Kane sealed the main entrance and sent the Chain Basilisk there.
It found no one.
While the white beast tore apart the empty courtyard, the dyers opened the cooling pipes in the basement. Kane sent fire hounds below. The students used the unguarded staircase to reach the cages. The flying beasts left the roof after the first brood, while the second came through the ventilation shafts on the opposite side.
The tower kept trying to find the main attack and was late every time.
Leon and I reached the service gallery. White veins pulsed in the walls. One captain entered the nearest crack, and his mosquitoes began gnawing through the thin links between the seals.
"If we sever this line, the family hall will open," Leon said.
"How do you know?"
"They made me draw the layout from memory."
"Why?"
"My father believed an heir should know how to rebuild the tower after a revolt."
The word came out calmly. Only the dragon beside him lowered his head: he remembered those lessons too.
The communication crystal came alive.
"The archive is holding. Rem says not to send help," Lily said. "The northern group has lost its staircase, and Cole is taking his people along the outer ledge."
A crackle sounded behind her voice.
Kane had found the academy transmitter.
"Lily?"
"Keep going. I'll move the channel."
The connection broke.
Leon looked at me, waiting for a decision.
"She said to keep going."
"That was a message, not an order."
He gave a short nod and went towards the family hall. I stayed by the vein while the captain finished his work.
The white fire came without warning, filled the ventilation shaft and engulfed the brood. The mosquitoes darted back, but the captain held the vein open. Through the bond, I felt not the swarm's shared pain but his own separate memory: a copper whistle above the dyehouse, the smell of wet cloth, Taya's hand lifting a mosquito from her shoulder one day and setting it free instead of swatting it.
I called to the captain.
The bond carried my presence, but no command.
He could leave.
The captain stayed for a few more heartbeats. The family door opened. The last mosquitoes made it out, and the red spark inside him went dark.
The System offered to restore the brood at the expense of the tower's beasts.
I closed the panel.
"We could restore their numbers," Styx said.
"But not him."
She kept the whistle in her memory and released the bond.
Students who had come by another route were waiting for us in the family hall. They had managed to open only some of the cages on the upper floors. Some beasts had refused to leave, and two had attacked their rescuers. One boy clutched his torn shoulder while his monkey tried to lead the wounded human towards the stairs.
"Kane sealed the exit," the student said. "Lily isn't answering any more."
Cole appeared on the outer balcony with three fighters. Of the twenty people he had led out, only four had made it. The others had stayed behind to hold the doors for the freed beasts.
No one knew what was happening to the group next to them.
We had to decide on the spot.
Cole led the students towards the archive lift. Leon and I continued towards the heart of the tower. The Void Dragon walked between us, leaning heavily on his sound wing.
The doors of the family hall closed behind us.
A second Leon stood in the centre of the room.
He wore the Li family's white uniform, the heir's golden insignia and a cloak without a single trace of blood. Beside him, an enormous, unhurt Void Dragon spread two perfect wings.
The Crown was no longer looking for a leader among our groups.
It had found the desire that could restore a single master.
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