The days in Themiscyra passed with an almost deceptive peace for Edward. His wives surrounded him with love, and his daughter brought him quiet joy that softened even the darkest of his memories. Sometimes, when the weight of centuries pressed too heavily on his shoulders, he would slip away with Death herself, walking with her across the beaches or through the gardens of the island. Their conversations drifted between the personal and the eternal—she teasing him about his stubbornness, him needling her for being too cryptic about the fate of the world.
Delirium would appear whenever the mood struck her, sudden and chaotic, disrupting whatever calm he had found. Edward never minded; her presence was like a spark against the numbness of immortality. She clung to him like an excitable child, and he indulged her, taking her on adventures that twisted into chaos with every step. One time, he handed her a floating umbrella, and she shot up into the sky, shrieking and flailing in a way that would later echo into myth, inspiring whispers that eventually shaped into the story of Mary Poppins. Fenrir, watching the scene unfold, leapt into his true form to snatch her from the skies before she drifted too far, and she laughed as though it had all been a game.
Unlike the shadowed history of his former world, the medieval era here did not drown in despair. He watched cities rise and kingdoms fall with the same still gaze he had carried for centuries. The fall of Constantinople unfolded before him, and for once, he remained apart. His ties with the empire had long since severed, Aurelias being the last Roman he had known well, a man who had grown into a ruler of note in his own right.
Curiosity, however, still pulled him. He spoke with Sultan Mehmed II one evening, the young conqueror mistaking Edward's descent from the clouds as the arrival of an angel. They sat together through the night, the Sultan pressing him with questions about the world, history, and even God. Edward answered as much as he could, careful with his words, but honest in his manner. By morning, Mehmed promised him that his prisoners would be treated with dignity, his subjects with fairness. Edward left before dawn, the Sultan staring after him, believing he had spoken with a messenger of heaven.
His hand against the Church had shifted the tide of Europe more than even he had expected. By exposing their manipulation of sacred texts and their indulgences in corruption, he had stripped them of much of their influence. The Crusades never reached the fever pitch they had in his old world, and without that, their control over kings and commoners waned.
The Hundred Years' War eventually sputtered to its end, leaving Britannia fractured. Civil war broke out—the War of the Roses—and Edward stood aside. It was not his place to mend every wound or tilt every balance. He had seen too much of what interference could create.
But time carried its own weight. After two and a half millennia of life, he found that fewer and fewer things could stir him. He had stood atop mountains, walked the deserts, dived into the depths of seas, and still, the spark was dimming. Once, he hurled himself from the peak of Everest, simply to feel something. He had landed without a scratch. In the place where he landed, he built a monastery, a quiet sanctuary for wanderers seeking meaning. Unknown to him then, it would one day twist the threads of destiny.
By the 1500s, Edward felt the weariness pressing harder. He could not be everywhere. He could not save everyone. More importantly, he should not. Humanity needed to grow into its own strength. His task now was not to lead from the front but to build those who could lead without him. With that resolve, he left Themiscyra behind, kissing his wives and daughter farewell, promising he would return.
His first destination was the Brotherhood of Assassins. Founded centuries ago by Hasan I Sabbah, the order still clung to much of its original idealism, unlike the corrupted version he had seen in another timeline. Yet its current leadership disappointed him. They were short-sighted, selfish, more concerned with power than with truth. The rank and file still held loyalty to the cause, but their leaders were unfit.
Edward knew he would need them. He dreamed of an organization that would guide humanity silently, without shackles, never ruling, only nudging from the shadows. But to claim the Assassins, he would have to break them first. He carried a relic, one powerful enough to sway them, tied to a Heroic Spirit of their creed.
Flashback
Edward stood before the assembled Brotherhood, hundreds of assassins arrayed in a hidden courtyard. Their blades glimmered faintly in the torchlight, their faces masked. He looked at them and let out a weary sigh.
"Do we truly need to fight?" he asked, voice calm. "I already dealt with your leaders. A lot of you has joined me. Must the rest of you throw yourselves into the fire for nothing?"
A ripple of anger passed through the crowd. One of the older men, his face wrapped in cloth, stepped forward. "You dare mock us, foreigner. You think to conquer the Brotherhood with words? Our lives are for the cause. We will die before we let you twist it."
Inside Edward's mind, the voice of the Heroic Spirit stirred, Assassin.
