A/N: I'm doing this whole story in a new kind of formatting. It's kind of experimental, to match the experimentality of this fanfiction itself, at least for me. I'm going to try to keep these author's notes to a minimum; if you'd like to read my thoughts on each chapter, I'll have a section in my profile. Please visit.

Enjoy.

Once, there was a young boy chosen for an extraordinary destiny.

This is not his story.

But his story is intricately linked with my story, just as my story is linked to other stories linked with other stories. The connections our hearts make bind our fates to one another fully, and so I suppose it is not so strange that two people who have never met could influence and be influenced by each other with effects of such magnitude as to destroy worlds and rekindle stars.

I guess that my story is not really mine; truly, it is three stories so closely intertwined that to try to separate them would dilute their significance. The story of a friend, traitor, and sojourner. The story of an orphan, dreamer, and murderer. The story of a father, king, and fallen philosopher. One seeking redemption. One seeking purpose. One seeking vengeance. All three of us fools, in our own ways.

Who am I? Well, that's a question for the sages. Once, I was called wise—Ansem the Wise, but that eventually changed. Once, I was a respected leader of many people, but that changed as well. Once, I was a man seeking retribution, but that changed most of all. Names don't seem to matter as much to those who are no longer certain of their own identity.

Call me DiZ, I suppose. It's as good a name as any.

My story intermixes closely with the story of the young hero, but it was truly my story that started it all. Looking back, maybe some things could have gone differently, some tragedies averted, if I had not done some things, if I had made better choices. Yet, who can know? As all stories do, mine does not truly have a beginning, nor does it truly end. All our stories simply begin in medias res, and end with the promise of a new beginning somewhere, chasing after that "to be continued" perpetually ahead of us—even into death. There are always others to take up the torch of our own story and make it part of theirs.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The beginning that concerns us within my story is simply the moment in time that set events in motion eventually beyond what I could stop, and that I do know. It was this day that changed me from a naïve idealist to...well, a naïve idealist broken in spirit and determined to transform the world. I was to be crowned king on this day, and it was this day that I died in every sense save literal.

It was this day that I lost my future, my dreams, my wife, and my son...

xx(

now come one, come all to this tragic affair
wipe off that make-up—what sin is despair?
so throw on the black dress, mix in with the lot
you might wake up and notice you're someone you're not
if you look in the mirror and don't like what you see
you can find out firsthand what it's like to be me
so gather 'round, piggies, and kiss this goodbye
I'd encourage your smiles and expect you won't cry

)xx

Prologue:The End

"Honey? Wake up," comes an insistent voice. I grunt and stubbornly nuzzle deeper into my pillow, ignoring it. "Honey," the voice says more sternly. I moan a little to indicate that no force on this world is going to get me out of my bed. "Come on, Ansy," her voice demands in exasperation. Ah, the despised pet name, the one that I would suffer no one but Melena to call me, and that only because I love her more than oxygen without getting overly poetic.

Eventually, her coaxing wears me down. "Melena, why exactly are you waking me up at this obscene hour?" I croak, cracking open a bleary eye at the ornate grandfather clock standing close by. 6:45. Hardly even dawn had crept into the room.

"Because, angel-eyes," she teases, flicking a stray strand of dun-brown hair behind her shoulder, "today is a very special day." For a moment, I lie and stare into her soft blue-gray eyes blinking playfully at me from behind thick black lashes. Her pale-pink lips, usually so contrasted with her deep tan skin, are already smeared with blood-red lipstick in preparation for the day. I am mildly irritated that I missed seeing her before she got ready, because kissing her soft copper cheeks is so much more satisfying without getting a taste of cover-up and blush in the mix. Why exactly does society demand that women hide their features below practically geological layers of mineral powders and chemicals? I had never understood it, and likely never will.

Melena pecks me on the cheek, leaving a juicy scarlet stain, and whispers enticingly in my ear, "You'll want to get up soon, because today is the day you get crowned king."

"Precisely," I quip, rubbing the kiss-marks off my face and getting a red handprint on the snow-white sheets by accident. The room staff will enjoy that.

