The rain was a promise the sky had no intention of keeping.
It was not the cleansing, life-giving rain of the storybooks my mother used to read to me. This was a different beast entirely. It was a cold, spiteful downpour that fell from a sky the color of a fresh bruise, soaking the imperial capital of Aeridor in a misery so profound it felt eternal. It plastered my silver hair to my scalp, seeped through the fine wool of my tunic, and ran in shivering rivulets down my spine. The water tasted of iron and rot, the city's foul breath exhaled into the heavens and spat back down upon its people.
And the people… they were legion.
A writhing, screaming, ecstatic mass of humanity packed the Grand Processional Way. They perched on rooftops, hung from windows, and crushed against the barricades, their faces upturned to the weeping sky. Their mouths were open, a thousand dark O's, and from them issued a single, continuous roar. A sound of celebration. A sound of bloodlust.
I was ten years old. And I knew, with the chilling certainty only a child can possess, that they were here to watch my world end.
It's just a play, I told myself, my small hands clenched into white-knuckled fists inside my pockets. A grand, terrible play to teach the other nobles a lesson. Father said politics is a stage.
But my father's lessons on statecraft hadn't included the scent of hot tar from the executioner's braziers, or the way the Royal Guard's crimson cloaks looked like freshly spilled blood against the wet, grey cobblestones.
From my hiding spot in the mouth of a rancid alley, squeezed between a stack of reeking fish barrels and the cold, unyielding stone of a tanner's shop, I had a perfect, terrible view of the scaffold. It was a stark thing of black wood, erected before the marble steps of the Imperial Palace. High above, on balconies draped in cloth-of-gold, the other High Nobles watched. Their faces were impassive masks, their jeweled robes catching what little light dared to pierce the gloom. They looked like vultures, waiting for the feast to begin.
A horn blew, a mournful, gut-wrenching sound that sliced through the crowd's roar, silencing them for a breath. Then, the procession began.
First came the Royal Executioner, a mountain of a man named Vorlag. He wore no helmet, his bald head gleaming with rain and sweat. His armor was black iron, unadorned save for the Emperor's sigil—a sunburst devouring a dragon—etched in cruel, sharp lines upon his breastplate. He walked with a heavy, deliberate tread, and in his hands, he carried it.
The axe.
'Titan's Tear,' they called it. Its head was a crescent of polished obsidian, wider than my chest, and its haft was the petrified heartwood of a lightning-struck ironwood tree. It was a thing of legend. A tool for ending legends.
Behind him, flanked by a dozen guards, they came.
My parents.
Duke Alistair Veylor and Duchess Elara Veylor.
The crowd erupted. They screamed. They spat. They threw stones and clumps of mud, some of which splattered against my father's back. He didn't flinch. His back, broad and straight in the simple white prisoner's tunic, was a testament of defiance. He walked as if he were leading a victory parade, not marching to his own death. His silver hair, so like my own, was matted with grime, but his head was held high.
My mother was… smaller. Frailer. The rain had plastered her own silken hair to her face, and her tunic was torn at the shoulder. But there was a fire in her eyes, a familiar blaze of Veylor will that even an Emperor could not extinguish. They were forced to their knees at the center of the scaffold, their hands bound behind them with thick, rough-spun rope.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run out there, to cast the simple light-sigil she had taught me, to show them all they were wrong. My hand twitched, my fingers itching to trace the familiar patterns in the air. But I was frozen, pinned in place by a terror so absolute it felt like a physical weight pressing down on me, crushing the air from my lungs.
Vorlag the Executioner unrolled a scroll. His voice, a gravelly bass that needed no magical amplification, boomed across the plaza.
"By the divine decree of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Valerius IV, let it be known! Duke Alistair Veylor and Duchess Elara Veylor, of the now-dissolved House Veylor, are found guilty of the highest treason!"
A roar from the mob. My nails dug into my palms, breaking the skin. The sting was a distant, meaningless thing.
Treason? Father was the Emperor's most loyal sword and shield! He won the Northern War!
"They are found guilty," Vorlag continued, his voice dripping with righteous fury, "of conspiring against the throne, of plotting the Emperor's assassination with forbidden arts!"
My blood ran cold. Forbidden arts…
"They are found guilty of practicing the blasphemies of the Black Sigil, consorting with abyssal entities to grant them unnatural power in the field of battle!"
The lie was so vast, so monstrous, it stole my breath. House Veylor's magic was the magic of tactical light, of battlefield clarity and logic. The Sigil of the Watchful Eye. It was pure, precise, a stark contrast to the chaotic, soul-devouring nature of the Black Sigils. Everyone knew that. Didn't they?
