I am Custodian-born and bred and I know better than anyone exactly what that kingdom truly is. It is a place where wealth breeds more wealth, while poverty becomes a life sentence from which there is no escape. If you are rich, you grow richer still; if you are poor, you have no right to climb higher. You live in squalor, and you die in squalor. That was the fate not just for me, but for every unfortunate soul born into poverty within Custodian's borders.
That kingdom resembles less a proper nation and more a den of thieves and criminals. Illegal activities run rampant through every corner smuggling, gambling, slave trading, prostitution, drug dealing; name it, and you will find it operating openly in the streets. The King is a tyrant, and the nobles who follow him are no better. They enforce a system built entirely on greed and fear, and you cannot dare to oppose it not if you wish to keep your head upon your shoulders. There is no honorable path in that kingdom; it is rotten to its very core. Those brave enough to speak out end up swinging from the gallows, their names dragged through the mud until history remembers them as traitors rather than martyrs.
I met a few lords there who genuinely tried to do what was right men who believed in justice, who wanted to lift up the poor and bring order to the chaos. But every single one of them met the same tragic end. They were framed for treason, accused of conspiring against the crown, and charged with crimes they never committed. Their lands were seized, their families stripped of every possession, and they died with ropes around their necks while crowds brainwashed by royal propaganda cheered their deaths.
I remember one in particular: Lord Marcus Hedward Thorne. He had been a high-ranking military advisor who used his position and influence to sneak food and supplies into the very slums where I grew up. I was fourteen years old when I saw him for the first time, handing out loaves of bread to children who had not eaten in days. He looked nothing like the other nobles I had seen. He wore no fine silks, held no arrogant sneer. He was simply a tired man with kind eyes and heavy shoulders, carrying a weight too great for one person to bear.
A year later, he was arrested. The official charges claimed he had been selling military secrets to enemy kingdoms, but everyone in the slums knew the truth: he had been caught trying to expose how the royal treasury was being emptied to fund the King's endless wars and his insatiable appetite for women and pleasure. They hanged him in the main square of the capital. I stood in the crowd that day, my fists clenched so tight that my nails drew blood from my palms. I watched as his body was roughly handled and nearly trampled by the unruly masses. He was the first person who ever showed me what human kindness truly looked like.
That day, I learned a harsh lesson: in Custodian, righteousness was a crime punishable by death.
As Prince Vonce leads me through the grand halls toward the council chamber, I cannot help but constantly compare this place to everything I knew back home. Here in Callibean, even the least favored prince has a roof over his head and enough food to eat. Gardens bloom with flowers instead of growing wild with weeds, and the law exists to protect the people rather than oppress them.
We enter the council chamber to find the King and his high-ranking nobles already gathered around a massive table covered in maps and documents. King Theron of Callibean is an older man with graying hair and a stern expression though there is a hint of weariness in his eyes that reminds me of Lord Marcus. This king has his own flaws and weaknesses, certainly, but unlike the King of Custodian, who is driven solely by hunger for power, King Theron carries himself with a quiet kindness.
"Vernom," he says, barely glancing up from the map spread before him. "Glad you could finally join us. We were just discussing Custodian's recent movements along the border."
I look down at the map. Custodian's territory is marked in bold red ink, stretching like a spreading stain across the northern lands. Their armies are clearly positioned right along the edge of Callibean's territory, massed and waiting for the order to advance.
"Their King has already sent an official demand," Prince Vonce says, pointing sharply to a section on the western side of the map. "He claims these provinces belong to Custodian by ancient right and insists we cede them immediately."
"'Ancient right' is nothing but a convenient excuse for theft!" one of the nobles snaps angrily. "We should gather our armies and march out to meet them head-on!"
"War would cost us thousands of lives and drain our treasury dry," another noble argues in return. "We should negotiate offer them tribute and goods in exchange for peace. It is the safer path."
As they argue back and forth, voices rising in tension, I feel my hands clench into fists at my sides. I know exactly what will happen if Callibean chooses either path. If they fight, they might win battles, but they will eventually lose countless good people in the process. If they negotiate and give in, Custodian will only return again and again, demanding more and more until there is nothing left to take.
I know this because I have watched it happen before during the fall of the Kingdom of Bastil. I fought in those battles myself; I watched good men die for a cause that was never truly theirs to begin with.
This war will not end simply because Callibean resists or surrenders. Before they ever turned their greedy eyes toward this kingdom, Custodian waged war against at least three other nations, consuming them one by one. I remember a pivotal event from my past life: the endless cycle of conquest was halted only briefly when the King of Custodian was assassinated. But his death brought no lasting peace. His son succeeded him a man even crueler, more tyrannical, and more bloodthirsty than his father who unleashed even greater slaughter across the entire continent.
If I step forward now to help Callibean, what will become of my soul and the sins I carry? And what of the lives of countless others? Can I truly save more people than I might put at risk? Wars take everything from everyone. They steal a mother's child, claim a wife's husband, and shatter the dreams of young men who joined the army hoping for a better life. My own life was stolen from me before it even truly began, shaped only by hardship. But as a soldier, I became the instrument that stole lives in return all for the greed of the King I served, and for what? Nothing. I died nameless and homeless, just like the men I killed. At least, I thought, no one would grieve for me when I fell… but those I killed? I am certain they were mourned, just like the very first man I slew the one who begged me for mercy.
The cost is the same on both sides of the battlefield. Yet Custodian, heartless as it is, has never viewed people as equals. To them, every soul is merely a pawn to be used and then discardedespecially the soldiers sent to die on distant front lines.
I think back on my own past on the boys I fought alongside, most of them even younger than Cael, who foolishly believed the King's lies about glory and honor. I remember watching them fall one by one, their bodies left to rot in foreign soil because there was no one left alive to bring them home.
The arguments around the table grow louder and more heated, but I barely hear them. My mind races with possibilities ways to slow Custodian's advance, methods to weaken their hold over their own people, strategies that might give those suffering under their rule a glimpse of something better.
King Theron finally slams his fist hard against the table, the sound echoing sharply through the room and silencing everyone instantly.
"Enough!" he commands. "We cannot keep arguing in circles while our enemy prepares to strike. Does anyone here have a plan that does not end in either surrender or slaughter?"
Suddenly, all eyes turn toward me.
I take a deep breath, feeling the crushing weight of my past life and the fragile hope for tomorrow pressing down upon my shoulders. I step forward, my voice steady and clear, ringing out with a confidence Prince Vernom never possessed but which the soldier in me has carried for years.
"I do," I say firmly. "But it will require us to think differently about what it truly means to win a war."