Melena flicks my nose, and sits on the edge of the bed. "So," she continues as if my objections had not been recognized by this good council and would not be taken into consideration, thank you very much, "you have to get up, eat a healthy breakfast provided by the state's loyal kitchen staff in honor of today's festivities, and write your coronation speech, which I know you didn't do and didn't allow anyone else to do either, saying that you'd do it. But you didn't."

I yawn right in her face to show what I think of that, and Melena grimaces at my morning breath. "And brush your teeth; you smell like a bear in there," she advises, breezing out of the room. "I'll be in the library all morning. Show up when you've decided not to be a lazy grump."

"Uh-huh," I vaguely agree, rolling over and pulling the covers over my head.

xx(

Melena Rieszmara. My first and only love. As first in line to inherit the throne, it was my duty not to marry for love, but for family lines, good breeding, and political advantage. How wonderful Fate was then, to allow the perfect candidate to be this gorgeous creature of sun and moon, wind and earth, mischief and gentle understanding, clear-headed decisiveness and pragmatism, who embodied all of the qualities I lacked yet loved me for all my virtues and faults? Too wonderful, I later learned. It is more painful to love and lose that not to love at all.

My wife was the daughter of the leader of the nomadic tribes that lived in the desert across the mountains. Since the inception of our nation, the tribes had been opposed to our living in the high, cold mountains that their people celebrated as sacred, polluting it with our technology and powering that technology with the natural power of the crystals that grew deep within the mountains' craggy hearts. However, Melena's father recognized that the tribes would have no chance were it to come to war with our state, and proposed the marriage as a political maneuver. I, who had before so cringed at the idea of an arranged marriage, readily accepted; Melena did so as well. The marriage went off without a hitch, and I at the tender age of twenty-one was a married man and fully eligible for the throne.

Since then, the nomads had been our greatest allies, bringing our isolated state news and information from across the desert in exchange for trade and valuable financial support. Some dissatisfied factions and tribes broke from the main alliance and would harry our trade convoys and diplomats; at the same time, small pockets of extremist groups formed in the state, appalled at the idea of allying the country with "those bands of heathen primitives". However, such opposition was sporadic and in the minority. For the most part, our three years of marriage remained uneventful, if you can call two assassination attempts and the birth of our child "uneventful".

It wasn't to remain uneventful for much longer.

)xx

Two hours later, I stroll into the castle library, whistling a tune I had heard before breakfast on the lips of one of the cleaning staff. One of the nobles looks up to give me a reproachful glance; upon seeing who I am, however, she turns pale and drops her gaze. I give her a wink and stop whistling.

"Well, look who decided to show up," a quiet voice sardonically remarks from directly above my head. I look up, slightly startled, only to relax upon seeing who it is. "Get enough beauty rest, my liege?" the owner of the voice adds, shifting in his seated position atop the long bookshelf to swing one foot down and kick me lightly in the side of the head.

"Obviously more than you did, Tempest," I retaliate, poking his foot away from my face. "Get down from there."

The man sighs theatrically, carefully places his feet under him, and catapults himself into a perfect backflip from the top of the shelf, coming within bare centimeters from cracking his head on the ceiling. He lands with perfect catlike grace six feet in front of me; the impact of his fall is so perfectly muted and absorbed that barely even the thick dust settled on the most ancient of the books is disturbed. "That one's for free, ladies and gentlemen of the court," he graciously responds to the stares and glares of most of the library's "nobler" occupants.

I stifle a smirk. Such a man is Tempest Strife, the leader of the Castle Guard and my personal best friend, who can behave in such a manner amongst the supposedly higher-ranking members of the imperial court and get away with it with his customary not-quite-insubordinate charm. His lithe, muscular physique, shaggy steel-black hair falling about his face and shoulders in an assortment of spikes, deep blue eyes, and rugged good looks make him an object of some desire to many lonely women, but they are usually deterred by his tough-as-nails fiancée of six months, Helena.

He jerks his head towards the stairs to the upper floor of the library. "Melena's waiting for you, sir," he offers, slipping into more appropriate speech following his little stunt.

As we move towards the staircase, I clap him on the shoulder. "Tempest, what have I told you about calling me 'sir'?" I ask.

"Not to, sir," he responds in what would seem a faintly bemused yet respectful tone to someone unused to spotting the tell-tale sparkle in his eye. I roll my eyes as he chuckles at the joke he's made hundreds of times before. "Uh-oh," he adds suddenly, slowing his strides by a half-step and nodding at the staircase.

