The first day of the new week dawned crisp and cool over the Imperial Academy. Baruk had made a good breakfast, and while they had been eating, Solivair had presented him some school supplies to take with him to his classes, including a small bag to carry everything in. In conducting an inventory of the manor alongside Margaret, the old Vileborn had noted that Klarion had no real school supplies and had taken it upon himself to see about providing him some. Needless to say, Klarion was already appreciating having his new Steward around.
Klarion left with Hatsune after they had eaten their fill. Together, they had made their way across campus. For Klarion, the initial strangeness of the Academy had faded. Indeed, he mostly knew the layout now, knew where to make their turns and where to avoid the worst of the morning rush.
At his side, Hatsune stepped away as they approached the building where his Foundations of History class was meeting. “I’ll be waiting for you in the hallway after your class is over.”
Klarion nodded, and they went off in opposite directions. The lecture hall was already half-filled by the time he entered the room, the rising rows of seats occupied by his fellow scions—some organizing their notes, others talking in low murmurs. Klarion took the seat he had taken the last time he had been in the class. Within minutes of having done so, the majority of the rest of the empty seats filled as the rest of his classmates rushed into the room before the professor could beat them to class. The whispers around him continued, but thankfully, most had turned their attention away from him and to the question of whether Professor Mordrane would be as acerbic and strict as she had been last time.
The ones who said she would be were the ones who were right.
When Professor Mordrane finally entered the room, she walked with the measured precision of a battle-hardened general more so than a teacher, her black robes trimmed in silver swirling as she strode to her podium. There was no wasted movement as she walked to the front of the class. Her presence alone was enough to wring the air from the room, and any scion foolish enough to still be murmuring quickly fell silent.
Klarion straightened in his chair instinctively, feeling her violet gaze sweep over the class like a sharpened blade.
When she finally spoke, beginning the lecture, her voice commanded their undivided attention. “History is not simply a collection of dates and battles. It is the foundation upon which Empires rise and fall.” She looked from one side of the room to the other, making sure each of her students was either taking notes or focused on her speaking. “If you do not understand how the Empire came to be, you will not understand how to preserve it.”
With a flick of her wrist, the chalkboard behind her shimmered, and the air above it rippled with golden light. A timeline bloomed into existence, glowing in suspended air. At one end, a clear starting point shone brightly, marked as the Earliest Recorded Date of the Empire. But Klarion’s eyes were drawn to the chaos before it—a fractured, tangled era of broken lines and jagged script labeled only as The Veil of Fury. Professor Mordrane gestured to it, her expression as sharp as the lines of magic glowing in the air.
“This is where we will begin today: with the end of the Veil of Fury,” she said, giving the class a moment to write down the few notations that labeled the simple timeline she had created before continuing, “It was a period of unrelenting conflict and instability following the collapse of the preceding order.”
Klarion lifted his hand, the motion drawing the briefest flicker of attention from the other scions before Professor Mordrane’s attention landed on him. She did not call on students lightly, but when she inclined her head slightly in his direction, he knew she expected something worth asking.
“What exactly was this preceding order?” Klarion asked. It wasn’t just curiosity that prompted him. The Empire had not risen from nothing—power did not simply manifest, fully formed. From the classes he had attended and the books he had read back on Earth, all societies built themselves upon what came before, consuming or repurposing the old to forge something new. The way Professor Mordrane had framed it just now, this preceding order had been significant enough to warrant recognition before she even began detailing the Empire’s origins.
From the back, a sharp snicker broke the silence. Someone muttered something under their breath, and he didn’t have to turn to know it was one of the usual arrogant scions, those who thought his House unworthy of its continued existence.
Professor Mordrane’s expression did not change. If anything, there was the barest flicker of approval.“A good question,” she said, somewhat to the surprise of more than a few scions, “one that many scholars have asked… but to this day, there is no definitive answer.”
That quieted the room, and Klarion frowned slightly.
“You mean no one knows?” he pressed.
