The Rex Imperia left Bren the way storms leave a sky.
For two days his presence had pressed on the city—golden eyes, red cloaks, twin fires stamped into every polished breastplate.
Then the banners turned.
The Praetorians wheeled their horses in one smooth motion, steel and crimson swinging like a gate. The Imperial procession poured back out onto the king's road, a tide of mail, lacquered cuirasses, and disciplined hooves.
And just like that, the weight lifted.
The dust hadn't even settled when the headaches began.
He left behind a signed contract, after all.
The terms of Ezra's future were inked in the Great Hall under too many watching eyes, sealed with too much wax, and too many smiles.
Betrothal: Ezra Blackfyre, heir of Fulmen, was formally promised to Hestia Regaladeus, daughter of the Rex's fourth wife. They would not meet until Ezra's fifth birthday, when the Princess would travel to Bren "so that affection may precede duty."
Elites: Ten Elite Praetorians would remain in Castle Blackfyre"for the mutual preservation of peace." On parchment, they were bound to obey Reitz's orders within his domain. In reality, their true liege wore twin lions over his heart.
Hostages-in-denial: In exchange, Reitz would send a detachment of his best Knights to the Imperial Capital. Officially, it was for "joint training" and "exposure to central doctrine." Unofficially, Reitz was handing the Rex a bundle of leashes tied to Fulmen's throat.
It was all very civilized, very legal, and very hard to refuse when the man offering it was close enough to crush your skull in one hand.
Only when the last wax seal cooled, and the Emperor's laughter dwindled to a memory, did Reitz and Aerwyna finally drag their exhausted bodies up the inner keep stairs.
There were too many things in the air that couldn't be named without making them real.
They passed corridors that still smelled faintly of feast—wine and roasted meat, perfume and polished marble—and it all felt wrong, like the castle was trying to pretend it hadn't just been forced to kneel.
They reached the door that used to be a guest suite.
Now it was Ezra's.
Aerwyna pushed it open first.
The room was bright in that Castle Blackfyre way—white walls, silver leaf catching the light in sharp little glints, no shadows allowed to linger. The built-in shelves were full now, the desk too large for its owner, but already scarred with ink smudges and little scratches from a quill that had been held too tightly.
They found Ezra sprawled on his stomach across the custom desk, as if he'd melted there.
A thick tome lay open beneath him, so large it might have been repurposed as a shield. Ezra's elbows dug into the wood, his small hands propping his chin as he stared at neat ink lines with the focus of a man tracking an enemy.
It was nonsense, objectively: an eight-month-old reading like a scholar.
They'd gotten used to it anyway.
Reitz's shoulders dropped a fraction. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath.
"Hey there, Ezra," Reitz said softly.
Ezra looked up.
His face brightened in a way that made Aerwyna's chest tighten. He rolled awkwardly onto his backside and pushed himself into a wobbling sit, legs splayed, hair sticking up in one stubborn tuft.
"Mother. Father." He gave them a wide, toothless grin. "Do you have my gifts?"
Aerwyna's mouth twitched.
Of course.
"I know Mother won't give me the crystals and cores," Ezra added, lower lip pushing out in a small, theatrical pout.
"That's because your mother is intent on keeping the castle standing," Aerwyna said.
Reitz cleared his throat. He was suddenly aware of how much they'd missed him these last two months. Most of their visits had been quick checks between councils; they'd mostly caught Ezra asleep.
"Well," he said, scratching at his jaw, "you can't have the crystals. Or the cores. Or the sword I gave you. The east wing enjoys its current lack of craters."
Ezra's shoulders sighed.
Gatekeeping. Always with the gatekeeping. One minor library incident and no one trusted you around high-density mana cores anymore.
The minor accident Ezra was referring to still had a baby shaped hole under the plaster.
"But," Reitz added quickly, "the other items are coming. Sir Evan will bring them himself. We decided not to involve servants—too many eyes, too many chances for… stories."
He shifted his weight, mail whispering under his coat. His gaze flicked to Aerwyna, pleading silently.
There is… something else.
Aerwyna took pity on him.
"What your father is trying to say," she cut in, smile a touch too bright, "is that you are betrothed," Aerwyna grimmaced at the word.
Ezra blinked.
"Betrothed?" he repeated, "What is… betrothed?"
Ezra didn't know the exact word, he only understood the root word which meant binding, or blood, he needed further clarification.
Aerwyna's jaw tightened slightly.
"It means we have promised you to a future wife," she said, voice controlled. "As your father is my husband. It binds Houses. It is… good for you."
Wife he knew.
"I—It's like having a—a friend, you get to meet on a dedicated basis. You'll have to get to know her and she will have to get to know you." Reitz said with visible tension in his forehead.
