Ethan studied the throne carefully, his brow furrowed. The stone wasn't ordinary—it had the dark gleam of obsidian, its surface so polished it almost swallowed the light. The texture seemed familiar, as if he had seen it once before, but the memory slipped through his grasp. In the end, he shook his head.
"Then tell me," Aldric 's voice broke the silence, steady yet carrying the weight of centuries, "do you know why I despise crows?"
"Crows?" Ethan echoed, considering the strange question. He searched through the fragments of history he carried in his mind.
Long ago, during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States eras, the intellectual boom of the Great Concord of Philosophers had shaped destiny. Confucians, Legalists, Pathfinders, The Pragmatists, the Twin-Balance Order, and the War Scholars had fought with words and ideas, not just steel. Yet Aldric had risen from all that chaos to unify the land, and with unification came his obsession with conquering death itself.
