The empire did not sleep.
Even beneath the velvet hush of midnight, its palaces hummed with life—courtiers scheming in candlelit chambers, assassins testing their blades against marble columns, and rumors slithering down corridors like smoke searching for lungs.
Aleksi had learned long ago that knowledge was louder than any blade, though far less respected. He was a scholar, not a soldier; a man whose worth lay in the ink staining his fingers, not the scars across his skin. Still, his pulse quickened as he crossed the obsidian bridge into the heart of the Imperial Citadel.
They said the Empress did not summon people—she collected them.
The guards who escorted him wore helmets shaped like snarling beasts. Their silence was a language of its own, one Aleksi could not translate. He counted their footsteps, searched for rhythm, for meaning, for anything that might distract him from the truth pressing into his ribs:
he was not entering the palace as a guest. He was entering as prey.
The Citadel opened before him like a jeweled wound. Walls glistened with embedded quartz, throwing pale light across the floor, as if the very stones desired to be beautiful for her gaze. Every corridor whispered her presence—paintings of her eyes, wide and adoring, frescoes of her smile painted with pigments that refused to fade.
Empress Elara.
The Yandere Empress.
The woman whose throne was carved from the bones of enemies who had displeased her.
And now, for reasons hidden in shadows, she had turned her gaze to him.
Aleksi's fingers twitched toward the satchel at his side, heavy with scrolls. Ancient texts, fragments of forgotten law, rituals that once bound empires greater than hers. Knowledge—his only weapon, his only shield.
The doors of the throne room yawned open. Light, too golden to be natural, spilled out and struck him blind for a heartbeat.
And in that heartbeat, he heard her voice—sweet, lilting, edged with a hunger that could strip the soul bare.
"Aleksi," the Empress whispered.
Not scholar. Not subject.
His name.
It was not the sound of welcome.
It was the sound of possession.
She sat upon a throne of ivory and shadows, her figure draped in silks that shimmered like spilled wine. Her beauty was undeniable, cruel in its perfection. She looked not at the guards, not at the courtiers, not at the blood-red banners hanging from the ceiling. She looked only at him.
"Come closer," Elara said, her words falling like petals sharpened into blades.
Aleksi forced his legs to move. Each step echoed too loudly, as though the palace itself were listening. He bowed low, hoping she could not hear how violently his heart struck against his chest.
"You are far from your libraries, little scholar," she said. "Tell me... did you think your books could keep you hidden from me?"
He lifted his gaze, just enough to meet the shadow of her smile.
"I am a servant of knowledge, not of thrones. If I am here, it is because you willed it."
A hush fell across the throne room. Courtiers stiffened. Guards shifted their weight. To speak so plainly to her was to invite death.
But Elara laughed. Low. Delighted. Dangerous.
"Yes," she breathed. "I willed it. And I will more."
Her eyes gleamed like a promise and a curse entwined.
Aleksi understood, in that moment, that there would be no returning to his quiet life of scrolls and silence. The Empress had chosen him.
And the Empress never let go of what she chose.
Elara leaned forward on her throne, resting her chin upon her hand.
"They told me you read the old tongues," she said. "The dead languages no one dares speak aloud. Is it true?"
Aleksi's throat was dry, but he nodded. "It is true."
Her smile deepened, though it did not warm. "Good. Because I have found something... peculiar."
She snapped her fingers. From the shadows, a servant hurried forward, carrying a scroll wrapped in chains of silver. The air shimmered around it, faintly humming, as though the parchment itself despised being contained.
Aleksi's heart stumbled. He knew this script even before the chains were undone. It was one of the Forbidden Codices—texts outlawed for centuries, their words said to bend the will of men and summon things best left nameless.
"You see," Elara said, "others fear this. They whisper of curses, madness, ruin. But you will read it for me. You will give me its secrets."
Aleksi's mind raced. He had studied fragments of such works, but only in hushed secrecy, never aloud. The Codices were not written to be read—they were written to consume.
"Majesty," he said carefully, "to read these words is to invite them into the world. The ancients sealed them away for a reason."
Elara tilted her head, eyes narrowing in delight. "And yet, I want them. Tell me, little scholar—are you saying no to your Empress?"
The silence in the chamber tightened, suffocating. Every eye was on him. He knew that a single wrong word could see him cut down where he stood.
Aleksi bowed his head. "I am saying only that truth carries a cost. If I read, then you must be prepared to pay it."
The courtiers gasped. A murmur rippled through the hall. None spoke to her this way. None dared.
But Elara… Elara laughed again, richer this time, like thunder hidden in silk.
"How perfect," she said. "How utterly perfect. You will not cower like the others. You will speak truth, even when it trembles in your throat."
She rose from her throne. The movement was slow, deliberate, every step down the dais measured like the stroke of a blade. When she reached him, she was close enough that Aleksi could smell the perfume clinging to her silks—roses and iron.
Her hand, pale and unyielding, lifted his chin. Her eyes met his.
"You belong to me now," Elara whispered. "Not to your books. Not to your gods. Not even to yourself. You are mine."
Aleksi's pulse roared in his ears. His mind screamed for him to run, but his body refused to move.
And then—sudden, sharp—he saw something in her eyes. Not just obsession. Not just hunger. Beneath the layers of madness and desire, there was fear. A fear she buried, a fear she thought no one could see.
The scroll. It was not curiosity that drove her. It was desperation.
Before he could draw breath, she pressed the chained Codex into his hands. The silver links burned cold against his skin.
"Read," Elara commanded.
The throne room held its breath.
Aleksi hesitated only a moment before unsealing the first clasp. The chains fell away with a hiss, the parchment unfurling like a serpent waking from slumber. The letters carved into the page pulsed, faintly alive, their glow painting the walls with shadows that did not belong to this world.
A sound rose from the scroll, low and hungry. Not words. Not yet. Something older. Something that had been waiting.
Aleksi's vision blurred. The room seemed to tilt. And as the first syllable formed on his tongue, he felt the world itself lean closer to listen.
Then—
A scream. Not his.
The chamber plunged into chaos as one of the courtiers collapsed, blood streaming from their eyes. The words had not even been spoken, yet already the Codex was feeding.
Elara's smile widened.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes. Continue."
Aleksi stared at the scroll, horror knotting in his gut. He understood now. The Empress did not want knowledge. She wanted power. And if he read further, something unspeakable would awaken.
His voice shook as he whispered, "Majesty… if I go on, there will be no turning back."
Elara leaned closer, her lips brushing his ear.
"Then don't turn back."
And the Codex shuddered, its words blazing brighter, waiting to be born through his mouth.