"A week ago, I was a simple young man who was mostly concerned with where his next decent meal was coming from. Everything since then has been moving faster than I’ve been able to fully process, and standing here right now, looking at all of you, still feels like something that’s happening to someone else."

He paused, looking across the room at the gathered faces. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

"But I’m here. And I understand what this place is and what my name means and what you’ve been waiting for. I can’t promise I’ll be everything you imagined, because I don’t know yet what I’m capable of. What I can promise is that I won’t waste what I’ve been given.

I’ll become the man this house needs, and I’ll do it properly."

He let that sit for a moment.

"That’s all I have."

The hall was quiet for a breath.

Raani stood up and appreciated Jake.

The room gave her its attention immediately, the side conversations fading, faces turning toward her with the practiced attentiveness of people long accustomed to listening when Raani spoke.

"Young master," she said, addressing Jake directly rather than the room at large, though everyone present was clearly meant to hear this, "there are matters of the house’s current situation that you need to understand before you meet anyone from the main branch. The political landscape of Clan Raikarndel at this moment is—" she paused, choosing her word with care, "—active."

Jake leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap.

"That’s a polite word for it," he said.

Raani acknowledged this with the faintest movement of her mouth that might have been a smile in a less controlled person.

"Your father left no formal declaration of succession before he departed. The clan bearing his name had accumulated considerable power and assets across the three realms during the years he operated within this world, and when he left, he left behind everything he had built here—the wealth, the territory, the political connections, the obligations—without a named heir and without clear instructions."

"So naturally," Jake said, "everyone who shares his blood decided they had opinions about who should be in charge."

"That is an accurate summary," Raani said.

"Your father’s brother, the man we call Elder Vaskian, holds the main house and has sworn to preside over the selection of the clan’s patriarch. He is a formidable man in his own right and has maintained the clan’s stability through what could have been a catastrophic period of internal conflict."

She took a breath. "He has done this in part by recognizing the claims of every individual who could demonstrate verifiable descent from your father and allowing them to contest the role of patriarch according to the clan’s traditional methods."

Jake looked at her.

She looked back at him.

"How many?" he asked.

"Thirty-six," Raani said.

The hall was very quiet.

Jake opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again.

"I’m sorry," he said. "You said thirty-six?"

"Yes."

"Thirty-six people contesting the role of patriarch."

"That is correct."

Jake turned this over in his mind for a moment, looking at the ceiling as though it might offer some perspective on the number, and then he looked back at Raani with an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral and failing in ways that were visible around the edges.

"My father," he said slowly, "went to war against a Demon God and won. He defeated twelve iterations of an ancient demonic power that had presumably been destroying things since before most of the people in this city were born. He fought across three realms, accumulated enough influence to have a city-state name a clan after him, and attracted the devotion of warrior women who bond with dragons."

He paused. "And in all of that time, in the gaps between the demon wars and the realm-shaking battles and whatever else he was doing, he found the energy to have thirty-six children with different women across the known world."

He paused again.

"My father," Jake said, "was a deeply committed man."

He was now sure that man indeed had a breeding fetish.

Several of the maidens at the far end of the table made sounds that they were clearly trying to suppress. Raani maintained her composure with the determination of a woman who had been maintaining composure through difficult circumstances for most of her adult life.

"The thirty-six recognized offspring represent only those whose claims were verified by the main house," she said, returning smoothly to her briefing.

"There may be others whose descent cannot be confirmed or who have chosen not to present themselves. The thirty-six are the officially acknowledged contestants."

"Of course," Jake said pleasantly.

"Because thirty-six wasn’t enough competition on its own. We needed the possibility of more."

"Young master—"

"I’m listening, Raani. I’m just processing while I speak. It’s a habit."

He sat forward and rested his elbows on the table, his expression shifting from wry to attentive. "The main house. Tell me about Vaskan."

Raani gathered herself. "He was your father’s sworn brother, and unlike your father, he was born and raised in this world, a man of this realm rather than an agent brought from another. He has lived his entire life in the shadow of what your father was and has made his peace with that in the way that only certain kinds of exceptional men can make peace with being permanently second to someone extraordinary. He is patient and principled."

"He also favored your mother and had been waiting for you to come."

Jake looked at her for a long moment.

"He knew I existed," Jake said, and it was not quite a question.

"He knew your mother carried a child before she left with your father. He did not know where you had been placed or whether you had survived the years between then and now."

Jake sat with this information and felt the weight of it settle into him alongside everything else he had been accumulating since the rest stop, each revelation adding another layer to the portrait of a life that had been waiting for him to arrive and claim it while he had been spending eighteen years eating well and being lazy and ignoring the mark on his shoulder.

"So Karut," Jake said.

"Where does he stand in the thirty-six?"

Raani’s expression did something carefully. "He is the strongest among them," she said.

"By a considerable margin. His power, his resources, and the time he has spent cultivating both have placed him well ahead of the other candidates in every metric the clan uses to assess readiness for leadership. Many in the main house already consider the question settled in his favor."

"And then I showed up," Jake said.

"And then you showed up," Raani confirmed.

"A candidate they did not know to account for, carrying the bloodline of both parents in full, recognized by ancient beasts, awakened by circumstances that no one planned or predicted."

Jake thought about Karut standing on the road in simple traveling clothes with a white tiger beneath him and enough power radiating off him to press a newly awakened Class II bloodline heir into the dirt without visible effort. He thought about the pleasant smile and the measured voice and the words that sounded like a welcome and carried the clear meaning of a warning.

"He sent the attackers," Jake said.

"The robed men and the orcs. The welcoming ceremony, he called it."

"Almost certainly," Raani said.

"Though he will have ensured there is nothing that connects him to it directly."

Jake nodded slowly, turning this over with the sharp, organized part of his mind that had always been more present than his exterior suggested. Karut was not reckless. Karut had looked at the arrival of a previously unknown competitor and responded with a test rather than an assassination, which meant Karut was either principled enough to want information before making decisions or calculating enough to understand that a clumsy early move would compromise his position in the main house’s eyes. Either way, the man was not someone who operated on impulse.

Which made him considerably more dangerous than thirty-five rivals of lesser power combined.

"Thirty-six people," Jake murmured, almost to himself.

"And I’ve been here for approximately four hours."

He picked up his cup, found it still had wine in it, and drank thoughtfully before setting it back down.

"All right," he said, meeting Raani’s eyes across the table.

"Tomorrow, I want to understand the traditional methods, the clan’s process for deciding the patriarch. Every rule, every precedent, every way the contest has been conducted before."

He looked around the hall at the gathered maidens, all of them watching him with that particular intensity of people who had waited a long time for this conversation to happen.

"And I want to know which of the thirty-five who aren’t Karut might be interested in making a friend before the contest formally begins."

The hall was quiet again.

Then Raani said, with something in her voice that was new—not reverence exactly, but the warm, careful sound of someone revising an estimate upward—"Your mother had a saying, young master. She said that the most dangerous person in any room is always the one who is still being underestimated."

Jake set down his cup.

"She sounds like she was very clever," he said.

"She was," Raani agreed.

"You remind me of her."