Eterna The First Named Continent of the 7.
Known as the land of Gold but the people called the land Eternal, but its heart was always the same city.
It was impossible to ignore, wedged like a golden spike through the continent's center, ringed by walls that shimmered with centuries of layered enchantments.
Even on the rare clear day, a haze of mana rose from its towers and gardens, and the thousand rivers that fed it glistened with the dissolved ambitions of all who'd come seeking power.
The city itself and by default answered to one man: His Radiance King Laurence Eterna XI, who'd held the throne since before the current generation of Dukes learned to walk.
They called it the Undying Continent, but the truth was simpler.
The thing that didn't die was the hierarchy since Its bones had been fixed in place for centuries, and nothing so quaint as an individual's will could shift them.
At the top of the table was the Grand Dukes of St. Germain, who ruled the Eternal City in the King's stead, and would again produce the next lineage of prophesied heroes.
They wore their legacy like a weapon, and everyone else wore it like a collar.
Below them, the three great pillars, the Duke houses, kept the rest of the continent from collapsing inward.
House Bourne, out west, was the axis of balance. They were the kingdom's accountants, its administrators, its most loyal governors and, it was rumored, its most efficient assassins.
No one in living memory had ever caught a Bourne in a lie, but perhaps that was because no one in living memory had survived trying.
In the south, House Baltazar: a dynasty of warriors so obsessed with improvement that even their servants trained with live steel.
Galagar Baltazar, head of the house, was said to be the Strongest Swordsman in the World, though only idiots and foreigners needed that proved.
The Baltazars could field an army of ten thousand off nothing but extended family, and their dueling culture had thinned enough cousins to keep the rest hungry.
To the east, House d'Árcenne: the mage of prodigies.
If House St. Germain was the seat of prophecy, the d'Árcennes were the source of its power.
They made and unmade laws of nature in the time it took lesser nobles to schedule a banquet.
The current matriarch, Lady Jessamine, was one of only three living archmages, and the only one to have traversed the entire worlds without losing her sanity.
Together, St. Germain, Bourne, Baltazar, and d'Árcenne maintained the neat, perfect little lie called the Golden Peace.
It was written in every child's schoolbook, recited in every pageant, and enforced with such clinical perfection that even those ground to dust beneath it had to admit: things could always be worse.
***
[Aurelian's POV]
The week after the Day of Golden Truth, Corwin came home late with the smell of expensive ink and sharper stress clinging to him.
He announced the news at the dinner table, carefully avoiding Marienne's eyes as he unfolded a pale yellow letter sealed with the main house sigil.
His hand trembled just enough to rattle the cutlery.
"Aurelian," he said, voice pitched somewhere between pride and disbelief.
"The main house has given me a special commission. I'll be delivering a consignment to the Academy. Highest-priority, straight to the research wing, and I'm to hand it off personally."
He waited for Marienne's gasp as her delighted hands to fly to her cheeks as she proclaimed it an honor. She performed her part with flawless timing, but I was watching my father's face.
It was not pride that pinched the skin around his eyes. It was the look of a man noticing his own footprints leading up a cliff.
I asked, because I knew I had to know.
"What are you delivering?"
"A crate of raw mana crystals," he replied, too quickly.
"Rare, high-grade. The kind they use for top-level enchantments and experimental arrays. They said I'm to treat it as if it's worth more than my life."
"Ah," I said, because I didn't trust myself not to say anything else.
The next morning, I cornered him as he polished the brass clasps of his travel case, the way he always did before a trip that made him anxious.
"Father, if you like, I can come with you. The Academy's having an open house. I could get a sense of the place. Maybe even see the demonstration halls."
Corwin blinked at me and I knew it wasn't something I would ever say.
"You want to see the Academy? For your own sake?"
I nodded.
"It's only a few days' travel. And... I want to see what it's like. To know more."
He beamed approval, the way only fathers desperate to believe their son was turning out normal could.
"Of course! Of course, We'll make a trip of it."
…
…
…
By the time Corwin had finished repacking his travel case for the fourth time, I'd already diagrammed the next three days' with all these disaster scenarios in the back of my mind.
If Eterna had a Golden Age, it was always at the edges and riddled with dry rot beneath.
The Royal Highway in particular was a well-documented corridor of "opportunity" for those with a flexible relationship to property law.
Even before the Abyssal War, bandits and enterprising militias had cut their teeth on these roads, and after five centuries of "order," they'd simply grown more sophisticated.
But the real risk wasn't the road. It was the cargo.
High-grade raw mana crystals weren't just valuable, they were volatile—one miscalculation and you had a crater where a person used to be.
Worse, everyone from here to the Capital knew the Academy paid idiot money for these. It was like spritzing yourself with fresh blood before wading into a lake full of sharks.
I asked Corwin, as mildly as possible, "Why can't we use the family's array? Wouldn't that be safer than open road?"
He smiled, the way men do when they think you're asking so they can explain.
"The main house said the resonance is too risky. They had a scryer run the numbers. If you try to port mana of this grade, it can shatter the containment and, well—"
He mimed a small explosion with his hands.
"Best case, you lose the cargo. Worst case, you lose everyone in the receiving chamber. We have to do it the old way."
I nodded. It was the answer I expected, and the answer I would have given in his place.
But my mind kept circling back to the word "containment."
The way Corwin said it, with a little shudder, not quite concealed.
I watched him assemble his travel kit with the same ritual he'd used for every business trip since I was old enough to remember.
The battered old satchel that held an abacus, spare papers, a fountain pen and a flask of cheap brandy for when the numbers didn't add up.
He checked his leather armor, a relic from the Academy's years, and ran a sharpening stone down the blade of a serviceable but ordinary shortsword.
He wasn't delusional. He knew what could happen on the roads between here and the Capital. But he still wore the armor like a merit badge and treated the sword like a high school diploma—important, but mostly ceremonial.
He caught me watching.
"Worried for me already, Aurelian?"
I forced a smile, then let it fade. "The main house could have sent this by bonded courier, or hired the Balthazars' own. But they're sending you. You ever wonder why?"
He let the question hang, the way only a man with a conscience could. "Maybe they wanted to see if I'd make a hash of it. Or maybe they just wanted to see if I'd come back."
He tried to say it as a joke, but couldn't quite manage the laugh.