The morning of the Trial arrived with a sky the color of bruised plums. The Great Arena, a massive stone structure built by the First Emperor, was packed to the rafters. Thousands of commoners sat in the upper tiers, their faces grim, while the nobles sat in the gilded lower boxes, draped in furs and jewels that felt hollow in the face of the empire's decay. In the center of the arena stood the Dragon-Slayer's Stone, an ancient monolith that held the "Blood-Axe," a relic said to be movable only by one who possessed the Dragon God's favor.
One by one, the young lords of the Great Houses stepped forward. The Duke of the South's eldest son, a man built like an ox and covered in enchanted plate armor, roared as he gripped the handle of the axe. He poured every ounce of his mana into the weapon, his face turning purple, his veins bulging like snakes under his skin. The axe didn't budge. The stone didn't even hum.
"Incompetent!" Duke Valerius (who had traveled to the capital in a desperate bid to regain his standing) hissed from the sidelines. He looked aged, his spirit frayed by the "Mark of Nexus" that still burned on his soul.
As the sun reached its zenith, the High Priest of the Dragon God stood, his white robes billowing. "If no warrior can move the relic, then the Council shall appoint a Regent by sunset! The bloodline is dead! The Ghost is a lie!"
A ripple of despair went through the crowd. The common people looked at each other, their last hope for a "Vigilante King" evaporating in the heat of the noon sun. But then, the wind died. The flags of the empire, which had been snapping violently in the breeze, suddenly went limp. A silence so absolute fell over the arena that the sound of a single bird's wings felt like thunder.
From the dark entrance of the gladiator's tunnel, a lone figure emerged. He didn't wear armor. He didn't carry a shield. He wore a high-collared coat of midnight-black silk, accented with silver threads that looked like spiderwebs. His pale skin seemed to absorb the sunlight, and his black hair was pulled back, revealing a face of such sharp, aristocratic beauty that the ladies in the boxes gasped.
But it was the eyes that stopped the hearts of every person in the arena. They were not brown, nor blue, nor green. They were two perfect orbs of molten gold, glowing with a divine, terrifying authority.
"The Ghost," a peasant whispered, and the word spread like a wildfire through the stands. The Ghost. The Prince. The Dragon.
Livius didn't look at the crowd. He walked toward the Dragon-Slayer's Stone with a rhythmic, effortless gait. Every step he took left a faint, glowing footprint of gold on the sand. When he reached the monolith, he didn't grab the axe with two hands. He didn't even brace himself. He simply placed a single, slender hand on the cold iron of the weapon.
"This empire was built on the breath of the god," Livius said, his voice amplified by the acoustic magic of the arena so that it sounded like it was being whispered directly into everyone's ear. "And it will be rebuilt by the one who remembers the weight of the soul."
With a flick of his wrist—a movement so casual it seemed impossible—the axe slid out of the stone as if it were being pulled from water. A shockwave of pure, golden mana erupted from the point of contact, shattering the stone monolith into a thousand pieces and sending a roar of light into the sky that could be seen for fifty miles.