Even though arranged marriages were common across most of the Empire—and even in Fulmen—at least they hadn't done that. Reitz had married Aerwyna for love, and despite fierce opposition, he'd still ended up with her.
Ezra held still.
Inside his skull, everything sprinted.
Shit.
What do I do? Babies don't argue about political marriages. I know exactly what it means, but I'm not supposed to know what it means.
On Earth, he'd been comfortable with equations and solder and sterile rooms that smelled like alcohol wipes. People had always been the harder part.
His lab had joked for months about the assistant who had "100% been flirting with him" for a year. Ezra hadn't noticed until she handed him an invitation.
To her wedding.
To someone else.
Even with Elea, he didn't really have anything he did considered that was considered romantic.
Shit, shit, shit, what do I do?
Now he was legally promised at eight months old.
He should ask who.
No—that's suspicious.
He should ask if she's nice.
Too on the nose.
He should… shut up.
Yes.
Dumb baby.
Nod and accept your fate.
He furrowed his brows, the inner storm never reaching his face.
Aerwyna, desperate to fill the silence, pressed on.
"Being betrothed is like having a very good friend," she added breaking the silence, forcing a smile. "You'll grow up knowing someone who will always be tied to you. It will be good for you, little one."
"Okay," Ezra said simply.
Reitz deflated with a soft, audible sigh.
"See?" he murmured to Aerwyna. "He doesn't mind."
Aerwyna didn't answer.
She was watching Ezra too closely, as if she expected him to blink wrong.
They lingered a few minutes—guilt making them softer than usual—then duty pulled them away again. Mine disputes. Noble egos. Whispers about the Rex's offhand comment that "the boy looks like a Primarch in the making."
When Reitz and Aerwyna left, he sighed. There was a hint of apprehension on his face.
As the great philosopher Homer Simpson said: That's a problem for Future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy
Ezra huffed.
A little while later, the door opened again.
Sir Evan entered carrying a chest as if it might explode or cry at any moment.
"Milord," he said, setting it gently on the desk. "These are the items Lady Aerwyna has deemed… ah… safe."
"Books?" Ezra asked, a spark creeping into his voice.
"Yes, Milord."
Evan opened the chest and drew out two volumes.
The first was beautiful in the way expensive things had no right to be. Pale leather, soft as skin. Gilt edges. An embossed sunburst sigil at the center of the cover—the mark of the Rex Imperia.
The second looked like it had tried to die and failed.
The leather was cracked and darkened in patches as if something had spilled on it decades ago and never fully dried. The spine canted slightly; the corners were worn down to raw board. The pages had the yellow-grey tone of old bone.
"Lady Aerwyna retained the jeweled book," Evan said. "She believes the core in its cover is active and… inappropriate for your age."
Of course she does.
"I see," Ezra said, voice flat.
He reached for the ugly one first.
His small fingers brushed the cracked leather.
It felt… wrong.
Not magically, exactly. Just old in a way most things in this world weren't. It was as if it didn't match the current era.
Most books here were vellum, while the ones obviously meant for mass production were made from plant fibre. From what he'd already extracted—from what he'd asked, and listened to—this era, whatever it was, didn't really correspond to any medieval age on Earth. Not with their construction techniques, not with the concrete they used—Roman concrete—and not with the paper they used, which was actual plant-based paper.
For some tomes that were supposed to be much more valuable they used vellum—for official writs, for heirlooms. For something more distributed and used, they used paper. This felt like paper. The texture and grain alone didn't feel like leather at all.
He opened it.The letters inside lined up with mechanical precision. Every curve was identical. Every vertical stroke the same thickness. The spacing between words was uniform, the lines marching across the page in perfect, unbroken ranks.
It was not handwritten.
Printed.
Ezra's heart stuttered.
A press, he thought. Or something like one. Movable type, maybe.
But as far as I know they don't have any printing press at all.
His eyes moved faster—this could be a clue, or something. The language, however, was a mess. It looked vaguely like an alphabet—close enough to bait his pattern recognition—but it had too many letters, and too many strokes that weren't letters at all. Here and there, lines broke into tight clusters of symbols that, to Ezra's understanding, almost looked like equations.
Not Imperial script. Not regional cursive. Not any character set he had seen in this world's books. The glyphs looped and hooked in patterns his mind filed under "similar to nothing," though his bones itched with the feeling that he should recognize the shape of it, if not the meaning.
He turned a few pages.
The layout was disciplined—proper sections, proper paragraphs, as if written for study. No illuminations decorated the margins. No diagrams broke the dense blocks of text. Page after page: pure information, with no concessions to anyone but a determined reader.
