Around him, several councillors lowered their heads in agreement.
Even those whose expressions remained carefully neutral did not object.
Arik recognized ambition among them. Some had held emergency authority for decades. Some controlled ministries that would lose influence the moment sovereign command returned. Others had built entire political identities around interpreting Goliath’s final laws.
They would not surrender that power without negotiation.
But none of them was foolish enough to voice a desire to control Arik while the imperial crest above him burned with his ether.
More importantly, their private ambitions were smaller than the boundary surrounding Nuria.
Authority inside a sealed empire remained authority inside a prison.
They wanted trade restored. They wanted access to the territories beyond the Gate. They wanted to know which families had survived, which nations had risen, and whether the old roads of Nuria existed beneath the new borders Arik had described.
They wanted the empire returned to the world where they believed it belonged.
A military representative stood from the northern tier. The silver at his temples and the decorations across his formal uniform suggested he had served long enough to remember the world before isolation.
"Is there still a place for Nuria outside?" he asked.
The question stripped the chamber of politics.
Arik looked at him.
"There is a world," he said. "But it is not the one you left."
The man’s jaw tightened.
"Agaron is now an empire. Pais and Wrohan are kingdoms. Borders have shifted. "Agaron is now an empire. Pais and Wrohan are kingdoms. Borders have shifted. Provinces became nations. Some names survived; others did not. The people outside know Nuria only through fragments, relics, and histories that contradict one another."
"They believe us dead," someone said from the upper tiers.
"No," Arik said slowly. "They forgot you exist. We thought Felix’s work had erased Nuria from memory, but at that time we did not know there was still an empire behind the Gate. Now, it is possible Goliath shielded you from the others."
The chamber went quiet, already calculating their next actions.
Cassian looked toward him, and Arik saw the warning there too late.
A woman in dark blue from the legal tier rose first. "If that is true, then opening the Gate may remove that protection."
"Yes," Arik said.
"And the surrounding powers may remember us."
"Yes."
"And Agaron," another councillor said, his voice sharp from the eastern tier, "is now an empire."
Arik looked at him.
The counselor did not sit.
"You are its Crown Prince."
"I am."
"Then you understand our concern."
"I understand several of them," Arik replied. "You should be more specific."
A faint, bitter sound moved through the chamber.
The counselor gripped the rail before him. "We do not know you."
"No," Arik said.
"You arrived yesterday through an unstable Gate, opened wards no one has touched in seventy-two years, and carry the ether of the emperor we lost. But you are also heir to another empire, bonded to someone from Wrohan, guarded by Agaronian command, and surrounded by people whose loyalties are not Nurian."
Severin’s shadow shifted.
Cassian did not move.
The counselor continued anyway. "You may choose Agaron. You may choose your family. You may choose to reopen the Gate and annex us before we understand the world outside our own border."
"I might," Arik said.
The honesty struck harder than denial would have.
Several councillors recoiled.
Cassian’s eyes narrowed slightly, but Arik did not stop.
"I do not know what I will choose," he said, and this time the Golden Court carried his voice into the high tiers with painful clarity. "My parents are beyond the Gate. My siblings are beyond it. My empire is beyond it. I was raised to inherit Agaron, not to return to Nuria and replace a dead man everyone spent decades preserving in memory. I do not know if I want to leave my home and my family for an empire I remember with another man’s grief."
The woman from the Continuity Bloc had tears in her eyes again, but they were not soft this time.
They were frightened.
Arik looked at them all.
"I will not lie to make you feel safe. If the Gate opens, every country outside may become a threat. Agaron included. Wrohan included. Pais included. And I do not yet know where I belong."
A long silence followed.
Then an older councilman stood from the military tier.
"That is why you must take the oath."
Arik turned toward him.
The man wore no ornament beyond a black collar pin and an old scar across his throat. His voice was rough but steady.
"We have tried placing others above the state," he said. "Regents. Councils. Emergency sovereign substitutes. Blood relatives. Core-compatible candidates. The empire tolerated administration. It did not accept a ruler."
Cassian’s jaw tightened, but he did not contradict him.
"The sovereign ether does not activate for us," the councillor continued. "The outer shields can be maintained. The cities can be governed. The records can be preserved. But the core does not open its full authority to anyone except Goliath’s bond. Except you."
Arik’s expression hardened, fists clenching by his sides. "Convenient."
"No," the councilor said. "Desperate."
Another voice rose from the western tier. "If the Gate opens without a sovereign oath binding you to Nuria, we are exposed. If you leave, we are a sealed empire with a dying boundary and no accepted ruler. If you stay without oath, we are at the mercy of your uncertainty. If you return to Agaron as Crown Prince and claim us from there, we become a province before we become a country again."
"You think the core would prevent that," Arik said.
"We know it would try," the legal counselor replied. "The sovereign oath binds authority to preservation of Nuria. If you attempt to ruin the empire, sell it, abandon it, or fold it into another crown against its survival, the core will resist you."
"And if I refuse?"
The chamber did not answer at once.
That was answer enough.
Finally, the military counselor said, "Then we remain in the dark."
Arik’s ether moved beneath his bandages.
The counselor met it without flinching. "We would rather kill the man who returned than watch the sovereign bond walk away from us again."
The Golden Court went utterly still.
Cassian closed his eyes.
Severin’s shadows deepened across the floor.
Arik looked at the councilor for a long moment.
"You believe you could?"
"No," the man said. "But we would try."
Something in Arik respected that more than the crying.
Two weeks," the legal counselor said. "Recover. Stabilize your ether. Speak with your mate. Attempt to reopen contact with Agaron, if you can. But in two weeks, this council expects you to take the sovereign oath."
Arik glanced toward Cassian.
The old man looked tired enough to break, but he did not look surprised.
"You agree with them," Arik said.
Cassian’s voice was quiet. "I understand them."
"That is not what I asked."
"No," Cassian said. "But it is the answer I can give in this chamber."
Arik looked back at the tiers of frightened, grieving, calculating faces.
He could fight people.
He could fight counselors.
He could fight armies, if necessary.
But he could not fight an entire empire clawing for light after seventy-two years of darkness.
Not without becoming the monster they feared.
"Two weeks," he said.
The throne behind him pulsed once, gold and silent.
Arik did not sit.
But Nuria heard him.