The hall detonated not with stones but with voices. Where the Seats sat like islands of collected weather, humanity surged—a tidal, furious thing—demanding blood in tones that made the crystal lamps tremble. Placards jutted like broken teeth from the crowd of envoys. The chamber had not been so loud since the clips from Seattle first bled into the world.

A hand rose from the Leviathan Seat, and the noise broke against it like wind on a reef.

"Order." The word was a physical thing, heavy as an anchor, and it steadied the room. The Leviathan leaned forward, eyes like cold water. "This was a suggestion, not a verdict. There is no need for this outburst."

The human delegate who had been closest to shouting clenched his jaw and spat, "It is an insult—compensation for the dead? Do you think coins and contracts will fix bones and silence grief?"

"Justice, not ledgers!" a foreign secretary shouted, knuckles pale on his folder.

"Our people don't want payouts—they want safety," someone cried, voice breaking on the second word.

"Is a crater worth a budget line?" asked a woman in gray, already weeping.

"Would you pay me to forget my brother?" someone else demanded,

Then Sage laughed.

Sage, sitting in the Ninth's place with her uniform sharp and a smile too small to be pleasant, made a sound that began as a chuckle and finished as a scalpel. It cut the delegate's retort in two and tilted a dozen faces to look.

"Compensation is how the world has always been managed," she said, voice flat, rhetorical, and cold. "When nations rage at one another, do you march every leader into a pit? No. You sanction. You embargo. You cripple economies and send a message while sparing blood. Is that not compensation?" She let the question hang, and for an instant the assembly heard the truth of it—the small cruelty of policy dressed as justice.

Sage leaned forward, eyes bright with a light that was not entirely daylight. "If any nation has the means and the will to slay a dragon, do it. We will not stand between you and your consequences. But know this: the consequences will be yours. Or you may choose the old thing—sanctions, reparations, agreements. That is the choice. Do not pretend otherwise."

A murmur moved like slow water. The human delegates argued among themselves. Someone muttered that sanctions would be toothless against Firmatha Sangaur or Heka—self-sufficient, sealed, and armored with technologies and powers ordinary states could not touch.

From the Elven seat, the leader's voice rose without malice, only cool inevitability. "Hence, compensation is the wisest course. You cannot execute a dragon. You have no right to."

A minister in a dark suit rose, fingers white around a folder. "You speak of compensation. But, you cannot quantify a life," he said, voice shaking with anger. "It's obscene to pretend numbers can balance a grave."

Lunara's laugh came low and rough. "Of course you can. You already do." He lifted a scarred hand. "You measure lives every day. To one person, a single death is dearer than the world; to another, an entire family barely earns a moment of silence. That is your arithmetic—fiercely painfully subjective, endlessly shifted by distance and noise."

A delegate snapped back, "And your arithmetic places dragon lives above all others. Is that not just another kind of bias?"

The Elven leader answered without malice. "It is not preference; it is truth. A dragon's existence moves creation itself. When the world reacts differently to a being, the measure must follow. That is not sentiment—it is fact."

Amaterasu, radiant yet suddenly careful, touched the edge of the human outrage and softened it with an answer no one else could make palatable. She rose, and the room looked towards her.

"They speak a truth no one here wants to acknowledge," she said. "A celebrity's death explodes like lightning; a homeless person's grief whispers and is lost. We cannot pretend we are blind to this. But if we are to stand as one, if we are to mature beyond the reflex of outrage, then Firmatha Sangaur must try to see the world as we do. Compensation alone will not heal wounds. We must move the world toward a better compromise."

She then turned her attention towards Mythara, the main character of this tale,

"Besides, these two Dragons have laid themselves before the mercy of this assembly."

Sage scoffed and then turned to the delegates. "Then we will decide compensation first, and then we will decide what judgment will accompany it." She looked towards the other seats and all of them agreed, including Amaterasu. Her gaze scanned the human delegation once again, but none of them said a word. She then began,

"Let's start with reconstruction. Firmatha Saguar will accelerate the infrastructure initiative, and must stop delaying. Heka will impart to each nation the knowledge to create and train Chasers. Also being the main cause of this event, Heka will underwrite twenty percent of the global commitment to reconstruction reform." Her words were direct, not a plea.

A ripple of shocked dissent erupted from the human delegates. Someone at the back asked, raw and quick: "And the secret of becoming Persequions? Are you going to hand out those secrets as well?"

Amaterasu faced the man and spoke with certainty. "No," she said, flat. "We do not know enough about the truth of that power yet. The idea is premature and dangerous. When understanding exists, the matter will be revisited. Until then—no."

Sage nodded once, "I agree with Amaterasu's assessment."

That request died before it could properly gain shape, but there were still more opportunists.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Then construction should begin within the cities hit by the event in question." A delegate from France spoke.

A delegate from a smaller coastal nation slammed his hand against the table. "If reconstruction begins in the major hubs, you hand more power to those who already hoard it. Our cities have lain in ruins for decades. Our people cannot wait while New York or Paris builds glittering skylines on the backs of this disaster."

One of the larger-nation ministers sneered. "Those hubs are the arteries of global trade. If they collapse, your 'cities' will starve with them. Priority must go where the weight is greatest."

The chamber cracked into argument, voices clashing like steel. Accusations flew—favoritism, corruption. The same fury that had demanded punishment now turned inward, nations clawing at each other over contracts not yet signed.

Mythara's gaze flicked toward Cefketa. And in that instant, he saw it—the smile ghosting across his lips, the faint narrowing of his eyes. He remembered the cities Cefketa had chosen to drag their battle through. Paris. Beijing. New York. Global arteries, each one now a bargaining chip. Cefketa had written this script with rubble.

