Prince Kaldor Valerian was born screaming, and the midwives swore the sound cracked the crystal chandelier in the birthing hall.

His father, Emperor Valerian the Unbroken, ruled from the Eternal Throne, a seat forged from the melted crowns of a hundred conquered kingdoms.

His mother, Kaltriss Valerian, second wife and High Chair of the Nobles Eternal Court, wore her beauty like a garrote wire.

Kaldor was five when he first drew blood.

A training sword, too heavy for his arms, slipped during sparring and opened the stable boy’s thigh to the bone.

The boy bled out in the straw.

Kaldor watched, fascinated, then asked the swordmaster if the red made the blade prettier.

The swordmaster was found hanged in his quarters the next morning.

Official cause:suicide by shame.

At seven, he could recite the Twelve Edicts of Rule while disarming grown knights blindfolded.

At nine, he poisoned his governess for correcting his pronunciation of “mercy.”

The poison was slow.

She lasted three days.

Kaldor brought her tea every morning and asked if she felt better.

The Academy of the Crimson Spire took him at ten.

By twelve, he was untouchable.

Golden hair, sapphire eyes, a smile that made duchesses blush and generals kneel.

He spoke in perfect courtly cadence, bowed with exquisite grace, and never raised his voice.

Then came Cadet Rhen Tallow.

Rhen was a merchant’s son, clever, loud, and stupid enough to speak truth in the refectory.

“Your father’s a tyrant. A despot who taxes breath and calls it loyalty. The empire bleeds because he’s too busy polishing his throne to notice.”

Kaldor laughed along with the others.

Later, in the moonlit dormitory, he sat on Rhen’s chest and slid a stiletto between the boy’s ribs—slow, deliberate.

Rhen gurgled, tried to scream.

Kaldor covered his mouth with a silk glove and whispered:

“Shh. Father says manners maketh man.”

The body was found at dawn.

Official cause: tragic accident during night training.

The stiletto vanished.

Rhen’s tongue was nailed to the academy gate as a reminder.

No investigation.

No trial.

The Emperor sent a gift: a new sword, Mercy’s Edge, forged from star-iron and inlaid with sapphires.

The blade was beautiful.

It drank blood like wine.

Kaldor wore it at his hip from that day forward.

He smiled at banquets, kissed babies, and signed execution orders with the same hand.

At fifteen, he led his first purge.

A border duchy had withheld grain tithes.

Kaldor rode in at dawn, golden armor gleaming, and burned the granaries with the peasants still inside.

He stood on a hill and watched the flames, head tilted like a child admiring fireworks.

“Father says *sacrifice builds character,*” he told his aide. “They’ll thank us when they’re thinner.”

The aide was found floating in the palace moat a week later.

Official cause: drowning in loyalty

On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, the empire threw a Grand Jubilee

Fireworks painted the sky.

Wine flowed like rivers.

The Eternal Throne room was packed with nobles in silk and gold.

Kaldor entered last, Mercy's Edge sheathed at his hip, six orbiting blades humming like a choir of razors.

He bowed to his father.

He kissed his mother’s hand.

Then he smiled, then moved

Mercy's Edge flashed once.

The Emperor’s throat opened in a perfect red smile.

Kaltriss had time for one gasp before an orbiting blade punched through her eye and out the back of her skull.

The room froze.

Kaldor stood between the corpses, blood dripping from his golden gauntlets, and smiled the same smile he’d worn at twelve.

"Father always said the throne was eternal He just never specified whose eternity.”

The blades spun faster.

Nobles dropped to their knees.

Some wept.

Some pissed themselves.

All swore allegiance before the blood cooled.

Official cause of death: 'Assasination by unknown parties'

The bodies were burned at dawn.

Kaldor sat the Eternal Throne that night, still wearing his father’s crown, still tasting his mother’s blood on the air. But the Chaos Weaver appeared and snatched him from his usurped throne.

Now, in the Fractured Abyss, dropped into a world of meat gods and starving cities, Emperor Kaldor Valerian smiles the same smile he wore when he murdered his parents.

“Fear not, citizens. Your liberation is at hand.”

The blades sing.

The empire burns.

And somewhere, a child hands a blood-stained gangster a handkerchief embroidered with Hope.

The palace burned like a god’s funeral pyre.

Ash fell in slow, black snow.

Screams rose and died in the heat.

Jax came down the hill, boots dragging through blood that hadn’t decided if it was mud yet.

Cigarette glowing.

Suit shredded.

Face half-cooked.

Valerian waited at the bottom, golden armor perfect.

Not a scratch.

Not a speck.

Six blades orbited him like caged comets, tight, twitching, humming a song that sounded like soon.

Elara’s warning about southern reinforcements never left her mouth.

One blade snapped to her throat, edge kissing skin.

“Go woman, I'll not tolerate you much longer”

She spat—“Ko’lir’tik” (Pig Fucker, in her language)—and vanished in a crack of lightning.

Valerian didn’t blink.

His eyes were locked on Jax.

The gangster stopped two paces away.

Close enough to smell the prince’s rosewater.

Close enough to see the lie in his smile.

“You reek,” Valerian whispered, voice silk over a garrote.

“Gutter. Sewer. Vermin.”

Jax exhaled smoke through his nose.

It curled around Valerian’s face like a noose.

“Ground’s still red,” Jax rasped.

“Same as yours.”

Valerian’s smile didn’t move.

But Mercy’s Edge slid an inch from its sheath.

Unasked.

“You killed a god’s toy,” Valerian said, voice soft.

“Walked out of my war.

You dare.”

Jax flicked ash.

It hissed.

“Dare’s free.

Betrayal costs extra.”

