When Apalarakan rose in mist,
A ghost beneath the silver sky,
The Legions swore to end his reign
Before the year’s first light could die.
Yet Transalas, with mighty force,
Emerged as days grew short and done;
The Legions saw their hopes recede,
The war endured beyond the sun.
Then Gransa came on wings of dread,
A shadow cast to swallow day;
The Empire steeled for endless war,
As darkness bled the skies to gray.
For forty years the battles raged;
Nine Beast Kings fell to sword and flame.
The Sixth Age closed, the world restored—
In dawn reclaimed, a peace proclaimed.
– Excerpt from The Rise of the Beast Kings
A flash of hammered gold peeled her from the Sect—and with it the echo of Elder Valinsa’s warning: to falter is failure. The pine-clean air felt thin, almost judgmental, as if the room itself measured her pulse against that edict. A single breath tasted of moonshadow incense still clinging to her robe, the scent transmuting relief into competition. Freedom chimed in her ribs—bright, brittle, and easily cracked.
The Room of Threefold Oaths greeted Sylva like a waiting judge. Wet‑slate floor gleamed in a perfect circle, bronze and alabaster lines radiating toward true north: the imperial ideal. The air felt thick, as though the chamber had been built to hear secrets first and lungs second.
Three elevated thrones dominated the chamber. First, a Rahabian Storm-Throne of granite laced with veins of gold and copper—rights carved in enduring stone. Second, a Bone Seat of Calcara, pale ivory burnished to a living sheen—duties etched in memory. Third, the Root-Chair of Eisentor, carved from age-black Folog-wood alive with whorls of amber sap—costs grown from sacrifice. A low round table, wide as a wagon wheel, anchored the thrones to the room like a weaver’s knot.
The thrones seemed to watch her as she moved—three faces of imperial law carved in contradiction. The granite Storm-Throne radiated endurance, but its unyielding lines warned that rights, once granted, could calcify into chains. The Marrowed Throne’s smooth surface shimmered with half-remembered duty, its runes catching the light like teeth. But it was the Root-Chair that drew her: Folog-wood’s living grain pulsed with a slow rhythm, amber sap weeping from ancient wounds. Sacrifice, it whispered, is not merely given, it is grown with action.
Against the far wall a bronze water-clock gurgled, its upper bowl draining drop by glittering drop. Three hours remained in Nyxol the Scribes statutory window. Three hours for Sylva to weigh the Imperial Contract. Each drop sounded like a heartbeat more real than her own. For an instant she simply listened, letting the clock’s rhythm braid with the quiet pulse of the animating silk in her chest. In this moment, she was free.
She turned, taking in the chamber’s curved circumference—the silent witnesses to every petition ever spoken here. To her left rose a sweep of fossil-white bone, Dion memory-runes flowing across it like thaw on winter glass. Straight ahead stood a monolith of Folog-wood, dark-grained and resonant, its face threaded with cloth enough to weave a full tapestry. To her right towered storm-gray stone, Rahabian glyphs chiseled in angular relief, each stroke as methodical as the culture to produce the script.
She drifted toward the Folog-wood panel where cords of dyed fiber hung like an imperial quipu—record, contract, and scripture entwined. To an untrained eye, it was merely art: strands of every color swaying in the lamplight forming an abstract tapestry. But to Sylva, the tension of each knot, the twist of every fiber, and the nuanced interplay of color and position formed a living grammar. This wasn’t just a contract; it was the Woven Word, the empire’s most complex oath, binding soul to empire and allowing power to fill its citizens.
Crimson knots within this intricate tapestry listed duties owed the empire. Jade loops proclaimed rights granted and guaranteed with powers older than the Sul. Silver braids tallied costs paid and debts yet to incur. Dozens, hundreds of other colors, fabrics and knots carried meanings of their own. Sylva spent hours reading each strand and woven knot. To Sylva, it was perfect.