He chuckled, his tone both amused and grim.
[These men are bound to their creed through loyalty or fanatism. Convincing them is wasted breath. Their leaders are gone; still they hang onto it. now only the relic can bind them.]
Edward answered silently. [I'd rather not force their will. Even if they are killers. Not unless I must.]
The elder's hand trembled, then in a sudden flash, he hurled a dagger at Edward's head. Edward raised two fingers, catching it effortlessly.
He asked, " would truly not dedicate yourself to a just cause? To truly help mankind?"
Some hesitated, but others took out their weapons.
His sigh carried finality.
"Very well," he said softly. "Equip: Assassin."
A surge of wind roared outward, kicking up sand and dust. A blinding light enveloped his body, forcing the assassins to shield their eyes. When it faded, Edward was no longer himself.
Before them now stood a figure in black robes lined with red and gold. Half his face was hidden by cloth, the other showing the weathered features of a middle-aged man with a dark beard streaked with white.
This was the Assasin Heroic Spirit Edward possessed. One who he used to take down most of the Brotherhood. This was Altair Ibn-La'Ahad, garbed in the Armor of Eden.
Murmurs rippled through the Brotherhood. They could sense that whatever has happened, this other man now standing in front of them was a greater Assassin.
Edward raised his hand. In his palm , an artefact appeared , glimmering under the sun. It was the Apple of Eden, pulsing with light.
His voice carried across the courtyard.
"Forget the past," he commanded. "Start anew. not bound by lies, but by truth. Your goal is to eliminate anybody trying to cause war, destruction and instability. Protect humanity as you would protect your children."
Then he added with a smile. "Nothing is True, Everything is permitted."
The Apple of Eden shone brilliantly. A wave of energy rippled through the assassins, and they fell to their knees one by one. Their minds bent, not shattered. Their past sins in exchange for a chance at redemption. Edward didn't alter their entire being, just the worst parts.
They were reborn, their loyalty tied not to the corrupted leaders of before, but to Edward and the cause he envisioned. They lifted their heads, their eyes alight with conviction.
Most of the Brotherhood was his. But the ones who escaped will probably form a new order. He will wait for them if they chose to attack in retaliation. Altair himself was guiding him, so he won't fail, like he didn't.
Edward left the courtyard in silence, the Apple of Eden dimmed in his hand. His mind weighed heavy, but he knew it had to be done. He had not destroyed them. He had remade them. He needed an army absolutely loyal to the cause. A force of shadows that hide beneath the light.
Flashback ends.
Thus the foundation of his new order was laid. He would go on to recruit many visionaries from all over the world. Magicians from Vonarland, Shamans from Eternia, Oracles from Greece, brilliant inventors and scientists like Galileo, Isac Newton, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie and many more would in time become a part of this secret organization.
He named it the Order of Light, an organization meant to guide humanity toward its better self.
But In time, the world would call it by another name: the Illuminati. Although many would consider it just a conspiracy theory. A shadowy brotherhood, invisible but ever present, devoted not to power or dominance, but for the salvation of mankind.
*****
There was one small act, almost careless, that spiraled beyond his intent. He sunk the ship of Christopher Columbus before it returned with the slaves. When he came upon the natives who would have been consumed by conquest, he urged them to gather their belongings and move west and south. Some listened, placing their faith in his words.
Others mistrusted him, seeing only another figure of power come to disturb their ways. Edward respected their decision and left them in peace.
For those who followed, he created something greater. With his magic, he wove a barrier around their new land, one that no ill-willed invader could breach. There, the people found safety and built a new home they called AhanuKai — the land of Harmony and Laughter.
They even raised statues in his honor, celebrating him as their protector. Edward stayed only long enough to see them settled, then returned to his greater task of building the Order.
After establishing the Order of Light, Edward finally felt he could breathe. For centuries, he had carried the weight of every decision, every turning point, and every war upon his shoulders.
Now, with the age of discovery dawning and the industrial revolution waiting on the horizon, he knew the world would soon change in ways no king or conqueror could halt. It was time to gather minds that could guide humanity with him, not just follow his hand blindly.
His first thought was to turn toward men whose genius had already bent the course of history. The first name on his lips was Lorenzo Valla, the brilliant humanist and scholar whose writings had once exposed the forgeries of the Church. But when Edward sought him out, he found himself too late — Valla had died decades earlier, leaving a void that could never quite be filled.
