Chapter Five — Whispers in the Palace
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The palace had been quieter of late.
Not the kind of quiet that came with peace or comfort, but the peculiar hush of absence—when something that had always been there suddenly wasn't. The bastard prince no longer lingered outside the Emperor's chamber doors, no longer made a scene by waiting for hours in the corridor, clinging to the hope of being acknowledged. The long benches near the Emperor's audience hall, once made his personal vigil, now sat empty.
The courtiers and servants noticed. They always noticed.
"Perhaps the half-breed finally realized his place," one maid whispered as she carried linens through the west hall.
"Or perhaps he's dead at last," another murmured back with a smirk.
The two giggled, though their voices dropped to hushed tones when guards passed by. Gossip traveled fast in the Imperial Palace. Faster still when it was about the stain no one dared mention aloud in front of the Emperor.
For years, Killian had humiliated himself in their eyes, sitting cross-legged outside his father's study, golden eyes fixed on the carved double doors. Sometimes he waited until dawn, unmoving, like a shadow glued to the wall. More often than not, the guards dragged him away by his collar, tossing him down the steps. And on the rare occasions the Emperor allowed him to enter, the great man of the empire did not so much as look at him.
"His Majesty tolerates him only because of the blood," an older steward had once said at supper, his voice heavy with disdain. "Nothing more. Were it not for those eyes, the boy would be ash already."
"The Emperor should have killed him with the mother," another muttered. "Would have saved us the shame."
The shame. Always that word.
Killian's mother had not been a noblewoman, nor even a concubine. She had been a dark-elf slave taken during the southern campaigns, prized for her beauty and rare bloodline, her mocha skin and luminous hair. By law, she had no right to exist in the palace beyond servitude. But when she became swollen with child, things changed.
"Kill it," the midwives had said when the truth was discovered. "Before it festers."
But the Emperor, whether out of arrogance, curiosity, or some fleeting moment of cruelty, had allowed her to bear the child. Perhaps he wanted to see what such a union produced. Perhaps he thought the babe would die quickly on its own.
It hadn't.
And so the boy came into the world—mocha-skinned, ears sharp as blades, his face marked with the unmistakable traits of his mother's cursed kin. The court had recoiled, murmuring about omens and blasphemy. The only feature that saved him from the pyre was his eyes—golden, brilliant, unmistakably imperial.
That, and the Emperor's indifference.
"The woman may name him, if she wishes," His Majesty had said at the time, his voice cold, as though already bored with the matter.
And so she had. Killian. A name from the tongue of her people, a lullaby word that meant little shadow in her dialect. The court had scoffed. It was no royal name. The names of the dynasty always bore the weight of prosperity, dominion, lineage—words that carved history into stone. Names like Aurelius, Cassian, Damiar.
But not him.
Killian.
The boy with a slave's name, the bastard child of dusk and empire.
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Killian sat in the east tower library, the morning sun bleeding gold across the floorboards. Dust motes drifted through the air, catching the light like tiny sparks. He watched them, silent, his chin resting lightly on his hand.
Power. That was the question.How to claim it in an empire that refused to even admit he existed.
He had no allies. No noble backing. His mother, once a slave, had been ground down to nothing until she withered away in silence. His name was mocked, his blood despised, his presence considered an offense. In another life, in his first life, he might have begged or clawed desperately for acknowledgment. He might have wasted years on tears and humiliation.
Not this time.
He remembered his first life with clarity sharp as steel. Back then, power had come only after ten grueling years on the battlefield. Ten years of mud, blood, and endless hunger. Ten years where he bled for a father who never once called him son. It was only then—after dragging himself through carnage—that he'd been granted a sliver of recognition. A pitiful morsel of influence that crumbled the moment the war ended.
And what had it earned him in the end? A crippled leg, the jeers of courtiers, and a slow, bitter death.
He exhaled slowly, fingers drumming against the table.
In his other lives, he had avoided the battlefield altogether and learned quickly the futility of throwing himself at death's door for scraps of favor. He had hidden, plotted, bided his time. But in doing so, he had let others seize the stage. He had watched, powerless, as names carved themselves into history while his own was erased.
Now... now he had perspective. And more importantly, he had skills.
Swordsmanship honed across six lives.Healing magic that had made the servants tremble only nights ago.Arcane tricks buried deep in memory, forbidden rites whispered in shadows.
He was no longer the broken boy kneeling in mud, begging the heavens for mercy. He was a creature shaped by death, by failure, by centuries of pain.
The battlefield.Yes.
His lips curved in a faint smirk. It was inevitable his father—if that title could even be given to the man—would send him there. In two years, when he reached his 12th birthday the Emperor would dress the command as an honor. A chance for the bastard prince to "prove himself." But everyone would know the truth: it would be an execution in all but name. A convenient disposal without the mess of outright killing him.
Let him send me, Killian thought.I'll go willingly.
Because this time, he would not crawl. He would seize the war itself and bend it to his will. He would make the battlefield his throne.
And more than that—he would steal a crown not of gold, but of silver.
In his first life, that title had been claimed by another—Aurelius Valemont, a prodigy only a few years older than him. Killian remembered the boy vividly: sixteen at the time, leading the imperial charge with a blade like lightning, carving victory into the bones of the opposing empire. That campaign had given Aurelius his moniker, his fame, his unshakable place in the empire's history. The empire's golden son had been born in blood, shining so brightly it had cast Killian into shadow.
But now Killian knew the truth.
Aurelius Valemont. The Silver General. One of the male leads in this cursed novel. One of many, gathered like moths to the heroine's flame. Another pawn destined to serve her story while he—always he—was cast aside as the villain.
His lips curled into a cold smile.
Not this life. There will be no Silver General. Not here. Not now. His victories, his campaigns, his legend—they will be mine. Every song they once sang for him, every honor carved into history, every banner raised in his name—I will take it. And when the heroine's story begins, she will find that one of her glittering stars has already been swallowed whole.
He leaned back in his chair, golden eyes gleaming with the certainty of a predator.
"This time," he murmured to the silence of the library, "there will be no Silver General."
He weighed the pros and cons with the precision of a tactician. The war was dangerous, yes. The front lines chewed up soldiers and spat them out broken. But danger meant opportunity. He had skills none of them could imagine. And if he took the Silver General's stage for himself, if he stripped Aurelius of the chance to etch his name in legend—then the empire would have no choice but to recognize him.
They could deny his existence in court. They could spit on his name in whispers. But they could not deny victory. Not if it was his.
Killian's golden eyes glinted in the morning light. Eight years. That was the time the novel's story would take to awaken fully. Eight years until the world bent toward its destined heroes. But in those years, he would lay his claim, brick by brick, battle by battle. By the time the true game began, it would be his board, his rules.
And when the empire finally looked upon him, they would not see the half-breed mistake, the bastard shadow.
They would see the prince of torment."The Obsidian Prince."The rightful heir to war itself.
Killian leaned back in his chair, lips curving into a smirk. For the first time in six lives, the path ahead did not seem like a sentence.
It seemed like an invitation.
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