Boris had promised his people one crown for every Volkorian bloodline, and now a map on his wall proved how many he had failed to reach. He was tall, broad, an old emperor with a white beard that spilled over his cloak. He stood before the map alone. Colored pins marked the bloodlines he ruled. Empty space marked the ones still scattered across distant worlds. He had sworn to unite them all before his reign ended. His reign was nearly done. He wanted to leave. To board a ship himself and find the lost families. But he could not. Below his throne room waited a hundred nobles who fought over grain, over titles, over old grudges. The moment his throne sat empty, they would tear the court apart. He had tested it once, gone three days to the border. He came back to two ministers stabbed and a treasury half looted. So he stayed. And the bloodlines stayed lost. Boris pressed his hands against the map until the pins bit his palms. Staying meant failing. Leaving meant chaos. He could not do both, and he could not do neither. He turned to the window. In the palace garden below grew a single glowing blue flower, taller than a man, sparks drifting around its huge petals. His grandmother had planted it. She once told him the flower did not travel. It sent its seeds instead. The thought stopped him. He did not need to travel either. Boris crossed to a cabinet and lifted out a faceted crystal, cool and heavy in his hands. It glowed when he held it. He had used it before to speak with distant governors, their faces rising in the light. He had never trusted it with something this large. Now he had no other choice. He woke the crystal. One by one he called the loyal agents scattered across the far worlds. Their faces bloomed in the light, small and bright. He named the goal plainly. Find the lost bloodlines. Speak in his voice. Carry his crown where his body could not go. He would stay on the throne and hold the court. They would become his hands across the stars. The last face faded. The crystal dimmed. Boris set it down and let out a slow breath. He had solved it. He would not leave, and the search would still begin. Then the crystal flared again, unasked. A new face appeared, one he had not called. The image twisted. Behind the face rose a purple shape, many-eyed and shifting, a jaw full of teeth. His agent's mouth opened to speak and the light cut to black. Boris gripped the dead crystal. His agents were out there now, moving in his name. And something out there had already found one of them.