The next was Leonardo da Vinci. Edward met him in Florence, a city still buzzing with art, invention, and dangerous politics. Leonardo was exactly as the stories claimed — quick-eyed, sharp-tongued, and endlessly curious.
When Edward sat him down and spoke of the Order, Leonardo listened without a word at first, sketching as he absorbed every phrase. Edward explained the purpose: not only to guide humanity with knowledge, technology, and ideas, but also to place limits on destruction and war, to safeguard mankind against threats from the stars as well as from themselves.
Leonardo's brush paused the moment Edward mentioned civilizations beyond Earth. His face lit with the joy of a child and the hunger of a genius. "Aliens," he muttered, rolling the word as if tasting it for the first time.
"So the heavens are not empty after all. Then invention is no longer vanity, it is necessity."
His acceptance of the Order's purpose was immediate, and his curiosity boundless.
Edward's next choice was Nicolaus Copernicus, then a young man whose ideas about the stars were beginning to take shape.
Edward introduced him to advanced concepts of mathematics and physiology, offering knowledge centuries beyond his age. Copernicus listened with rapt attention, his world opening wider with each revelation.
After learning what Edward knew of the heavens and of the stars' true nature, Copernicus pledged himself to the Order, almost reverently. "You are giving me the language of the cosmos itself," he said, eyes gleaming.
Then came Niccolò Machiavelli. Edward met him later, in the midst of Florentine intrigue, where Machiavelli's wit and sharpness were already notorious. He listened to Edward with skepticism at first, but the more Edward spoke of politics beyond kings, of governance beyond ambition, the more his doubt turned to fascination.
"Your knowledge makes mockery of every prince and pretender I have studied," Machiavelli admitted. "If your Order has the power to shape rulers, then perhaps I belong here." After some convincing, he agreed to join, though Edward made it clear that his plans would always be subject to oversight.
That oversight was the core of Edward's vision. Every member of the Order would undergo regular inspections of their works and plans. None would be given unchecked power.
Before taking any major action, they would need to communicate with him directly. With the Apple of Eden in hand, Edward could test the consequences of each path, guiding them toward choices that would benefit mankind without descending into tyranny.
By the year 1550, the Order had established its headquarters, a quiet sanctuary of thought and planning where visionaries debated and constructed the future. Edward believed he could at last step back, watch, and trust. Yet history never allowed him such peace.
He had thought he could finally relax, yet once again the world threatened to drown itself in war. The spread of gunpowder and firearms was changing warfare forever, and Edward could already see the chaos it would unleash. He expected the next storm to come from that direction — but the first upheaval arrived from a different quarter.
The Second Crusade had become a beast no one could recognize. What had once been the rallying cry of knights, priests, and pilgrims for Jerusalem was now nothing more than the cloak of greed.
The kingdoms of Spain, Britain, and Portugal, drunk on the wealth of their new budding empires and their ships that cut through oceans, had dressed their hunger for land and gold in the language of God. What they now called a holy crusade was not to reclaim a relic or a shrine but to conquer entire continents. The target of their zealotry was no longer the the Holy Land, but Eternia.
Eternia, once called Africa, was nothing like the tales the Europeans whispered to each other in their courts and taverns. Those old myths of savagery and weakness had long since withered. Under Edward's hand centuries before, the continent had found unity where there had once been only fracture.
Kings and queens had been guided to trust one another. Scholars and artificers had turned their attention to discovery rather than division. Rich with iron, gold, and fertile fields, Eternia had moved faster than anyone outside its borders could have believed.
Steam engines rumbled along their trade routes. Alchemists and magi together studied the sparks of electricity. Their armies wielded not only steel but magic woven from the land itself.
And they were not alone. Beside them stood Vonarland — a confederation of Greenland and the northern lands that would one day be called Canada.
These northerners were no strangers to survival, and under Edward's distant hand they too had grown into a formidable people.
Their bond with magic ran deep, frost and storm answering their call. These were not the broken and desperate peoples Europe had told itself it could enslave . These were powers rising, strong enough to defend themselves.
Still, the so-called crusaders pressed on.
Edward could hardly believe it when the truth reached him. The kings of Spain, Britain, and Portugal had taken the very horror he once fought , the enslavement of Africans, and dressed it in the language of piety.
