For the Empress!

The bodies had already begun to rot.

They lay where they had fallen, sprawled in the dust, their lifeblood soaking into barren earth that refused to drink it. The air was thick with the smell of iron and shit, the scent that always came when men died severely. Flies had gathered, hungry little gods of carrion swarming the broken corpses in buzzing black halos.

John paid them no mind. He knelt among the dead, his sword resting across his knee, a damp cloth running along the curved length of blackened steel. Blood came away in dark streaks, fresh and slick. He hated leaving a blade uncleaned. There was something about the way it dried, how it thickened, how it clung like guilt. It had to be wiped away.

He worked in silence, the only sound the whisper of cloth over steel, the slow, methodical scrape as he worked the edge sharp again. His armour was scuffed and streaked with red, but none of it was his blood.

The wind moved sluggishly through the fields, stirring dead stalks like the bones of a long-starved corpse. This land had once been fertile, the empire’s breadbasket, but now it was nothing but blight and dust, famine and ruin. The soil was cracked, the crops wilted, and those who still lived here were little better than the dead he had just made.

“Is it done?”

John didn’t look up. He finished the last stroke across the blade before speaking. “Yeah.”

The farmer was old, and gaunt. A man worn to sinew and sorrow—stood a few feet away, hands clasped, eyes darting between the bodies as if expecting them to rise. He was wrapped in tattered wool, clothes that might have been fine once before war and hunger had taken their toll.

He stepped forward, cautious, eyes wary. No doubt he had second thoughts now. Perhaps he saw something in the way John sat, cleaning his blade like a man mending a piece of his soul, and realized he had invited something worse than bandits onto his land.

But it was too late for regret.

John stood, rolling his shoulders, working the stiffness from his muscles. He had taken six bandits down—a swift, ugly fight. These men were just hungry thugs with rusted swords and dirt beneath their nails. They had fought like starving wolves, **** and wild, but desperation made men sloppy.

John had cut them down fast. He didn’t enjoy killing, but he was good at it. And in the end, that was what mattered.

He sheathed his sword. “Your problem is solved. My coin.”

The farmer hesitated. “I—I have it, I do.” His hands fumbled at his belt, untying a small leather pouch. He thrust it forward as if eager to be rid of it.

John took it, and weighed it in his palm. Not much, but a handful of silvers and some coppers. He had been paid worse.

He tucked the pouch away and glanced back at the farmer. The man’s knuckles were white, his gaze flickering from the bodies to John’s sheathed blade, as if half-expecting it to be turned on him next.

John turned his gaze back to the ruined fields, the horizon smeared with sickly light as the sun fell lower. He should move on before night came. The dead would not bother him, but the living were always worse.

The wind shifted before he heard it.

"This one suffers."

The voice was not spoken. It was woven into his thoughts, slipping between them like fingers through silk. A woman’s voice—melancholy and vast, like a song played on strings long since broken.

It echoed inside him, slow and sorrowful.

"He clings to dying land. He will starve here. His children will starve. And yet, he remains. Do you not pity him?"

John stopped walking.

His hand went to his sword’s hilt, fingers curling around the leather grip, instinct over reason. He turned his head sharply, scanning the fields, his body tensed.

There was nothing.

Just the corpses he had left behind, the distant silhouette of the farmer, already trudging back to his broken home, and the long stretch of blighted earth fading beneath the dimming sky.

John let out a slow breath.

He waited a moment longer.

The voice did not return.

The wind did not rise again.

He exhaled, loosed his grip on his sword, and kept walking.

Vessun’s Rest was not a city in any true sense of the word—it was a graveyard where the living waited their turn. The people here were the ones the empire had cast aside—farmers without fields, merchants without goods, orphans, cripples, and the hopeless.

The outskirts of the shantytown stretched like an infection, houses of rotting wood and torn canvas, the air thick with sweat, piss, and unwashed flesh. The weak begged. The strong took. That was the rule here.

John made his way through the narrow streets, stepping over mud and shit and bodies that might have been drunk or dead.

The whores watched him pass from their doorways, some leaning against splintered wood, their dresses loose at the shoulders, painted lips curling in practiced invitations.

"Back again, forsaken?" one called, her voice sweet as honey, thick as venom.

He didn't answer.

The Cinder House was neither the worst nor the best of Vessun’s brothels. Its sign was half-burned, barely hanging from its hinges, and its interior smelled of cheap perfume, incense, and the kind of desperation that clung to men who had nothing left but coin to spend.

John pushed past a man stumbling out, half-dressed, his purse lighter, his soul no fuller.

Inside, the dim glow of oil lamps cast the room in a dull amber haze. A few men sat at the tables, drinking away their miseries. A bard plucked a lazy tune on a stringed instrument, though no one cared enough to listen.

"Back already?"

The voice came from Lirianne, a tall, dark-eyed woman draped in a loose crimson wrap, her black curls tumbling over one shoulder. She had the look of a woman who had seen too much, cared too little.

John unbuckled his belt, shrugged off his cloak, and tossed both onto a chair.

"Killed some bandits," he said simply.

Lirianne arched a brow, stepping closer. "And the farmer? Still breathing?"

"For now."

She hummed, low in her throat. "Surprising. Thought you might slit his throat, too, take his last coin while you're at it."

John didn’t bother with an answer. She liked to prod, to see if there was still anything soft left in him.

She reached for a bottle of cheap wine and poured him a cup. "Got paid, then?"

He took the cup. Drank. The wine was bitter and thin, a little better than vinegar, but it washed the taste of dust and blood from his mouth.

"Enough."

Lirianne watched him a moment, then leaned in, voice dropping. "There's a man asking about you."

