Chapter 339: The Meeting VII
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Chaos surged around his arm and hand, not flaring outward wastefully, but compressing inward until his fist seemed wrapped in a dark bright mass of controlled power. The ground under his lead foot cracked slightly as he set himself.
The whole camp held its breath.
The black armored lizard lifted higher.
The white griffin-like birds went silent enough to feel unnatural.
Bat Bat was biting her own knuckle to keep from shouting something probably brilliant and disastrous.
Kess had stopped breathing altogether.
Elena’s hand had not moved visibly toward a weapon because Elena did not require visible weapons to change a night. But the three rank-three maids beside her had gone from composed to coiled. Not interfering. Not yet. But one more second and even the air around them seemed poised to cut.
Sekhmet charged.
Mihos charged too.
No more testing. No more measured exchange.
Just two bloodlines, two prides, two bodies loaded with enough force to split the night at the point of contact.
They met at the center. Or would have.
Because in the exact breath before blood blade and Chaos fist collided, another presence entered the line between them.
Not by running. By appearing.
Lady Seraphiel stepped into the middle as if the space had been waiting for her permission to exist.
Her hands rose. One caught Sekhmet’s blood-charged strike. The other caught Mihos’s Chaos energy wrapped fist.
And stopped both of them. Not slowed.
Totally stopped them.
The force of the collision they should have made instead detonated outward around her in a ring of violent pressure that snapped tent cloth, bent lantern flames flat, and drove dust and loose gravel across the ground in a wild outward blast.
But Seraphiel herself did not move. Not one inch.
Her expression was calm. Too calm. The kind of calm only monsters and gods ever truly mastered.
One hand held Sekhmet’s reforged broken blood blade by the force around it as though it were an unruly child’s toy.
The other held Mihos’s charged fist in place as if his rank, purity, and family arrogance had all combined to become something mildly inconvenient at best.
For one suspended heartbeat, no one in the camp made a sound.
Then Seraphiel turned her head slightly.
Her eyes, beautiful and ancient and absolutely done with everyone present, moved first to Mihos and then to Sekhmet.
A few moments earlier...
Inside the inner receiving chamber of Mihos Dawn’s western camp, Lady Seraphiel sat across from Stephen beneath warm lantern light and expensive silence.
The room had been prepared with the same polished restraint everything around Mihos seemed to wear. Fine wood. Soft carpets. Tea placed correctly. Curtains layered to keep out road dust and lesser discomforts. The kind of space wealthy houses built when they wanted to pretend civility could fully control blood.
It could not.
Not tonight.
Stephen, head butler of the main Dawn House, stood with the posture of a man who had spent too many years serving powerful people to ever waste movement. Even now, with Lady Seraphiel before him and one heir waiting in one part of the camp while another approached from the road, he did not fidget. He did not pace. He simply held his hands before him and answered carefully, the way old retainers answered when every sentence might become future family history.
Lady Seraphiel had already felt that something under this meeting was stranger than simple pressure on a lower branch business. She knew Mihos well enough to understand his arrogance. She knew the family well enough to understand their cruelty. But she also knew when movement in the old bloodline did not match ordinary punishment.
So she had asked directly.
"Why now."
Stephen lowered his head slightly, not in weakness, but in acknowledgment of who sat before him.
"Master Eyra was asked to remain in the Middle Domain," he said. "The master of the family made that order himself."
That caught Seraphiel immediately.
Her eyes sharpened. "Remain."
"Yes."
She leaned back a fraction, more from thought than comfort. "So uncle decided to take Eyra back." The surprise in her voice was real now. "But why?"
Stephen answered without decoration.
"First Master Eyra has reached the True God rank."
That changed the room.
Seraphiel went still.
True God.
(Author Note: The gods rank are-
Low level god
Mid level god.
High level god
True God
Many more ranks for later. )
She had known Eyra was rising. Known he would rise. But hearing that he had crossed fully into that rank made something old and private shift inside her chest before she smothered it under discipline.
Of course he had.
That stubborn, impossible man had always climbed as if heaven itself had once insulted him personally.
Stephen continued in the same level tone.
"You know how the situation is in the Middle Domain. The House Master will soon leave for the Upper Domain. He has already given the family head position to his second son."
Seraphiel’s mouth moved faintly with something too sharp to become a smile.
"Yes. That part I had witnessed myself."
"The second son now holds the family head seat," Stephen said. "Young Master Mihos is the heir of the family line beneath him."
That she also knew. More than knowing, she disliked it.
Stephen went on.
"But while the House Master prepares to leave, he wants his first son back within the family structure."
Seraphiel’s gaze did not leave him.
"Eyra."
"Yes."
"After all this time."
"Yes."
There was no point pretending that was not astonishing.
Eyra had been cast out in all but the most technical blood sense. His name had remained, because houses as old as Dawn never entirely cut blood loose if there was power left in it. But presence, authority, and belonging were different matters. He had been removed. Sent away with humiliation disguised as law. Used, then cast outward when his choices made the family look weak and uncontrolled.
And now the old man wanted him back.
Not from mercy.
From need.
Stephen, being too honest to fake nobility where there was none, said it plainly.
"A True God can help keep the family safe during the House Master’s absence."
There... That was the spine of it. Not forgiveness. But utility.