The elders had warned that even the illiterate could sign onto the contract, that the empire wanted only a freely spoken yes. For the contract drank willingness, not comprehension. Knowledge sharpened consent; ignorance did not void it. That truth felt as liberating as it was terrible. Sylva wondered who could trust the contract so blindly? How could anyone have faith that the costs paid were worth the rewards received without true comprehension?
She circled the room, palm sliding over bone and stone in turn, watching glyph-constellations flare and fade as the Sulphen manifested for the first time at her touch. The water-clock ticked down and Sylva treasured each extra second of freedom. Once she agreed to the great contract before her, and she would agree, she would become part of the empires machination’s, little more than a cog in a much greater machine—for now at least.
Every oath required sacrifice and she wouldn’t delude herself that the cost of citizenship was anything less than autonomy. She would be bound to follow the commands of empire, little more than a number on the ledgers of imperial power. But for now, in this brief window between her time as a student of the Sect of Silken Grace and the time in Aslavain to come, she was free. For these three turns of the water-clock—and only these three turns—she was free. She treasured the time she had.
At the final chime she strode to the Root-Chair and took her rightful place on the seat. She sat, spine arrow-straight, silk-threads inside her skin tightening in anticipation. Her voice, when it came, was steady, measured, as practised as breath. She had memorized these words long ago.
“Under the gaze of Nyxol the Scribe, I invoke the right of Empire. I bind myself to the Sulphen willingly and pledge to serve the empire. I seek an audience to gain entry into Aslavain.”
The table answered. A pale ivory needle emerged from its centre, rising like a stitch begun. Sylva did not hesitate. She pressed her finger to the point. The needle pierced. Instead of blood, fine filaments of living silk unravelled from her fingertip, shimmering as they spooled into the ivory. Her hand slackened, the inner weave sagging as though some essential cord had been snipped. A soft tremor ran from knuckle to wrist—weakness, an immediate price for the changes that she knew were taking hold of her soul.
She tasted coppery absence on her tongue, a phantom flavour where her magic had parted company with her flesh. In that hollow she felt the empire take root, knotting her threads into its vast, unseen loom. To share in collective power she had surrendered a sliver of her solitary essence to the greater whole.
The needle withdrew. The table sealed as though untouched. Sylva’s diminished hand curled into a fist, sensation already beginning to return. It was done. Choice had become chain and, in equal measure, key.
A second flash of hammered gold answered a moment later, heralding transport to the Queen of Silk. Sylva worried naught that Nyxol the Scribe would welcome her. The great spider never declined an audience with the Silkborn, her second-greatest creation.
The world dissolved into hammered-gold light and spat him out onto cold stone. Hadrian landed hard, crashing to his knees as his stomach churned in violent protest. A wave of nausea crested, and he retched, bile scorching his throat. He scrambled backward, a panicked motion to shield the Fog-Silk robe from the spreading puddle. Guilt, sharp as the acid burning his throat, lanced through him at the thought of staining the priceless garment—a fabric said to turn arrows, yet as delicate as captured mist.
He remembered his parents unfolding it just yesterday, their faces grave in the lantern light. The cloth had pooled between them, a whisper of impossible softness. True Fog-Silk, spun by the Brood’s coveted worms—not the rougher thread of Cutra’s own making. He could not guess the debt his village had incurred for it, only that its weight was heavier than any stone.
He remembered a trader laughing at his offer of Fog-Flare thread, dismissing it as pyrite to true gold. Hadrian had never seen gold, but now, smoothing a hand over the robe’s surface, he understood. This was not the fabric that had merely sustained Cutra; this was the fabric of its hope for the future, a hope now entrusted to him. The thought of fouling such a promise sent a fresh tremor through him.
He rose carefully, his stomach settling as he smoothed the robe one last time. His gaze swept the chamber: a low, round table and three elevated thrones. His eyes passed over the granite Storm-Throne and the living Root-Chair, settling on the third. The choice had been made long ago, in the mists of Cutra. Rovan Khal, the Titan of Carven Bone.
