My name is Alistair, and for twenty years, I have served as the King's Right Hand, the Chief Aide to His Majesty, Reynard of House Valerius, ruler of the Collapsus Kingdom. I have seen wars, treaties, famines, and triumphs. But nothing, I tell you, nothing compared to the summer of 1313.
It was the season the heir was born.
For years, the silence of the royal nursery was the loudest sound in the kingdom. It echoed in the council chambers, a void that ambitious dukes and scheming counts filled with their whispers. "What happens if the king falls?" they'd murmur over their wine. "My second cousin has a strong claim," one would say. "The western clans would follow my banner," another would boast. The kingdom was a tapestry pulled taut, waiting for a single thread to snap.
Then, on a sweltering Midsummer's eve, the thread was woven.
"The queen…?" I asked, rushing into the king's solar, my papers forgotten.
The king, a man usually carved from granite, had tears streaming down his face. But he was smiling. A real, unburdened smile I hadn't seen in a decade. "A boy, Alistair," he breathed, gripping my shoulders. "A strong, loud boy. With hair… like spun sunlight."
That was the first wonder. The prince was born with a crown of golden curls, a stark contrast to the king's dark chestnut and his mother's humble brown. It was seen as an omen, a blessing from the First King himself.
"The people will say the sun has blessed him," I observed.
"Let them say it," the king laughed, the weight of the world sliding from his shoulders. "He shall be named Leo. For the First King. For the golden mane. For the strength he must embody."
And so, Prince Leo was named. And the kingdom, holding its breath for so long, exhaled in a roar of celebration.
The king ordered forty days and forty nights of feasting. Every village square had a roasted pig, every fountain ran with wine (watered down, but still). The great hall of the Citadel was never silent. Bards sang, knights competed in friendly bouts, and the scent of spiced meat and ale was perpetual. It was a catharsis. The dangerous calculations of the "what if" were, for now, closed ledgers.
I stood beside the king's throne on the tenth night, watching the nobles dance. "The Duke of Thornwood seems especially joyful," I noted quietly. "His daughter is of marriageable age."
The king's smile tightened, just a fraction. "Let him dream, Alistair. My son's cradle is not a bargaining table. Not yet."
But it was. We all knew it. The celebration wasn't just joy; it was a show of stability. A message: The line is secure. Plot elsewhere.
And then, there was the matter of the prince's mother.
In the midst of the roaring nobles and clinking goblets, a quieter figure was often overlooked. Lady Emilia. No, not Lady by birth. Emilia was from the distant, windswept hills of the Westfold, a region the king had brought to heel five years prior. He saw her during a victory tour, a healer's daughter with eyes the color of a forest pool and a spirit that didn't flinch under a king's gaze. He wanted her. She became his concubine. Not a queen, not even a high-born mistress. And she was the one who had given him his miracle.
I found her one evening on a balcony, away from the heat and noise, looking down at the celebrating city. Little Leo was asleep in a bassinet beside her.
"You should be inside, my lady," I said gently. "This is your triumph as well."
Emilia turned to me. She was beautiful, yes, but it was her calm that was striking. The calm of deep, still water. "Triumph, Lord Alistair?" she said, her voice soft. "I see a lion's cub placed in a den of older, hungrier lions. All this gold and music… it's to drown out their growling, isn't it?"
I had no easy reply. She saw too clearly for a woman from the kırsallar, the backlands.
"The king loves him," I offered. "And the people adore the symbol he represents."
"And when a symbol is made of flesh and blood," she whispered, brushing a golden curl from Leo's forehead, "it can bleed."
Her words hung in the warm night air, a chilling prophecy amidst the distant laughter.
The forty days of celebration did their job. The kingdom was drunk on relief and future promise. The factions were quiet, for now. But as I looked from the radiant, relieved king, to his perceptive, common-born lover, to the tiny, golden-haired prince who slept through it all, I knew.
Emilia was right. The real story wasn't beginning with a celebration. It was beginning with a quiet, terrible tension. The heir had arrived. And now, every greedy eye, every ancient grudge, every political ambition in the Collapsus Kingdom had a single, small target.
The celebrations continued, a roaring river of merriment that swept through the Citadel. Yet, beneath the surface, the bedrock of our world remained unchanged: bloodlines and the magic they carried.
