[House Veyrath — Study Chamber — One Week Later — Early Morning]
Long ago, when the Twin Divine Dragons descended upon the mortal realm, the lands of Eshkaran were little more than scattered kingdoms ruled by warring chieftains.
The Golden Dragon of Creation and the White Dragon of Eternity bestowed upon humanity the blessing of elemental power, allowing mortals to form contracts with the sacred beasts born from the elements.
It was an age of miracles, and it was also the beginning of a thousand years of bloodshed.
Among the first to receive the dragons’ blessing were two ancient bloodlines in the Eshkaran Empire: House Veyrath and House Azrath.
House Veyrath formed a contract with Veyra, the White Leopard of Air, while House Azrath forged its bond with Azhar, the Crimson Tiger of Fire. Both were among the mightiest of the elemental guardians, beasts whose names alone could make lesser spirits bow their heads.
With such formidable guardians at their sides, the two houses rose above the rest.
The Veyraths commanded the winds and the armies that marched beneath their banners. The Azraths wielded the flames of war and, in time, ascended the imperial throne. Their influence extended beyond the battlefield into the courts, the temples, the markets, and the treasuries of Eshkaran.
Together, they possessed everything other noble houses coveted: power, wealth, land, and the ability to crush any rival who dared challenge their supremacy.
Yet strength did not bring peace.
For generations, House Azrath pursued the dream of uniting the noble houses beneath a single imperial order. It promised stability, prosperity, and an end to the endless feuds that bled the empire dry.
Some houses welcomed the proposal, and others saw an opportunity to seize power for themselves.
Behind closed doors, alliances were forged. Ancient grievances were revived. Noble families that had spent centuries fighting one another suddenly discovered a common enemy.
House Azrath...and House Veyrath.
The two bloodlines refused to surrender their authority to a coalition of ambitious nobles. Negotiations failed, threats followed, bribes changed hands, and assassins began slipping through palace corridors beneath the cover of darkness.
One by one, the boundaries of political rivalry were crossed.
A lord was found dead in his private chamber, a marquess vanished on the road to the capital, and entire bloodlines were accused of conspiring against the throne.
Then the imperial response came.
It was swift and merciless...and it did not stop at the gates of the palace.
The imperial family, backed by House Veyrath, launched a campaign to dismantle the rebellion. Noble titles were stripped away. Estates were seized. Bloodlines that had ruled for centuries were reduced to names in forgotten records.
Some houses fell beneath the sword, and others lost everything before a single blade was drawn. By the time the purge ended, the empire’s noble hierarchy had been reshaped in fire and blood.
The surviving houses learned a lesson they would pass down to their children for generations.
Never stand against the Azraths and never provoke the Veyraths.
For the two families had not merely defeated their enemies; they had made an example of them.
And so, from that age onward, a name spread through the empire’s halls, whispered behind silk screens and muttered over wine cups whenever the imperial family or the Grand Duchy was mentioned.
The Demons of Eshkaran.
. . .
. . .
"So," a small voice interrupted, "they were demons because they won?"
The question hung in the study chamber.
Master Belran Ashur paused, one hand resting upon an ancient scroll. Morning sunlight filtered through the latticed windows, casting narrow bands of gold across the polished floor. Bronze oil lamps stood between shelves of clay tablets, and the walls were carved with the victories of Eshkaran’s ancient kings.
Seated before him was Seyra Veyrath, her little legs barely reached the footrest beneath her chair. A writing tablet lay untouched before her, its surface covered with neat lines she had been instructed to copy.
She had listened to the entire history without interrupting.
Well, almost the entire history, now her violet eyes rested on her tutor with an unsettling stillness.
Master Belran smiled... It was a carefully arranged expression, the sort of smile a man wore when he believed himself far more intelligent than the person before him.
"Not simply because they won, my lady." His gaze lingered on her face, and the warmth in his smile failed to reach his eyes. "They were called the Demons of Eshkaran because of the cruelty with which they secured their victory. The old records speak of ambition, bloodshed, and a thirst for power that knew no bounds."
