The Void Dragon sank its claws into the golden ring.
The space around its paws turned black. Leon guided the cut with gestures and his voice instead of through a seal, leaving the beast free to retreat.
The dragon continued.
The ring split.
The white current entered the open void channel. For an instant, everyone in the academy saw the Crown from within.
Beneath the city lay not one tower but a network of old defensive lines, debt seals and family contracts. All of them converged on the titanic core. But there was one more node at the centre, small and almost extinguished.
The seal of the Wang family.
Mira was the first to recognise it.
"Your parents built the original defensive circuit," she said. "Kane did not create the Crown. He turned their network inside out."
My father's face surfaced in my memory. Not a true memory, but someone else's recording from the laboratory. He stood beside a diagram and said that a city could not be defended by one creature's command. Every node had to confirm the bond separately.
My mother held Styx's egg.
"If a central master takes control of the network, a free witness will be able to demand renewed consent."
Kane had cut off the end of the recording.
That was why he needed Styx. Not only because she was a powerful queen: her egg preserved the right, built in by the creators, to put a question to the entire network.
"Then we can shut down the Crown," Cole said.
Mira shook her head.
"Demanding renewed consent does not mean they will refuse. Many people are afraid of losing their beasts. Many beasts will choose a familiar bond even if it caused them pain. We cannot predict the outcome."
Leon added, "And there will be no reversing the consequences."
If we began a full review, every contract in the city would be broken at once. The protective dome would fall. The Wildlands would be left open. Hospitals would lose their healing beasts. Transport would stop.
Kane had built his power so that freedom looked like a catastrophe.
Lily kept broadcasting.
"Then the city has to know the cost before it decides."
She put the diagram of the Crown on every available screen and said it plainly: once the bonds were broken, things would get worse before people learnt to live another way.
Open in the reader