The throne of Rhoden was older than any living man, carved from obsidian that had weathered centuries of warlords, monarchs, and kings who claimed their right to rule. Tonight, it sat cracked, a fissure running jagged through its backrest as though the empire's spine itself had broken.
The great hall was silent save for the drip of rainwater leaking through shattered windows. Torches hissed weakly in their sconces, shadows crawling across the marble floor like carrion waiting to feed. At the center of it all stood a boy.
He was short for his age—barely fifteen winters—and yet his presence filled the chamber like a storm waiting to break. His hair, pale and untamed, caught the torchlight in molten strands. His face was delicate, almost unfairly so, the kind of beauty more often sung of maidens than princes. But the eyes ruined the illusion—grey, cold, cutting. The kind of eyes that made courtiers swallow their words before daring to speak.
In his right hand he clutched a sword blackened from battle, its edge still wet with the blood of men who thought him too weak to wield it. In his left, he held a crown—bent, fractured, its gilded points snapped. A mundane crown, unblessed by magic, stripped of its ceremony. To the world, it was nothing but a relic of a monarchy slipping into ruin. To Adelram, it was a curse.
The court whispered that he was unfit. Too small. Too strange. Too lacking in the sacred gift of magic that every scion of Rhoden's line had boasted since the empire's founding. A prince without fire. A ruler without spark. They called him unworthy, whispered that the gods had mocked him, and in taverns their songs were crueler still: a crown on a crippled branch, a throne on splintered wood.
Yet no one dared say it to his face. Not after what happened to Lord Veyric.
The memory lingered like smoke: the day a councilor, fat on wine and pride, had laughed in the boy's face, calling him a pretty doll with no flame. Adelram had listened, silent, unmoving. Then he had raised his hand, etched a rune into the air with a speed none believed he possessed, and Lord Veyric's voice failed him. The man had tried to summon his magic, to conjure flame, and nothing came. His gift was gone. Stolen. A heartbeat later, Adelram's sword cut clean through his neck.
The boy had been thirteen.
From that day, no one mocked him aloud. They whispered behind stone walls, plotted in shadows, feared him as they would a venomous viper—small, fragile-looking, but a single bite was death.
And still the empire stirred against him. The nobles gathered in secret, conspiring to dethrone the prince before his shadow grew too long. They feared his tyranny, though he had not yet ruled. They feared his ruthlessness, though they had begged for a stronger hand when the border wars raged. They feared, most of all, what he could become if left unchecked.
Beyond Rhoden's walls, the world watched. The Esbande to the east sharpened blades, their warlords whispering that Rhoden was ripe for conquest. The Hyperion Empire, vast and eternal, sat neutral, their bishops content to play gods while the world burned. And in the north, the scattered free races—the elves, the anveils, the shifting tribes—watched with wary eyes, unwilling to kneel but unwilling to see the balance of power tip.
The storm was coming.
Adelram lifted the shattered crown and set it upon the throne, the broken gold glinting like a warning. He did not sit. He had never liked the throne, its weight, its false promises. He turned instead toward the windows, toward the ruined city below where fires burned in the streets and peasants whispered of prophecy.
The chosen one will rise, the priests had proclaimed. The chosen will bear the crown of eternity and lead Rhoden into the age of gods.
Adelram almost laughed. He was not chosen. He was cursed. And he would not bear the crown of eternity—he had shattered it himself.
But the world did not yet know. They still clung to their prophecies, to the belief that destiny was written in stars and not in blood.
Adelram tightened his grip on the sword, his reflection flickering in its darkened steel. He was not their savior. He was not their god-born heir.
He would be something else entirely.
And when the world finally understood, it would already be too late.