The weight of kingship, King Valerius had learned, was not the crown. It was the map. He stood before the great, vellum map of Aethelgard in his private study, a lone, tired man in the dead of night. For a year, he had watched this map sicken. Red pins, courtesy of Commander Eva's grim reports, dotted the landscape, a plague of death and chaos. Black ink now stained his own southern province, the Sunstone March, signifying a festering rebellion.
His kingdom, the great Kingdom of Aethel, was no longer a mighty nation. It was an island, its shores eroding with every passing day as it was battered by a sea of fear.
"It cannot be a command, Your Majesty," Praxus said, his voice quiet from across the room. The scholar sat at a small desk, a dozen discarded, angrily crumpled pieces of parchment at his feet. They had been at this for hours, trying to forge the words that might save the world.
"They must recognize the authority of Aethel," Valerius countered, his voice a low growl. "We are the center of civilization, the seat of the First Truth. The clans of Karak, the merchants of Zahram, they must be reminded of their fealty."
"Fealty is a memory of a world that no longer exists," Praxus argued, his gaze unwavering. "In that world, the authority of Aethel was backed by the unquestionable grace of Qy'iel. Now? Now we are merely the largest house in a burning village. To them, you are not a High King; you are just a neighbor whose house is also on fire. The summons cannot be a command. It must be a plea. It must speak to their shared fear, their shared blood. It must be a call for a chorus, not a demand for obedience."
Valerius was silent. The scholar's words chipped away at a thousand years of royal pride, but they rang with a hard, undeniable truth. His authority was an echo. Their only chance was to turn that echo into a chorus.
He walked to the desk and picked up a fresh sheet of parchment. "Then let us forge a plea that has the strength of a command," the King said. "A new kind of kingship for a new, monstrous age."
For another hour, they worked. They chose every word with the care of a stonemason laying a foundation, building a message of shared terror, of common ancestry, of defiant hope, and of a pragmatic, terrible duty.
The next morning, in the cold light of dawn, the chosen messengers were summoned to the throne room. It was not a grand public ceremony, but a somber, private council of war. King Valerius, flanked by Commander Eva and General Kyrus, stood before the three individuals who would carry the fate of the world in their satchels.
A king did not choose messengers lightly. For the mission to the north, to the fierce and skeptical clans of Karak, he had chosen Captain Brand, a veteran of the Royal Guard with a granite jaw and the blood of the Iron Peaks in his own ancestry. He would speak their language of strength and honor.
For the treacherous journey south, into the fractured politics of Zahram, he had chosen Envoy Soren, a young, sharp-witted diplomat whose family had managed trade caravans for generations. His currency was not steel, but words and cunning. He was to navigate a landscape of suspicious matriarchs, ambitious emirs, and the growing shadow of Ouen's new theocracy.
And for the wild, untamed forests of Verdane in the west, he had chosen a woman named Willow, one of the kingdom's Royal Rangers. She was a scout of legendary skill, a woman who could read the land like a book and who understood the fiercely independent nature of the forest tribes.
King Valerius addressed them, his voice devoid of royal flourish, filled only with the immense weight of their task.
"You do not carry a simple message," he said, his gaze moving over each of them. "You carry the last, desperate hope of our people. For a year, we have been drowning on our own separate islands of fear. This summons is the first rope we have thrown to each other. Some will refuse it. Some will try to cut it. It is your duty to see that it holds."
He stepped down from the dais and personally handed each of them a heavy, sealed scroll case bearing his royal sigil.
"Go with the memory of the light that was stolen from us," he commanded. "Go with the fire of our defiance. And pray to whatever strength you have left that you find others who are willing to do the same."
From a high balcony, Praxus stood beside the King and watched the three riders depart. They galloped through the fortified gates of Aethelburg and split at the great crossroads, one turning north, one south, one west. Three tiny, fragile sparks, cast into a vast and encroaching darkness.
The King had thrown his stones into the pond. Now, all they could do was wait, and pray to a god he knew wasn't listening, that the ripples they created would be waves of unity, and not the tidal wave of a new and bloodier war.
---
The Chronicle of the Fallen
Time Period Covered: Approximately Day 301 through 303 of the Age of Fear
Victims of The Reaping: 1
Victims of the Covenant: 21
Deaths from Ashen Attacks: 32
Deaths from Civil Unrest: 8 (Includes political assassinations and skirmishes in the Sunstone March)
Total Lives Lost: 62
Of Note Among the Fallen:
— A master shipwright in a coastal town in Aethel, whose skills were crucial for the new Naval College, found dead in what was officially called a "work accident."
— A tribal chieftain in Verdane who argued for isolationism, reaped. His death clears a path for a more cooperative leader to rise.