The soft patter of rain on the carriage roof greeted me like an old memory - hazy, echoing, and strangely soothing.
Outside the tinted windows, Morren City shone beneath stormlight. Gas lamps flickered behind wet glass, casting golden halos on the cobblestone below. From our place on the carriage, we glided across wet stone, tracing a path through the heart of the Nobility District.
The city looked like it had been built by dreamers and accountants locked in an endless argument - cathedrals beside suit-makers, tax offices leaning on ivory statues. Beauty and practicality shoved together until they almost looked like harmony.
The medieval bones of this fortress-city were slowly being smothered by modernization, a trickle bleeding down from the capital.
Inside the carriage, no jolt reached us from the paved roads, as if we rode on air itself. Either enchantment or hidden technology - Aetheris stones embedded in the frame.
That alone said everything about the world we lived in.
Aetheris stones - the crystallized remnants of divine energy. When the Veil tore open a thousand years ago, they surfaced alongside it. Even those without a gift for divinity could use them. Not well. But enough to power machines, arm armies, and build a world that shouldn’t have worked, yet somehow did.
It was this fusion of ambition and sacred debris that shaped the empire around me. Automatons with clockwork limbs. Guns without powder. Carriages without horses. Engines humming not with oil, but with stolen divinity.
I sighed and leaned back, watching rain streak the glass.
I caught sight of a cluster of nobles walking the streets under umbrellas so wide they could’ve been sails. Their silhouettes were perfect little paintings against the lantern glow - dreary yet beautiful, as if the whole world was performing for them.
Nobility was a direct result of humanity's transformation more than a millennia ago. A signature of divine heritage or faithful merit.
It had all begun with the War of Redemption.
More than a thousand years ago, humanity nearly ceased to exist. The Veil fractured into this reality, and from its tear came the Nightlurkers - things of madness and shadow. Not demons. Not quite. But to the people who saw them, the difference hardly mattered.
Entire cities disappeared in days. Reality bent under eldritch pressure. The Nightlurkers weren’t conquerors. They were unmakers. Guided by dark gods that slept in the Veil, attempting to blur the lines between both realities.
I shifted in my seat, rubbing my temple. Even thinking about it left me unsettled.
Arthur, of course, was unfazed - nose buried in a heavy book labelled The Commandments of Man, pipe smoke curling lazily beside him.
“In the hour of ruin, he came,” Arthur murmured, not even glancing up. “The Eternal Emperor. The Masked Prophet. The Father of Humanity.”
I groaned. “Really? Reciting scripture now?”
“You’d do well to learn from him, Damian,” he said, turning another page. “I’m no zealot. But Magdalene was the most impactful man to ever live. His words carry weight, even now a millenia after his time.”
I turned back to the window, watching a cathedral spire vanish into mist.
“Doubt it. But duly noted.”
It wasn’t like he was wrong.
The Emperor had appeared when humanity was at its end. He brought with him the blessing of divine energy brought by the Almighty - a power to push the darkness back. It was said he split the ground he walked on, and when he appeared, he created a casym so large a canyon formed.
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But he was not alone.
Twelve Apostles followed him. Mortals gifted power by the Almighty directly, with twelve pairs of divine eyes said to carry immense power that could warp the laws of reality itself.
And then came the Emperors one hundred and twenty disciples, the first followers. Each gifted a pathway, shards of divinity etched into their souls, forever carried in their bloodline.
For a time, they led humanity’s resurgence together. Humanity fought back, and the entities born from the Veil were pushed back to the rift between realities. They were on the cusp of the final battle for humanities survival. All that was left was to seal the rift, and humanity would finally prosper against the Veil.
Until the Apostles turned.
Corrupted. Challenging the Emperor’s right. Whatever the reason, they betrayed him just before the gates of hell.
The schism shattered them. Fifty-five pathways remained holy, siding with the Emperor. Fifty-five were branded heretical, siding with the Apostles. Ten wandered in between, remaining neutral.
The Emperor’s final act was to seal the Veil away. The Apostles were defeated, and their followers scattered. The Nameless Ones, the cult of the forest that Arthur burned down and the one that had experimented on me all those years ago, were descendants of one of those heretical followers.
The Apostles twelve Divine Eyes, said to contain impossible power, were scattered across the world. The Church deemed them the highest heresy. Even whispering their location was blasphemy.
And humanity, for the first time in a century, breathed again.
I stared through the rain at the blurred lights of Morren, jaw tight.
It was a good story. Maybe even true. Didn’t matter if it wasn’t. Everyone believed it, and in this world belief was truth.
Just like they believed the Emperor was more than human. Just like they believed this empire was divine.
But I’d read enough to know truth and history rarely slept in the same bed.
If my guess was correct, Magdalene probably wouldn’t have liked being worshiped like a god.
I shook my head, muttering. “The view’s better than the sermon, at least.”
Arthur finally closed his book, smirking faintly. “You seem deep in thought. Apprehensive?”
“Let me guess,” I muttered. “Every noble gets nervous before their ceremony.”
He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Exactly. You wouldn’t be the first.”
I raised a brow. “You were scared?”
He chuckled. “Terrified. Almost ran from it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I liked the clothes too much.”
That actually dragged a smile out of me.
Arthur grinned, eyes sharp now. “But you’re already awakened. You’re ahead of where I was, and the large majority of kids your age. All that’s left is connecting to your pathway. After that? You’re in.”
“In what?” I said dryly. “Like a circus? Or a pit?”
“Both, if you play your cards wrong.”
I sighed, staring at the rain. The thought of connecting to my pathway made my skin crawl. What or who would I see? A battlefield? A horse thief? Otto von Bismarck?
Arthur broke into my thoughts with a sly glance. “Maybe you’ll even catch a noble daughter’s eye. Girls love that tragic, brooding aura of yours.”
“I’ll pass. Aren't you twenty-eight? You're one to be talking, for a bachelor you're pretty much a grandpa.”
He raised a finger. “True. But the difference is, I bore them. You? You make them curious. That’s much worse.”
I groaned, crossing my arms. “Let them be curious. I’m too busy for love. Or arranged marriage. Or whatever passes for it in your world.”
Arthur hummed approvingly. “Wise words. But remember - covers draw them in, pages make them stay. You can’t help what they see in you. But you can choose what you show them.”
The rain hammered harder on the roof, like it agreed.
Through the fog, the Regent’s Manor loomed into view. Obsidian stone, glowing stained glass, torchlight spilling across velvet canopies where nobles stepped out of carriages. Jewelry and brooches gleamed like stars under the storm.
Arthur adjusted his cuffs and snapped his book shut.
“Moralius, 11:09,” he recited. “Man needs meaning. He must kneel before something greater than himself. A man who has no meaning will fall under the weight of his own sins.”
I smirked faintly.
Hopefully that's not aimed at me.
I must admit, it makes me want to read the book now. Just a little.
Arthur leaned back. “Try not to die of nerves before we even step inside.”
I didn’t answer.
I was too busy staring at the manor.
And wondering which version of myself would walk out of it.
