Re:Ant Lord-Chapter 113: Chains of Silk

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Sunrise spilled honey-gold through lattice windows. Mia woke stiff, armour dents imprinted on skin, eyelids gritty. The world felt hollow to her, yet a strange ember glowed inside her chest. It wasn’t hope, exactly; more stubborn refusal to let hope die.

She washed swiftly and braided. Her heart was tight, donned a training tunic and cloak. First appointment: review casualty scrolls at Bastion archivum. But before duties she detoured to parapet where desert could still be seen.

Wind carried distant bell chimes from the temple district, rites for the dead had begun. Tiny black figures moved along boulevard preparing pyres of jackal carcasses, drake hides, and ant brothers alike. Mia pressed hand to heart plate.

"I will bring you back," she whispered to morning sky. "One way or another."

An unbidden memory surfaced: Kai teasing her after the mine, "I’ll invoice later." Lip quivered; she squared shoulders. If Kai was captive she would find him; if he was dead she would carve justice into the world’s bones.

She inhaled, crisp dawn burning nostrils, and turned toward the council wing to requisition scouts, no matter how far Mantira runs. She will find it and kill it

Far below, in catacombs of desert glass, a lone ant plotted similar return; destiny had not woven its final thread. "I will return alive."

Morning light filtered through the honey-amber dome of the High Audience Rotunda, tinting every marble block and mural panel the color of burnished topaz. Princess Mia stood alone at the center of the circular floor mosaic, an ancient map that showed the deserts and the broken rivers between them. Her polished boots trembled on the depiction.

She bowed low while a councilman spoke in loud voice,

"All kneel. Her Radiance, the Eight Star rank Queen of ant kingdom, Mother of a Thousand Broods, Keeper of the Scarlet Crown, will speak."

From a dais carved like overlapping wings rose the Queen’s silhouette, tall, statuesque, clad in layered obsidian plates and violet silks that drank light. As always, a sheer, smoke-black veil masked her features; only two rubies eyes glowed. Power rippled off her in heat waves, bending the very air.

Behind Mia, high stewards, war-seers, and silk-robed archivists formed a crescent. Whisper-quilts of parchment crackled as scribes prepared to record every word.

Mia forced her voice to steadiness. "O Revered Mother, we have returned victorious. Desert ruler A’zhorath’s corpse is ours, and the desert route is secure. Yet... one of my officers, Scout Leader Kai was captured by a Blood-Scythe Mantira. I beg royal sanction to lead a rescue party beyond our borders to the desert."

Whispering gusted among officials; to seek a worker off duty lines was unheard-of. Mia felt the murmurs pricking skin like sharp needles.

The Queen was silent long enough that the mosaicked continents seemed to tilt under Mia’s feet. Finally, the veil shivered, her voice emerging low and resonant:

"Your dedication to every soldier does you credit, child. Yet the loss of one worker ant is a grain of sand in an hourglass. The Mantira’s tunnels span half the wastes; you risk squandering regiments on a corpse."

"He lives," Mia insisted, fists balling. "My heart is telling me, he is alive..." she swallowed the confession that her heart still thrummed with a sense of Kai somewhere in the dark "my investigation reports say no body was found. He saved the corpse train. He deserves to be saved in return for his loyalty."

Robes rustled as a grey archivist cleared his throat. "Provision thirty-one, subsection five: expedition assets below three-star rank are replaceable."

Mia spun. "Replaceable? He is not some worker ant. He is my trusted soldier."

The Queen raised a single clawed hand; silence fell. "Daughter, sentimentality weakens steel. Your wounds remain unhealed, your soldiers dispersed. You will not leave the capital. Attend to rebuild Dawn-Blade and your court duties."

Mia’s chest hollowed, yet she knelt, voice iron under silk. "Yes, Mother-Queen." Custom forbade argument now. She bowed so low her forehead brushed the star map, right over the desert drawn in molten gold.

"Rise, Daughter." The queen’s tone gentled a fraction. "One day you will understand a leader’s calculus. Dismissed."

Mia straightened, eyes burning. She executed a perfect formal pivot and walked from rotunda beneath a skylight; the sun’s prism split into seven knives across her face.

She did not cry, not here. But each step felt like wading through congealed amber.

In corridors of blazing stained glass Mia’s lieutenant Jun awaited, hands twisting runic prayer beads.

"Permission?" the healer whispered, hopeful.

"No." One bitter syllable.

Jun’s shoulders drooped. "Shall I muster volunteers anyway?"

Mia bit her lip until she tasted copper. "Mother’s watchers would brand that treason. We’d all lose our shells." She exhaled shakily. "Go; tend our wounded. They need you more than my private storm."

Jun bowed and hurried off, leaving Mia among columns that glowed carmine and emerald. She brushed mosaic dust from the cape, straightened it. Her duty web was still wide, rebuilding command, debriefing survivors but her thoughts surged like floodwater around a broken dam.

"If I can’t march, I’ll search another way. Information. Informants. Mantira lairs." She would comb archives, bribe spice caravans, anything short of disobedience. But a voice deep inside hissed "Obedience is just another cage."

She strode for the Voiceless Library, jaw set.

Far away in the desert, beneath horizons, Kai regained awareness from his sleep, inside his own cell.

Stone cold damp clung to his plates. Shackles of fused quartz pinned wrists over head, ankles against stalagmite floor. Rings pulsed with low-grade paralysis sigils that sapped aura each time he flexed. He hung in a bubble shaped cavern whose every wall glittered with uncut diamond dust, a grotesque jewellery box.

The Blood-Scythe Mantira paced before him on six daggered limbs, tail barbs idly twirling a thread of A’zhorath flesh like butcher’s twine. Its mask-face plated shut, then slid open to reveal compound eyes of swirling violet.

"Little ant awakes. Good. Flesh stays sweeter when the heart still thumps."