Melena is waiting at the top of the stairs, arms folded and foot slowly tapping a death-march on the marble floor. She scowls at me with the look of someone trying to muster up her irritation at something she knows she's going to let slide anyway. "Two hours," she growls.

I give her my best puppy-dog look. "But we were up late last night," I point out. "You don't want me falling asleep at the ceremony, do you?"

"I believe that'd be what they call a 'fox pass' across the mountains, ma'am," Tempest butts in, trying to be clever and in the process mispronouncing the phrase faux pas. "Need to keep the foxes on the ground over there, apparently," he adds facetiously, though his legendary "straight face" never wavers.

"I'm going to pass a fox down your throat, Strife, if you say another word," Melena retorts in Tempest's general direction, wiping the faint smirk off his face.

"Now, that's not fair," I say defensively. "He didn't do anything—"

"Neither did you, for that matter, and now we have four glorious hours together to do everything," Melena sighs in exasperation. Tempest glances at me. You didn't tell her? he mouths. I give him a fractional shake of the head as we reach the summit of the staircase, and make a quick "cut" gesture across my throat with two fingers. Melena glances at me, and I pretend to be tugging at my collar.

"Let's see," she enumerates in a half-whisper. "You've got a coronation speech to write, a foreign policy to make up on the spot, some thank-you's to issue to people we can't stand, a few reams of certificates or contracts or some form of official documenting to scrawl something resembling your name all over—"

"Aspirin to take, wine to chug at the after-party, embarrassing stories to tell after the drinking of said wine, half a continent to bestow upon a lovely and well-mannered best friend..." Tempest continues with a straight face, "not to mention a two-year-old child to keep entertained during all that time. Unless, of course, you want the kid to busy himself with scribbling on the newly washed walls in the study."

"They washed my study walls?" I mock-gasp. I'm notorious for my odd habit of writing important notes on the wall. Melena likes to sneak portraits in to cover them up. "Now I'll never remember which way the microscope goes..."

"Speaking of two-year-old children foisted off on frazzled younger sisters..." someone sighs from behind me somewhere between the shelves, and there emerges my little sister of nineteen years, Andreya, dragging in tow my most precious gift.

xx(

Shiro. My son. There, it's been said: I was a father. I, in the midst of all of my foolishness, my incessant quests for newer scientific boundaries to be pushed—in other words, my focus pretty much on myself—somehow managed to assist in the creation of a living, breathing, beautiful human being. (Granted, if you asked Melena, I barely did anything at all, but that was after she discovered that stretch marks don't go away.)

Having a child changes one's perspective on things. The first twelve months, I spent hardly any time working on any of my pet projects (my then-going-on-three-years-long study of the heart comes to mind), attending to matters of state, or even eating or sleeping...for the most part. And yet, the first time Shiro smiled, curled his little hand around my finger, and said his first word ("da-da", of course), I felt like the happiest man alive. The diapers weren't much fun, I admit, but for my part, I'd do it again, exactly the way it was.

Only this time, I'd cherish every moment... because one never knows when it all will come crashing down.

)xx

Shiro points when he sees us, and tugs frantically on Andreya's hand. "Daddy! Mommy!" he insists. For his age, Shiro doesn't have a very wide vocabulary, but he is adept at nonverbal communication nonetheless. As Andreya approaches us, I reach down and scoop my son into my arms in one motion. His insistent vocalizations suddenly disappear in an excited shriek.

I rustle his hair, the dirt-colored locks the same shade as Melena's. He has my eyes, however—a light vermilion red the color of late sunset. Melena often jokes that my pale skin (in comparison to her desert-tanned complexion), painfully light blond hair, and red eyes conspire to make me look like an albino lab rat; I often retaliate that her deep tan and brown hair conspire to make her look like she rolled recently in a puddle of mud. Such a pair are we. In Shiro, though, our best physical traits shine through. I remind myself sometimes to keep him away from the ladies as he grows up.

"Oh, no," Melena suddenly moans. "I forgot that thing of his—we have to go back."

"What thing?" I innocently inquire, enjoying myself. Shiro cocks a head as if to listen.