The crowd didn't care. They drank the lies like fine wine. "Traitors!" they screamed. "Demon-lovers!"
Vorlag let their hatred build, a maestro conducting an orchestra of scorn. Then, he raised a hand.
"For these crimes, the sentence is death. Their name shall be struck from the annals. Their crest shall be burned. Their bloodline, extinguished. May the heavens themselves bear witness to this justice!"
The heavens answered with a roll of thunder that shook the very stones beneath my feet.
Amidst the chaos, my mother's head lifted. Her gaze swept the crowd, a frantic, desperate search. For a second, I thought she was looking for an escape, for a friendly face. But then her eyes, those brilliant sapphire eyes, locked onto my hiding spot.
She found me.
Across the impossible distance, through the rain and the roaring mob, she saw her son. Her face, which had been a mask of defiant pride, softened. For a fleeting, heart-wrenching instant, she was just my mother again. Fear and love and a sorrow so deep it was an ocean warred in her expression. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. It was a silent prayer.
And then, something impossible happened.
Her right hand, bound behind her back, twitched. A faint, almost invisible shimmer of amethyst light pulsed from her skin. It was a glyph—a complex, layered piece of enchanting I had only seen in my father's most protected grimoires. It wasn't a sigil you cast; it was a blessing you bestowed. The light detached from her, a fragile, trembling wisp, and shot across the plaza like a startled hummingbird. It moved unseen by anyone else, a secret message of love in a world of public hate, and sank into my chest.
It felt… warm. A deep, anchoring warmth that spread through my bones, a stark contrast to the shivering cold of my skin. It was the last hug she would ever give me.
Then her eyes shifted to my father. He had seen it. He understood. He turned his head, just enough, and his gaze found mine. His eyes were not soft. They were hard as steel, filled with a terrible, final command. He looked me dead in the eye, and I saw his mouth form two silent words, a legacy and a curse.
Live. Remember.
That was it. The last lesson. The final order from the Duke of House Veylor to his heir.
He turned his face forward, his chin high, and offered his neck to the sky.
Vorlag moved. He set aside the scroll and took up the axe. He spat on his hands, gripping the petrified wood. The muscles in his back and shoulders bunched, thick cords of power under his rain-slicked skin. He raised Titan's Tear high, the obsidian blade drinking the grey light, seeming to absorb the world's misery into its edge.
I tried to close my eyes. I couldn't. My father's command had locked them open. Remember.
The axe fell.
There was no clean swoosh like in the stories. There was a sound. A wet, percussive, final sound. A thump-crunch that was both heavy and horribly sharp. It was the sound of an idea ending. The sound of a life being brutally unmade.
A spray of crimson, shockingly bright against the monochrome world, arced through the air. It misted across the pristine white marble of the palace steps, a painter's violent, thoughtless splatter. My father's body stayed upright for a second, a grotesque statue, before it crumpled like a discarded puppet, strings cut. His head, his noble head that had held so much knowledge, so much strategy, rolled once, twice, and came to a stop near the edge of the scaffold. Its eyes were still open, staring sightlessly at the jeering crowd.
The mob roared its approval, a tidal wave of sound that physically pushed me back against the stone wall.
My mother did not scream. She did not weep. She simply watched my father's body fall, and a single, perfect tear traced a path through the grime on her cheek. Then she, too, bowed her head, her sapphire-fire eyes closing for the last time.
Vorlag didn't even pause. He raised the dripping axe again.
THUMP-CRUNCH.
The same sound. The same spray of red. The same limp crumpling of a body that had, a moment ago, held my entire world. Her head rolled to rest beside my father's.
Together, even in this.
My mind simply… broke. The world dissolved into a smear of grey and red, a cacophony of roaring voices and hammering rain. A high-pitched scream filled my ears, and it took me a long moment to realize it was my own. It was a thin, reedy, pathetic sound, completely swallowed by the mob's ecstasy.
As if on cue, a Royal Guard strode to the front of the scaffold holding the Veylor banner—the silver Watchful Eye on a field of cobalt blue. He held it up for all to see, then tossed it into one of the braziers. The silk caught fire with a hungry whoosh, the silver thread melting, the watchful eye burning until it was a blind, blackened socket.
Ashes.
The sky split open. A jagged fork of lightning tore through the clouds, followed by a crack of thunder so violent it felt like the world was being torn in two.
And in that moment of blinding light and deafening sound, I ran.
My body moved on its own, fueled by a primal terror I had never known. I scrambled out of the alley, diving into the chaos of the dispersing crowd. I was small, insignificant, just another piece of human refuse in the gutters of the capital. I pushed, I crawled, I fell and got up, my face streaked with tears and rain and mud.