The wall opposite the thrones was paneled in dark Folog-wood, veined with amber and hung with a silken tapestry more intricate than any he had ever imagined. He turned, tracing its edge where it met a wall of gray stone, and then another of pale, massive bone. The sight, so precisely matching the travelers’ tales, tugged a thin smile across his lips. At least one thing was as he expected.
Skirting the evidence of his sickness, he approached the wall of pale, fog-white bone. It was cool and smooth beneath his palm, an unbroken surface etched with sweeping whorls and knife-deep slashes. His fingertips traced the grooves in wonder. What beast leaves such bones? he thought. Some sky-giant from the hearth-tales, perhaps. Nothing that stalked the mists below Cutra was of such a scale.
A warmth seemed to pulse from the bone, calming the last of the churn in his gut. He followed the wall until it met a span of mottled gray stone covered in chiseled, deliberate symbols. Stone. His breath caught. A peddler had once traded him a simple pebble—his first and only piece of the deep earth—and he had treasured it for years. This morning, he’d pressed it into his mother’s hand, a promise to return. The memory was a sudden, sharp ache of loss. He clenched his jaw, forcing the feeling away. Homesickness had no place here.
His eyes narrowed, trying to prise sense from the swirling script. Nothing. His father had tried to teach him, tracing runes in soot, but sword drills had always taken precedence. What use were letters to a village that needed warriors? He knelt, tracing a symbol on the floor with one finger. The curve wobbled, shamefully wrong. Heat pricked his cheeks as he swiped the mark away, erasing the proof of his failure. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to read the contract; its words were already etched upon his heart.
He returned to the table and took his place in the throne carved of pale bone. He had rehearsed the words until they were as familiar as the weight of a sword in his hand. They came now not from memory, but from instinct.
“Under the gaze of Rovan Khal, the Ancient One, the Father of the Dion, the Titan of Carven Bone, I invoke the right of Empire. I bind myself to the Sulphen willingly and pledge to serve the empire. I seek an audience to gain admission to Aslavain.”
He waited for a sign—a peal of thunder, a rush of power like the Luminary fire, a voice from the heavens. Instead, a thin spike of pale ivory emerged silently from the table’s center, rising like a thorn from a branch. He frowned at the quiet, anticlimactic thing. All the hearth-tales of Aslavain—of monsters, trials, and glory—began with this?
He leaned closer, searching the spike for any of the script he couldn’t read, any clue to its purpose. There was nothing but a surface polished to a razor-fine point. After a long moment of cautious examination, he reached out a tentative finger. The instant he brushed the tip, a sharp prick and a jolt of heat shot up his arm. He recoiled, staring at the single, perfect drop of blood welling on his fingertip. An attack? No one had warned him of danger here.
He started to rise, his hand instinctively going to his sword hilt, but the ivory needle was already sinking back into the table, vanishing without a trace. The blood on his finger was the only proof it had been there at all. Before he could make sense of it, the world lurched. Golden light flooded his vision, and the scent of stone and closed air was replaced by something he had only ever dreamed of: the smell of open sky, sun-warmed earth, and waving grass.
Gold light tore Lotem from the steppe. The stone beneath his feet was dead, yet a phantom vibration—the fading echo of the Nomad’s March—rose briefly up his calves like distant drums, then faded into silence.
The air was cool and lifeless, nothing like the warm breath of the plains. Lotem stood motionless for a moment, toes curling instinctively against the marble, searching in vain for familiar earth-song. His towering shadow stretched toward the three thrones, each carved from different material yet looming as large as the moon-lit Eldar hills he’d left behind—authority now carved from inert stone, lifeless bone, and rigid wood—materials that lacked the pulse and breath of living earth.