“We have fragments,” Professor Mordrane admitted, gesturing toward the fractured lines on the timeline, which Klarion now realized was symbolic of the fractured knowledge of that time. “Scattered mentions in the oldest surviving texts, implications in relics unearthed from ancient ruins across a myriad of worlds. But nothing cohesive.”
She took a step forward, and for a moment, the glow of the timeline cast sharp shadows across her face. “What we do know for certain is this:” She let the silence stretch for a heartbeat before continuing. “The System, as we know it, was not always as it is now.”
That caused a ripple of murmurs. Klarion could feel the energy in the room shift. Every student here had lived their entire lives with the System—its rules, its leveling, its classifications. It was the foundation of Multiversal civilization itself. The fact that the majority of scions around him did not know what Professor Mordrane casually mentioned made him glad he had asked the question.
“The preceding order,” Professor Mordrane continued, “was either the architect of the System, or the catalyst that transformed it into what we know today. Whether it was a single ruling entity, a vast empire, or something else entirely, we do not yet know. But research always continues. Perhaps we will know in time.”
She let the weight of the revelation settle before she finally spoke again.
“If what I just said interests you, I would recommend you unlock your class before the end of the year and take my elective on the Veil of Fury later on during your studies here,” she said before gesturing back to the timeline. “But that is a conversation for later. Right now, our study begins. We will trace the course of history as we know it, peeling back the layers of war, expansion, and governance. And perhaps, if you are diligent enough, some of you may one day contribute to answers much like the young Blacksword Scion has asked for.”
Her violet gaze swept over them once more, lingering on Klarion for a fraction longer before she turned to continue the lecture. “Following the end of the Veil of Fury, however it ended, whatever civilizations had existed prior to that point were shattered carcasses drifting across the planes and between the stars.”
With a flick of her fingers, the glowing lines of the timeline near the Veil of Fury shuddered and fractured still further, splitting into a dozen more broken strands, each labeled with the name of a fallen civilization of some sort. Or at least that was what Klarion guessed, given what the professor had been saying so far. He rushed to take as many notes on what he was seeing as he could. Something told him that the information the professor was so casually sharing was not something that was so easily found in such a distilled form, even in the Central Archives.
“With every polity lying in ruins, countless warlords amongst the races arose to fight for dominance of what became known for a time as the Scattered Shards,” Professor Mordrane continued, “with many eventually seizing what little remained of the previous order, only to be torn down in turn. Few lasted more than a generation. Fewer still left behind more than ruins of their own.”
Another gesture, and Professor Mordrane brought a new image to life on a different portion of the blackboard—a swirling maelstrom of names and battles, brief flashes of records and younger, though still eventually destroyed, civilizations, one which took up the majority of the display behind her. "The Varkaal Dominion," she listed first, "once considered the most promising successor to whatever order had come before. It boasted unmatched military discipline, soldiers with Rare classes and leaders with Epic or higher classes of their own, all capable of cleaving through hordes of their enemies like a scythe through wheat. It lasted seven thousand years before its warlords turned upon each other."
The Varkaal Dominion flared in gold on the timeline before abruptly fading into dust.
"House Iltheris," Professor Mordrane continued, her hand pointing to another name that was near where the Varkaal Dominion had been on the blackboard. "A noble lineage that survived the first centuries of the Veil of Fury. They prided themselves on knowledge, on controlling what little remained of the old libraries and artifacts of several civilizations that they had apparently served during the Veil of Fury. Their holdings were shattered when they sought to unify the warring enclaves around them. Their arrogance blinded them to the need of more than honeyed words and the promise of a share in their ancient power.”
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Again, the name blazed bright before fading, lost like the Varkaal Dominion and others that she hadn’t spoken about.
"The Narvexi Pact," she called out, turning to the blackboard to gesture once more, "a coalition of powerful warbands that briefly held dominion over the worlds of more than a dozen planes of existence. They enforced unity through brutal conquest, imposing law through sheer terror. They were considered unstoppable… until the first cracks of rebellion shattered them from within."