My only thought was home. The Veyor estate. A part of my shattered mind believed it was a sanctuary, a place of safety.
It was a place of fire.
The grand iron gates, forged with our crest, had been torn from their hinges. The manicured gardens were trampled and burning. And the manor itself… our home… was an inferno. Flames licked from every window, black smoke billowing into the already-dark sky. The Royal Guard were systematically looting and destroying everything, their laughter sharp and cruel on the wind.
"There's one!" a voice shouted.
I froze. A guard, his face flushed with exertion and glee, had spotted me. He pointed his spear. "A Veylor pup! Get him!"
I turned to flee, but my feet tangled, and I fell hard onto the stone path. Pain shot up my leg. I was done. It was over.
Then, a blur of motion.
"Young Master, this way!"
It was Elara. Not my mother, the Duchess, but our head handmaiden, Elara. A woman with a kind smile and warm hands who had served our house since before I was born. She grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and hauled me to my feet.
"They're everywhere," she gasped, her face pale with terror. "We have to hide."
She pulled me toward the servants' entrance, into the smoke-choked corridors of the west wing. The heat was a physical blow, the air thick with the smell of burning velvet, old books, and something else… something coppery and sweet. Blood. The bodies of our staff, of men and women I had known my whole life, lay strewn across the hallways like discarded dolls.
We ran, our footsteps echoing in the dying heart of my home. But they were right behind us. Their heavy armored boots were a thunderous drumbeat, getting closer and closer.
We burst out into a small, walled garden at the back of the estate. A dead end.
"Elara…" I whimpered, clinging to her dress.
She turned, her back pressing against the cold, ivy-covered stone of the garden wall. She stood between me and the two guards who filled the doorway, their spears leveled. Her body, so small and unassuming, became a shield.
"Please," she begged, her voice trembling. "He is just a child. He has done nothing."
The first guard laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "He has Veylor blood. That's enough. Step aside, woman, and the Emperor might show you mercy."
Elara's chin lifted. In her simple servant's dress, facing down two armed soldiers, she looked as defiant as my mother on the scaffold.
"I serve House Veylor," she said, her voice clear and steady. "And I will, until my last breath."
The guard's smile vanished. "So be it."
He didn't use his spear. It was quicker, uglier. He stepped forward and drove a long dagger into her stomach. A single, brutal, efficient thrust.
Elara made a sound—a soft, wet gasp. Her eyes went wide with shock, not pain. She looked down at the hilt of the dagger protruding from her abdomen, then back up at the guard, with a look of profound pity. She sagged forward, and the guard ripped the blade free.
She fell to her knees in front of me.
Her blood, dark and hot, soaked the front of her dress and spilled onto the stone pavers. She reached for me, her hand trembling, and cupped my cheek. Her fingers were already growing cold.
"Live, my Lord Caelum," she whispered, her breath hitching. Her blood was on my face. "Live… and… remember…"
The same words. The final Veylor loyalty.
Then the light went out in her eyes, and she collapsed at my feet. Her warm blood pooled around my shoes.
I stared at her body. At the blood. At the impassive faces of her killers. Something inside me, the last vestige of the boy named Caelum, finally and irrevocably died. There was no scream this time. No tears. Just a vast, cold, silent emptiness.
The guards advanced. I didn't move.
And then the warmth in my chest, my mother's final gift, flared.
It was not a fire, but a pulse of absolute, numbing cold. The air around me shimmered. The amethyst light of my mother's glyph, which had been dormant inside me, erupted outward in a silent, invisible shockwave.
The two guards froze mid-step. Their eyes glazed over. For a heartbeat, they stood like statues. Then, their gazes unfocused, they turned, blinked as if waking from a dream, and walked away, their minds wiped clean of the last few moments. They hadn't seen me. They had forgotten the boy in the garden.
Amnesia. A cloaking glyph of the highest order. My mother had saved me, one last time.
I crawled away from Elara's cooling body, a feral thing moving on instinct. I slipped through a crack in the garden wall and fled into the labyrinthine squalor of the capital's underbelly. I hid among corpses in a plague cart, the stench of death a comforting blanket that masked my own living scent. I slept in gutters, the rain washing the blood and tears from my face. I ate what I could steal—a mouldy piece of bread, a discarded apple core.
For days, I was nothing. A ghost. A memory.
Finally, driven by a gnawing hunger and a sliver of desperate hope, I found a secluded cave on the bluffs overlooking the sea, far from the city's hateful glow. It was damp and cold, but it was safe. It was mine.
My body ached. My stomach was a hollow pit of pain. But it was the searing pain in my right hand that commanded my attention. In the delirium of my escape, I had tried to cast a simple sigil. The most basic one a Veylor child learns: the Sigil of Illumination, a simple ball of soft light. It was an instinct, a cry for comfort in the suffocating dark.