They had turned chains and plunder into sacraments, a holy war against heretics. A crusade not of faith but of profit. Worse still, when he pressed the Order of his allies for the truth, the blade turned and cut deeper. This war was born of his shadow.
The Vatican had spread word of him. His long defiance of their authority, his resistance to their shaping of history, his protection of peoples they had sought to control , it had earned him their undying hatred.
The clergy named him heretic, corrupter, false prophet. They warned the kings that his touch had poisoned lands, that only holy fire could cleanse them. The kings saw their chance.
Cloaking greed in faith, they declared a crusade not only to erase his name but to claim the lands he had touched, with their resources and their riches.
With muskets, cannons, and gunpowder swelling their courage, the kings convinced themselves they could shatter both Eternia's walls and Edward's legend. For them, this was never about the cross. It was about glory. It was about treasure.
They gathered an armada larger than any ever seen: over a thousand ships, creaking and swelling on the waves, carrying nearly three hundred thousand men. Soldiers, priests, mages, mercenaries — a tide of steel and hunger that no coastal village could hope to stop.
When they landed on Eternia's shores, the first battles were massacres. Outcasts, criminals, and exiles who had lived beyond the protection of Eternia's great cities were slaughtered or chained. They used the old magic of the lands to aid them.
Crusader priests and mages blessed the shackles. Soldiers sang hymns as they drove women and children onto ships. Fire and smoke rose into the sky, thick enough that even Edward, far above, could smell the ash.
But conquest faltered when they marched deeper. The armies of Europe met not broken tribes but the barrier magics of the united Eternians. Shields of shimmering light rose before their cities. Spears of fire and wind struck from the ramparts. Muskets cracked in vain against walls that refused to break. What followed was no triumph but a grinding war of attrition.
Months dragged on. The crusaders bled and gained little. Disease crept into their camps. Every step forward was bought with lives. Every victory was matched with a counterstroke of magic and steel.
And still, the kings spread their fleets further. Spain sent ships south to seek more lands to enslave. Portugal combed the coasts for ports to seize. Britain, restless, pushed westward with a great fleet, seeking new territories across the ocean, into the lands that would one day be called America.
Edward watched it unfold from above the clouds, his heart sinking heavier each day. He had thought that perhaps, after stepping away, building an Order to guide them, history might find its own peace.
Yet here it was again, men twisting faith into chains, twisting his very name into a reason for slaughter. It was as though history would always find a way to bleed, even from the shadow of his footsteps.
It was then he turned his gaze north. Vonarland. He descended before its king, a warrior-sorcerer crowned not with gold but with carved ice and steel. Edward told him plainly: take all the land of the north. The forests, the rivers, the coasts that would one day be Canada, all of it must be theirs. He shall bless those lands so they remain a sanctuary for humans escaping the wars.
They would be the bulwark against the empire that would one day rise in the south. Against the hunger of a future America, Vonarland would need strength enough to endure.
But it was not only strategy. In his heart lay something more selfish, something more human. The land had once been his own home, in another life. He wanted it strong. He wanted it whole. He wanted the land of his birth to rise as a true nation — one that could hold harmony, not be torn apart by conquest. Only if he entrusted it to Vonarland, guided by his will, would that dream take root.
Yet even with that hope, the war in Eternia weighed on him. Cities held, armies stood, but every clash left graves behind. For all their progress, for all their unity, the blood of the young still ran into the soil.
He had watched enough slaughter to know when death served no cause. This was death for greed, dressed in the robes of holiness.
Edward's patience frayed. Mercy had been his gift before, when he could afford it. But now, looking upon the countless corpses, seeing the cries of chained innocents and the arrogance of kings across the sea, he felt that mercy was wasted.
And so he chose to descend.
He would no longer watch from the heavens as these false crusaders called upon God, and claiming it was will of the boy he raised, while bathing in chains. He would show them what it meant to stand before him — not only his kindness, but the wrath that had broken empires and humbled gods.
If they wished to make him the shadow behind their holy war, then he would step into that shadow and burn it into their memory.
Edward dropped from the clouds, his figure cutting through the storm. For the first time since the war began, the crusaders would see not the faces of Eternia's defenders, but his.
And they would learn why his name had been both feared and loved for centuries.
*****
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