He had heard the rumors, of course. Everyone had. Half of Wrohan treated foreign empires as gossip with better uniforms, and Agaron - old Agaron, impossible Agaron, the one people still spoke about with lowered voices whenever ether did something inconveniently mythical - had always collected the strangest stories.
Its emperors were chosen by ether.
Liam had assumed it was a metaphor.
A political fairy tale turned into state propaganda. A dramatic explanation for the stability of dynasties. This is what old empires invented when they needed peasants to look at a bloodline and call it destiny rather than administration.
But Arik stood in the marked zone with gold light climbing his skin like reverence, and for the first time Liam understood how such a lie could survive long enough to become history.
Because it had never been a lie at all.
Arik's eyes shone.