Why would the Emperor give a book no one can read? At least, no one that Ezra knew—unless this was some archaic Imperial hand the court had forgotten how to speak.
He flipped farther.
Same structure. Same relentless density. Still nothing he could anchor to.
He closed it, thumb resting on the worn spine.
Nothing.
Then an idea hit him.
What if I use AMP?
His heart skipped—stupidly hopeful. Maybe this was a clue to why he'd been sent here. Why he was living as a baby in a foreign land.
Ezra had sweat hard.
He activated AMP.
Nothing.
He tried again, eyes tracking the lines with AMP running.
Still nothing.
He exhaled, slow and thin. Ahh… I thought as much. Guess I was hoping for too much.
He closed it again, thumb resting on the worn spine.
He set the tattered volume aside with reverent frustration. The adrenaline that had pumped through his veins ebbed, leaving a strange, hollow feeling in its wake.
Later, he promised himself. Later.
The pale leather book opened under his hands with the soft crack of expensive vellum.
On the first page, in gold ink that shimmered when the light hit it just right, neat letters spelled out:
The Histories of Rex Imperium
Being a True and Faithful Account of the Rise of the Elemental Clans,
The Founding of the Throne
And the Peace of Ascent
The Age of Chaos
The Histories started with hunger.
It told of scattered tribes living at the mercy of beasts, storms, and the whims of bad winters. Then came mana—though the book dressed it in reverent language as the Spark, the Breath of the World.
Certain families could call fire without flint, harden soil to stone, pull water from the air, move the wind. Their children often could too.
>"Thus men marked that power ran not equally in all veins, but cleaved unto certain houses as water unto its bed. Where blood burned bright, it was set apart; where it burned not, it was turned to service."
They discovered heritable traits and immediately started hoarding them
>"In those first days, when the Clans had not yet learned the steadiness of law, men said often: 'Let the strongest decide, for we have no time for quarrels while the beasts still circle—and the Arcanists with them.'"
>"Of the Arcanists the old scribes speak sparingly, for their names were an ill-omen. They are drawn in the margins as robed and faceless, their workings as shards and crooked geometries, as if the world itself had been struck and splintered."
>"So it came to pass that the Trials of Strength were accounted no sin in those years, but a necessity: for no man had leisure for ten years of pleading while monsters gnawed the borders—nor while the Arcanists did the gnawing for them."
They were fighting Arcanists. But what exactly is an arcanist? From what I understand, according to Reitz and Aerwyna they are barbarians? Some tribal people in the south west and other parts of the empire?
>"In the decades thereafter—called by later scribes, with unearned gentleness, the Years of Adjustment—keeps burned, granaries split, and upon many fields the Imperial sigil faced itself, banner answering banner as if the realm had drawn sword against its own reflection. House fought House and cousin fought cousin, and the Trials of Strength climbed rung by rung until even the Patriarchs stepped into the circle and named it the right to guide the alliance."
Civil war, Ezra translated.
Ezra continued reading about more detailed events inside the book, mentioning certain houses of merit and certain imperial lines and then the turning point came.
The Seven Crowns in One Generation
>"In those thirty years the realm learned how thin a crown could be. Seven times was it set upon a brow, and seven times was it proved not iron but tinder. "
>"Three kings took the throne by combat, with heralds crying lawful victory while the stones beneath their boots drank the blood that purchased it. Two more were slain upon the very dais where they sat in judgment, called forth by writ and custom to answer steel with steel, and left cooling where their banners still hung behind them. "
>"One, seeing the circle waiting for him like an open grave, laid down the crown rather than step into it—choosing the shame of surrender over the glory of a death made public. And the last died in his bed of a sudden sickness, which the court physicians named with careful tongues; yet the whispers in the corridors named it with fewer syllables and far less mercy."
>"In those days… it seemed to many that the throne itself had become but another prize in the ring. Law was silent; only spear and spell spoke."
>"So thickly did challenges fall upon the great lords that the marches went unpatrolled, the roads unkept, and the granaries uncounted. Many looked then upon the Clans and said, 'We have bound ourselves to wolves that eat one another before they guard the flock.'"
It wasn't just the throne. The Histories briefly sketched how some regions did nothing for years but host duels. Every ambitious landed lord could challenge his superior. Every feud escalated up and up. There wasn't any governance—only duels.
So that was the Empire's origin story: not justice, not unity—just a society that couldn't stop solving politics with duels until it ran out of kings. No wonder they wrote laws about it later. The question wasn't whether violence belonged in government—it was how to schedule it.
Ezra had been drowsy already, and now it hit him all at once—his body heavy as if he'd run a marathon despite never leaving the desk. His energy still came in strange, erratic waves. He slumped forward, cheek to wood, and let his eyes close.