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By dawn, the world had softened into shades of silver and pearl. Birds stirred. Thin mist coiled low across the undergrowth. The wagon waited beneath a cradle of boughs, dew glittering on its canvas. Ryan's eyelids were heavy when Scarlette roused him—wordlessly, with a simple tilt of her chin toward the road ahead.
It was Scarlette who took the reins.
Ryan, his injuries stiff and nagging, settled onto the flat of the wagon bed. The rhythmic creak of axles, the soft clop of hooves, and the hush of wind through leaves layered together into a weary lullaby.
The Empire's spine—the old Imperial Road—was a thing of understated grandeur. Wide and leveled, lined intermittently with ward‑stones etched in ancient sigils, it ran like a gray artery through the heart of Silveria. Milestones bore the stylized crest of a sunburst crown: faint, weather‑worn, yet still unmistakable.
Silveria Empire.
The oldest of the 4 Great Empires on the Miris Continent.
A continent seated on the broader world of Hesperia, hemmed by ocean and bordered by lands that had long since fallen into ruin.
Beyond the empire's lawful borders, there were tracts of desolation that maps marked only in muted colors: Void Plains—territories ravaged by time and monsters, where old cities lay buried beneath dunes or strangled by ash.
Within the Civilized Belt of the continent, four major empires held sway, each orbited by smaller kingdoms kept steady through trade, oaths, or necessity. Among them, Silveria was oldest—founded over two millennia ago in the shadow of the Dark Abyss War, a conflict that had almost devoured civilization.
The story went like this:
In the age when the world tottered, Silveria's First Founding Emperor came to this land from another world—summoned by the sorcerers of that desperate era. Some swore he wielded both aura and mana—the sole Magic Swordmaster. Others believed the tale a metaphor, a sort of myth to bind fragmented people together when the soil still smoked with ruin.
The lore was vague.
Intentionally so.
The ancient archives—what few fragments still existed—never agreed on detail.
But everyone agreed on the result: the Empire endured.
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The wagon creaked onward. Morning unraveled into a pale, gilded ribbon of light, and the road ahead widened, then narrowed, then climbed again over low, old hills. The wind carried scents of pine and damp earth, the distant sweetness of flowering shrubs, and the faint bitterness of moss.
Scarlette drove in silence. She had handed him a waterskin earlier without a word. He took it, swallowed, and let the quiet stretch.
After a time, he cleared his throat.
"I know there are ancient accounts," he said, "about otherworlders summoned long ago. Especially during the Dark Abyss War. I can't tell if they're historical records, or just stories people wanted to believe."
His tone was casual. He pretended to be idly curious about history. But the truth hummed beneath his words. He wanted to understand Silveria, its foundations, its miracles—and why Scarlette felt so… interwoven with the weight of those myths.
"What do you think," he added carefully, "Scarlette?"
The crimson‑haired woman angled her head, just a fraction, as if to show she was listening. Her eyes remained on the road. The veil hid the set of her mouth.
"Facts or not," she said at last, "we cannot tell. Words deceive more easily than eyes do."
Ryan scratched his cheek. Cryptic, but… fair.
He hesitated, then pushed his luck.
"Are you sure you're not a Magic Swordmaster, Scarlette?"
Her sigh was immediate—soft, but unequivocal.
"No." She flicked the reins gently; the horse responded with a smooth, patient gait. "Ask again, and I leave you behind."
Ryan's spine straightened. "N‑no more questions!"
Silence returned like a curtain fall. The wagon wheels kissed gravel. A hawk traced an arc across the sky, riding a warm column of rising air.
After a while, when he thought he had earned back some meager stock of courage, he tried again—softly this time, careful not to prod.
"Ahm… Scarlette?"
No answer.
He continued anyway.
"I know you don't want to talk about it. But—last night…" He coughed. "I'm not prying. I just… as your companion, I thought—if you needed someone to listen, I could. I mean—only if you want to."
Scarlette's gloved fingers tightened on the reins by a hair's breadth—so subtle he might have imagined it. She turned slightly, enough to glance at him over her shoulder.
"Why," she asked—flat, pared down to a single blade‑thin word—"would you want to know?"
Even without seeing her full expression, Ryan could feel the sliver of cold running through her tone. It wasn't anger. Not exactly. It was the kind of sharpness born of old edges—things honed too long and worn too deep.
He swallowed.
"I… because you looked like you were carrying too much alone," he said honestly. "People admire you, but—no matter how strong someone is—there are days the burden gets heavy. Having someone listen can help. Even if they don't understand it all."
Scarlette looked away—just a tilt of her head forward again, eyes on the road. For a breath, her voice was still. When words finally came, they were quiet. Steady. But there was a hairline crack—barely there—in the sound.
"Even if I told you," she said, "you would not understand. The more I explained, the more it would perplex you."
The air around them felt thinner.
Ryan frowned—not at her, but at the ache in that reserved voice. He wanted to reach for something that wouldn't bruise—some response that would not feel like prying—and found none. He understood the shape of silence better than he wanted to.
He rested his head back against the wagon's sideboard and let the wheels and road speak for a while.
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Hesperia's histories were full of gaps, like manuscripts eaten by time. The First Founding Emperor—the so‑called Magic Swordmaster—appeared often as a figure painted, then smudged. Someone placed carefully in myth and buried carefully in fact. What little the public archives still held claimed that:
-He was summoned to this world during the last, blood‑red days of the Dark Abyss War.
-He forged the first Imperial Wards—vast, ritual chains that bound regions together into sanctuaries against the abyss.
-He drafted the earliest Concords between martial houses and magic schools, forcing sword and sorcery to coexist.
-He laid the foundations of the Imperial Road, a network some believed was more ritual than stone.
-He vanished after the war ended—some said ascended, others said simply walked away.
But none of this was settled enough to press into a classroom slate. Scholars argued. Priests quoted. Old men swore they knew the truth. Archivists poured over crumbling vellum only to find five accounts that contradicted the sixth.
Even the Emperor's name slipped through history like water through fingers.
Ryan turned it all over in his mind.
If he truly existed… then the impossible became real once. And if it became real once…
He cut the thought off. No. It was a dangerous loop to get trapped in. And the last person he should project it onto was sitting three feet from him driving a wagon like she was born to rule the horizon.
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