But my magic had betrayed me.
The moment I traced the pattern in the air, a searing, black fire had erupted from my palm. It wasn't the clean, white light of my family's power. It was a twisted, corrupt thing that had burned my skin, scorching the lines of the sigil into my flesh as a permanent, ugly scar. I looked at my hand now. The wound was puckered and black, a broken, misshapen mockery of the Watchful Eye.
My own magic, my own blood, had rejected me. My mother's glyph had saved my life, but in doing so, it seemed to have shattered my connection to the Veylor legacy. Or perhaps… perhaps the lies were true. Perhaps our blood was tainted.
The thought was a poison.
With a shaking hand, I picked up a sharp shard of flint. The cave wall was damp rock. I began to carve. My fingers were clumsy, my muscles weak with hunger, but my will was iron. I carved the crest of my house. The proud, silver Watchful Eye. I carved it with the memory of my father's lessons, my mother's songs, the warmth of Elara's hand. I poured every good memory I had left into the stone.
When it was done, I stared at it. A symbol of everything I had lost. A monument to my own powerlessness.
A wave of rage, so pure and so cold it felt like the heart of a glacier, washed over me. It was an adult's fury in a child's frail body.
Live, and remember.
I remembered the cheering crowd. I remembered the sound of the axe. I remembered the smell of my burning home and the weight of Elara's dying body. I remembered the Emperor's sigil on the executioner's armor.
And I remembered their names. All of them. The nobles on the balconies who watched and did nothing. The Emperor on his throne. The Executioner and his axe.
My grip tightened on the flint. I raised it, and with a guttural cry that was half-sob, half-snarl, I struck the carving. I dragged the sharp stone across the Watchful Eye, carving a deep, violent scar through its center. Breaking it. Killing it.
I will not beg the throne for justice that will never come.
I stumbled back, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I looked at my fine, ruined tunic—the last remnant of my old life. It was stained with mud, grime, and the blood of a woman who died for me. With trembling hands, I stripped it off, along with the rest of my noble clothes, until I was naked, shivering in the cold cave air.
I threw the clothes into a pile. I tried again to cast a sigil of fire, but my magic only sputtered, a painful flicker of black flame. It was enough. The cheap wool and ruined silk caught, smoldering at first, then bursting into a small, pathetic pyre.
I watched the last vestiges of Caelum Veylor burn. The firelight danced on my skin, casting long, flickering shadows on the cave wall. It illuminated the scarred crest. The broken eye.
I will not carry the name of the dead. Their name is a weight. A target.
The fire consumed the clothes, leaving behind nothing but a pile of grey, feathery soot. Ash.
I will become the shadow beneath their glittering crowns, the ghost in their grand halls. I will learn their forbidden arts, the very powers they condemned my family for, and I will turn their lies into a weapon.
I reached down and scooped up a handful of the ash. It was still warm. I smeared it across my chest, a baptism of fire and loss.
And one day, when they are at the height of their power, fat and complacent in their stolen glory, I will come for them. I will strip them of their names, their titles, their lives. I will burn their houses to the ground and make them kneel in the ashes of their own arrogance. And on that day, when they beg for a mercy they never showed, they will not call me Lord or Duke.
They will call me King.
Seven Years Later
The wind that swept across the plateau was sharp and clean, carrying the scent of pine and distant snow. It whipped the hem of a dark grey cloak around a young man's legs as he stood before the gates of the Obsidian Spire Academy. The academy was a needle of black stone that pierced the clouds, a place where the Empire's most promising—and most dangerous—mages were trained, far from the prying eyes of the capital.
The young man was perhaps seventeen. His hair was the color of moonlight on steel, a stark silver that fell across his brow. He was lean, but his posture spoke of a coiled, dangerous strength. He stopped before the grizzled instructor guarding the entrance, whose face was a roadmap of old scars.
The instructor's eyes, sharp and discerning, swept over him, lingering on the subtle confidence in his stance, the faint, blackened scar that traced a broken pattern on the back of his right hand.
"Name?" the instructor grunted, his quill poised over a ledger.
The young man looked up. For a moment, the sun caught his eyes, and they flashed with an unnatural, mesmerizing light—irises of pale grey, flecked with shimmering motes of gold, like embers dying in a field of snow. A faint, cold smirk touched his lips, a look that held no humor, only purpose.
"Ashen Kirel."
The instructor's quill scratched the name into the book. "Family name? History?"
The smirk widened, a flicker of grim satisfaction.
"No family," he said, his voice smooth and cold as polished stone. "No history."