Melena shoots me a look that could strip the paint from the walls. "You know," she growls. "The thing."

"Oh, that thing," I suddenly "remember." "Well, we might as well go get it." Around us, the heads of some inquisitive nobles retreat behind their books once again as what seemed a crisis was revealed to be only a small family issue.

"Do you think we have enough time?" Andreya leans forward with a look of concern; mentally I roll my eyes.

"We could take the lift," Tempest suggests casually, running an errant finger along the surface of the enormous Buster Sword strapped along the length of his back—his pride and joy. "We got that one line fixed, finally."

"Okay," I demur. "We'll go together, get the thing, and be back before ten." Melena takes Shiro from me to free my arms. I pull back one shelf to reveal the lift hallway, and the five of us stride down it, the very picture of innocent socialization combatting family woes.

The mood shifts dramatically once the lift comes to life with a jolt, as of relatively new machinery working at odds with more worn components. Melena's expression of loving exasperation melts to one of consternation as she turns to Tempest. "You made sure no one could monitor us, right?" she anxiously inquires, as Andreya raises her hand to her mouth and nervously bites at her fingernails. "This line is secure, and you just opened it, is that right?"

Tempest wearily draws a hand over his brow. "Yeah," he replies, as his inner anxiety and weariness begins to show through the veneer of lovable borderline disrespect he affects in public. "No one can hear us here, I'm absolutely certain. No one can see us, either, and no one's followed us from the library. We have nine minutes and forty-seven seconds, provided Mihael shows up when he's supposed to."

The lift jerks as it makes its way up the glowing line of energy projected by the directional crystals. Tempest looks up. "You know, Rieszmara, you're a damn fine actress," he informs her. "I didn't think Ansem even told you the plan."

"You think he wouldn't tell me something of this magnitude? We're satkasn married," Melena icily snaps, swearing in her native tongue. Tempest raises an eyebrow, and she visibly cringes. "Sorry," she apologizes. "Tension. We're all full of it. But yes, Ansem told me the plan weeks ago. If it weren't for the fact that we have enemies and no way to avoid them, we could forgo all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense about communicating in the first place."

"If it weren't for the fact we have enemies, we wouldn't need a plan at all," Andreya points out.

"What's there is there," I resolutely point out, "and we have a limited amount of time to talk. Melena, I did, in fact, write the speech we need," I address my wife, pulling from an inner pocket of my scarlet cloak a scrap of paper. "I figure on delivering it while Tempest sets up our cover. That way I can stall, if need be. Tempest, when's—"

"Five seconds," Tempest replies. "We're set to stall—here." At his words, the lift shudders, passing an ancient decorative alcove built into the outer castle walls; there are many such artistic and architectural embellishments. The power line sputters for a moment, and in that moment another figure slips aboard the lift as the energy walls flicker in and out of existence.

The figure is dressed all in black and dark gray, in order to blend more efficiently with the shadows in the recessed alcove. It pulls off a hood to reveal short auburn locks clumping together in spikes and glistening with sweat, a narrow face with high cheekbones and thin lips usually seen twisted into a wry smirk, and the vermilion eyes that are a genetic trademark of the royal family. Such a face is the face of my half-brother, Mihael, third in line to inherit the throne.

"Hello, brother," he pants, and flexes his wrist. A six-inch knife pops into his hand with a whisper of cloth. Andreya gasps. "I believe we were here to discuss the succession of the royal throne," Mihael grins, a gleam appearing in his eye.

xx(

A brief explanation of politics in the state:

Since before even my grandmother's grandmother's time, the territory containing the mountains and surrounding lands ending at the Great Desert (someone was working overtime on that name) had always been known as our country, strangely nameless. Call it the state, call it the commonwealth, call it a writhing cesspool of human corruption or whatever you like, but the actual name of the country has been lost to antiquity. Some may ask how a people forgets the appellation of their own land, but the point by now is moot.

As for the political system, one family had been in control of the state almost since its inception: my family, the royal family, usually referred to as, simply, the "Family". It is easy to identify a royal in the state—a member of the Family goes only by his or her first name. Marry into the family, and one's former last name is hardly ever used, Melena being a strongly opinionated exception to said rule. I suppose the logic goes that the more modifiers one needs, the less well-known one is.

