Chapter 115: A meeting to be discussed.

The sovereignty agreement had been signed for less than a week, and already, Prince Aldren could not sleep.

He stood at the window of his private chamber on the third floor of the Royal Palace, staring out at the city of Traona below.

The capital was quiet at this hour. Lanterns lined the main streets in neat rows, their soft glow casting long amber lines across the cobblestone.

Merchants had long since packed up their stalls. The night patrol moved in pairs along the outer walls, their armor catching the moonlight every few seconds as they passed beneath the watchtowers.

It was a peaceful scene.

Aldren hated it.

He turned away from the window and walked toward the oak desk at the center of the room, where a single document sat beneath a brass paperweight.

The royal seal of King Desmond Altair the Third was stamped at the bottom of the parchment, pressed deep into red wax.

The sovereignty agreement.

A formal recognition of the Jaun Land as independent territory under the rule of the Shadow of Victims. A monster.

A dungeon boss.

A virus that the kingdom should have crushed the moment it crawled out of the ground.

And his father had signed it.

No, worse than that. His father had smiled while doing it. He had called it wisdom. He had called it strategy.

He had looked at his son with that tired, condescending expression and said, “You will understand when you are older, Aldren.”

As if age had anything to do with recognizing weakness when it was staring you in the face.

Aldren gripped the edge of the desk until his knuckles turned white.

He could still see that witch sitting in the Hall of Crowns, crossing her legs like she owned the place, talking down to his father as though the King of Traona were a shopkeeper negotiating the price of fish.

He could still feel the pressure she had released, that brief, suffocating wave of killing intent that had locked his body in place and stolen the air from his lungs.

He had reached for his sword that day.

He had not been able to draw it.

That was the part he could not forgive. Not the insult. Not the treaty. Not even the fact that his father had chosen to kneel before monsters rather than fight them.

It was the fact that he had been powerless.

And now, the Kingdom of Traona had officially declared to the world that a monster nation on its southeastern border was a legitimate, sovereign state.

That the Shadow of Victims was not an enemy to be destroyed but an ally to be courted.

That the same creature who had slaughtered Duke Eloit, four Calamity-class Dragons, and over four hundred soldiers was now under the protection of a diplomatic agreement.

The Dukes had accepted it.

Every single one of them. Even Gareth, who had spent his entire career preaching about the superiority of human military strength, had eventually nodded his head and signed.

Cowards.

All of them.

Aldren released the desk and paced across the room, his boots hitting the stone floor in sharp, rhythmic strikes.

He had tried to reason with his father. Privately, after the witch had left and the hall had emptied, he had stood before the throne and laid out every argument he could think of.

The people would not accept this.

The Dukes would lose faith.

The Hero Association would see it as an act of desperation. The other kingdoms on the continent would view Traona as a nation that bowed to monsters rather than stood against them.

His father had listened to all of it.

And then he had said four words that still burned in Aldren’s chest like a brand.

“The discussion is over.”

Not “you are wrong.” Not “I understand your concern.” Not even “we will revisit this later.”

The discussion is over.

As though Aldren’s voice did not matter. As though the First Prince of Traona was nothing more than a decoration standing next to the throne, there to look impressive and keep his mouth shut.

He stopped pacing and stared at the wall.

There was a map hanging there. A large, detailed projection of the kingdom’s borders, updated weekly by the Royal Cartographers. The Jaun Land was marked in the southeastern corner, and for the first time in the map’s history, it bore a name that was not Traona’s.

Valdris.

The word tasted like poison.

…

The knock came at exactly midnight.

Three short taps, a pause, then two more.

The pattern had been agreed upon three days ago through a chain of intermediaries that Aldren had spent weeks cultivating. Servants who owed him favors.

Merchants who valued coin over loyalty. A border guard stationed near Duke Aldric’s northern territory who had a gambling debt larger than his annual salary.

Aldren crossed the room and opened the door just enough to see the figure standing in the corridor.

It was a man he had never met before. Tall, thin, dressed in a traveler’s cloak that was too clean to belong to an actual traveler.

His face was narrow, with sharp cheekbones and pale grey eyes that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

A thin scar ran from the corner of his left eye to his jawline, so precise it looked almost deliberate.

“Prince Aldren, I presume.” The man’s voice was smooth. Too smooth. The kind of smooth that came from years of saying exactly the right thing to exactly the right person.

Aldren stepped aside and gestured for the man to enter.

The door closed behind them.

“You are from the Nexus Empire,” Aldren said. The man removed his cloak and draped it over the back of a chair with the casual ease of someone who had done this in a hundred rooms across a hundred cities.

“My name is Varen. I serve as a diplomatic envoy for the Nexus Empire’s External Affairs division. Though I suspect you already knew that, given the lengths you went to in order to arrange this meeting.”

He smiled. It was not a warm smile.

“I must say, Prince Aldren, when your message reached us, there was considerable debate about whether to take it seriously. A prince of Traona, reaching out to the Empire that his own father considers the kingdom’s greatest threat? It raised eyebrows.”

Aldren did not sit down. He stood with his arms crossed, his back to the window, the moonlight framing his silhouette.

“My father is making a mistake that will cost this kingdom everything. I intend to correct it.”

Varen tilted his head, studying the prince with those pale, calculating eyes. He reminded Aldren of Duke Aldric in the worst possible way.

The same quiet intelligence. The same feeling that every word you said was being cataloged and filed away for future use.

“A bold statement. Care to elaborate?”

“The Shadow of Victims. The dungeon in the Jaun Land. My father signed a sovereignty agreement with it less than a week ago, recognizing its territory as independent. He did this because the witch that monster sent to our court told him the Nexus Empire was preparing for war, and that the only thing standing between Traona and annihilation was an alliance with a dungeon boss.”

Aldren’s jaw tightened.

“My father believed her. He signed the agreement on the spot. He did not consult the Dukes beforehand. He did not bring it before the council. He sat in that hall and handed over a piece of our kingdom because a monster’s servant told him to be afraid.”

Varen leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his fingers steepled beneath his chin.

“And you believe this was… unwise?”

“I believe it was the single greatest act of cowardice this kingdom has ever committed.”

The words came out harder than Aldren had intended, but he did not take them back.

Varen let the silence sit for a moment before speaking again.

“I will be honest with you, Prince Aldren. The Nexus Empire has been watching the situation in the Jaun Land very closely. The emergence of a dungeon lord capable of destroying a Duke’s forces in a single engagement is not something we ignore. Our scouts were deployed to the region within days of the incident.”

“I know. Your scouts were spotted near the northern border of the Jaun Land shortly after the sovereignty agreement was signed. My father’s intelligence network detected them.”

Varen’s expression did not change, but something shifted behind his eyes. A flicker of interest.

“You are well-informed.”

“I am the First Prince. I have access to military reports whether my father wants me to read them or not.”

Varen uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees.

“Then let me ask you a direct question, Prince Aldren. What exactly are you offering?”

Aldren had been waiting for this.

He walked to his desk, pulled open the bottom drawer, and retrieved a second parchment. This one bore no royal seal. It was written in his own hand, and it contained information that, if discovered, would be considered high treason.

He placed it on the desk between them.

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