Ashveil reeked of smoke, rust, and failure.
The air was thick with fine black dust that never settled. Its streets were uneven, lined with shattered buildings, flickering streetlamps, and overgrown rails that hadn't seen use in years. Broken cultivation nodes dotted the corners like dead organs. The city was a relic, a symbol of what happened when a Black heir failed to tame a domain.
And now, it was Jareth's.
A single transport glider sliced through the overcast sky, descending onto a cracked plaza where a handful of officials waited in awkward formation. The city had no garrison, no honor guard. Just weary civil clerks in stained robes and dull armor, blinking against the storm winds as the glider's landing gear hissed against the broken stone.
Jareth stepped out alone.
No entourage. No speech. No crest banners flapping in artificial wind.
Just his presence and the pulse of an SSS core that made qi in the air ripple unconsciously.
One of the older officials stepped forward, forcing a polite bow. "Lord Jareth… welcome to Ashveil."
Jareth surveyed the ruin around him. Faint sirens rang in the distance. Smoke drifted from a collapsed energy plant just beyond the city wall. At the end of the plaza, an abandoned cultivation arena slouched in silence.
"This was once a trade hub," he said flatly.
The man nodded. "Twenty years ago. Before the rebellion. The city's last lord your cousin Aldric was removed after the core furnace exploded during a duel. Since then, the node grid has collapsed. Productivity is down eighty percent. The people…" He hesitated. "They survive."
Jareth turned to him. "Not for long. Survival is not legacy. From now on, Ashveil is mine."
He started walking.
The officials scurried to follow.
---
The core of the estate was mostly intact bare bones of the Black family's former presence. The walls were still reinforced with darksteel, the cultivation chamber was repairable, and the main control tower still housed a dormant mind-core a data and strategy AI system once used by the previous lords.
Ayaka moved ahead of him through the halls, scanning every room with the grace of a wraith. She finally stopped at the base of the control tower.
"We'll need a team to rebuild the inner command functions. The city's energy matrix is barely functioning. There are power leaks and qi fractures everywhere. I've marked the node cluster for repairs."
Jareth nodded. "Start with the market districts. Trade first. Visibility second. Stability last."
Ayaka raised a brow. "Not security?"
"They expect me to play general. I'll play kingmaker instead."
He walked toward the mind-core terminal, where a dusty control console flickered intermittently with blue symbols. He placed his hand on the rune crystal. The system stuttered… then flared to life.
"Mind-core initializing. Voice imprint confirmed. Welcome, Lord Black."
"Activating Ashveil strategic intelligence grid…"
Lines of code streamed down the walls. The entire structure hummed faintly.
"Good," Jareth muttered. "Now open file: Sera Wynne."
The display shifted.
A full holographic image of a young woman appeared. Late teens. Slim. Braids falling across her shoulders. Her eyes were sharp, fierce. She wore no formal robes, only a sleeveless dark vest over light body armor stained with ash. She looked like a war orphan. But her eyes… they burned with calculation.
Ayaka watched silently.
"Subject: Sera Wynne."
Unregistered cultivator. Estimated core grade: unknown.
Affiliation: formerly with Phoenix Dust resistance cell.
Current location: Ashveil Sector 9.
"She's hiding under our roof," Jareth said. "Let's go meet her."
---
Sector 9 was what the city called a no-go zone. It lay at the city's edge, where collapsed warehouses and corrupted cultivation wells had turned the landscape into a field of blackened stone and toxic winds. Energy leaked freely from fractured crystal mines, forming wild qi storms that distorted both sound and sight.
Jareth and Ayaka passed silently through the ruins. Creatures skittered in the dark mutant scavengers born of failed alchemy and abandoned beast cores. Ayaka's hand hovered near her dagger at all times.
At the base of an old mineral vault, they found her.
Sera Wynne stood barefoot in a field of red ash, practicing slow, measured strikes. Each movement flowed into the next, forming an unfamiliar martial art, one neither Jareth nor Ayaka recognized. Her core signature flickered unstable, quiet, but powerful in its own way. Not natural. Not refined. But forged.
When she saw them, she didn't flinch.
"I was wondering when you'd show up," she said.
Jareth took two steps forward. "You're hard to ignore."
"I'm not trying to be noticed."
"Then you're failing."
Sera tilted her head. "What do you want?"
"I'm rebuilding this city. That means dealing with the strongest people in it."
"You mean absorbing them," she said.
"No," he replied. "Recruiting."
She wiped a line of ash from her cheek. "I'm not a soldier. And I don't bow to nobles."
"Good. I don't want obedience. I want intelligence. Vision. Grit. Something this place has been bled dry of."
She laughed once. "And what makes you think I have any of that?"
Jareth stepped closer, his core flaring for a split second just enough to shake the red ash from the earth around him.
"Because you're still standing here," he said. "And everyone else ran."
A moment passed between them. Her gaze narrowed, calculating.
"You'll regret this," she said.
"I hope so," Jareth replied. "Regret keeps you sharp."
She extended a hand.
And just like that, Sera Wynne joined him not as a vassal, but as a storm waiting to happen.
---
That night, in the estate's war chamber, Jareth stood over a holographic map of Ashveil. His fingers traced red lines over weak node points, rival factions, and buried infrastructure beneath the stone.
Ayaka stood beside him. "Recruiting her may cost you points with the elders."
"They don't want me to win. They want me to be manageable."
She nodded. "And when you're not?"
He looked at her with that same cold calm that had silenced his uncle.
"Then they'll learn what happens when the throne chooses its heir before the family does."
Outside the window, the black sky roared with distant thunder.
War wasn't coming.
It was already here.