My Empire

Chapter 5: Demon 1, Sylver 0

                                   ~~~Lord Sylver of Arcefracti~~~

The horse knickered happily as I drew the brush through her tangled mane, carefully unraveling the absolute mess of twigs and leaves the young foal had tangled into her mane rolling around in the dirt and mud.

I shook my head, amused, as Caramel shifted, clearly eager to get back outside to play with her siblings and get dirty all over again. I released the small horse, giving up on keeping her clean and watching as she trotted outside the stables with a joyful neigh, joining her fellow foals in absolutely wrecking the stablehands' plans for doing anything other than caring for them this afternoon.

The mother of all the excitable young horses, my best and favorite steed, trotted up next to me, nudging my shoulder with her soft nose. Eris had been my horse ever since she was a foal herself, and I was one of many young heirs running amok in the castle.

While most empires had a clear line of succession and a royal family, Arcefracti was a bit different. Here, instead of the child of the ruler taking over after their death, whoever is most worthy gets it.

I was an orphan, my parents dead when I was just a baby. I don't remember them, or how they died, just the orphanage I lived in until when I was 10, when the Lord of Arcefracti, my adoptive father Lord Kain, walked in and picked 12 children at random to become the heirs to his crown.

From the day I left that orphanage to go to Amissan and the home of the royal family, my entire life changed. I spent my days training, learning how to fight and lead and do everything a monarch needed to do alongside the other heirs, my competition, but also my friends, the only family I knew.

While during the day I was your average heir, just one of many royal princes and princesses living in the castle, at night I was someone entirely different.

At night, I was the Ghost. A fearsome killer of the night, deadly and unstoppable.

The other 11 heirs were bigger and stronger than me. I could never hope to defeat them and rule, not when the smallest of them was much taller and stronger than me. And our adoptive father, Lord Kain? He may have been slim like me, but everyone knew better than to associate his small stature with weakness. Kain was the strongest fighter in all of the empires, uncontested winner of the Contest of Champions for almost a decade at the time.

No, to even have a chance at the throne, I needed to fight my own way. Fair or not. Arcefracti may be an empire centered around honor and fair fights, but when my life depended on being the one to slay Lord Kain and take the throne, I couldn't afford to fight fair.

So I found my people. Assassins, killers of the night. And they taught me everything I know. And then, years later, after hiding and pretending to be just a silly kid who didn't care about the throne and just wanted the comfort and power of being a royal heir, I struck. Lord Kain fell under my blade on a moonless night (no, I definitely didn't pick a moonless night to take the throne so it'd be more dramatic, shush) and the next morning I sat on my throne with Lord Kain's dark gold crown in fragments under my feet, his dark emeralds crushed and his reign well and truly ended.

It took me some time to earn the trust and loyalty of my people with the way I took the throne, but I made sure they knew I was worth it. I helped the people, fed the poor, improved the orphanages and schools, made the infrastructure firm, improved trade, and made my empire flourish in a way it never did under Kain's rule. Many of the would-be heirs supported me, since I had followed the laws of inheritance and took my birthright from Kain, and I rewarded them with noble titles and lands of their own, my loyal generals and advisors.