Early in the morning, the mythical assembly members were still loitering—regal and restless—awaiting any sign of the Emperor or Her Holiness.

Word had it Aroche had flown off with two mechanical griffiths and Bella to track down the royal runaways, so naturally, everyone assumed Burn would be dragged back soon—preferably before breakfast.

Now, as for the whole incest debacle—it wasn’t always such a scandalous affair. Go back six hundred years and you'd find kings merrily wedding their sisters, cousins, nephews, and possibly even their horses if the bloodline demanded it. But times change. Progress, as they say. These days, incest was considered… impolite.

Burn and Morgan, of course, had no idea they were siblings when they tied the celestial knot. Pure accident. A little oopsie from fate.

Still, if one squinted hard enough, their union had political sparkle: Her Holiness, cherished by the mythical races; and His Imperial Majesty, conqueror of the human realms and general headache to the rest of the world. A divine pair of unstoppable, incestuous warlords.

And now? With Nethermere teetering on the edge of interdimensional annihilation, nobody really had the luxury of moral outrage. An incest scandal? Really? They had bigger problems—like preventing the apocalypse.

So, in a rare moment of quiet consensus, the assembly members reached a tacit agreement: We simply do not talk about it. They needed both of these godlike figures intact and in sync, preferably facing outward toward the enemy—not inward toward a courtroom or an annulment.

Of course, there had to be limits. Let them bear the weight of their shared blood and vows, fine—but the idea of them reproducing? That crossed the line. The thought of unleashing a genetically compromised demigod child into this already chaotic world was a bridge too far, even for them.

So when they were summoned once more to the assembly hall, it was a bit of a surprise to find only Her Holiness present. No Emperor. No dramatic reentrance. Just Morgan—radiant, serene, and completely alone.

Naturally, this could only mean trouble.

They all remembered very clearly how Burn had lost his damn mind two days ago and nearly disintegrated them—along with most of the continent and, frankly, the planet. That moment had seared itself into their collective trauma registry.

But what no one could quite explain was why, now, the mere presence of this radiant, serene, breathtakingly gorgeous woman gave them the same sense of imminent, unspoken annihilation.

They bowed. Of course they did. Then they took their seats like good little diplomats who weren’t all internally praying for divine protection.

And then the beautiful ancestor—the divine, ethereal Her Holiness—opened her mouth.

“******** ******** ******** ******* *** ******.”

Ah. A very colorful sentence. One that managed to sound sacred, ancient, and like it should probably be censored in at least three languages.

“******** ************** ** ************ *****.”

Another vivid masterpiece. They weren’t sure if they were being blessed, cursed, or threatened with an astral lobotomy.

Then came something more… coherent.

“***** **** you didn’t think that since I was born seventeen times as an Elysian Princess, I wouldn’t be born as an Elysian Princess again? You think my bloodline is that random?”

Right. Of course. Because reincarnating seventeen times as a celestial royal apparently came with a divine warranty. Who were they to question the probability of hereditary destiny?

Then she hit them with:

“****** Merlin that ********* ********** is never my biological father. Do I look like him at all? Look at my ***** face.”

A few braver souls did look, only to quickly avert their eyes in case they turned to stone—or were forced to answer. She didn’t look like Merlin, true. But also, who in their right mind would say otherwise now? That felt like a trap.

And finally, the killing blow:

“You dared scare my husband to death?”

Ma’am, with all due respect—your husband scared us to death too.

She drew a breath—slow, deep, deliberate. And in that single, poised inhalation, the Assembly felt a decade drain from their lives, each of them resisting the primal urge to flinch. The stillness that followed was not silence—it was judgment suspended.

Then, with the weight of centuries behind her voice, Morgan resumed.

“My husband, Caliburn Pendragon, is a Pendragon,” she said, each word cutting with imperial finality. “Regardless of everything, he is.”

“He is not Merlin’s son,” she continued, voice low and lethal, “and he never will be. Yes, Merlin may have sown the seed—but that man has never been, and never shall be, a father to anyone.”

Her tone twisted, cold and sharp like glass underfoot.

“He is a heretic—a liar who wears the skin of an immortal archmage. A fraud who cloaked his depravity in myth. Strip him of every reverent title you ever bestowed. He deserves none. Not as my father. Not as my husband’s father. Not even as the progenitor of Hero Urien Pendragon.”

The name landed like thunder, and the Assembly collectively recoiled as realization dawned.

Urien Pendragon—Urien Soulnaught Pendragon, the first King of the Soulnaught Kingdom. The name behind the syndrome that plagued both rulers. The disease that bore Urien’s name had not been random. It had been lineage.

And two days ago, the truth had surfaced like a corpse in still water. Merlin was the cause. Every child touched by the Soulnaught Syndrome was born of his blood.

The Demon Lord had revealed it in court: Merlin’s twisted legacy was disease masquerading as destiny.

And with that knowledge, a darker truth crystallized.

Caliburn Pendragon—Burn—may not be the son of Arthur, but he was Urien’s blood kin. A brother by root, if not by household. The cursed blood of Pendragon did not flow from Arthur's line alone, but from Merlin’s black seed through Urien, through Burn.

The Pendragon dynasty, revered and feared, had always stood on poisoned ground.

But now, Arthur was dead. His son, Clarent, had raised steel in rebellion. The so-called rightful line had consumed itself in fire and betrayal.

And Burn?

Burn stood. Untamed. Unbroken.

The Second Branch of Pendragon—once cast aside—had become the last pillar still standing. By blood, by right, by unflinching survival, he was the legacy.

Not Arthur’s descendant, but his ancestor in all but time.

Caliburn Pendragon was not the shame of the bloodline.

He was the crown.

Now, after all the veils had been lifted and the bloodline laid bare, the years of him being named a bastard—an illegitimate son of Arthur—stood not as insult, but as blasphemy.

Every whisper, every slander, every noble who spat the word “bastard” in self-righteous contempt—they had not insulted a man. They had profaned a sovereign truth.

For Caliburn Pendragon was no stray branch clinging to the family tree—he was the root.

He was never Arthur’s shameful secret. He was the elder blood, the purer claim, the lineage that endured where the other rotted.

To call him illegitimate now was not mere ignorance.

It was heresy.

And no man in this realm—no king, no priest, no myth-carved fool—held the right to name him otherwise again.