Around him. ’On’ him. Not on his skin but ’into’ it—the warmth of her choosing the topography of his frame, pooling first at his shoulders before moving with deliberate, claiming slowness down his chest, across his hips, finding the specific architecture there and making her decision about it.

His cock—still standing—was touched by something that felt unmistakably like the interior of a warm mouth applied from all directions simultaneously.

It did not waver.

It was grasped—’held’—by something that had no fingers but exercised precision regardless, and then placed, with the delicate authority of a woman who considers herself an appropriate container: tucked, secured, the fabric of her manifesting around the shape of him in warm crimson linen. Underwear. ’His’ underwear. His outer robe forming in successive layers—the red cloth he always wore settling into place over it, the sash, the drape.

He was dressed.

In her.

She was on his skin. Breathing through him. A constant, particular warmth.

He looked down at himself. Adjusted the collar two fingers.

From the bath, Akane was watching with both brows slightly elevated—the expression of a nine-tailed fox genuinely impressed by the logistics.

"’I didn’t know she could do that for clothing,’" Helvora said, to the room.

"’She’s been practicing,’" Akane said.

"’I’m right here,’" the robe said.

They left the bath.

One by one, then in clusters—women rising from the water the way momentum builds before it becomes undeniable. Helvora first, the grey-haired queen stepping out with practiced composure, water sheeting from her curves, her tail already flicking off the worst of it. Seris behind her, pale and collected. Vyrena with her tattoos still running faint patterns from the bath’s heat.

Clothing assembled.

Not from wardrobes. From the palace itself—the Blazer Palace responding to the established will of the man who’d walked its corridors, reality obliging in the way it had learned to oblige. Fabric rose from nothing, forming on skin: close-fitting, high-quality, various in cut. Akane’s crimson dress with its particular management of her figure’s abundance. Yu Xiang’s tight black that left nothing unclear. Sylvea’s draped green. Yuna’s—

Yuna was the robe.

The tribal women of Kaira’s Stonefang—who had watched this particular sartorial miracle with expressions ranging from impressed to unsettled—found fabric settling on their own frames in the cut of their people. Simple. Functional. Dignified.

They looked at each other.

One made a small sound of approval.

Kaira stepped last from the shallow end, her blind gaze aimed forward with perfect confidence—because she had mapped this floor by sound and breath and formation-sense the moment she’d walked in. Her clothes took shape around her in the manner of a woman who had been owned by this man long enough to not be startled by small impossibilities. The gold chains caught light even beneath fabric.

Sabrina dressed herself, deliberately, from her own stored materials—a quiet statement of autonomy that no one commented on.

Yoo Ji-young was looking at her hands, checking that soap had been adequately addressed.

Thessa straightened her ears with careful hands, smoothed her garments, and fell into step behind her daughter with the focused energy of a woman reestablishing her dignity in real time.

The doors opened.

The Blazer Palace’s interior corridors were wide and lit with the formation-amber that ran through its stone—walls of black obsidian veined with gold, archways carved with martial histories in the script of dead empires. Their footsteps built a collective rhythm: the clap of boots, the swish of fabric, the soft pad of bare or lightly-soled feet.

Tianlong walked at the front.

His robe moved with him. Around him. ’In’ him.

The warmth never left.

His wives spread naturally in their positions—Akane to his right, Yu Xiang to his left, the others falling into the formation that had become instinct across a hundred hallways in a dozen territories. Behind them, in ranks that had less structure but no less purpose, Kaira’s tribal women walked. Upright. Composed. Watching everything.

The catkin nobles from Helvora’s faction arranged themselves further back, uncertain of their positioning, which was information in itself.

The conversation began quietly. The way conversations begin that aren’t meant to be overheard but also aren’t particularly bothered about it.

It was one of the tribal women—a broad-shouldered one with a jaw like a geological event—who leaned toward her companion and said, in the particular register of someone who considers herself discreet:

"’...should we kill her?’"

Her companion—shorter, faster eyes—considered this for half a step.

"’Which her?’"

"’The one we’re walking toward. The tiger woman.’"

A thoughtful pause. The shorter one tilted her head.

