The heavy, gold-chased doors to the Emperor's private solar swung shut with a soft, definitive thud, sealing Valerius II Martellon away from the echoes of the Pillars' reports. The weight of the Bridge-Crown felt like a band of cold iron. He stood for a long moment in the center of the room, the last of the colored light from the stained-glass windows stretching long across the Sky-Fall marble. Then, with a sigh that seemed to come from the foundation stones of Aethelspire itself, he reached up and removed the circlet.
It left a pale, indented line on his brow. He placed it on a velvet cushion atop a simple table, next to a half-finished model of a silver bridge, carved from pearwood. Without its symbolic weight, he looked older. The carefully maintained posture of the throne slackened, revealing the tired slope of his shoulders beneath the azure silk.
"Send for my son," he said, his voice no longer the resonant instrument of state, but thinner, weathered.
A steward bowed and slipped away. The Emperor moved to a window that looked west, over the capital's spires and beyond, to the hazy outline of the Verdant Veil. A crafted blight. The phrase, delivered in High Arcanist Selene's cool tone, circled in his mind like a vulture. Elara was right, of course. She always was. It was a declaration of war, not with banners, but with rot. And he had dismissed it as an administrative concern.
He heard the approach before the announcement—a firm, measured tread he knew as well as his own heartbeat. The doors opened.
"You summoned me, Father?"
Crown Prince Cassian stood in the doorway, a young mirror of the Emperor's fading majesty. At nineteen, he had the Martellon height and sharp grey eyes, but his face lacked the deep lines of care, the permanent furrow of a burden carried too long. He wore the simpler blue and silver of the heir, a sword at his hip—not ceremonial, but well-balanced and worn. He had his mother's directness in his gaze.
"Come in, Cassian. Close the doors."
The prince did so, crossing the room to stand before his father. He glanced at the abandoned crown on the cushion, then back at the Emperor's face. "The council was long."
"And unproductive," Valerius said, turning from the window. "They bring me puzzles with missing pieces and expect me to solve them with blunt instruments. Sit."
He gestured to two high-backed chairs near the cold fireplace. They sat, the space between them filled with the unsaid.
"The reports," Valerius began, steepling his fingers. "Banditry up twelve percent in the south. The Frostheim garrisons bleeding the treasury. The Draken clans testing our borders. The Merchant Kings of the Concord whispering of financing private navies." He listed them off like a grim inventory. "And a noble in the Sunscar Expanse executed for trafficking Umbral contraband. A 'crafted blight' discovered in the fringe of the Whispering Weald."
Cassian leaned forward, his grey eyes intent. "A crafted blight? By whom?"
"By whom indeed," Valerius murmured. "That is the question I did not ask. That is the question your mother accused me of ignoring." He met his son's gaze. "I gave them answers of stability. Of measured response. Of law and protocol. I painted over the cracks with the gilding of imperial patience."
He paused, the admission hanging in the air. "I am a weak ruler, Cassian."
The prince stiffened. "Father, that's not—"
"It is the truth," Valerius interrupted, his voice quiet but absolute. "Not from lack of love for this empire. Not from cowardice. But from… weariness. The throne is a glacier, and I have been sitting atop it for thirty years, feeling it grind down the mountains of my will, my certainty. I look at a map and see borders to be managed. Your mother looks and sees wounds to be cauterized. The Pillars see statistics to be balanced. We have all become stewards of a magnificent, decaying machine, and we have forgotten how to be its sovereigns."
Cassian was silent, absorbing the brutal, unprecedented honesty.
"The Silver Bridge is more than platinum and a star-blue diamond," Valerius continued, his eyes distant. "It is a promise. A promise of connection, of safe passage, of unity between realms. The nobles whisper it has grown brittle. They are not wrong. I have been polishing the arch while the piers sink into mud."
He leaned forward, the aging Emperor vanished, replaced by a father imparting a final, crucial lesson. "Before you wear this," he said, pointing to the crown, "you must see what it truly governs. Not from these towers. Not from reports on vellum. You must put your boots on the soil of the realm and feel its fever."
Cassian's breath caught. "Father?"
"I am sending you on a Progress. A royal tour, but not of pageantry. A tour of fealty and observation. You will travel to the great Ducal seats—Valtor, Stormcrest, Kray. You will visit the troubled borders in Ashfall and the Shattered Isles. You will stand in the blighted fields of the Oakhaven fringe and smell the corruption. You will listen to the Merchant Kings in their counting houses and hear the greed in their voices. You will look into the eyes of the garrison soldiers on the Frostheim walls and see their frostbite and their fortitude."