The governing system consisted of one monarch (a member of the Family), a legislative system called the Bureaucracy, consisting of one house of "nobles", composed of those with blood ties or other connections to the Family, and a house of commons, or elected representatives of the common people. The judicial system at the time was made of one large court of nobles, presiding over all regional courts of elected common officials. The monarch wielded supreme executive power, but also had wildly unbalanced powers over legislative and judicial decisions. All national political decisions made had to go through the king or queen. No exceptions

One would expect this to lead to discontent, but during my time, there hadn't been a true tyrant on the throne for generations. Worse, we were in a state of political stagnation and apathy. The economy was floundering, petty crime was up, and nobody seemed to want to do anything about it.

No one, that is, except myself. Tempest and many other high-ranking common officials agreed with Melena and me that we needed change in the state, and that wouldn't happen unless we ushered it in ourselves.

Our only problem had come in the form of the head of the noble court, and sixth in line for the throne, Lucrece. Lucrece was my uncle on my mother's side, a foul, cruel old man who kept his bad side out of the public eye. He was about thirty-five years older than me, loved to parade about in the formal robes worn by high-ranking members of the Family, and sported what Tempest once endearingly described as, "a cue ball for a head and a stupid-ass beard."

We could never prove it, of course, but due to many unfortunate "accidents" often happening most often to his political opponents, we strongly suspected he had ties to subversive nomad tribes (the ones who broke off from the main faction after Melena's and my marriage... the marriage that sealed my eligibility for the throne) dealing in mercenary work and black market slavery. Lucrece especially took pleasure in keeping commoners from having their cases properly represented in court; according to Tempest, rumor among the Guard was that he would stop at nothing to bring his isolationist and pro-nobility agenda with him to the throne.

We especially realized that we had to be careful after the second assassination attempt on Melena shortly before Shiro was born. The fact that the assassin in question had information on her pregnancy, which the entire Family had kept secret for safety, pointed to a traitor within our own walls. Unfortunately, Lucrece had been playing the political intrigue game long before I was even born, long enough to have his tracks covered six ways. There was no way we'd pin anything on him if we tried.

The true problem was that I honestly did not feel that I was made for the work of a king. All Melena and I wanted was to raise our child as a family (I of course had my love for science to keep me occupied as well). Our best hope for change in the state was my half-brother, Mihael, who would next inherit the throne following Melena and me. Mihael was the current Speaker of the Bureaucratic House of Nobility, and felt as strongly as I did about change. He, however, had much more drive and charisma than I did, and would be an asset to the throne. Thus, a simple plan was developed.

We had to make all indications point to my assuming the throne, so that Mihael would not be a target in the upcoming weeks. This meant resorting to the "cloak-and-dagger nonsense" to keep Lucrece from getting wind of anything out of the status quo. On coronation day, I'd deliver a speech indicating my abdication, and Melena's as well. Mihael would graciously assume kingship, and Melena, Shiro, and I would move out to the outskirts of the desert to live in peace. Tempest would stay on as Captain of the Guard, and make sure to watch for bids for the throne from Lucrece. Mihael would get his political allies in the Bureaucracy to begin drafting legislation for changes in the legal system, diverting power from the throne and nobles to the commoners.

And everyone would live happily ever after. Or so we were naïve enough to believe.

)xx

Andreya snaps shakily, "Mihael, that's not funny," as my half-brother laughs, pulls an apple from an inner pocket of his clothes, and begins to peel it with his knife.

"He wouldn't be Mihael without that stupid sense of humor," Melena mutters.

"Come on, I've been clinging to a wall by the tips of my fingers for the past seven hours," my half-brother objects while slicing off a bit of fruit and slipping it into his mouth. At Shiro's wide-eyed stare, he smiles warmly (a rare expression for the usually over-politicized Mihael) and cuts him a piece as well.

An interjection from Tempest: "I hope I shouldn't have to remind you all that we're on the clock."

At this, the entire company falls silent, even Shiro. "All our lives are at stake, need I add," he continues, "and while that remains an issue, I'm in command. This is the first and last time we'll be able to talk like this. Mihael, your job is to look surprised at the announcement. At the next lift stop, get out. Put the hood back on and make sure you aren't recognized. You shouldn't be a target today, but I warn you still—be on your guard. I've got my second-in-command giving you some perimeter protection."