Lotem paced forward slowly, eyes narrowed. The Empire had always loved its sets of three. “Three stones make a hearth,” he muttered an old Bal proverb bitterly under his breath, “why deny the fourth?” His fingers brushed the cool surfaces as he passed: stone shimmered with a faint sapphire chill, like blue torches marking artisans; ivory bone gleamed ruddy as warrior fires, duty etched in sacrifice; and finally, the carved Folog-wood bled gold in the flickering lamplight, echoing the torches that had marked his chosen path.
Each throne stood as a testament to the Empire’s rigid paths—craft, war, ambition—and each promised power at a price Lotem could sense even without deciphering the intricate carvings. Letters he couldn’t decipher ranked his worth as surely as the Malan clerk’s quill had—silent judgments echoing the disdain for his mixed heritage, each knot tallying debts of blood and bone the Empire still intended to collect. He recalled the clerk’s sneer, the dismissive marking of his bloodline as less-than-pure. Anger simmered in his veins, a familiar burn.
He thumbed the frayed edge of his bison cloak—the hide that had once made clerks whisper “exceptional mass” even as they scorned his heritage. His parents had begged him to take the peaceful path of blue, herding the great bison or tending the Empire’s grasses. Had his brother lived, perhaps Lotem could have chosen that gentler fate. Instead, the path of the artisan had withered along with his memories.
Lotem paused before the bone throne. Ivory shone like a legion trophy, beautiful yet steeped in distant wars where Bal blood had been spent cheaply. He reached inward, searching again for his brother’s laugh. Only the hollow drumbeats answered—their rhythm stolen by the Tul along with the man himself. He knew his brother had chosen Rovan Khal, the Titan. Skies above, Lotem knew he should choose Rovan Khal. He was Numen, Rovan would never turn down his request. Yet, Rovan had met his brother and his brother had died. Lotem hadn’t forgiven the Titan, no matter how small his role in that. His fingers tightened on the cloak’s rough edge, knuckles whitening. He felt a slight stirring in his cloak—a delicate rustle of fur and the twitch of a small, warm body—and released his grip before she awoke.
The steady dripping of the water-clock told Lotem he had hours left to read the contracts and ponder the thrones. He had hours left to decide his path. He didn’t need them, didn’t have time for them, not with the sleeping form stirring in his cloak pocket. Reading the words of the Empire was beyond him regardless. He could read ledgers and speak the trade tongue, that had always been enough for him. It wasn’t as though he could negotiate terms with the Woven Word. Nyxol’s contract was set in stone, quite literally so. Why bother reading the thing he would agree to regardless?
Slowly, deliberately, Lotem turned from the ivory seat, facing instead the granite throne—the stone cliff-face rising from the plains, unyielding and steady. Sylvine, the Sovereign of Emerald Skies, the last Dragon of the Sul, had once cursed the Bal; now her favor would either lift him toward his ambitions or cast him down in ruin. He stepped forward, the stone chair humming softly, almost a song he could make out. Lotem drew a slow, steady breath, filling his lungs as he had been taught by the [Shamans]: four beats in, four beats out.
“Under the gaze of Sylvine, the Sovereign of Emerald Skies,” he spoke, voice steady despite the echoes of loss in his chest, “I invoke the right of Empire. I bind myself to the Sulphen willingly and pledge to serve the Empire. I seek an audience to gain admission to Aslavain.”
A needle carved of polished ivory rose silently from the table’s center, its tip sharpened like prairie thorn. Lotem hesitated for a heartbeat, then pressed his fingertip to the point. The needle pierced swiftly, pain blooming like firegrass. Blood welled from his fingertip, drawn like ink onto an invisible ledger, leaving a hollow ache within him. Into that void, Lotem whispered a second oath: the Tul would bleed, and emerald grasses would feast upon their dust. Aslavain had to be worth it—had to be worth his sacrifices.
The needle withdrew, sinking seamlessly back into the wood. Weakness trembled through his bones, a fleeting cost for the power that stirred at the edges of his soul. Then golden light swallowed him again, and in the dark between heartbeats, he clenched his fist around the fading rhythm of the plains.
The steppe had always known his vow, and now, so did the Empire.