Mythara's chest tightened. He followed him that night, chasing him wherever he flew. He realized, far too late.

From her seat, Amaterasu came to the same conclusion. She looked over towards Sage, who engineered this chaos, with a simple suggestion. She caught Sage's look—her shrug. Such was the nature of power: catastrophe converted into currency. Amaterasu inhaled. This was simply human nature. If they would not evolve past it, then she would have to cut across the shouting before it curdled further.

"Enough. If every nation claws for priority, nothing will be built. We will establish a neutral third party to assess damage, compare needs, and order reconstruction accordingly. None may doubt the fairness of that process." Amaterasu stood without raising her voice, and the hall obeyed the gesture like a reflex. Aides froze mid-sentence, translators lifted hands from their mics, and several veterans of older councils found their shoulders drawing back, chastened by a presence that could not be denied. Only then did she turn, not to soothe, but to cut

"Ferradon—how long would it actually take?"

Ferradon, seated, shifted uncomfortably. His eyes narrowed. "That depends," he said carefully, "…on scope definitions," Ferradon continued smoothly, "and on procurement chains. Certain alloys require smelting temperatures not every nation can—"

"Answer."

—and logistics. Rail-gauge disparities, right-of-way disputes, maritime bottlenecks—"

"Ferradon."

He wet his lips. "Labor is also a constraint. Skilled crews must be rotated safely, and there are union frameworks—"

"Enough. Answer the question." The word landed like a hammer on an anvil. "How long?"

Ferradon glanced sidelong at the First Seat. The tiniest nod. The dwarf exhaled through his nose, pride and reluctance tangled. "With materials delivered and some guarantees, we can build everywhere at once," he said. "All of it. Under three months."

The chamber fell silent. Even those who had been shouting seconds ago froze, stunned.

Amaterasu let the weight of it sink in before speaking again. "Then there is no need for squabbling over who receives attention first. You will all have it—swiftly. The argument ends here."

For an hour, the delegates dispersed to the side rooms and negotiation booths, the anger voicing itself into spreadsheets and whispered clauses. The Ten Seats remained on their thrones, statues in conversation.

They reconvened, the Leviathan Seat called for the next order—punishment.

The recess ended. Delegates filtered back into the chamber, tempers cooled only on the surface. The Leviathan Seat called them to order, and the discussion turned—finally—to punishment.

A human minister rose first. His voice trembled with restrained fury. "If killing them is impossible, then confine them. Lock them away until such a time as execution is possible."

Cefketa laughed, a low, mocking sound that rippled through the chamber. "The only way you can confine us is if we let you. Why would we allow that if it means waiting for death? Fool."

Mythara said nothing. He only folded his arms, scoffing quietly in agreement.

The room bristled again, but then the Elven Leader lifted her hand. The hush that followed was near-instant. Her tone was calm, but it carried the weight of centuries.

"There is another way," she said. "The way of my people."

Dozens of eyes turned toward her. A human delegate frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

The Elf let the silence stretch a beat before answering. "When one of ours kills, whether by malice or by accident, we do not kill them in turn. We bind them by time. The sentence is measured by the lives they have taken—the average span of their victims' years. They are imprisoned for that length of time, and allowed service to shorten their debt. Accidents halve the years, but the principle remains. Few serve the full term; most choose service, and in that, reform themselves."

The words struck like a hammer blow in the chamber. The implication hung heavy. With thousands dead, the sentence would not be decades. It would be millennia.

Murmurs rippled, some horrified, some strangely relieved. For the first time, the prospect of punishment seemed…possible.

"Ten thousand years," someone said, and the chamber registered the scale of the proposal.

All eyes turned to Mythara. For a heartbeat, sound left the hall. Mythara felt the attention pressing on his skin—millions layered into one gaze. In it, he could hear his mother's voice, his father's iron verdict, the quiet oath he had breathed into Amaterasu's shoulder two weeks ago. He saw Seattle again.

He turned slightly, catching Cefketa's eye—the smallest smile, not victory, not surrender.

"I accept," he said. The words weren't loud, but they rang like struck stones.

Cefketa laughed again, too loud and too unashamed; it echoed off the vaulted ceiling, and then he muttered, almost under his breath, "So this is the game you choose." He folded his hands and regarded the assembly with the bored look of a man who has seen the board and knows how every piece will move.

"So be it," he said aloud.

The Ten Seats marked the pact. The measure hung heavy in the air—a sentence of epic length, tied to years that would be spent in service and attempted reform. Around the chamber, mouths were open with the first sounds of new arguments. Contracts would be written. Resources allocated.

Outside, the world watched and argued. Inside, the two dragons sat in a silence that carried the echo of a storm they had created. They waited patiently for chains they both knew would not hold.

*******

Mythara and Cefketa were confined in secret locations on opposite sides of the world. Only chosen world leaders and the Seats knew their location. Even those who acted as their guards had no idea what it was they were guarding. Inside those confined, sterile walls, Mythara sat on a thin mattress and stared out into the view of an endless ocean. Nothing bound him. The confinement was performance, not prison.

He lay on his back and then stared at the ceiling. He closed his eyes. The silence pressed like a weight.

Then the air bent. A hooded figure leaned casually against the wall.

"Looks like you did it. With time to spare," the Wanderer scoffed. His voice was calm, ancient, almost kind. "As promised, I'll answer your questions. So... what do you want to know?"

Mythara's eyes opened, burning with a rose-gold shine. A satisfied grin stretched across his face.

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