John stilled.

"Who?"

"Not sure. Doesn't belong to any of the usual gangs." She poured herself a drink, and took a sip. "Said he had a message for you. Told him you weren’t here."

John set down his cup, slow and deliberate.

"Where is he now?"

Lirianne smirked. "Waiting."

John rolled his shoulders, feeling the weight of the day settle into his bones.

He reached for his sword belt, buckle fastened before Lirianne could protest.

John stepped out into the street. The wind was rising again, pulling at the loose fabric of his tunic, stirring dust and whispering through the narrow alleyways.

Lirianne was right.

Someone was waiting for him.

A man stood at the edge of the street, cloaked in shadows and silence, posture easy, but there was no mistaking the tension beneath it.

Not a beggar. Not a drunk. Not a fool.

The stranger lifted his chin slightly, eyes catching the lamplight.

"I've been looking for you, forsaken," he said.

John said nothing. He let his hand rest on the hilt of his sword and waited, tilting his head slightly, eyes half-lidded, unreadable.

The stranger took a step closer, boots crunching in the dirt, his cloak shifting against the wind. His face was hidden beneath the hood, but his posture was easy, too easy.

“How have you enjoyed your stay?” the man asked, voice smooth, measured.

John shrugged, glancing back toward the Cinder House, where lamplight and laughter spilled from the doorway.

“The women are better than the bandits,” he said.

The man chuckled. “A man of refined tastes, I see.”

The stranger took another step closer, tilting his head slightly, measuring him.

“I know who you are, John,” he said. “I know what you are.”

John didn’t react. Didn’t twitch, didn’t shift, didn’t reach for his sword. He just waited.

The stranger took it as an invitation to continue.

“I know why you’re here, why you keep to the slums. Why you don’t walk in the high streets of Varethis.” His voice was almost sympathetic.

A thin, sharp smile rested on his face as he spoke again. “But I can change that.”

“I don’t need it changed,” he said simply. “The slums suit me fine.”

The stranger nodded, as if he had expected that answer. “Perhaps. But the slums are where men come to rot, not where men like you belong.”

“I belong wherever I choose to be.”

“Even if that means drinking piss-poor wine and fucking whores who’ll let you between their legs in exchange for keeping the rats out of their basements?”

John’s lip curled, but he let it slide.

The man’s smirk widened slightly. He knew he had his attention now.

“It isn’t just your status I can ensure, John,” he said, his voice dropping to something lower, heavier, more promising. “It’s your fortune.”

John remained still.

The stranger stepped in, voice like a whisper of steel against silk.

“The kind of fortune that would let you buy a hundred whores every day until you die.”

John let out a slow breath, thinking that the man had played his card well.

He could have promised honour, redemption,and a place in history. All the things lesser men might have salivated over.

But no.

He had promised coin.

And that meant he wasn’t here to waste John’s time.

For the first time, John truly looked at him. “You’ve got my attention,” he admitted. “Now tell me what you want before I start losing interest.”

The stranger’s smile widened, his eyes gleaming in the dim lamplight. “Good.” He gestured toward the alleyway leading deeper into the city. “Walk with me. We have much to discuss.”

The stranger led him down a narrow street, away from the lamplight and the stink of sweat and cheap perfume. The alley was tight and dark, the kind of place men went missing and were never found.

John walked two paces behind him, his hand never far from his sword. He had followed men into traps before.

The stranger spoke without looking back. “What do you know of Averína the Eternal?”

He thought for a moment before answering. “Almost nothing.”

The stranger didn’t slow his pace, but John caught the subtle tension in the way his shoulders stiffened ever so slightly.

“You are not alone in that,” the man muttered.

John shrugged. He had never cared for gods.

“The Empire swears by her name,” the man continued, his voice low, measured, as if he were weighing each word before speaking. “They call her Eternal, the Light of Varethis, the Mother of Dominion.”

They stepped into a broader street, where the faint glow of distant torches cast long shadows against crumbling stone. The shantytown stretched before them, but beyond it, in the distance, loomed Varethis proper.

Even from here, the Celestial Spire cut against the night sky, the seat of the absent Empress, standing tall, silent, and untouched by time.

“She hasn’t been seen in a thousand years,” the man said. “And the Empire has rotted in her absence.”

John kept walking. He had heard this speech before.

“The Church has grown cruel, its faith corrupted by power. The noble houses squabble like feral dogs, carving up the provinces for their own gain. The provinces themselves have begun to splinter, break away, kill each other for scraps. And the Regent—” The man spat the word like a curse. “He clings to his title while the world crumbles around him.”

John listened, but none of this was new. The Empire was dying. Any fool with a half-functioning brain could see that.

“And now war is coming,” the man said. His tone was lower now, more distant. “Varethis will burn. Thousands will die, maybe more.”

For the first time, John recognized something in his voice. Fear.

John studied him a moment, then rolled his shoulders. “I’m still waiting to hear why you’re telling me all this.”

The stranger exhaled, slow and deliberate. “Because, John…” He turned to face him fully now, stepping closer, his voice lowering like a secret pressed into the dark. “Because of your eyes.”

John’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“Your eyes,” the man repeated.

The stranger watched him carefully, measuring his reaction.

“There are hidden books in the Celestial Court, locked away from the world, meant only for the eyes of the High Theurge and the Oracle of Starlight.” His voice was steady, but there was something behind it now—something heavier.

“In those books, you are not the first with eyes like yours.”

John felt his jaw tighten. “Start explaining,” he said. “Now.”

The stranger smiled, but there was nothing warm in it.

“Oh, I will,” he said. “But first, we need to discuss a job.”