Seyra tilted her head.
"The records say that?"
"Indeed."
"All the records?"
For the briefest moment, his smile faltered.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because you said the nobles wanted to unite the houses, but then you said they wanted to destroy House Azrath and House Veyrath; those sound like two different things."
Master Belran regarded her in silence.
Seyra continued, her expression perfectly innocent.
"And if the nobles were the ones who hired assassins first, why are the Veyraths and Azraths the only ones called demons?"
A faint crease appeared between the tutor’s brows.
For a four-year-old, she asked rather inconvenient questions.
"The matter is more complicated than a child can understand. History is not always a matter of who struck first. Sometimes, it is the manner in which one answers that determines how one is remembered."
Seyra considered that.
’Ah. So if someone throws a knife at you and you throw the entire kitchen back, you’re the villain because your response was excessive.’
That seemed like a terrible system. Then again, humanity had invented taxes, office meetings, and people who sent emails marked URGENT without explaining what they wanted.
She had long since abandoned the hope that the world operated according to sensible principles.
"So, the people who wrote the history decided who the demons were?"
Master Belran’s fingers tightened around the scroll.
"Those who survive often have the privilege of recording events as they remember them."
"And those who die?"
"They leave behind silence."
His smile looked genuine as he appeared to enjoy the thought. Seyra’s expression changed; the childish curiosity faded from her eyes, leaving something colder beneath the deep violet.
She did not like the way he said it, and she was annoyed the way he looked at her whenever he mentioned House Veyrath, as though her very presence offended him.
Master Belran had been appointed to teach her history, noble customs, and the foundations of imperial governance. Yet since he started, his lessons have carried a peculiar pattern.
Every great Veyrath achievement came with a warning. Every imperial victory was followed by a reminder of the family’s brutality, and every time Seyra answered correctly, his expression suggested that her intelligence was an unfortunate accident.
Now she understood why.
He was not merely teaching her history; he was teaching her how to hate.
"Do you believe House Veyrath and House Azrath are evil?" Seyra asked, her small hands folding neatly atop the table.
The question was simple, but the silence that followed was not.
Belran lowered the scroll.
"I believe, my lady, that no house should be permitted to hold so much power without being questioned."
. . .
. . .
"That wasn’t what I asked."
Master Belran’s eyes sharpened.
For the briefest moment, the resentment beneath his composed expression surfaced, naked and unmistakable. Then, as though remembering whom he was addressing, he arranged his features into a pleasant smile.
"The class is over for today, my lady." He rolled up the ancient scroll. "We shall continue tomorrow."
Seyra stared at him.
’Ah. The classic escape technique. When you cannot answer the question, dismiss the person asking it... How very educational.’
"Of course, Master Belran."
She gave him a perfectly polite smile, and Belran bowed.
It was a technically correct bow, executed with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man being ordered to kneel before the executioner. His back bent, his head lowered, and every movement screamed that he would rather swallow a handful of burning coal than show respect to a four-year-old girl.
Then he turned and walked out; Seyra watched him leave, her violet eyes following his retreating figure until he disappeared beyond the carved cedar doors.
The smile vanished from her face.
She had encountered many unpleasant people in her previous life. Managers who smiled while dumping three people’s workloads on one employee. Colleagues who stole credit. Men who believed confidence and an expensive watch were substitutes for a personality.
But Master Belran was something else.
He had the education, the manners, and the polished appearance of a distinguished imperial scholar, yet every lesson he taught seemed designed to plant the same thought in her head.
House Veyrath is dangerous.
House Azrath is cruel.
Powerful people cannot be trusted.
Seyra tapped her stylus against the table.
She did not know enough about Eshkaran’s history to judge whether his claims were true. Perhaps the two houses really had committed terrible acts during the ancient purge, but there was a difference between teaching history and trying to convince a child that her family was wicked.