The Emperor's voice gained a sliver of its old strength, forged now not for command, but for conviction. "You will ask for their oaths of fealty, not for me, but for the throne you will one day occupy. But more importantly, you will watch. You will learn. You will see the domain beyond the books and the maps. You will understand why the bridge is brittle, and you will begin to learn, in your heart and in your mind, what it will take to make it strong again. You must learn to see the symptoms, as your mother does, and not just hear the complaints, as I have."
Cassian sat back, overwhelmed. The scope of it was terrifying. A Progress was traditional for an heir, but this… this was a mandate. An investigation. A first, lonely step into the weight of sovereignty.
"When do I leave?" he asked, his voice steady despite the whirlwind in his chest.
"Tomorrow at dawn. A modest retinue. Knights of the Argent Shield for honor, but also scouts from the Pillar of Echoes for truth. Your own eyes above all."
The Emperor rose, a sudden fragility in the movement. He placed a hand on his son's shoulder. The grip was still firm. "I have held this empire together by not rocking the boat, Cassian. That time is past. The currents are growing swifter. You must learn to steer into them, or be dashed upon the rocks. Do not make my mistake of mistaking stillness for strength."
Cassian stood, looking down at his father, seeing for the first time not just the Emperor, but the man who was tired of being one. "I will watch. I will learn."
"Good." Valerius's expression softened by a hair. "Now go. Prepare. And see your mother before you retire. She will have… thoughts."
The prince bowed, a deep, respectful bow not just to his Emperor, but to his father. He turned and left the solar, the future pressing down on him like a physical cloak.
---
Cassian found the Empress in the Grey Gallery, a long hall lined with portraits of Martellon ancestors. She was not looking at the fierce faces of kings and conquerors, but standing before a large, detailed map of the empire inlaid into the floor, her Verdant Veil silk gown pooling around her.
"Mother."
Empress Elara turned. Her sharp grey eyes, which missed nothing in the council chamber, now held a different intensity—softer, deeper, fraught with a private dread. She said nothing, simply opened her arms.
Cassian stepped into the embrace. He was taller than her, but in that moment, he felt like a child. She held him tightly for a long moment, then pulled back, her hands on his shoulders.
"He told you," she stated.
"The Progress. Yes."
"He is right to send you. And he is wrong to believe himself weak." Her voice was low, fierce. "He is a good man in an age that requires a hard one. His heart has been his cage. You… you have your father's heart, but you have my eyes. You must use both."
She looked down at the map, her toe touching the inlaid silver that marked the Whispering Weald. "The blight is the key. It is not an isolated tragedy. It is a probe. A test of the realm's vitality, sent by something that understands corruption better than growth. Your father sees a agricultural problem. I see a spear-point aimed at the heart of the Verdant King, and thus at one of the Twelve Pillars of the world itself."
She looked back at him, her gaze piercing. "You will go to Oakhaven. You will see this blight. You will not accept the assessor's reports. You will walk into the fields. You will talk to the farmers who are watching their legacy die. You will find the truth that the maps and the reports sanitize."
Cassian nodded. "I will."
Her composure cracked, just for a second. A mother's fear flickered across her regal features. She reached up and cupped his face. "Beyond that, my son, you must be careful. The land is restless. A traveling prince is a symbol, but also a target. The Spymaster's shadows will watch over you, but they cannot be everywhere. Trust your guards. Trust your instincts. Do not let courtly manners blind you to a knife in the dark."
She took a deep breath, mastering herself. "Seek fealty, yes. But more than that, seek understanding. Learn who bleeds for the empire, and who profits from its wounds. The future will be built on that knowledge."
She leaned forward and kissed his forehead, a gesture from a time before crowns and thrones. "You carry our hopes. You carry the bridge. But before you are a prince, you are my son." Her voice dropped to a fierce, almost inaudible whisper. "So you make sure, Cassian Martellon, that you tour this empire, and you learn its secrets, and you win its loyalty… and then you make absolutely sure that you come back. You return to me. Safely. Swear it."
In that moment, she was not the Empress chastising an Emperor in the Solar. She was a mother, staring at the precipice her child was about to walk along.
Cassian placed his hand over hers, his own grip strong. "I swear it, Mother. I will watch, I will learn, and I will return."
She searched his eyes, found the resolve there, and nodded, releasing him. The mask of the Empress settled back into place, but the worry remained in the lines around her eyes.
"Go and prepare," she said, her voice regal once more. "Dawn comes early. And the empire… the empire does not wait for princes to be ready."
Cassian bowed again and left her standing in the Grey Gallery, a green-clad figure alone amidst the stone-faced ancestors, her eyes fixed on the map as if she could already see the dangers her son would walk into, willing him the strength to see them first, and the wisdom to navigate the path between his father's weary caution and her own relentless clarity. The bridge's next architect was leaving the palace, and the realm held its breath.