In the Collapsus Kingdom, magical aptitude was not a common gift. It was a legacy, a carefully guarded inheritance passed down through noble veins. It was the reason royal and aristocratic marriages were less about love and more about strategic breeding—a consolidation of power, both political and arcane. A love match was a frivolous fantasy; a marriage without magical consideration was an abdication of duty.
This power was not hidden. It was a palpable force. The stronger the gift, the heavier its presence. You could feel a powerful mage enter a room—a pressure in the air, a hum against your senses, a quiet demand for deference.
And the living embodiment of this truth was Duke Michael.
He arrived on the twentieth day of festivities. I was with the king, reviewing the grain reports from the southern provinces, when the very atmosphere in the throne room shifted. The candle flames dipped and swayed. A gentle, inexorable weight settled on my shoulders, like an invisible cloak. The king looked up, a faint, knowing smile on his lips.
"Michael is here," he stated. No question, no doubt.
A moment later, the great oak doors swung open, and he entered. Duke Michael of House Valerius, the king's own cousin. He was not a large man, but he carried himself with a density that seemed to warp the space around him. His hair was silver, not from age but from his magic, a side effect of the immense power he channeled since youth. His eyes, a piercing violet, swept the room, and even the most boisterous lords quieted their laughter.
"Your Majesty," Michael's voice was calm, yet it carried to every corner without effort. He bowed, perfectly measured. The pressure in the room spiked for a second, then receded to a steady, respectful hum.
"Michael. You are late to the feast," the king said, though his tone was warm. Michael was his most powerful subject, and his most loyal. His power had been sensed by the royal mystics the day he was born—a torrent so strong it was considered a state asset. He was brought into the royal household as a child, not just as a cousin, but as a living weapon and a shield. His destiny had been written the moment he drew his first breath: to be the Future King's Sword and Shadow.
"I was ensuring the northern passes were clear for the emissaries, sire," Michael replied, his gaze finally drifting to me. "Alistair. The realm is bright with joy, I see. And the prince?"
"Thriving, Your Grace," I said, inclining my head. Under his gaze, I felt… assessed, like a equation being solved. It was not hostile, merely factual. It was the weight of his purpose.
"I must pay my respects to the child," Michael said. It was not a request.
We found Emilia in the sun-drenched solarium, Leo nursing quietly in her arms. As Michael approached, I saw her tense. She couldn't feel the magic the way a noble might, but she felt something—the instinctive wariness of a prey animal in the presence of a supreme predator.
Michael stopped a few paces away. He looked at the bundle in her arms, his expression unreadable. The golden curls were visible. The pressure in the room, which had followed him in, seemed to concentrate, to focus on the infant.
Leo stirred, whimpered softly, then opened his eyes. They were the blue of a summer sky, innocent and unknowing. They looked straight at the Duke.
And Michael did something I had rarely seen. He knelt. Not a full kneel, but one knee to the marble floor, bringing himself to the child's level. The oppressive force of his magic… softened. It didn't vanish, but it was reined in, carefully controlled.
"A golden lion indeed," he murmured, his voice low. "Welcome, Prince Leo. I am your servant." He looked up at Emilia then, and gave a small, solemn nod. "My lady. You have given the kingdom a precious gift."
Emilia only nodded, holding her son closer. Her knuckles were white.
Michael rose, the moment broken. The full weight of his presence returned. "He is healthy. That is what matters most for now," he said to the king. "The rest… will reveal itself in time."
The rest. The unspoken word hung between us all, heavier than any magic.
The rest was the question that would define Leo's life, the question that had ended the political scheming but birthed a thousand new anxieties: Would he inherit the magic? Would the golden-haired boy carry the unseen, crushing weight of power that defined and constrained the Valerius line? Or would he be… ordinary?
His birth had solved one crisis of succession. But in a kingdom built on magical lineage, a prince without power would be a different kind of crisis altogether. A vulnerability. A symbol not of strength, but of decay.
As Michael left the solarium, his power receding like a tide, I looked from the troubled, common-born mother to the oblivious, golden child, and then to the king, whose eyes held a new, fragile hope mixed with an old, deep fear.
The celebration was for a prince. But the court, and men like Duke Michael, were waiting to see if they had a mage. And in that silent waiting, I knew, the next great game had already begun.