"So that's it? I freeze my 'nads off and risk my life and limb to get told to lay low?" Mihael interjects incredulously, amid a mouthful of apple. "Who's this guy you've got around me anyway?"

Tempest nods curtly. "His name's Leonhart. He's a good man, and if you plan on ruling a country, you'd better get used to the idea of having to risk your 'nads for justice—I do it every day." Andreya stifles a half-hysterical giggle, and I glare at her. She regains self-control while Tempest addresses the assembled again. "I'll say it again: if any of us is suspected of having a plan, Baldy'll twist it to make us look like the conspirators throwing a coup. We don't want public opinion on his side—look what he's done to the courts."

To my sister: "Andreya, you're on child watch. Shiro may very well be in danger, if the suspected leak is there." Tempest gives her a jerk of his eyebrows to mean, of course Lucrece knows about him, we're just keeping this official and political and nice. "Melena, make sure he doesn't do anything stupid," he adds to my wife, gesturing towards me.

"Absolutely," she responds.

"Ansem, don't do anything stupid," he says to me, clapping me on the shoulder. "Also, don't stall too long with the official abdication. Make it short and sweet; otherwise, you're up in a high place just begging for cross-hairs on you."

xxxXXXxxx

I adjust the mythril circlet atop my head nervously. "Hey, after today, I'll never have to wear this dumb thing again," I joke to Melena in an attempt to lighten the mood.

She smiles faintly, but her mind seems to be elsewhere. "...We are doing the right thing, Ansem, aren't we?" she asks me softly, gazing towards the stone arch where we were due to emerge within minutes.

I gently grasp her shoulder and give her a reassuring squeeze. "Melena, I won't lie. We're doing what's best for us, and what's best for Shiro. Is it what's best for the rest of the world? I don't know. You don't know. No one can ever know the unintended consequences of their actions," I admit. "I consider myself a husband and a father before anything else. When it comes to my choice, I put you two first. That's all I need to justify my actions to myself. Is that enough?"

Melena pulls me down by the neck of my robes and kisses me. "It's more than enough," she whispers.

"If sir and my lady are done angsting and smooching, we have a show to run," Tempest says scornfully from my other side. Judging by his failure to modulate his tone so as not to rouse other nobles' ire, I'm guessing that he's as tense as a drawn bowstring.

Melena makes a disgruntled noise in her throat but steps back into position. Tempest matches the royal entourage for once, since I had managed to get him to wear his official uniform adorned with the nineteen-sided open cross crest of the state, as befitting his status as Captain of the Radiant Guard—the highest ranking position a commoner by birth could hold without being adopted into a noble family. (In fact, as such, Tempest was one-hundred-forty-ninth in line to inherit the throne.) I am wearing the traditional royal crimson cape over a three-sided chest plate and black floor-length robe traced over with red-and-gold twenty-sided cross motifs, and Melena is sporting a feminized version of essentially the same costume. ("All these...layers," she often complains.)

I give Melena's hand one last squeeze before the trumpets blow and the doors open before us. The coronation ceremony always takes place in the "Vale of Kings": a valley cradled in the outer ridge of the mountains, close to the border between castle land and the city proper. An ancient tile mosaic adorns the center of the natural bowl shaped by the mountain snowmelts. The stone arch that Melena and I are due to walk through is called the Victory Arch, for it was erected in honor of the brave women and men who fought to tame the harsh winters and forge a home from the living crystal and stone.

I swallow nervously. Well, why shouldn't I? It is kind of nerve-wracking to think that in a few hours, my wife and son will be on the run with me. The idea bounces around my brain for a bit as Melena and I walk out to the tumultuous cheers and applause of the gathered audience (consisting of all noble families of course. Some commoners are here by personal invitation, but they are very largely the exception). We approach the Arch to a mounting roar, and I wonder if maybe it's not—

It happens all at once.