And Master Belran seemed far more interested in the second.
The door opened, and Captain Ishtar Khaelis entered. His dark armor gleamed beneath the morning light, and her expression remained as composed as ever.
"My lady."
Seyra looked up.
"Lady Samira has arrived. She is waiting for you in the adjoining chamber."
She slid off her chair, nearly caught her foot on the hem of her dress, recovered with the dignity of a woman who had absolutely meant to do that, and marched toward the door.
Captain Ishtar watched her. "My lady, perhaps you should walk more carefully."
"Captain, I am a very careful person."
"You nearly fell."
"The floor attacked me."
"Of course, my lady."
Ishtar’s mouth twitched, she wisely chose not to argue with a four-year-old who could apparently declare war on architecture.
Seyra took her offered hand, and they left the study chamber together.
It had been three days since Seyra’s education had officially begun.
An entire lifetime, if one measured time by the number of times she had been forced to sit still while adults explained things she had not asked to learn.
Fortunately, not all her tutors were terrible.
Lady Samira Belqareth, was a delightful woman who approached every lesson with the enthusiasm of a general preparing her troops for battle.
She taught Seyra how to greet nobles, how to hold a cup, how to recognize the symbols of the great houses, and how to avoid accidentally insulting someone powerful enough to have an entire family executed.
That last lesson had seemed especially practical. Lady Samira also possessed an alarming ability to make etiquette entertaining.
According to her, a noblewoman’s smile could be a weapon, silence could be a declaration of war, and the angle at which one lifted a teacup could determine whether an entire gathering considered one refined or hopelessly uncivilized.
Seyra had listened with great interest, finally, a subject in which passive aggression was considered an art form.
The High Priest Nerath Zair had also begun her lessons on the sacred temples, elemental spirits, and the Aether Core. He asked questions about what she had seen, what she understood, and what she thought of the ancient stories.
Sometimes, he seemed less interested in teaching her than in discovering how much a four-year-old could possibly know.
Seyra suspected he was conducting a very polite investigation into whether she was secretly a tiny philosopher.
Then there was Master Belran Ashur.
His lessons were a different matter entirely.
With him, every historical achievement became a warning. Every powerful family became a potential villain. Every discussion somehow circled back to the dangers of House Veyrath and House Azrath.
By the end of his first lesson, Seyra had begun to suspect that the man would find a way to blame her Papa for a drought that had occurred a thousand years before her birth.
Seyra slowed in the corridor her thoughts had already wandered somewhere else.
’Was there’s any House Ashur in the Novel?’
. . .
. . .
Her steps stopped completely as the name had surfaced from the deepest, dustiest corner of her memory.
House Ashur.
"Oh...oh, no."
The captain’s expression became more attentive.
"My lady?"
. . .
. . .
The corridor was silent.
A servant passing at the far end slowed, took one look at the little girl standing in the middle of the hallway with the expression of someone who had just witnessed the end of the world, and immediately decided that another route might be preferable.
Seyra barely noticed, her mind was racing.
’There was a House Ashur in the novel.’
She remembered it now.
House Ashur had allied itself with one of the female lead’s collaborators. They had worked alongside the ill-tempered House Marekh, helping to orchestrate the political schemes that eventually contributed to Malik Zayrakh Azrath’s downfall.
House Marekh and House Ashur.
The names had appeared in the novel’s political subplot, buried beneath a mountain of betrayals, power struggles, and characters making decisions that would have been solved by a single honest conversation.
At the time, Seyra had barely paid attention, she had been more interested in the male lead and Villain.
Her expression became utterly blank and dumbfounded. Then her lower lip trembled with the desperate restraint of someone trying very hard not to scream in public.
SO MY TERRIFYING, POLITICALLY INFLUENTIAL PAPA HAS FOUND HIS ENEMY AS MY TUTOR?
She looked up at the ceiling.
Perhaps the Twin Divine Dragons had a customer service department, she would like to file a complaint.