The Narvexi Pact lingered longer before fading. Professor Mordrane turned back to face the class but let the silence stretch, allowing the weight of history to settle over them. Klarion rushed to get down as much as he could, never having been very fast at taking notes when he had been in school back on Earth. Though Valdre and Redrek had a different professor for their Foundations of History course, he was sure they would be covering the same content. He would have to see about comparing notes with them later.
Professor Mordrane extended a hand, and with a snap of her fingers, the magical display behind her shifted. The timeline that had previously been on display faded, dissolving into streams of golden light before reforming into something far more chaotic. A map appeared—if it could even be called that. It was a writhing, unstable thing, borders shifting and twisting as if caught in an endless storm. Territories split and reformed in erratic patterns, some vanishing entirely only to reappear elsewhere. No single power held dominance; instead, it was a patchwork of warring factions, kingdoms, and nameless empires locked in ceaseless conflict.
Lines of power flickered and broke. Some territories expanded like an unchecked fire, only to be consumed a moment later. The entire display pulsed with a sense of instability, as though even the magic that conjured it struggled to impose order on the image. Klarion watched the display, observing the chaotic swirl of shifting borders. What he and all the other scions were watching was more than just instability. It was an endless, cycling collapse of ambition and destruction.
"These and so many others are what shaped the early period after the Veil of Fury, before the Empire and its contemporaries rose to assert their primacy over the Multiverse. Without them, it is likely that Multiverse under the System would have remained fractured into endless numbers of warring factions and but a few, scattered enclaves of civilization struggling to survive."
Professor Mordrane stepped to the side, allowing the class a few moments more to take in the sheer chaos before them. Her hands clasped behind her back, her silver-trimmed robes unmoving despite the flickering lights casting shifting shadows over her from behind. Pulling his attention from the display, Klarion saw that she was looking at several specific students, himself among them, but for what reason he could not tell.
"So," Professor Mordrane eventually asked as the map disappeared behind her, "what conditions are necessary for an empire to emerge from such chaos?"
The class remained silent for a heartbeat, but Klarion could tell that Professor Mordrane had not meant it as a rhetorical question.
"Military strength."
A murmur of agreement rippled through the hall.
"Leadership," another scion added.
"Alliances," came a voice from the left side of the room.
"Law and order," said another, an elven scion seated not far behind Klarion.
"Control of resources," Klarion added after a moment, watching as Professor Mordrane’s eyes landed on him briefly before moving on.
For a moment, she was silent. Then, she nodded. "Good. You are starting to think as young scions of Imperial nobility should, considering the necessary elements of power, of rule. This is what will one day be expected of you.”
Some murmuring at the unexpected praise spread throughout the room, and for his part, Klarion also felt a small bit of pride. That was, until he saw the look on Professor Mordrane’s face. She was smiling. It was not a reassuring smile. It was the smile of a predator who had led its prey into precisely the position she wanted them in.
"You are all wrong." The murmurs and self-congratulations died off while Professor Mordrane’s expression remained unreadable as she turned back to the display. “Each of the components that your fellow scions mentioned are necessary parts of the strength of each contemporary power in the Multiverse. But strength alone is never enough."
She gestured toward the timeline again, the faded names of fallen warlords, crumbled houses, broken dominions appearing in sequence. "Countless leaders in the early period after the Veil of Fury were strong. But now? They are less than dust." She slammed her hand down on the podium, causing more than a few scions to jump in their seats. “What mattered was vision.”
The glowing map reappeared only to shift once more, the swirling chaos of warring factions fading, leaving only a single point of light emerging from the storm near the center. "The Empire did not rise because it was the strongest. It did not rise because it had the best warriors, the greatest fortifications, or the most wealth. It rose because one human man saw what no one else did. That the war would never end—not unless something greater was built."
The single point of light grew in size until a name was revealed, and Klarion knew at once that he was seeing the name of the first Emperor of the Empire he now belonged to.
Emperor Valerian Astraeus Magnus Treverorum
Even the scions who had seemed distracted earlier—likely those bored and accustomed to tutors who fed them history like a dull recitation—now sat upright in their chairs, attention wholly captured by Professor Mordrane’s mention of the Emperor who had built the Empire they all lived within.
