Imperial blood

Midnight had long since passed in the capital of the Ozwald Empire, yet the cramped office of Prince Luai, hidden deep within the cold vaults of the Eastern Palace, knew nothing of sleep. The room was heavy with the suffocating scent of burnt oil and dried ink. Unlike the opulent, sprawling halls of his brothers—which were constantly guarded by dozens of armored horsemen—Luai’s sanctuary was protected only by three veteran clerks who had spent their entire lives drowning in numbers, and a single retired soldier who limped heavily on his left leg.

Luai possessed no popular support. The grand army swore absolute loyalty to his brother Lucas; the nobility blindly followed Empress Mira; the prominent merchants had long since auctioned their allegiance for Jessica’s gold; and the keys to the spies and shadows were firmly clenched in Cassian’s hands. Luai was nothing more than an isolated mind trapped inside a narrow room, possessing nothing but his intellect and a few stacks of financial ledgers. Yet, for him, that was more than enough to wage a war.

"Your Highness," Gilbert, one of the veteran clerks, murmured as he placed a fresh report in front of Luai, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a stained sleeve. "We have completed the review of the maritime records as you requested, and the reality is far worse than we anticipated. If we attempt to construct a military fleet and confront Lyridan directly in the Eastern Ocean, we will face utter annihilation. Lyridan possesses seventy heavy warships, armored in enchanted soul-wood and equipped with mana cannons forged in the elven forests. Any direct naval confrontation would result in our small fleet being sent to the ocean floor within hours."

Luai stared at the document before turning his gaze to the highly detailed map of the Eastern Ocean hanging on the stone wall. He knew that Lucas’s arguments during the council meeting were perfectly logical from a purely militaristic perspective. The ports shared with Lyridan were not mere harbors; they were impregnable sea fortresses, heavily protected by magical watchtowers powered by rare mana crystals capable of detecting an approaching vessel from miles away. A direct assault would be no less foolish than Lucas’s obsession with a bloody land campaign.

"I am not planning a direct attack, Gilbert," Luai said, leaning back into his chair and interlocking his fingers. "Military aggression is the desperate language of those who have run completely out of options. We intend to economically strangle them... without shedding a single drop of our soldiers' blood." He stood up and ran his finger over a specific cluster of islands in the northeast, a treacherous region forever shrouded in thick, unnatural fog. "The Forbidden Archipelago. Ninety percent of the Republic of Lyridan’s trade—especially the heavy merchant vessels transporting raw materials and gold from the Sultanate of Amroz—must pass through the narrow sea routes surrounding these islands. They have no choice; the ocean currents there are the only ones capable of carrying heavy ships at high speeds. If we sever this artery, Lyridan’s commerce will collapse, their treasury will drain within weeks, and eventually, they will crawl to us, begging to reopen the routes."

"But, Your Highness!" Gilbert interrupted, his voice laced with alarm. "The Forbidden Archipelago is suicide! Everyone knows those waters are ruled by the Merfolk and the enigmatic Lords of the Archipelago. The mist there isn't weather—it is an ancient, hostile magic under their absolute control. Those who earn their favor cross swiftly; those who offend them wander blindly in the fog until the waves shatter their hulls against the cursed rocks. The Merfolk do not negotiate with humans. They view us all as existential enemies."

A faint, cold smile touched Luai's lips. "Everything in this world negotiates, Gilbert. The only question is whether you possess the precision to discover the correct price. And the Merfolk, as it happens, have a critical weakness—one we have entirely ignored because our generals only read books of war." He pulled a highly classified document from his desk, bearing the faded wax seal of a fallen northern noble house. "Fifty years ago, the Dwarven Continent exported a rare, magical salt extracted from the deepest veins of the Black Iron mines. This salt is not meant for consumption; it is an essential catalyst the Merfolk require to preserve the eggs of their royal bloodline. The magical waters of the ocean have become increasingly polluted over the decades, and without this salt, their offspring decay before they can ever hatch. The Empire banned its import after our last conflict with the dwarves, plunging the Merfolk into a silent, desperate crisis of extinction."

Gilbert’s eyes widened in sudden realization. "You mean... you intend to smuggle the magical salt to them?"

"I am not going to smuggle it," Luai replied, stepping closer to the map. "I am going to grant them the exclusive, sovereign rights over its trade. If we secure a massive shipment of this salt from the Dwarven Continent and offer it to the Lords of the Archipelago, we will ask for only one thing in return: close the Mist Currents to every vessel flying the banner of Lyridan, while allowing ships authorized exclusively by my office to pass safely and swiftly. This will not merely be a blockade, Gilbert. It will permanently redirect the entire wealth of the Eastern Ocean straight into our treasury."

Yet, securing the magical salt would be a dangerously intricate maneuver. The dwarves accepted only one form of currency for their rarest goods: Spiritwood, a sacred material harvested exclusively from the protected Elven Forests, which were under the strict political jurisdiction of the Elven Kingdom on the Central Continent. Here lay the true, Machiavellian knot: Luai would have to covertly manipulate his own family’s ancestral trade registries to siphon the Spiritwood—and he would have to do it without Empress Mira ever discovering the theft.

