[ZAYRAKH’S POV]
"You are the next Malik of Eshkaran, Zayrakh. The blood of our dynasty runs through your veins, and Azhar, the guardian of Fire, has answered your call. Three other elemental powers bow to your command. Remember what that means, my son. The empire is yours. Its gold, its armies, its temples, its people, all that lies beneath the heavens of Eshkaran belongs to you."
I was a child when my father and the previous Malik spoke those words.
My father rested a hand upon my shoulder. He smiled as he spoke, but I remembered his eyes far more clearly than his smile.
They were dark and hungry.
There was no love in them, only the satisfaction of a man who had spent his life gathering power and had finally produced an heir through whom his conquests might continue.
To him, I was not merely his son. I was the vessel that would preserve his name, his authority, and the empire he had taught himself to call his own.
"The world belongs to the strong; the weak may pray to the gods for mercy. The strong decide whether their prayers are answered."
I believed him.
When the priests of the Temple of Seven announced me as the next Malik, the court bowed as one. Gold ornaments chimed against silk. Foreheads lowered toward the polished stone. The generals who had commanded armies before my birth knelt before me, and the great noble houses that claimed descent from ancient kings offered their oaths with lowered eyes.
I watched them all from the foot of the throne.
They had not changed overnight, the same men who had once spoken around me as though I were a child unworthy of their attention now measured every word in my presence. The same nobles who had smiled at my father with calculated affection now bent their heads before his heir.
I understood then.
People did not bow to a name; they bowed to what the name could do to them.
Power could turn insolence into obedience. Gold could purchase loyalty, or at least a convincing imitation of it. And fear could make a man kneel even while hatred poisoned his heart.
In a palace, a man without power was no better than a carved stool beneath the royal dais. He could be used, discarded, or replaced, and no one would remember that he had ever stood there.
And I would never become such a man.
That night, beneath the painted ceiling of my private chamber, I stood before a bronze mirror and repeated the lesson my father had given me.
"Everything belongs to me."
The words sounded small in the silence.
I said them again.
"The empire and everything beneath the heavens...is mine."
I carried that word into every chamber of the palace, every council meeting, every battlefield. I learned to command before I learned to trust.
I learned to recognize treachery in a smile and ambition beneath a bow. I learned that mercy, when offered without calculation, could become an invitation for the cruel to strike again.
And I became very good at making others afraid.
Azhar answered my summons with fire that blackened stone. The three other elemental powers within my Aether Core strengthened beneath years of discipline, and the court began to whisper that the blood of the ancient dynasty had never burned so fiercely.
By the time I approached adulthood, I had come to believe there was nothing in Eshkaran beyond my reach until I saw him.
CLANG!
The sharp report rang through the imperial training grounds, beneath the colossal statues of ancient kings.
Sunlight spilled over the sandstone courtyard, where the shadows of carved lions stretched across the ground.
I had been returning from a council meeting when the sound reached me.
I should have continued toward my chambers.
CLANG!
I turned toward the courtyard; a gathering of knights stood around the training arena, their attention fixed upon a single figure.
He stood beneath the sun with a sword in his hand.
He wore dark training trousers, tied securely at the waist, and nothing above them. His dark hair fell across his forehead, damp with sweat. The afternoon light traced the powerful lines of his shoulders and chest, catching on the sheen of his skin as he moved.
He was young, but there was nothing uncertain about him.
His body carried the evidence of relentless training: broad shoulders, a strong back, and muscles that shifted beneath his skin with every controlled movement. He did not waste strength on grand gestures or unnecessary flourishes. Each strike was deliberate, each step measured, each turn executed with a precision that made the men facing him appear clumsy.
He moved as though the sword were not a weapon he had learned to wield but an extension of his own will.
I remained beneath the shadow of a sandstone arch, watching the exchange with an interest I could not immediately explain.
"Lord Vaerun Veyrath," one of the guards murmured nearby.
The name stirred a familiar memory. The heir of House Veyrath, the prodigy whose command of Veyra (Air) had already earned the attention of the imperial military. A young noble with an exceptional Aether Core, a formidable sword arm, and little patience for courtly games.
I had read reports about him, yet none of those reports had prepared me for the sight of him beneath the afternoon sun.
The way he reached for a bronze vessel of water to drink, his throat moving with the swallow. A sheen of sweat ran down his temple and along his jaw. His chest rose and fell as he caught his breath, and the muscles in his arms remained taut around the hilt of his sword.
I watched the water glisten on his lower lip, but Vaerun Veyrath had been different, and that day I had discovered a desire I had never known how to name.
I want that person.
I wanted his attention. his trust and his presence. I wanted those silver eyes to look at me and see something other than the Malik of Eshkaran, and from that day onward, I began to pursue what I wanted.
My fascination deepened into an obsession I could neither satisfy nor abandon. I became Malik. I inherited the golden throne, the armies, the treasury, and the authority my father had promised me as a child, yet the one man I wanted remained beyond my reach.
Vaerun looked at me with the same composed courtesy he offered any sovereign, and sometimes, when my attention lingered too long, there was something colder in his silver eyes.
Disgust and that disgust could ruin my entire day with a single glance.
I loved him; the truth had long since ceased to be something I could deny, even to myself. Yet what was love worth when the person you loved could look straight through you? What was the purpose of possessing an empire if I could not possess the one man who mattered?
I had spent ten years trying to answer those questions, and now, just when I had begun to believe that patience might eventually yield something, Vaerun had given his name to a child.
Seyra Veyrath, whom he had accepted without hesitation.
My fingers tightened against the golden armrest.
How can I allow this?
I had endured his indifference for years. I had tolerated his refusal to acknowledge what lay beneath my attention, his maddening composure, and his habit of treating my interest as though it were no more significant than the weather, but I would not endure the sight of him giving everything I wanted to someone else.
I would erase every obstacle that dared to stand between Vaerun and me. Including Seyra Veyrath.
Until I saw the elemental beast behind her.
I knew the weight of that power, the ancient authority woven into its essence, the unmistakable pressure that accompanied a guardian whose existence stood far above the elemental spirits contracted by ordinary humans.
Because I had felt it within my own Aether Core.
Azhar.
My guardian, the highest elemental spirit of fire, whose power had passed through the royal bloodline for generations. The ancient flame that had answered my summons, obeyed my commands, and reduced my enemies to ash, and now, its manifestation, stood behind a four-year-old girl.
Protecting her.
Its burning eyes followed Tazira’s every movement, its enormous body angled toward the noblewoman as though it were giving shape to the child’s unspoken anger.
But how could a child without an Aether Core possess a manifestation of the highest guardian of Fire?
. . .
. . .
I sighed. Whatever it is, I could not let her snatch away the one person I had spent ten years trying to make mine.
But---
"I SHOULD NEVER HAVE THOUGHT YOU COULD BE MY OTHER PARENT!"
Seyra’s voice trembled, but her violet eyes burned with a pain that seemed far too old for a child of four, and why...why is this girl guarded by seven elemental beasts behind her?
[END OF MALIK ZAYRAKH’S POV]