"The man who would become our Emperor did not begin as a conqueror. He was not born into power nor descended from an ancient line of rulers stretching back to before the Veil of Fury. He was a minor sovereign of one of the many fortified enclaves that barely managed to endure the first centuries after that chaotic time. Unlike the countless warlords and petty rulers that sought dominion through brute force, our Emperor did not waste his strength in reckless conquest. He sought something different: consolidation and order."
Klarion considered the weight of that choice. Amidst a world where survival was measured in days, where power was seized and lost in cycles of violence, the decision to consolidate rather than conquer was an anomaly.
Professor Mordrane continued. "The first great act of his rule was not a campaign of expansion. It was the establishment of law. Where others enforced rule through sheer might, he established governance. A structure that did not merely demand obedience but provided something in return—stability. A world where the strong did not prey upon the weak unchecked. A world where survival was not dictated by whether a warlord saw value in letting you live another day. The only thing that was asked in exchange was absolute loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire he sought to create.”
A scion sitting near the front, a young woman with sharp features and a crest of dark feathers woven into her hair, lifted her hand. Professor Mordrane motioned for her to ask her question.
“And what of those who refused?” the scion asked. “Not the other factions who sought to challenge him, but the ones who simply wished to remain apart? Those who had carved out their own small corners of stability—what became of them?”
There was no defiance in her tone, only a keen interest, but Klarion noted the way a few other students turned their heads slightly, waiting for the answer. Because it was a fair question. Given what he had learned through his experiences so far, Klarion felt like he already knew what the answer would be.
Professor Mordrane stepped away from her podium to address the scion. "An astute question. And one that deserves an honest answer." She gestured behind her again, and the Emperor’s name dissolved to recreate the timeline from before, except a single mark early after the founding of the Empire glowed brighter than the others.
“The answer lies with the Imperial Legions. The first of them were founded not only to expand and defend the borders of the Empire, but also to enforce compliance to the Emperor’s will within it. In those early years, only the Emperor himself was above the Legions, and he issued them a single command: bring order to chaos, by whatever means necessary. And they did. Through blood, steel, Essences, and, above all, unyielding will. Our Empire was forged in war, but not enough remember that our enemies are not always outside of our borders.”
She gestured one last time, and the blackboard behind her went blank, the previous golden marks disappearing altogether. “Your only homework is to reflect on what you learned today. Reflect and consider what you will do when it is your decisions that will impact the lives of your subjects. Will you make similar choices, or will you choose a different path? Think carefully because this will be one of the topics you will be required to defend in your final exam. Class dismissed.”
Klarion remained in his seat as those around him began packing their things away, giving time for the other scions to leave. Focusing on his notes, he quickly wrote down his thoughts regarding what Professor Mordrane had said while they were still fresh. Was the approach the Emperor took tyranny? Or was it simply the best choices to ensure the survival of himself and all those he cared about? He knew how his younger self would have responded before he had survived being kidnapped by the Blood Eagles back on Earth, and before he had come to the Imperial Academy and everything that had followed his arrival. Having survived all that… perhaps the choices the Emperor had made were simply the best choices to move forward, protecting what he sought to build.
In his situation, he might have made the same ones.
Yes, the Emperor’s vision had demanded sacrifice. It also demanded loyalty, obedience, and the destruction of anything that threatened his vision’s existence. And because of that, it had endured where countless others had failed.
As he finished his notes, Klarion realized why Foundations of History was required. It was not merely covering history to be studied but was pushing every scion to understand and apply it in the years to come. He knew little about this region of the Empire, but his gut told him that, much like Empires that had existed back on Earth, this Empire was not static. It was not done growing, and there would always be new threats. New challenges. And those who did not learn the lessons of its founding — who failed to grasp the necessity of the methods the Emperor and his supporters used — would find themselves crushed or pushed aside by those who did. Because they had learned and had the will to do what was necessary.
Klarion put his things away, all the while thinking over how similar his situation now was to that of the Emperor’s so long ago.
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