A rush. A sound. A vibration beneath my feet. An impact between my shoulder blades and a weight that propels me several feet forward and drives me to the ground. A blur of confusion and a hard thud and a burst of dazed pain as my head smacks the solid stone. For a moment I lie there and wonder faintly at the almost-pleasant buzzing sensation that is spreading through my skull before the fact that Tempest is lying across my legs and kind of making me uncomfortable struggles to the forefront of my thoughts.

And suddenly it is over and dust is settling and a shocked silence is so horribly thick in the air that is it just me or is it becoming harder to breathe? I don't know. Tempest utters the worst word he knows (and he is quite well versed), and I am struck with a sudden fear.

"Get off my legs, Tempest."

He doesn't say, Say "please", sir, I thought nobility was all about manners. He doesn't say, Stay down, it's still not safe. He doesn't even say, Sorry, I can't get off.

He says, "...Sir, perhaps it's better if you didn't..." and trails off.

"Get off me now."

A moment passes. Then the pressure leaves my lower body and I roll over onto my back.

...Oh.

Oh, God.

The Victory Arch had collapsed just as we were walking under it. Tempest had reacted without thought and shoved me out of the way. But Melena...

"Oh...oh...oh, my..." I can't form a word. Not even a coherent thought. The Victory Arch is—was huge. The amount of fallen stone must weigh over 450 kilograms—five tons in the old reckoning. The settled pile of rubble is so large that I can hardly see anything.

Except an arm. A very tan arm. I can see that much. And a spreading pool of red that I had initially taken to be a hanging edge of her cloak. Oh, God.

I was hardly even aware of my legs carrying me over to the site, but my arms burn now as I shove futilely at the heavy stone fragments. "Melena! Melena!" I scream, over and over. I have to get to her. She's probably in so much pain. She's probably trying to call back to me. The thought that she might be past the point of hearing me never enters my mind. She always hears. She always answers me. "Melena, for god's sake! Melena, get out of there! Melena!"

I feel a hand on my shoulder. "Sir—" Tempest begins to say and I snap out an arm to knock him away, lashing out at him like an injured animal.

"Get off me, damn you!" I try to shout again, but I begin to cough violently on the dust in the air. I hadn't even managed to dislodge Tempest's grip.

"Sir, there's nothing—"

"Don't you dare!" I am suddenly on my feet and holding Tempest by his shoulders, shaking him as hard as I can muster my strength. His face betrays no emotion, and the thought that he could just stand there while the world crumbles infuriates me. "Don't you dare, Tempest Strife! She's under there and we need to—"

My voice breaks as reality crashes into me with all the force of a desert storm—just the image of her arm laying limply out of the pile of rubble. How near the base of her elbow where it protruded from under the stone, her skin had turned purple and blue and mottled green, and little lacerations dripped blood so thick it looked black. The spreading crimson stain, as if someone had spilled a carafe of wine. The blood. Always the blood. "We—we need to...oh god, Tempest, she's gone!" My eyes remain dry, but I grip Tempest's arms and scream into his shoulder like a man dropped off the brink of sanity.

The rest is a blur. I feel someone (Tempest?) steering me away. Perhaps my entire body has disengaged itself from my conscious control—it would explain how I can no longer feel the pain in my head from where I hit it, or the aching tingles in the tips of my fingers where I rubbed through the thin material of my gloves and split my own fingernails attempting to shift the heavy stone blocks. I can only feel a hollow burning numbness spreading through my body like a fever. It burns and chills in the same way. I cannot stop shaking.

I am sitting suddenly. Tempest has escorted me back to a secluded corner of the library. My head is in my hands and I don't remember putting it there. I lift it with great effort. "Tempest..." I hollowly whisper, though my throat feels like it is riddled with glass shards. "...What are we going to do?"

Away from the public eye, Tempest's face is drawn and haggard. I have never seen him looking as old as he does now. He can't bring himself to speak yet.

As I stare at him, waiting for the answer and fearing that he wouldn't have one, slowly I become aware of a bitterness creeping up my throat.

"You said it was safe," I say, unable to keep a dull edge out of my voice.

Tempest draws his hand across his eyes. "We...I...We've had watch on the place for...for weeks... I can't understand... There was a trap within the Arch buried so deep it must have been there since..." His eyes are glistening. He kneels before me and drops his gaze. "I've failed you, sir. You and my lady. In her memory...I cry your pardon."