Valerian’s blades tightened into a perfect circle.

The hum became a growl.

“You think I need you?”

His voice cracked—just once.

“You think the Weaver didn’t name you?”

Jax’s eyes narrowed.

The blades tilted—toward him.

“Something eating you, Goldilocks?”

Jax took one step closer.

“Clock’s ticking.

Spit it out.”

Valerian’s smile widened—too wide, too perfect, wrong.

“The Weaver promised one king,” he said, voice sweet.

“Not two.”

Mercy’s Edge sang.

Half-drawn.

Hungry.

Jax’s hand brushed the bowie.

Three heartbeats.

Four.

Valerian’s fingers curled around the hilt.

Jax’s thumb pressed the knife’s guard.

Then Valerian laughed—soft, perfect, poison.

“Another time,” he said, turning.

“When you’re clean.”

He walked away, cape flaring like a matador’s taunt.

The blades followed, trailing behind him like dogs on a leash.

Jax watched him go, lit another smoke off a still-burning corpse.

“Clock’s ticking, pretty boy,” he muttered. “Rats don’t wait for invitations.”

He walked the other way, into the city’s screaming dark.

Behind him, Valerian’s blades sang—a promise, not a threat.

The bathhouse was a tomb of cracked marble and scalding ghosts.

Steam hung thick, tasting of sulfur and old blood.

The water boiled—hot enough to blister.

Jax sat neck-deep, cigarette balanced on the rim of a cracked skull-urn, whiskey glass in one hand, bowie knife in the other under the water.

Thumb on the guard.

Eyes half-lidded.

Every muscle coiled.

The door groaned.

Steam split.

Elara stepped through, barefoot, towel clutched like a shield.

Her scent cut the haze: ozone, pine, storm.

Her scars glowed white against olive skin.

She froze.

“Didn’t know this tub was claimed,” she said, voice low, dangerous.

“It is,” Jax rasped.

Knife twitched under the water.

Invisible.

Ready.

Elara’s eyes flicked to the ripple.

Then to his face.

She dropped the towel.

Scars like lightning across her back.

She slid into the far end—slow.

Water hissed where it kissed her skin.

Silence.

Drip. Drip. Crackle.

She broke it.

“Valerian.”

One word.

A blade.

Jax took a slow sip of whiskey.

The glass clinked against his teeth.

“Golden prick with a crown fetish,” he said.

“Smiles like he’s already pissing on my grave.”

Elara’s fingers curled under the water.

Knuckles white.

“He hasn’t shut up about you,” she hissed.

“‘The rat dares.’ ‘The vermin breathes.’

He’s obsessed.”

Jax’s knife shifted.

A hair.

Enough.

“Obsessed gets you dead,” he said.

“Ask the last guy who measured my coffin.”

Elara leaned forward.

Steam parted.

Her eyes were storm-gray.

“The Weaver whispered to him,” she said.

“After you walked out of the fire.

He hasn’t slept.

Hasn’t blinked.”

Jax’s cigarette burned down to the filter.

He didn’t flick it.

“Good,” he said.

“Let him choke on it.”

Elara’s hand moved under the water.

Slow.

Deliberate.

“You always bathe with a blade?” she asked.

Jax’s grin was all teeth.

“Back home, the water was the second hottest thing in the tub.”

Elara’s fingers stopped.

An inch from his wrist.

“Valerian’s not the only one measuring coffins,” she whispered.

Jax’s knife rose—just enough to break the surface.

Water beaded on the edge.

“To mutual enemies,” he said.

Elara didn’t drink.

But her hand didn’t move either.

The water bubbled.

The knife gleamed.

Outside, the city screamed.

Inside, two predators waited.

The steam was thick enough to choke on.

Water boiled.

The air tasted of sulfur and old blood.

Jax sat neck-deep, cigarette down to the filter, whiskey glass half-empty, bowie knife under the water.

Thumb on the guard.

Eyes locked on Elara.

She shifted—slow, deliberate—to the far edge of the pool.

Scars glowed white.

Her towel lay discarded like a white flag.

“How many women have you fucked, Jax?”

Her voice cut the haze.

Sharp.

Testing.

Jax didn’t blink.

Knife twitched.

“Lost count after the first hundred,” he rasped.

“And no, I’m not interested.

Save the honeytrap for someone who gives a shit.”

Elara’s smile was thin.

Predatory.

“Good.”

She leaned back, water lapping at her collarbone.

Eyes never leaving his.

“If the Weaver’s in Valerian’s head,” she said, voice low, “we’re all dead.

Or just you.”

Jax took a slow sip.

The glass clinked against his teeth.

“Sounds like Golden Boy’s mind is a hallway with one door,” he said.

“Weak lock.

Easy pick.”

Elara’s fingers curled under the water.

Knuckles white.

“My people see minds,” she said.

“Valerian’s?

A single corridor.

One way in.

One way out.

The Weaver’s already walking it.”

Jax’s cigarette hissed dead in the water.

He didn’t flinch.

“So he’s a narrow-minded prick with a god in his ear,” Jax said.

“Been killed for less.”

Elara’s eyes narrowed.

“The Weaver doesn’t speak to me,” she said.

“Doesn’t need to.

Valerian’s the key.

You’re the lock he wants broken.”

Jax’s knife rose—just enough to break the surface.

Water beaded on the edge.

“Then he’s gonna need a bigger hammer,” Jax said.

Elara’s hand moved—slow, under the water.

Not a weapon.

A warning.

“Watch your back, Harlan,” she whispered.

“Valerian’s blades don’t miss twice.”

Jax grinned.

All teeth.

All blood.

“Neither does mine.”

Elara dared not to delve into Jax's mind