The Dominion never slept, but it did not always roar. Sometimes, it whispered. And lately, all its whispers carried the name of Ashira Valen.
Her victory over the Lucdren Data Guild still thundered in the streets. Rivals who had once mocked her now bent their heads at her passing. Traders spoke of her reputation as though it were a commodity more valuable than gold. Every guild, every Councilor, every client wanted her presence, her words, her approval.
And then, one morning, when Kaelen laid the day's petitions before her—dozens of letters sealed in wax, contracts demanding her hand—Ashira merely glanced at them.
"Leave them," she said, her voice quiet, measured.
Kaelen blinked. "Leave them… unopened?"
Her jaw tightened. She wanted to snap, to remind him she was not a servant to the Dominion's endless hunger. But she swallowed the heat in her chest, forcing her words into a blade of calm.
"Yes. Let them wait. If they believe they cannot live without me, then let them prove it."
Kaelen studied her, searching. In his eyes flickered both confusion and awe. He had seen her fight with fury, charm with cunning, dominate with presence. But now, she was wielding something rarer: restraint.
Ashira understood the truth few dared to grasp: to be everywhere was to become ordinary. She would not bleed herself dry for their convenience. She would vanish—and by her absence, she would make them crave her all the more.
At first, the Dominion told itself a comforting story.
"She must be resting. She has earned it."
"She is plotting something grand."
"She will return, greater than before."
But as her silence stretched from days into weeks, the unease thickened. In the Council chamber, men muttered. In the guild halls, clients paced. The name Ashira Valen was whispered with a desperation it had never carried before.
Merchants rewrote contracts, postponing deals until her answer came. Rivals hesitated to move against her, unsure if her silence was weakness—or a trap. Even the common folk, who barely understood her work, repeated her name with awe, as though she were some storm on the horizon, feared precisely because it had not yet broken.
Ashira watched it unfold in silence, a small smile tugging at her lips. Her absence was not weakness—it was hunger made visible.
Kaelen remained by her side through those weeks. He handled the surface affairs, soothed the impatient clients, intercepted whispers of doubt before they could spread. But in the quiet of her chambers, he saw her struggle too.
Each day, she fought an urge as primal as fire: the urge to act. To step back into the light and remind the Dominion why it feared and adored her. Sometimes her hands shook when she forced herself not to sign a letter, not to summon her Councilors.
And Kaelen would place a hand over hers. "You don't need to remind them," he whispered. "They are already remembering."
He did not advise her. He did not guide her. He only comforted her, steadying her heart when it threatened to betray her resolve. And every time, Kaelen's respect for her deepened. To resist the temptation of constant dominance was, in his eyes, greater than any conquest.
But in another corner of Dominion, Serenya Veyra lived the opposite side of the law.
She too withdrew—not as strategy, but as consequence. Her verses, once sung in the taverns, were now traded like cheap coins by printers who cared nothing for their beauty, only their use. Invitations to salons dwindled. Letters stopped arriving.
And one night, as she sat alone at her desk, quill in hand, she realized with a hollow ache: no one noticed she was gone.
Her absence did not stir hunger. It stirred nothing at all.
Why? The question burned her. She replayed memories of Malrik Draeven, who vanished from her life again and again. Yet each return was thunderous, inevitable, irresistible. Even in silence, Malrik lived in the Dominion's veins.
So why did her silence taste like erasure?
Her hand trembled as she wrote a few forced lines of verse—commissioned propaganda, not art. The words felt like ash in her mouth, but she handed them over anyway, because it bought her another day of bread.
And later, she found herself in a tavern, overhearing whispers.
"They say Malrik will rise again. He always does."
Her grip on her cup tightened until her knuckles whitened. They still whispered of him in awe. Of her? Not a word.
When she returned home that night, anger smoldered beneath her ribs. She snatched one of her old poems from the drawer—a verse she had once written for the people, alive with hope and beauty. For a heartbeat, she thought of reciting it aloud, reviving it.
But then the bitterness surged. With trembling fingers, she held it over the candle flame.
The parchment curled, blackened, then burst into a delicate fire. The words she had once cherished turned to smoke, vanishing into the air.
Serenya sank into her chair, tears burning but refusing to fall. "Forgotten," she whispered to the empty room. Her absence was not power. It was obliteration.
Then, one night, when the streets lay hushed beneath pale lanterns, the Oracle's Whispers spilled through the Dominion like a voice carried by the very stones. Some said it was memory, others a prophecy. To Ashira, to Serenya, to Kaelen, to every ear, it came the same:
"The sun blinds when it lingers too long;
The moon enchants because it departs.
To vanish is not to weaken—
But only if your return is worth the waiting."
Ashira's lips curved faintly. Yes. She understood. Her absence was a crown of invisibility, and they were already bowing.
Serenya, hearing the same words, felt her heart shatter. Her return was not worth the waiting. Not yet.