Chapter 1: Return to the Sovereignty

Starlight fractured across the viewport in a wash of blue-white as the Morningstar dropped out of hyperspace, and Sera blinked against the sudden shift from the featureless grey of transit to the sprawl of Dragon Sovereignty space. She'd forgotten the scale of it. Asteroid clusters stretched across the viewport in a ragged constellation, each one carved and built into something that defied the word station. The Sovereignty's city-cores rose from the rock like growths of crystal and bone — spires of dark stone veined with gold, docking rings that curved in the sweep of a dragon's ribcage, habitat domes faceted like scales catching the light of a distant sun. Between the clusters, the ancient wards burned in a curtain of pale fire that shifted through violet and amber as it rippled across the perimeter. Not a wall. A membrane. Old enough that the magic had worn grooves into the fabric of space itself, and it moved like something that breathed. She'd grown up seeing images of this place. She'd stood in the Council's antechamber once, years ago, when Thornwick had first brought her before the seven houses — a salvage hauler with dragon tattoos she barely understood, stumbling through a world that wanted to claim her or destroy her and hadn't decided which. Now she leaned forward in the pilot's seat, hands loose on the controls, and watched the Sovereignty resolve into detail through the cockpit glass. Traffic moved in disciplined lanes — courier ships with house sigils on their hulls, heavy freighters bearing mineral loads from the outer mining operations, a diplomatic cruiser with the triple-crest of House Stormveil banking toward the central cluster. More ships than she'd seen on her last visit. The Council session had drawn them in. The pendant lay warm against her sternum. It had…