The chamber had no name and no place in any recorded history. Hewn into the marrow of the Pyrenees, buried beneath a forgotten Carthusian monastery where no monk remained and even the crows had stopped visiting, it was the hidden seat of the Xia Council—an order older than kings and older still than most gods remembered by name.
Twelve thrones formed a perfect circle. No two were the same. Each one was sculpted from stone brought from the four corners of the earth—lapis from Sinai, jade from the Yellow River, obsidian from Mexico, basalt chipped from the banks of the Tigris. They had not been chosen for comfort. They had been chosen for power, for presence, for memory.
Behind each throne stood a torch, unlit but already warm with promise. At the very center of the circle was a brazier, shallow but wide, and in it burned a strange fire—one that licked the air in silence and gave off no smoke. It pulsed instead, like a heart still beating beneath the earth. A fire untamed by wind or wood. A flame older than fire itself.
Ten of the twelve thrones were filled.
The Masters who occupied them sat in reverent silence, robed in shades of earth and ash, each one as still as the stone that bore him. Behind them stood their Apprentices—watchful, younger, yet bound by oaths that could not be broken without great cost. They were not soldiers, not scholars, not priests. They were something far more dangerous. Stewards of knowledge forbidden to the outside world. Keepers of truths so volatile, a single sentence uttered in the wrong tongue could unmake a nation.
And before them, shackled and kneeling, was a man.
Edward Stafford.
Son of York. Noble blood. Scholar. Strategist. Once the pride of the Christian Clan, Apprentice to Master Ox.
Now, a traitor.
His bindings were more than ornamental. The chains had been forged in the volcanic gut of Mount Etna, cooled in sacred oil, and blessed by three faiths before being placed upon him. They bound more than the body. They stifled the soul.
And yet—Edward knelt tall.
His chin was raised. His spine unbent. His eyes, ice-blue and unreadable, flitted from Master to Master, not with regret, but with a gaze that measured. He was outnumbered. Surrounded. Already condemned.
Still, he smiled.
From the High Seat—an imposing throne of red granite—Master Horse leaned forward. His age was difficult to place. His voice was not.
It cut clean through the stone-heavy air.
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
The silence that followed was not empty. It was filled with the weight of a thousand years of tradition—of betrayals avenged, of wars averted, of fires kept contained by whispered words and ancient agreements. This chamber had seen secrets buried and civilizations spared. Now, it watched a man who had dared unravel its order.
Edward smiled wider.
"I did what none of you had the stomach to do," he said.
His voice was smooth, not raised, but it traveled through the chamber like a whisper across ice. "The tribes of the New World weren't ready. You would have gifted them power—the kind that scorches mountains and stirs oceans—because you thought it noble. Thought it fair. But fair is the lie we tell ourselves before disaster."
He paused, then added with a low bitterness, "I watched a boy try to mend a broken wheel with hands still bleeding from the last ruin. That's what you were doing—offering magic to people still reeling from conquest and plague and steel. You call that wisdom?"
Master Horse's expression did not change, but the flame in the brazier flared once—brief, sharp, like a breath sucked between teeth.
"You were an apprentice," he said slowly, enunciating every syllable. "You were not to act. You were to learn."
"I learned," Edward said. "More than you meant me to. I saw the holes in your logic, the weaknesses in your traditions. I learned that reverence makes cowards of even the wise. And I acted—because no one else would. Because watching the world drown slowly is still watching it drown."
Master Ibex leaned forward now, eyes like worn glass beneath his hood. "You murdered your own teacher," he said softly. "You defiled Master Ox's sanctum. You broke the oath spoken in blood. That knowledge was not yours to wield."
Edward tilted his head. "And yet I wield it. Cleanly. Effectively. Without dithering councils or half-measures. Ox would have understood eventually. He taught me to ask the dangerous questions—he just never imagined I'd answer them."
That caused a stir. One apprentice flinched. Another took an unconscious step back. Even the fire in the brazier hissed as though in warning.
"You speak of power as if you earned it," said Master Leopard. His voice was high and dry. "But you stole it. You used it to bend kings, twist faiths, and blacken the sky above nations."
Edward's smile thinned. "I did not steal. I reclaimed what the world buried. I stopped waiting for permission to protect the future. You sit here debating while cities crumble. I have walked through those cities."
His gaze swept the chamber. "I have stood beside burning altars. I have seen children coughing up blood because their leaders feared change more than death. I have watched monarchs eat like gods while their people beg for water."
"Protect?" spat Master Horse. "You destabilized half the world."
"I ignited it," Edward corrected. "A world in stasis is a world that rots. I merely accelerated what was already coming."
"You backed Luther," said Master Crane, his tone curiously flat.
"I gave him courage," Edward replied. "A few whispers in Wittenberg, some gold passed through Antwerp, and Europe trembles on the edge of reformation."
"Spain. France. The Ottomans," said Master Ox's empty seat, as if his ghost still lingered there.
"I nudged them," Edward said. "And they moved like pawns across the board. But it's what pawns become that you've never understood. Some of them reach the end."
Crane's fingers twitched. "And China?"
Edward bowed his head, mockingly. "The Zhengde Emperor required no push. Only a little smoke to darken his vision. A few Portuguese ships in the harbor. A sickness in the capital. The afflictions spread faster than fire. But fire is honest. Fire doesn't hide behind scrolls and secrecy."
The Masters sat in grave silence.
"He has allies," muttered Master Leopard, the words dry and hoarse. "The balance may already be undone."
Crane hesitated. "Do we invoke the Pillar of Judgment?"
"That rite is legend," whispered Ibex.
Horse's eyes did not leave Edward. "Then let the legend begin."
At that, he turned toward the brazier and spoke a word not uttered aloud in over two hundred years. The flames convulsed, as if struck by lightning, and then—without warning—snaked across the floor and up the chamber walls, leaping from torch to torch, lighting all ten in sequence.
A ring of fire surrounded them now. Along the curved walls, ancient sigils shimmered into view—symbols etched by the first generation of the Xia, glowing like coals beneath snow. They pulsed with something more than light. Memory, perhaps. Or prophecy.
The flames cast flickering shadows, and within those shadows danced visions: great cities broken like toy blocks, temples overrun, soldiers in strange armour, ships burning on blackened seas. And amid it all—a silhouette. Tall. Proud. Arms spread like wings. Edward's own likeness, writ large in smoke and flame.
The apprentices shifted. Some shivered. One made the sign of protection across his chest.
Master Horse didn't blink.
"If this is true," he said, "we are not dealing with treason. We are staring down the first fires of collapse."
He turned to the young man beside his throne—Tariq, son of Damascus. The apprentice's hands trembled, but his eyes were steady.
"If he's caused all this," Tariq asked, "what haven't we seen?"
The chamber fell still.
Edward's voice was barely audible now. "You think this ends with me."
He raised his gaze, and in his eyes was the calm of a man who had already set the forest ablaze. His fingers curled slowly into fists, not in defiance, but as if to hold on to the last warmth of conviction before the storm.
The fire behind him cracked again—sharper this time. As if something ancient had stirred.
Master Horse's reply came quiet, heavy.
"Then may God help us all."