The palace smelled of ash and broken stone.
Days after the battle, no royal banners remained. The halls where nobles once feasted were stripped bare, gold and velvet torn down. In their place, Rayon's Hollow Strings hung in the corners like spider silk, faint and shifting, watching everyone who stepped inside.
It wasn't just a ruin anymore.
It was his.
Rayon stood in the great hall, staring up at the cracked throne where he had laughed himself hoarse. His organization—the gutter-born soldiers, thieves, killers, and strays—stood in formation around him. Rough voices that once cursed and joked now spoke in silence, waiting for him to speak.
He spread his arms, voice sharp and cold.
"This palace," he said, "isn't a monument to kings anymore. It's the heart of the Web. From this day forward, this throne is mine. Our old den will stay as a branch, a place for new blood to cut their teeth. But here—here is where the strings of this city come together."
The cheer that rose wasn't noble, wasn't polite. It was savage. Raw.
The sound of people who knew they'd just inherited power.
In the weeks that followed, Rayon's rule spread like wildfire.
He turned the palace's treasury into a war chest, paying his soldiers not just with coin but with growth. Missions were handed out daily—assassinations, protection rackets, raids on rival gangs. Each job pulled strings tighter around the city.
He instituted ranks inside the Web:
Threads – new recruits, given menial tasks. Weavers – those who completed missions, entrusted with their own squads. Spinners – lieutenants who reported directly to Rayon, controlling districts. The Hollow Hand – Rayon's inner circle, bound to him by blood and oath.
Every member grew sharper. Hungrier. More dangerous. And all of it spiraled back to the spider at the center.
The Next City
Rayon leaned over a map one night, the room lit only by a single lantern. His Hollow Strings stretched across the parchment, tracing the roads like veins.
The city he now ruled was a corpse already—its nobles gutted, its laws rewritten. To stay here would be to stagnate.
But the next city… bigger, richer, crawling with knights and sorcerers. The perfect place to weave a new web.
He smirked, tapping the parchment where its royal district lay.
"The palace was only the start."
The night he left, the city was silent. His lieutenants remained behind to run the palace, the branch den growing fat with recruits.
Rayon walked through the gates with only a small escort, his cloak trailing behind him. He didn't look back. He didn't need to.
Because this city already belonged to him.
What mattered was the next one—and the threads he would tie there.