Seeing Tempest so self-effacing seemed only to make the experience more surreal. The sky was not green, war memorials did not collapse on the nexus of the universe, and Tempest never was not in control of any given situation. At the same time, I cannot seem to forget that spreading pool of red.

I place a hand on Tempest's shoulder. "It's just...I...I'm so—" Suddenly I sit bolt upright. At almost exactly the same time, Tempest jolts to his feet, half-dragging me upward.

"Oh, god. Shiro."

xx(

The rest of that terrible day still remains a haze of horror to me. Even to myself, I cannot crystallize a single rational thought from the days following Melena's death and the events thereafter.

I will summarize.

They found Mihael with his throat cut. He was nailed to the left double door of the east castle entrance by his hands, feet and neck. On the right was my sister Andreya, murdered in much the same fashion. Their blood had been used to paint obscenities above their heads in the tongue of the nomad tribes. It is a mark of how desensitized and incoherent I had become that day in that my initial horror had not been directed at the brutal deaths of more members of my family, but that Melena's language—so beautiful when it fell from her lips—had been used in so depraved a manner.

We never found my son. Only a cryptic note discovered clenched in Andreya's cold hand hinted at his whereabouts—"Khe'sye'hyf il'jhaa'gjyai ken." "He is with the true nobility now." The line was taken from an ancient fictional lay of a revolution gone awry, referring to the death of a martyr after his capture, torture, breaking, and subsequent three year duration as the enemy's slave. Perhaps it was only meant as a cruel gibe, but my blood ran cold as ice at the thought.

Obviously, we were meant to believe the rebel tribes did it. Tempest and I knew better, of course. Lucrece. He had been six steps ahead of us the whole time after all.

"These aren't random, and he didn't screw up," Tempest had told me later that day. "I believe he wanted you to stay alive. Think about it. The entire set of succession to the throne before him offs it within minutes of each other. He ascends the throne, looking extremely guilty. He's got the makings of his own tyranny, yeah, but he wants absolute loyalty. He wants to be a hero.

"With you as the lone 'survivor', horribly devastated, why of course you'd abdicate. To him. He advocates a policy of isolation and hostility to those awful tribal bastards. Who wouldn't agree? He gets his war and he gets to be a hero. His pet separatist tribes get to pick from the spoils once the war is over. And you'd be dead within a week of abdication. The perfect coup.

"As for Shiro, I couldn't say. That's the one piece that doesn't quite fit. I have a hunch, though, that one of his slaver friends offered to pay dearly for a member of royal blood."

I could have stepped down. I wanted to so badly. I hadn't even wanted the kingship before the tragedy; now, the mere thought brought ashes to my mouth. But stronger than that feeling was the burning hatred directed at the man who did this to us. To me. I couldn't stand to let him win. I couldn't stand to allow his efforts to prevail.

So I took the throne.

Over ten years of rigorous government reform followed. Crime rates dropped drastically, in part thanks to the efforts of Tempest and his police force. Lucrece seemed not to have foreseen my ascension to the throne. He disappeared mysteriously four days after my coronation, and was never seen by myself or anyone who'd recognize him again.

The capital city was renamed from "the Garden" to "the Radiant Garden." Eventually, I began to regard the people of the country as my people. Melena and Shiro were never far from my thoughts at first. I drove myself to make the lives of my people safe and happy, to make their lives the kind of lives I had selfishly hoped to secure for myself and my immediate family.

I had regained equilibrium, at least.

But the wounds never quite healed.

I believe that a sort of anger was born within me that fateful day—a seething, cold, venomous anger, like the "poison tree" the poets speak of, waiting only for the ripest conditions under which to bear fruit. My love for the memory of my wife and son helped to subdue its initial onset, to drive it deep down into my heart where it could not do others harm. However, a bitterness would sometimes manifest itself in me towards Tempest when his children were born—that he could have what I never would. I never fell in love with another woman.

Many years later, some first steps were taken toward healing the festering wound in my soul. Indeed, perhaps I may have healed entirely, given just a little more time. Perhaps my story would have turned out much differently. But it is the closest to us that hurt us the most deeply and painfully.

I am getting ahead of myself again.

For, dear audience, remember well what I said at the start:

This is only the beginning of this story.