"’No,’" she said. Then, with the exact cadence of someone arriving at an obviously superior alternative: "’We can just spread her legs. Husband can fuck.’"

The first woman considered this.

Nodded slowly.

"’...that does resolve it.’"

From slightly ahead, Akane’s ear—the left one, under her hair—tilted a quarter-inch rearward. Her tail gave a single, appreciative swish. She said nothing.

Vyrena, in the middle ranks, had heard every word. Her amber eyes moved to Sabrina’s back—the set of those shoulders, the rigid spine, the tail that was sweeping at the floor with too much force.

Vyrena decided she had not heard anything.

The passage narrowed as the formation ahead of them began to pulse—the realm gate that connected the Blazer Palace’s private wing to the outer-facing hub, the territory whose entrance was carved from copper-toned stone in the architectural language of the Tiger Clan’s mercenary holdings. Two enormous panels of reinforced metal and formation script, currently shut. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

They opened as Tianlong approached. Automatically. Because things opened for him.

"’Wait.’"

The word came from Kaira.

She had stopped. Not from hesitation—the blind chief didn’t do hesitation. She’d stopped with the deliberateness of a woman who has a thing to say and intends to say it from a position.

The tribal women stopped with her. Twelve of them, in formation, without being told.

Tianlong turned.

Kaira’s blind silver eyes found his aura—found him—with the precision that never stopped being slightly arresting to watch.

"’The catkin come with you,’" she said. "’My women stay here.’"

Statement. Not question.

He held her gaze for a moment—held what passed for it, his eyes on her face while her silver ones found his qi signature.

"’Your choice.’"

She nodded once. Crisp. Then she stepped aside and let the column pass through the gate.

Her twelve tribal women lined the walls of the corridor in pairs—shoulders back, eyes forward—watching. Watching him walk through. Watching his wives, each one, as they passed. The catkin nobles moving behind him. Sai, who had been drifting somewhere in the middle of the procession and was now looking at the copper-stone walls with the specific interest of a merman encountering architectural choices he finds idiosyncratic.

He passed through the gate.

The realm door ’sealed.’

The sound it made was like a sentence concluding.

In the corridor behind the gate, silence.

The twelve tribal women stood in their pairs. The copper-stone walls held the amber light.

One of them—the broad-shouldered one from before, whose jaw remained geological—looked down at her own thigh. Frowned.

Then looked at the thigh of the woman beside her.

Who was also looking at her own thigh.

The fabric there was wet.

Not from the bath. Not from sweat. From the particular category of physiological response that does not require active participation and is difficult to argue with after the fact.

The broad-shouldered woman looked at the sealed gate.

Then at herself.

Then at the gate again.

She said nothing for a very long count of seconds.

Then, from the opposite wall, one of the other tribal women—one who’d been watching the bath scene with the focused attention of a field commander assessing enemy tactics—spoke.

Her voice was perfectly level:

"’By the way.’"

Everyone looked at her.

It wasn’t one of the Stonefang women.

It was Mermade. The catkin queen who had arrived here through means involving butterfly pocket dimensions and Yu Xiang’s particular brand of social persuasion. She was standing with one shoulder against the wall, her dark tail curved behind her, golden eyes moving between the tribal women’s faces with the evaluative interest of a woman assembling a theory.

"’Why don’t you all fight each other,’" she said, "’and become strong?’"

Absolute silence.

The catkin and the tribal women looked at each other.

Across the narrow corridor. Face to face. Taking in the specifics—the tribal women with their cultivator scars and their Bronze-Silver body realm, the catkin nobles with their formal training and their specific disciplines. Both groups who had arrived here as ’audience.’ Both groups who had been watching a man move through the world like water through rock.

Both groups whose thighs had answered questions their pride hadn’t asked.

The broad-shouldered tribal woman’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

She looked at the catkin woman directly opposite her.

Who was, now that she looked properly, at roughly her own cultivation level.

"’...Hm.’"

"’Yeah,’" said the catkin woman slowly.

"’We didn’t think about it,’" said a third, from further down the wall.

"How about organising a tournament where those who win have to get chance of sleeping with Lord?"