A Veiled Assembly
The planet wasn't a world so much as a puzzle—an entire labyrinth folded into a sphere. Its seas were ink, its continents a snarl of corridors that looped back on themselves. At the very core, a cavernous chamber breathed a sickly green light.
Twelve robed figures sat around a colossal obsidian table. Hoods hid their faces. Only their eyes showed—reptilian slits, glacier-blue irises, starfield pupils—each pair strange in its own way. The air pressed down with such cultivation might that a weaker soul would have ashed the instant the meeting began.
A low voice broke the hush.
"Report." The Speaker's eyes were colorless, like old bone. "Our timetable was for next era. It seems the cosmos has other plans."
Varnyx—his pupils thin and serpentine—let a forked breath curl. "A chaos child has been born to the Stormhavens. Confirmed from three lines: a birthing flare over Stormhaven Palace, an astral aurora unseen in eons, and… the way their rivals suddenly went quiet." His gaze slid around the table. "If we allow this, the scales rust shut in their favor."
"Chaos children are rare," Kaldra said, voice as precise as ice. Her eyes were blue-white, unblinking. "Not unique. We have outlived others."
Erol, whose irises swirled like galaxies, clasped his hands. "Every cycle leaves fewer levers. If we act, we do it before the boy's name is woven into their primary formations. Before the clan patriarch marks him."
A murmur. Sleeves shifted like dark water.
The Speaker tapped the obsidian once. "Motive and method."
Varnyx smiled without warmth. "Not death. We don't waste a miracle. Extraction. We cultivate him offstage until his signature matures, then tune him to our purpose."
"'Cultivate'," someone chuckled from the shadowed end. "You mean converge him—turn a living child into a treasury on legs."
Silence held for a beat.
Kaldra didn't flinch. "Cold words don't change cold math. If we cannot break the Stormhavens, we dilute them. A chaos child raised under our law would be… useful."
"Assuming we can touch him," Erol said. "Stormhaven wards are not theater."
Varnyx lifted a hand and the table's surface showed rippling scenes: a glittering palace wreathed in astral falls; floating family isles; silver-flora gardens; squads of sentinels; a sanctum like a quiet star. Over the image, patterns of watch-rotations and ward-lines appeared in faint ink.
"We don't use force," Varnyx said. "We use trust. We placed a seed thirty millennia ago. It bears today."
The Speaker's gaze sharpened. "Name the seed."
"Lysel," Varnyx said. "A palace maid. Thirty thousand years of service. Never ambitious. Never idle. She knows the kitchens, the nursery corridors, the timing of the inner sanctum veils. The clan calls her 'aunt' to half their children. She has a son buried on their grounds. They do not notice her; they love her."
A soft exhale went around the circle.
"And the instrument?" asked Kaldra.
"Evernight's Embrace," Varnyx replied. "Legend-tier celestial poison. Dream-inducing. Difficult to trace—even to a Temporal Flow powerhouse. It creates vivid illusions, euphorias and terrors, and sinks the body into a sleep that only overwhelming external power can break. Some never wake. We have enough for a single breath, braided into incense."
Erol's galaxy eyes flicked to the Speaker. "Aria Stormhaven will be the target?"
"Her vicinity," Varnyx said. "The poison doesn't respect rank, but proximity bends fate. While she sleeps, our second instrument replaces a guard on rotation."
A figure at his right tugged down their hood just enough to show a face that was beautiful and indistinct at once, shifting like heat-haze. "Zephyr," they said with a lazy bow. Their voice could have belonged to anyone. "Mimicry is art. I copy appearance, gait, and aura. Give me a breath to study and the door will open itself."
Kaldra's gaze was arctic. "And if the patriarch is present?"
Zephyr shrugged. "Then I copy someone else and we delay. I can smell Orion's presence three corridors out. I plan to be four away."
"We extract the child to a blind," Varnyx continued. "A pocket anchored to this labyrinth. We do not keep him long. We simply set the convergence—a gentle lattice that teaches his chaos to sing on our key—then return him. His body goes back clean. His path… bends toward us."
Erol steepled his fingers. "How do you intend to avoid the clan's fate-sight? They keep seers older than our arguments."
Varnyx's smile thinned. "We route our tampering through grief. Stormhavens forgive sorrow. Lysel lost a child in their service; her dream under Evernight will be allowed by the wards. The convergence lattice rides that permission."
A new voice, gravel and smoke, rumbled from the far side. "You are proposing to pierce Stormhaven holy ground with poison, mimicry, and a song of sorrow."
"Yes," Kaldra said simply. "We are."
"Risk?" asked the Speaker.
"High," Varnyx said. "But less than frontal war with a clan that breeds heroes and counts time like coin."
Erol glanced around the circle. "We could… simply wait. We have waited before. We let empires rot from within; this is our craft."
Varnyx's tongue flicked. "Waiting is how you lose to chaos. It doesn't ripen; it erupts."
A pause. Then, not a vote—something older. The twelve sank their fingers into the obsidian and let the table drink a whisper of their will. The stone warmed.
"Consensus," the Speaker said. "Proceed"
The world blinked.
Wind didn't move. The light dimmed without fading. Overhead, at a distance that mocked distance, an eye opened. It was enormous—planet-wide—its iris a slow-burn star. Cold attention pinned the labyrinth like a needle pinning a moth.
Every hooded figure stood at once, hands together, backs inclined.
"We greet the Night Emperor," they said in a single, careful voice.
Space above the chamber thrummed. Not loud—true. The kind of vibration you feel in bone and law. Beyond the rock, beyond the table, the fabric of time around the world almost—almost—split like cloth under too much weight. Stars in the vision Varnyx had conjured flickered and died and then remembered themselves again.
The eye looked. Not angry. Not pleased. The way tide looks at shore.
A word fell into every mind like a seal pressed into warm wax:
"Patience."
Sweat ran along Kaldra's temple. She did not wipe it. The galaxy in Erol's eyes slowly unwound and wound again. Zephyr's face blurred, then steadied, as if they had almost forgotten who they were supposed to be.
The gaze lingered—one breath, two—and then the lid slid down. The eye closed. The chamber remembered sound.
No one moved for a heartbeat.
Then the Speaker exhaled, long and thin. "We are heard."
Erol's voice was tight. "And advised."
"Or warned," Kaldra said.
Varnyx's lips thinned into a line. "Caution is not delay. Patience is not paralysis."
Zephyr's voice came back light. "Do we shelve the mask and send flowers instead?"
The Speaker's colorless eyes cut to Varnyx. "You will hold. Preparations continue quietly. No poison burned. No mimic in their halls. We braid paths and alibis, not actions."
Kaldra's jaw flexed. "We set our pieces on the edges. We test the folds of their warding with harmless grief. We measure who comes when we tug the smallest string."
Erol nodded once. "And we find out who pulled us."
The Speaker let a final ripple cross the table, Stormhaven Palace dimmed; the labyrinth's green light returned. "Dismissed. Keep your breaths small. This is a universe that counts them."
Chairs scraped softly. Robes whispered. One by one, the twelve vanished into their private corridors. The last to go was Varnyx. He paused at the threshold and looked up into the rock as if it were sky.
"Patience," he murmured, serpentine eyes narrowing. "Then practice."
The chamber emptied. Far above, the eye was closed, but its absence stared like a second sun that had chosen, for now, not to rise.