The Lord of the Dominion stares back.

He stares at this Princess, at the sole outsider within his court.

He stares at this girl with blue eyes and blonde hair.

He stares at the thing that refuses to prostrate against him.

He stares.

For five thousand years this place has remained undesecrated, for five thousand years all have bowed before the blood of Tianci and this throne they have sat upon. Every soul from the greatest of conquerors, the most lowly of cowards—has placed their head to this floor in reverence.

For the entire history of the Dominion nobody has defied this place, this sacred chamber, this holy crown of black, divine flesh-metal upon his head, and the Covenant itself.

They have never defied him.

No General has refused his orders, no Sage has rejected his clauses, no citizen has even questioned his word, his promises, his lies.

Mother died in her chamber.

Fallen to the ground, still seizing from the stroke that traveled through her brain. Her almond eyes wide, that gaze centered at him—at that young man who only stared back in cold, dead silence as she drowned in her own vomit.

Save me. She wordlessly cried, helplessly to her own son. Child of my blood, sacred Tianci. Save me.

And he stood there without uttering even a single whisper.

And watched until she was nothing more than a cold, unmoving corpse in a puddle of its own fluids.

He doesn't remember what they were arguing about.

Mei loved the taste of coffee and sweet milk on her tongue.

She was taller, graceful—and had the same eyes of mother. Those irises colored in roasted almonds, more mature than his by three years.

She was better than him: how with each word Mei brought down the High Court before her, and each stamp she put to motion would alter the very path of the Dominion to a better future.

She trusted only him.

Only by the blood coursing in his veins, by the memories of the two children playing in the Palatial Temple, listening to the stories upon the lap of a faceless father long dead, could Mei trust someone.

And he remembers how on that cloudy day she begged him for change, to forge a path forward for this Dominion, for the people of Tianci together. To reform like those traitors in the south of their continent, to be just like those who had peddled peace while selling weapons to the Xiaoshan Rebels.

Mei loved the taste of coffee and sweet milk on her tongue.

And she died that day, when he slipped that dose of cyanide into that cup of coffee and sweet milk.

Save me. She wordlessly cried, foaming at her mouth. My brother, sacred Tianci. Save me.

And he left her there to die.

Save me. Those soldiers had screamed amongst the sound of gunfire and artillery, dying in the muddy trenches in that war against those Axial Powers.

Save me. Said the starving, walking skeletons as they died in their mass graves during that Great Starving.

Sacred Tianci.

Lord of the Dominion.

Save me.

But they watch him.

Those Sages, those Magistrates, sharpen swords in the shadows.

In those closed rooms they speak, they unite, they come together—create their rebel riflemen from platoons of farmers, create their bombs with chemicals smuggled into the temple, their private audiences chances to slip poison into his cup. Every movement they make is against their master upon this Black Throne, each moment they plot and plan against him.

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And so he must play the game against them, always.

Magistrate Baek Jiwoon was dragged screaming from Lower Court, a bullet put in his head that very night. Admiral Shimizu Hana had drowned, falling into the Adranic Ocean while aboard her own flagship. Sage Ryu Haneul was killed visiting the 9th Rifles in-action against the Southern Rebels, their position relayed to an awaiting ambush in the Xiaoshan mountain range.

"Your fear will destroy you." It's the voice of that woman with those onyx eyes that breathed the tides of an ocean, of a depth deeper than the vast sea of stars above them. And she spoke to this young Lord of the Dominion, like the waves of the sea. "You will let it consume all that you are, and when it is done it shall leave nothing left of you."

She hadn't drunk from the cup, letting that thin layer of lethal ricin atop the coffee oils settle against the ceramic. "Do you want your life to be of fear, Sire?"

No. He had wordlessly begged her then, staring at that oceanic soul that was consuming him in its infinite abyss. Save me.

But those gods, the ones who brought their fire to this world in the eons long ago, offered no mercy to humanity.

So the universe took her away.

And no matter how many of her physicians he ordered buried alive, no matter how many purges he brought down on the courts in her whispered name, no matter the volume of blood spilled in agony that ocean always consumed it all.

"One day, something will look at you the way you look at others." She had said, holding his hand, so pale and cold on that table as she bled to her death. "Then, you won't be able to breathe."

And she spoke those words into the world as her breath left her lungs, as she held the child whose birth had killed her. "But promise me that you won't look at him with fear. Promise me that when you stare into his eyes, you will look at him as a human being."

But it was fear that had brought the Axials over the border, their tanks crushing riflemen and artillery reducing cities to rubble.

It was fear that had brought the Dominion to starvation, the murder of millions by the hand of nobles unable to let go of their precious few crumbs of bread and pride.

It was fear that has brought the Dominion this far.

And so, the Lord of the Dominion is nothing but fear.

But as this demon from across the Wailing Fang stares at him he feels his lungs seize, his forehead sweat, and his limbs shutter.

Why? Why has she come here? He quietly cries to the gods he has defied, leveraged for power and blood. Save me.

No. The Black Throne whispers into his ear, like the rustle of a cobra across the forest floor. She is here because sons and daughters bled to death in the battlefields of a war you could've stopped. She is here because children consumed the flesh of their dead parents in the depths of a famine you could've relieved. She is here because of what you've done.

She is here because of all your sins.

She is here for everything you have built.

But she shall start with the last thing you have ever loved.

She shall start with him.

Zai is paralyzed in his prostration, his head ever so tilted towards that defiant thing standing next to him. Even from this perch atop this cursed throne the Lord of the Dominion can see his son shutter, shaking in primordial terror at her presence.

You gave his hand to a marriage with a Demon of heretics. The Black Throne continues to spin its lies towards him. You sent him away, to live alone with this monster. You can see the scars of what she has done, in the way that he glimpses through his interlaced fingers and the way he even breathes: for three months she has tortured him with unspeakable atrocity. For three months she has had her way with him, all because you wanted political convenience.

You wanted space to push through your treaties and purchases of weapons, you wanted time to give into this addiction, into this fear that has long consumed you. You wanted to do these things without seeing the signature of her greatest gift on those political countermeasures, without ever having an audience with him to explain your actions of taking bread away from the mouths of the starving, and funneling silver coins to those courtiers who threaten you with civil war.

You sold your son like a used prostitute.

You are a monster.

The Lord of the Dominion barely draws breath into his holy lungs, trying to find the words to stop this madness, to halt this defiance in his chamber.

Save me.

But no gods, no spirits, no one is here to save him anymore.

Nothing comes from the emptiness within him, nothing except the tradition that has propped up this rotting corpse of nation like some sick puppeteer.

His voice is a whisper, yet still booms like thunder across this chamber. "Rise."

They all rise at that order from their Lord, each one from the sole Crown Prince to the lowest of viceroys in attendance stand alongside that Silver Demon in this holy room.

And for the long seconds he cannot help but stare at his son, watching the terror Zai shows not to his father, but to the girl beside him.

So the Lord of this ruin, this husk of fear, gives the final order for this ceremony, and for the first time in five thousand years the Tianci Dominion desecrates its most holy place.

"Go, in peace."

And they do—leaving the chamber simmering in violence.

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