25 Meryn

Meryn, exhausted from recent magic, travels with Stark, Siegrid, and their direwolves to the ruined Grunfall manor for peace talks. The site’s open approaches reassure Meryn against ambush. General Ruby Navarro awaits with attendants. Stark and Siegrid flank Meryn as she takes a guarded seat across from Ruby.

Ruby proposes a ceasefire and a renewed alliance against Alistair Brightbane, asserting Astreona’s true enemy is Alistair, not Nocturna. The condition: Meryn must travel to Brightbane to meet King Lucien. Stark bristles, and Ruby counters with hard realism—Nocturna’s weakened defenses, the defection of the Phylax, and the threat of internal unrest—pressuring Meryn to accept.

Ruby escalates by warning that, absent agreement, Astreona will hunt Alistair inside Nocturna, beginning with clearing Weisenstat, endangering crucial grain supplies. Meryn consults Anassa and turns to foresight: refusal shows burning fields and starving children; acceptance shows a distant image of a foreign crown and blood, ominous but less catastrophic. Weighing immediate harm to her people, Meryn withholds a commitment and requests time.

Ruby grants twenty-four hours, then presents a “gesture of goodwill.” An attendant leads in a figure who shatters Meryn’s composure: her father, dead eleven years, now turned Siphon. The revelation reframes the stakes and Ruby’s leverage as the clock toward renewed hostilities begins.