The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

"You like anyone who insults you creatively," Mezos said.

"That is not true."

"It is deeply true."

Liam looked between them, unimpressed. "Are all of you like this?"

"No," Rex said. "Arik is worse."

Arik’s mouth curved faintly, and as if to support Rex’s accusation, he inclined his head in mock honor.

Liam stared at him.

The morning air held for one narrow, ridiculous beat.

Then Liam said, "That was not a compliment."

"I accepted it as one."

"You cannot accept insults as compliments just because you’re royal."

Noah brightened. "Actually, that may be one of the main uses of royalty."

Rex lifted one hand and activated the ward with a pulse from the green stone ring at his finger. The air around Arik, Mezos, and Noah bent subtly, not making them invisible, only forgettable at the edges. The kind of ward that enticed passing eyes to move away before recognition formed.

"It explains Wrohan’s government," Rex muttered, shaking his hand.

The ward settled more firmly around Arik, Mezos, and Noah, softening their outlines just enough that a passing eye would decide, without thinking too hard, that they were visiting lecturers, auditors, or some other category of person best ignored before coffee.

Liam gave the shimmer a brief inspection.

"The left edge is weak."

Rex looked offended. "It is not."

"It is."

"It’s holding."

"That is not the same as being good."

Noah leaned slightly toward Mezos. "He speaks to crown princes the way engineers speak to unstable boilers."

"Accurately?" Mezos asked.

"With contempt."

Liam glanced back. "Move." 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

They moved.

The university doors opened to Liam’s palm and Rex’s authorization, though the old brass-framed reader hesitated for half a second when it reached Arik, as if even the access system had enough instinct to reconsider allowing him indoors. Liam keyed in a manual override before it could develop opinions.

Inside, the main engineering hall stretched long and high ahead of them, lit by strips of morning ether light embedded along the vaulted ceiling. The air smelled of old stone, hot dust, metal polish, burnt coffee, and the faint, honest trace of machines that had been repaired too many times by people who loved them more than the administration funded them.

For a moment, Liam’s shoulders eased and started down the hall.

"We take the north mechanical corridor," he said. "It has fewer staff before eight, and the ward interference is lower there. Do not touch anything. Do not ask questions in front of students. Do not read plaques aloud."

Noah looked immediately interested. "Why not?"

"Because most of them are lies."

Rex sighed. "That is unfair."

Liam looked at him.

Rex amended, "Politically unfair. Technically accurate."

They passed beneath the first arch.

On either side of the hall, statues stood in recessed niches between the ward plates. At first glance, they looked like the usual academic vanity: bronze and white stone figures of old scholars, founders, conquerors, donors, and men who had probably used public money to commission memorial versions of themselves while still alive.

Mezos glanced at the first one without interest.

Then the second.

By the third, his pace slowed.

The statue showed a young man in military formalwear, one hand resting on the hilt of a ceremonial blade, his face handsome, pale, and almost indecently self-possessed. The next showed the same man perhaps ten years older, cloak swept back as if caught in a heroic wind no corridor had ever provided. The next, older still, holding a map of Wrohan’s expanded territories beneath one hand.

Mezos’s gaze sharpened.

"They’re all Felix."

Liam did not slow. "Yes."

Noah stopped looking amused.

Rex’s mouth tightened with a familiar embarrassment, as if he had never liked this hallway and had been forced to walk through it since he was a child.

Mezos looked from one statue to the next, then further down the corridor, where the niches continued in disciplined intervals like a timeline no sane institution would have permitted.

Felix as a young commander.

Felix as conqueror.

Felix as patron of ether infrastructure.

Felix as a university benefactor.

Felix, as a sainted elder statesman, one hand over his cane, gaze lifted toward a future that had apparently required expensive sculptors and no shame.

Mezos stared.

"Was he a narcissist?"

Rex let out a short laugh with no humor in it. "Was?"

Liam made a small gesture with one hand. "The official answer is that the statues were donated by grateful civic committees after each major territorial integration and infrastructure initiative."

Noah tilted his head toward the nearest plaque. "And the unofficial answer?"

"The grateful civic committees were funded through offices Felix controlled, chaired by men Felix promoted, and reviewed by cultural boards Felix later absorbed."

Mezos’s expression had gone deeply still.

"That is disturbing."

"Welcome to Wrohan," Liam said. "We preserve psychological illness in bronze."

Arik’s gaze moved over the statues without visible reaction, though the air around him seemed to cool by a degree. His brooch pulsed once beneath the ward’s concealment, a faint silver stutter against black fabric.

Liam noticed.

"Do not react to the statues etherically," he said. "They are ugly, not dangerous."

"Are you sure?" Noah asked.

"No."

That did not comfort anyone.

They continued down the hall.

The statues grew older as they walked. Felix in battle armor. Felix beside a stylized ether tower. Felix with one hand extended over a miniature model of the university’s first exploitation channel, as if he had personally coaxed the earth open through benevolence rather than conquest, funding pressure, and ownership disputes that still made legal historians drink.

Mezos slowed again before one statue near the central stair.

This Felix was middle-aged, smiling faintly, the inscription beneath him reading: Grand Prince Felix Canmore, Guardian of the Modern Ether Age.

Mezos stared at the words.

Then at Liam.

"Guardian."

"Yes," Liam said. "Apparently ’monopolist’ did poorly with donors."

Noah made a strangled sound.

Rex looked at the ceiling as though asking a god he did not believe in for patience.

Arik stepped closer to the plaque.

For a moment, the hall felt very far away.

Liam glanced at him and understood, with no context and far too much instinct, that Arik was not seeing a statue but something violent enough that the air around him seemed to draw tight.

Liam’s irritation shifted, unintentionally, into attention.

Then Arik looked away from the statue, and his face was calm again.

"Felix enjoys permanence," he said.

Rex’s voice was dry. "He enjoys people being reminded of permanence."

"No," Liam said, moving again. "He enjoys people being reminded that every corridor eventually belongs to him."

Mezos fell into step beside him. "And yet he never fully privatized the academic source."

"He tried."

"Why did he fail?"

"Because the university source is tied into too many public-facing systems to seize cleanly. Research contracts. Industrial safety studies and grant-funded infrastructure for outer districts. If he took it outright, he would have to admit he wanted control more than productivity." Liam’s mouth curved faintly. "Even Felix likes pretending he is not the villain in engineering reports."

Noah looked around at the statues. "The hallway seems less committed to that fiction."

"The hallway has tenure."

Rex laughed despite himself.

They turned into the north mechanical corridor, narrower and less ceremonial. The statues ended abruptly, replaced by exposed conduit lines, marked access panels, old warning signs, and the comforting sight of a scorch mark above a sealed laboratory door that Liam knew had been caused by a third-year team, a miscalibrated compression ring, and an argument about breakfast.

Much better.

Mezos glanced back once toward the statue hall.

"That corridor is worse than the palace."

"It’s more honest," Liam said. "The palace hides ownership behind etiquette. The university put it in bronze and made students walk past it to learn thermodynamics."

Arik’s voice came from behind him, quiet. "And you still stayed."

Liam did not turn.

"For the machines."