Beyond the family hall began a round corridor with no doors.
The walls converged on the centre, where the Predator Crown pulsed. White light was already moving along the dragon's conduit. With every beat, his heart jerked and his damaged wing spread again against his will.
Leon walked beside him, holding his burned fingers to his chest. He could not close the old bond without reclaiming a master's rights.
At the end of the corridor stood a round gate with a recess for the swarm's control node.
Kane had expected Styx to come to him as the sole queen. Then the Crown could have taken the entire swarm through her at once.
But the central node no longer existed.
Seven captains were in different parts of the tower: one had died at the vein, and two were not responding. Even if the others had wanted to, they could not have reached the door at the same time.
The System offered Styx the option of gathering their sparks back into herself.
"Restore unified swarm. Probability of opening: one hundred per cent."
White fire appeared behind us. Ahead, the conduit in the dragon's chest grew stronger. Kane did not rush us: every path to him required the return of a master.
Styx rose from my shoulder.
The captains came through the bond. Not the captains themselves, but the traces of their decisions: the hospital district, the clutch beyond the wall, the wounded by the river, the archive lift. Each of them could lose their will if she drew their sparks into herself.
"I won't gather them," Styx said.
The Crown closed the recess.
Leon sank to one knee. The dragon groaned. A few more beats and Kane would force him to open the door from within, turning the beast into a key.
A faint buzzing came from the ventilation shaft.
A scout with a burned wing crawled out towards us. He came from the first brood, from the academy forest, and had received no separate core when the swarm divided. His memory held no city plans. Only the scent of a grass rat, the shadow beneath a fallen tree and the palm around which the whole colony had once gathered.
The scout settled in the recess.
Nothing happened.
"Not a captain," Styx said.
She still held the last red spark in her chest. It gave her no power over the swarms. It was what allowed Styx to retain speech, the memory of her forms and her own body.
Styx was going to give away the last spark.
"If you give it away, what will be left?"
Styx did not answer in words. She showed me the scout, the closed door and the white fire.
Then she touched her forehead to his.
The red spark passed into the small body.
Styx fell.
I caught her in both hands. Her wings could no longer hold the air, and the bond grew thinner than breath. She kept her name and a few images, but human speech was gone.
The scout did not grow at once: red lines spread across his wings, and a faint rhythm of his own formed around him.
The new captain looked at Styx.
She could not command him.
He entered the control slot of his own accord.
The round gate opened, burning his wings. The captain held the passage while we carried Styx through and the Void Dragon squeezed after us. When the beast's tail crossed the threshold, the red point in the door went dark.
I did not know whether the scout had made it out.
Kane stood ahead of us.
White plates covered half his face. The Chain Basilisk had fused with the throne, and the titanic core beat in the Crown's chest. A black vein stretched from Kane to the Void Dragon.
Kane looked at Styx in my palms.
"You gave up the last thing you had to enter."
"No," Leon said.
The dragon beside him raised his head.
"The last one entered of his own accord."
The Crown closed the door behind us.
"Owner identification initiated," the System said.
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