James sat in the largest shard of what was once his Citadel, the white stone jutting up around him like broken teeth. The black marble desk had been dragged here, planted in the center of the ruin, and around it the papers rose in towers. He worked through them one after another, pen scratching, his hand pressed hard against his jaw as if to hold it all together.
A bottle of whiskey rested beside the pen. Behind his chair, a bottle of wine leaned half-empty against the wall. Neither dulled the weight.
He wrote anyway.
Taxes. Names for prison. Lists for exile, for who would be thrown into the crater without a parachute. Who would feel the hammer.
Then a different sheet caught his eye. A report from Civil Control, detailing a group sighted near the shade city on the Citadel's edge. The same place Jasper had vanished from only a week earlier.
James's eyes flicked to the window. The katana still lay in the corner of the room, untouched since he had taken it. The steel glinted faintly in the gray light.
He lowered the paper back to the desk. Civil Control noted the group might be the start of a rebellion.
The thought twisted bitter in his mouth.
No one would be that reckless. Not here. Not while they were safe. Not while they were fed. Not with Evodil unhinged.
Not while James was the one holding this city together.
He shoved the report aside with a sharp exhale, reaching for the whiskey. Tilting it back, he missed his mouth by an inch, the liquor spilling down over his lap in a rush of heat and smell.
"Damn it."
The curse ripped out of him as his palms slammed into the marble. A sharp crack split across its surface, the sound carrying into the hollow chamber. He closed his eyes, dragged his hands away, and rubbed slow circles into his temples. The damp patch on his pants lifted, then vanished in a faint shimmer, the whiskey evaporating into nothing. The desk stayed fractured. He could do nothing about that. Not yet. He'd need another. When he could find him. When he decided to return. Whenever that would be.
With a huff, James reached behind his chair, dragging the wine bottle forward. He twisted it open, brought it to his lips, and drank. This time the taste stayed where it belonged.
Another paper slid into place. Another report. Another sighting.
He scanned it, jaw tightening. A group this time near a bakery — or whatever the shades called it. He didn't care what they ate, what they did, what corners of the city they clung to, so long as they stayed in line. So long as they obeyed him. So long as they obeyed Evodil.
But this report came with a picture.
Three figures. Robed. Shadowed. Faces hidden.
Except one.
The light caught on a head of curly black hair, skin faintly tanned.
James's chest went still.
Only one boy in this city looked like that.
His son. His Jasper.
James pressed his palm against his forehead, dragging it down over his face before shoving the paper aside. A low groan slipped through his teeth as he slicked his hair back. It slid the wrong way, falling to the left.
He hated this. Hated the weight of a human body. To interact with the world through flesh felt like weakness. Dependence. Borrowing existence from something lesser. It burned more knowing he was the only one who seemed to struggle with it. His pride could not tolerate the imbalance.
Evodil never showed cracks. Noah wore his body like a loose coat. Ariela… wherever she drifted in the underground, she had always been an exception. And Jasper—he was something else entirely. A complication James refused to name.
The chair scraped loud against stone as he rose, tie straightened, posture squared. His shades lay on the edge of the desk, lenses catching the dull light as he slid them on, piece by piece, until the reflection hid his eyes.
"Take these out," he barked toward the door. His voice snapped through the chamber.
The door groaned open. Two figures stepped inside.
Shades. Not the common type. These wore uniforms. These followed commands. These belonged to him. At least until Evodil decided otherwise.
Their helmets were shaped wrong for human skulls, trapezoids with a single red-eyed sigil across the front. Screens glowed faintly on their chests, touch panels for settings, a feature Noah had insisted on during Civil Control's founding. Adjustments. Modes. Protocols.
Their uniforms stretched black, white, and red across broad frames. Long-sleeved, sharp-cut, resembling police attire re-colored for Menystria's needs. But the cloth was never whole. Spikes pushed through at odd angles, tearing holes in the fabric where the shadows beneath their bodies jutted outward.
They could speak, sometimes. Enough to pass orders, enough to make their presence worse.
For James, it wasn't frightening. Only impractical.
He walked past the two Shades, their bodies shifting just enough so their spikes and armor didn't scrape his suit. The stench followed anyway. Not the iron tang of blood he was used to, not even the acrid stench of burning ink. No—this was closer to rot. Bread left damp too long. Mold blooming in dark corners.
James groaned under his breath, the rare break in his composure. It took a lot for a smell to bother him. This managed it.
He kept walking. Through the fractured halls of the Citadel, past the long corridor with the Light Gate glowing faintly at its end. His boots echoed against the marble, steady, deliberate, until he reached the open edge. He didn't bother with the shade city below. Not yet.
