Page 93 of Empire of Wrath and Ruin
He pointed toward the Imperial box, though the Emperor hadn't yet shown himself. "My father would have you believe that this is necessary. That we must choose between strength and compassion, between victory and honour. But that is the greatest lie of all."
The crowd was truly listening now, hanging on every word. Even the prisoners had grown quiet, hope flickering in their eyes like candleflames in a storm.
"We can be strong without being cruel," Jalend declared. "We can be victorious without being monsters. We can build an Empire worthy of the name—not built on the bones of the innocent, but on the willing loyalty of free peoples who choose to stand with us because we offer them something better than fear."
I found myself nodding, caught up in the vision he painted. This was what I'd dreamed of in my darkest moments—a world where power served justice rather than the other way around. Where strength protected rather than conquered.
"Today, I ask you to choose," the prince said, his voice dropping to something almost intimate despite the vastness of the arena. "Choose between the Empire you've been told to accept and the Empire you know we could become. Choose between the easy cruelty of the arena and the harder mercy of true civilization."
He gestured toward the cages one final time. "These people are not our enemies. They are our future subjects—if we prove ourselves worthy of their allegiance. They are the test of who we really are when we think no one is watching."
The silence that followed his words was so complete I could hear the wind stirring the sand at my feet. Sixty thousand people held their breath as one, and for a moment—just oneperfect, crystalline moment—I believed we might actually reach them. That the prince's words might crack through decades of conditioning and show them the truth of what they were celebrating.
"How touching."
Then Emperor Valerius rose from his throne.
The man who had sired Jalend looked nothing like his son. Where the prince carried himself with quiet dignity, the Emperor radiated a cold arrogance that seemed to freeze the very air around him. His purple robes caught the sunlight like spilled blood, and when he spoke, his voice cut through the arena's acoustics with the precision of a blade.
Even from this distance, I could see the fury radiating from him like heat from a forge.
"Magnificent," he called out, his voice carrying effortlessly across the arena despite its conversational tone. "Truly magnificent. Such passion, such conviction. You always were gifted with words, my son," he said, and the final two words dripped with such contempt that I felt them like physical blows. "My traitorous, pathetic excuse for an heir."
The crowd stirred uneasily, sensing the shift in the air. This wasn't part of the scheduled entertainment—this was something raw and dangerous unfolding before their eyes.
"You return to us not as a prince of the realm, but as a traitor," the Emperor continued, his voice carrying easily to every corner of the arena. "Dressed in the garb of slaves, speaking the words of weakness, standing with our enemies."
I watched Jalend's shoulders straighten, saw his chin lift with defiant pride despite the public humiliation.
The crowd had turned toward the Emperor now, their attention shifting like moths to flame. This was their true master, the source of all authority in their world. Whateverdoubts Jalend's words might have planted were already withering under the weight of imperial presence.
"You think these cattle," he gestured dismissively toward the cages, "deserve your noble mercy? They are resources, nothing more. Fuel for the machine that keeps our Empire strong. Their deaths serve a purpose far greater than their miserable lives ever could."
I felt Livia's hand brush against mine, a brief touch that might have been meant to comfort but only reminded me how far we'd travelled from safety, how exposed we were on this stage of sand and blood.
"And you," the Emperor's gaze fixed on his son with the intensity of a striking serpent, "you stand there in the armour of a slave, speaking of honour? You, who abandoned your duty? You, who turned your back on everything I built for you?"
His voice began to rise, the careful control cracking to reveal the fury beneath. "I gave you armies to command, provinces to rule, a throne to inherit. And what did you do with these gifts? You threw them aside to play hero with a handful of malcontents and murderers."
The words hit Jalend like physical blows. I could see him flinch, see the certainty drain from his face as his father's contempt washed over him. This wasn't just political theatre—this was personal, a father destroying his son in front of the world.
"You were weak then," the Emperor continued, his voice dropping back to that terrible conversational tone. "Running from your responsibilities, hiding behind noble sentiments and pretty speeches about justice. You are weak now, standing in my arena making demands as if you had any right to speak in my presence."
He leaned forward, gripping the marble rail of his box with white knuckles. "You want to know why I told the world youwere dead? Because you were. The moment you chose them over your own blood, over your own Empire, you ceased to be my son."
The silence that followed was deafening. I could hear my own heartbeat, could feel the crystal's pull across the sand, pulsing in rhythm with my pulse. The whispers were getting louder now, feeding on the raw emotion that filled the arena like smoke.
"Guards," the Emperor said, the word falling into the silence like a stone into still water.
That single command broke whatever spell had held the crowd. Cheers erupted from the stands—not the uncertain murmur of people wrestling with conscience, but the bloodthirsty roar of citizens whose loyalty had been reaffirmed, whose bloodlust had been given fresh purpose.
"Kill them all."
The words echoed across the arena, and I felt something crack inside my chest. Not my ribs, though they felt tight enough to snap. Something deeper. Some last fragile hope that maybe, just maybe, we could win this without becoming monsters ourselves.
Guards poured from every tunnel, their armour glinting in the afternoon sun like scales on some vast serpent. Dozens of them, then hundreds, moving with the practiced efficiency of men who had done this countless times before. They spread across the sand in perfect formation, cutting off every avenue of escape, surrounding us with a wall of steel and malice.
The whispers in my head were no longer whispers. They were screams now, voices of rage and despair and ancient madness clawing at the inside of my skull. I could feel darkness bleeding from my skin like ink in water, shadows that writhed and twisted with lives of their own.