As he finalized the maddeningly complex mathematical equations for this scheme, a series of calm, measured footsteps echoed down the stone corridor. The heavy door swung open to reveal Cassian. The Third Prince stepped into the cramped, paper-strewn room, his calculating eyes sweeping over the mess before finally settling on his brother.

"An impressive office," Cassian remarked smoothly, a venomous edge to his tone. "It smells of clever, quiet conspiracies. Quite a refreshing change from Lucas’s chambers, which smell predominantly of sweat and rusted iron."

Luai gave a sharp nod to his clerks, gesturing for them to leave. They hurried out into the darkness, shutting the door tightly behind them. Now, only the two brothers remained, face to face in the dim candlelight.

"What brings you to the accountant's den at such an ungodly hour?" Luai asked coolly, returning to his desk.

"I came to offer you a deal," Cassian replied, stepping closer and placing his hand flat upon the map, directly over the borders of the Republic of Lyridan. "I know you are planning something at sea, and I know you wish to shatter Lucas’s grand military ambitions. What if I told you that I can provide you with the exact movements of Lyridan’s fleet and the vulnerabilities of their naval fortresses?"

Luai studied his brother’s unreadable face with agonizing care. Through his own secret investigations into intercepted correspondence, Luai already knew that Cassian maintained illicit channels of communication with Lyridan’s high commanders. But Luai’s sharp mind instantly saw the invisible thread connecting the betrayal: Cassian had no desire to help Lyridan, nor did he wish to save Lucas. He was playing both sides against the middle. He was feeding Lucas fabricated intelligence to lure him into a catastrophic, prideful defeat on the northern front, while providing Lyridan with just enough information to earn their trust. Once both sides had thoroughly exhausted and bloodied one another, Lucas’s military prestige would permanently collapse, leaving the throne entirely vacant—waiting for Cassian to claim it.

"Information always comes with a price," Luai said calmly. "What is yours?"

Cassian smiled like a hunting fox. "When Father finally declares Lucas a failure and strips him of his birthright as Crown Prince, I want your absolute support before the Council of Nobles. You control the numbers, Luai. And the nobility always listens to numbers... especially when their own pockets are involved."

"I will consider it," Luai replied evenly.

But deep within his chest, Luai knew the truth. Cassian was the most dangerous predator in the imperial family after their father, and the moment he finished destroying Lucas, Luai would inevitably become his next target.

After Cassian vanished into the shadows of the corridor, Luai stood entirely alone. He looked at the great glass hourglass on his desk; the week was bleeding away rapidly. Everyone inside the palace was weaving deadly webs against one another. Jessica was already moving Sanctus gold into the provinces to legitimize the Holy Church’s insidious cultural influence; Empress Mira was actively pressuring the high lords to choke off the army's supply of iron, effectively forcing Lucas to accept her family's crushing terms; and Princess Marina remained completely isolated, staring at the maps of the burning Continent of Fire with a silent, paralyzing terror.

Luai walked toward the small, barred window overlooking the darkened palace gardens. High above, in the tallest, most formidable tower of the citadel, a solitary light still flickered in the chambers of Emperor Moran II. At that exact moment, a feeling as cold as ice spread through Luai’s veins. He vividly recalled his father’s expression during the council meeting—that faint, mysterious, unreadable smile. The man had no apparent weaknesses; he possessed absolute, terrifying knowledge of his realm.

A chilling thought took root in Luai's mind. If he, a prince locked in a library, had managed to uncover all of these deeply buried schemes—the treasury manipulation, the illicit foreign alliances, the economic sabotage—in a matter of mere months, how could a tyrant rule this fractured empire with an iron fist for forty long years without knowing?

It was a staggering realization: Emperor Moran II knew everything. He was fully aware of Cassian’s treasonous correspondence with Lyridan; he knew the exact terms of Jessica’s blasphemous pact with Sanctus; he watched in silence as Empress Mira slowly suffocated the state's finances. The Emperor had deliberately allowed the treasury to be emptied; he had systematically permitted the crisis to rot the nation from within for one singular, monstrous purpose: to transform the Ozwald Empire into a bloody, lawless arena where his own children would viciously tear each other to pieces, leaving only the deadliest wolf standing to inherit his crown.

Luai tightened his grip on the wooden frame of the window until his knuckles turned white. The reality was clear, and it was terrifying. He was not resolving the Empire's crisis out of his own free will. It was, after all, just another chess piece moving precisely on a board designed by his father from the very beginning. But as Luai looked out over the emptying chamber of his mind, a dark truth crystallized: if he wished to survive this game—if he truly intended to ascend—simply following the established rules would never be enough. To reshape the fate of the Empire, he would have to do something far more radical. He would have to dissolve the entire board. He would have to destroy the council itself, starting with the ruthless ambition of his brothers... and ending, inevitably, with the terrifying old man sitting on the throne.