From his coat pocket, he drew a cigarette. He pressed his ring finger against it; the flame flickered to life instantly, catching with a quiet hiss. Smoke curled upward as he lifted it to his lips, staring out from the edge of the floating island. The city stretched beneath him, quiet and restless all at once.
The view stirred a memory. One from a hundred years ago. Maybe more. He didn't bother keeping count anymore. But the image was clear enough, sharper than the paper-stacks and rebellions of today.
He saw himself, Noah, and Evodil at the edge of another floating stone. The wind pulling at them, the horizon wide, blank, waiting. Noah hunched over some stolen human device, Evodil smirking into the void as if he owned it, and James standing behind them, arms crossed, already thinking of order, of names, of permanence.
He remembered Evodil's single word — Menystria — and the way it had settled into them all, a word that sounded like it had always been there. He remembered his own declaration, firm as carved stone: Law and Order.
And now here he was, standing alone at the edge, smoke curling from his lips, wondering what the hell any of it had been for.
James lowered himself to the grass, legs folding beneath him. The cigarette stayed balanced between his lips, smoke rolling out in slow streams through his nose as he dragged the breath deep.
Jasper would've called him disgusting for it. He always did. Back before that. Before the soldier. Before the blood on his hands tipped everything off balance.
If that moment hadn't happened—if Jasper hadn't pulled the trigger in that government building, if the war hadn't flared into being right there on the floor—they wouldn't even be here. Caroline never would've set foot in Menystria. Evodil never would've tied himself to her with that idiotic, fragile affection.
She had been kind, James would give her that. He'd seen her often in the manor, the way Evodil lingered too close, the time they spent together. He wore glasses, kept his shades up, but he always saw more than people realized. Even through Evodil's blindfold.
The eyes beneath it had never fooled him. To strangers, they were horror. To him and Noah, they were a sign. Not of comfort, not exactly, but of constancy. If chaos still burned in those eyes, then the world still followed the one rhythm they knew: that nothing stayed steady, and nothing could. A constant of never having a constant.
Now, though… his eyes were clouded. Murkier. Harder to read behind that strip of fabric.
And it wasn't the girl. James knew that. Evodil didn't break because of her. If she vanished, he'd adapt. He always did.
But she was gone. Long gone. James exhaled smoke into the open air, the thought settling in with the taste of ash. He guessed she wasn't coming back.
James flicked the cigarette from his lips. It spun once, trailing a faint ember before dropping into the crater below. He exhaled with it, brushing ash and dust from his suit as he pushed himself back to his feet.
His gaze lingered over Menystria stretched beneath him. Not the city he had built. Not the city they had named. Something slower now, decaying, rotting piece by piece. What was left of it. What would remain after the rest fell away.
A sigh escaped him, sharper than he meant it to be. The corners of his mouth twitched upward in spite of himself. Fleeting.
Jasper's wide-eyed arrival. Noah's first meeting with Ariela. Ariela's first meeting with him. Evodil's triumphant grin when he'd discovered coffee, the endless sparring matches that always ended in a draw, or James standing above him, hammer braced, chest heaving.
They were stupid memories. Useless. But for a moment, he didn't mind them.
Because for a moment, he knew they would never happen again.
The smile vanished, leaving only the usual line of blankness across his face. He turned from the edge, leaving the view behind without a second glance, and walked back toward the Light Gate, the glowing threshold of the Citadel waiting for him.
He climbed the stairs slowly, eyes tracing the ceiling above.
When he first planned the Citadel, there hadn't been one. No roof. No walls to block the air. It was supposed to breathe, cool and open, a fortress that felt alive. Now, it was only white marble and poured concrete. Closed. Heavy. Suffocating. A monument to endurance instead of design.
At the top, he crossed through the corridors without glancing back toward Menystria. The office door stood open. Inside, the desk was clear, the stacks of paper already carried away by Civil Control. Efficient. Expected.
James crossed to the window, pausing only to take the whiskey bottle from where it sat. He tipped it back, the burn washing down his throat, then lowered it, gaze sliding down to the corner where the katana lay.
He stared at it in silence.
A single glance of regret.
And the weight of knowing what he had to do. If there was any chance of order becoming justice again, he couldn't keep it.
He took up the weapon, sheath and all, and unlatched the window with a grunt. The air from the crater rushed in, cold, empty, endless.
He looked down into the dark. Nothing met him. Nothing ever would.
Then, before thought or doubt could root itself in his mind, he let go.
The blade slipped from his hand and vanished into the abyss.