Episode-781
Chapter : 1561
Lloyd looked at her. He looked at the pain in her face. He wanted to lie to her. He wanted to tell her it was just propaganda, that the Altamiran government had brainwashed its people, that it was all just a misunderstanding. It would be the kind thing to do. It would let her sleep at night.
But Lloyd respected her too much for that. She had walked into the lion's den with him. She had faced danger and death to save her friend's sister. She wasn't a child anymore. She was a soldier in his army, whether she carried a sword or not. And soldiers deserved the truth, no matter how ugly it was.
"You want to know why they hate us," Lloyd said, his voice flat. It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Jasmin said. "I need to know. The history books... the ones they teach us in the Academy or the ones in the library... they say we are the liberators. They say Bethelham brings order. But the way those people looked at us... that didn't look like liberation."
Lloyd let out a short, dry laugh. He reached out and tapped the stack of books in front of him. "History books," he said with a sneer. "History books are written by the people who won, Jasmin. They are the trophies of the victors. They aren't interested in truth. They are interested in justification. If you want to know why a man hates you, you don't ask the man who punched him. You ask the man with the black eye."
He stood up and walked over to a shelf deep in the shadows of the archives. He ran his finger along the spines of the books until he found one that was covered in a thick layer of grey dust. It was an old book, bound in black leather that was cracking with age. There was no title on the spine, just a faded symbol of a four-headed hydra.
He pulled it out and walked back to the table, dropping it with a heavy thud. Dust puffed up into the air, making Jasmin cough.
"This," Lloyd said, placing his hand on the cover, "is the truth. It's not the truth they teach in schools. It's not the truth the King likes to talk about at banquets. It's the truth that is written in blood. And trust me, there is a lot of blood."
Jasmin looked at the book with a mixture of curiosity and fear. "What is it?"
"This is the history of the world before there was a Kingdom of Bethelham," Lloyd said. "This is the history of the United Front of Babylon."
"Babylon?" Jasmin repeated. "I've never heard of it."
"Of course you haven't," Lloyd said, sitting back down. "They tried very hard to erase it. Babylon wasn't a kingdom. It was an Empire. A massive, unstable, glorious, and absolutely horrific Empire that covered almost the entire continent. It existed about a hundred years ago. And it was ruled by four families."
He opened the book. The pages were yellow and brittle. He turned them carefully until he found a map. It was a map of the continent, but the borders were all wrong. There was no Bethelham. There was no Altamira. There was just one giant, sprawling mass of land divided into four colored sections.
"Look here," Lloyd said, pointing to the map. "You see these four territories? They represent the four pillars of Babylon. The four nations that made up the Empire."
He pointed to the north. "The Nation of Ferrum. That's us. Or rather, that's what we used to be."
He pointed to the west. "The Nation of Austin. That's my mother's family."
He pointed to the east. "The Nation of Garcia. That's where I went to get the cure for Rosa's mother."
And finally, he pointed to the center. "And the Nation of Throne. They don't exist anymore. Not really."
Jasmin leaned in, her eyes wide. "Four nations? But how did they work together? The Ferrums and the Austins... we are so different."
"They didn't work together," Lloyd said with a dark smile. "That's the joke. It was called the 'United Front,' but there was nothing united about it. It was a nightmare of politics. The way it worked was simple, in theory. Every ten years, the leadership would rotate. One family would become the Emperor family, and the other three would be vassals. They would rule the entire continent for a decade. Then, when their time was up, they would step down, and the next family would take the throne."
Chapter : 1562
"That sounds... fair?" Jasmin ventured, though she sounded unsure.
"Fair?" Lloyd laughed. "Jasmin, imagine you have absolute power for ten years. You can do anything you want. You can take any land, kill any enemy, tax any peasant. And you know that in ten years, your rival is going to take that power away from you. What do you do?"
Jasmin thought about it. "You... you try to keep the power?"
"Exactly," Lloyd said. "Or, you spend your ten years looting the country so thoroughly that when your rival takes over, there is nothing left for them to rule. You spend your ten years killing anyone who might challenge you later. You spend your ten years building armies to protect yourself when you step down."
He looked at her, his expression grim. "Cruelty wasn't a bug in the system, Jasmin. It was the only common language. Every decade was a race to see who could be the most brutal, the most efficient tyrant. Because if you were weak, even for a moment, the other three families would eat you alive."
Jasmin shuddered. "It sounds horrible."
"It was," Lloyd agreed. "It was a meat grinder. And the people who got ground up weren't the lords or the ladies. It was the common people. The farmers. The merchants. The people who just wanted to live their lives. They were just resources. Cattle to be used by whichever family happened to be wearing the crown that decade."
He tapped the map again. "And that brings us to Altamira. Or rather, the place that would become Altamira. Back then, it didn't have a name. It was just a region. A very special, very unlucky region."
Lloyd paused, looking at Jasmin to make sure she was ready to hear this. He was about to destroy her image of his family, of the noble House Ferrum. But she had asked. She wanted to know why they were hated.
"You asked why it's personal," Lloyd said quietly. "It's personal because we didn't just conquer them, Jasmin. We owned them."
Lloyd watched Jasmin process the concept of the United Front of Babylon. It was a lot to take in. The idea that the stable, relatively peaceful world she knew was built on top of such a chaotic system was jarring. It was like finding out your house was built on a graveyard—which, in a metaphorical sense, it was.
"So," Jasmin said slowly, trying to piece it together. "Four families taking turns being tyrants. And the Ferrums were one of them."
"We were one of the worst," Lloyd corrected her. He didn't sound proud, but he didn't sound ashamed either. He sounded factual, like he was reciting the specifications of a machine. "The Ferrums have always been warriors. We believe in steel. We believe in strength. When it was our turn to rule, we didn't use diplomacy. We used the sword. We turned the Empire into a military camp. We conscripted farmers, we burned villages that didn't pay taxes fast enough, and we crushed dissent with iron boots."
He turned a page in the dusty book. It showed a woodcut illustration of a massive army marching under a banner that looked suspiciously like the Ferrum crest, but jagged and crueler.
"And the Austins?" Jasmin asked. "Your mother's family?"
"They were different, but not better," Lloyd said. "The Austins deal in the Void. They deal in magic and secrets. When they ruled, it was a time of shadow police, disappearances, and magical experiments. People didn't get executed in the town square; they just vanished in the middle of the night. It was a reign of terror, just a quieter one."
He pointed to the map again, specifically to a large, green area in the south-west.
"Now, look at this area," Lloyd said. "This is what we now call Altamira. But back then, in the days of Babylon, this region was known as 'Tiamat.'"
"Tiamat," Jasmin whispered the name. "It sounds... ancient."
"It means 'Mother of Life' in the old tongue," Lloyd explained. "Tiamat was the breadbasket of the Empire. It was a vast, fertile agricultural region. The soil there was so rich you could drop a stick in the ground and it would grow leaves by the next morning. It produced the grain, the fruit, the meat, and the cotton that fed and clothed the entire Empire."
He looked at Jasmin. "Do you know what happens to the people who produce everything in an Empire ruled by tyrants?"
Jasmin shook her head slowly.