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Book I: The Feast of Daggers
Chapter One: The Blood Sun Rises
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VORTAN – THE IMPERIAL PLANET
Year 9804 A.V. (After Vraxion)
Month of Torva, 9th Day – The Ascension of the Princes
A red sun clawed its way into the sky, spilling its blood over the black marble terraces of Velcrux, the High Imperial City. The great towers of the Exarchium—those spined fortresses of shadow and steel—cast long teeth across the city below, biting into market squares where slaves moaned under silver collars, and nobles walked with blades for tongues.
It was a morning for slaughter. A morning for succession.
And a morning for Hector Vel'Xarion to be born again—into power, into province, into war.
He stood naked at the edge of his private balcony, the crimson light bathing his pale, muscular frame. His back was carved from marble, his shoulders squared with promise, and his eyes—those cold obsidian knives—scanned the horizon like a predator seeking fresh sin.
Behind him, sprawled on the bed of woven black silk and oxblood sheets, lay a girl no older than thirteen, motionless except for the soft tremor of her thighs. Her name was Halira. Or Hadra. It didn't matter. She was a gift from one of his half-aunts, delivered the night before with a curt note:
> "To welcome you into governance, dear nephew. She's trained, fertile, and mute. Just how boys like you enjoy them."
There had been no ceremony. No slow seduction. Hector had made use of her before dinner, after dinner, and once more at dawn, with cold detachment and an idle hand curled around a chalice of viridian wine.
She was still bleeding.
He did not care.
The scent of her—the copper, the fear—mingled with incense and dew as his steward approached from the obsidian corridor. The man's boots clicked, hesitated, then continued.
"Prince Hector," the steward intoned, not looking at the girl on the bed. "The Emperor has summoned all sons to the Hall of Thorns. Your escort awaits."
Hector turned his head slowly. "Is the old man lucid enough to speak without drooling this time?"
The steward's face didn't flinch. "No promises, Highness."
Hector stepped away from the balcony, trailing sunlight and menace as he approached the mirrored wall. As his attendants silently moved to dress him in midnight leathers and pale silver armor—embossed with the sigil of his house, a hydra with seven heads consuming one another—he caught his own reflection.
He looked like a god, but he felt like a dagger. And he intended to carve his name into history with both.
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THE HALL OF THORNS
Velcrux Citadel – Throne Wing
There were thirty-seven princes still living.
And today, all had come.
The Hall of Thorns was a towering dome of jagged glass and bone-chiseled ivory, its floor a mosaic of ancient conquests, its walls lined with living thorns fed on slave blood. Above them, the ceiling glowed with captured starlight, harvested from the Or'vex moons centuries ago and burned into crystal with forgotten technology.
The princes gathered below the dais in silence, every robe and armor a different language of bloodlines. Each bore the marks of their mother's House—red-eyed hawks of House Vel'Raxas, the emerald manticores of House Vel'Drassa, the golden twin-tailed lions of House Vel'Xarion.
And at the top of the steps, slumped on a throne of teeth and sorrow, sat the Emperor.
Velgor the Frail. Velgor the Silent. Velgor the Dying.
His skin was stretched parchment, his breath came in wet rattles, and his hands twitched with phantom pain from decades of blood magic and poison. No longer a man. A relic. And yet… still Emperor.
Until the vultures tore him apart.
"Princes…" his voice was a hiss dragged through tar. "You are… of age. Of blood. Of war. And I… am tired."
He coughed, something black spilling into the cloth his nursemaid held to his mouth.
"You will each receive… a province. An army. A vault. A chance."
His rheumy eyes drifted toward the center.
"To kill. To rise. Or to die like pigs in mud."
Gasps were few. The words were expected. Tradition.
But it still made the air tremble.
One by one, names were called. Provinces declared. Armies assigned.
And then—
"Hector Vel'Xarion."
The chamber went quiet.
He stepped forward, dressed like war and smiling like a funeral.
The Emperor did not smile back.
"You will rule Dathar-Kai," Velgor rasped. "The western expanse. Borderlands of traitors and beasts. Home to broken nobles and the last free slaves."
There were murmurs. Dathar-Kai was a savage territory, barely pacified, crawling with rebel warlords, old blood cults (unofficially), and fringe nobles with just enough mystic blood to make them dangerous.
Most would've seen it as punishment.
Hector only grinned wider.
He bowed, just enough to insult the dais. "I shall turn it into a palace of screams, Father."
Velgor nodded once—perhaps out of approval, perhaps out of decay.
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THREE DAYS LATER – PORTUM VERAX (DOCKS OF VELCRUX)
Hector boarded his ship in full ceremonial armor. It was a dragonfly-class dreadcraft, lacquered bone and steel, sleek with three pulse-engines capable of breaking the low orbit of Vortan. At his side were six commanders, all handpicked.
None were loyal.
That was the point.
Trust was weakness.
Across the docks, nobles watched from towers and balconies, whispering like scavengers over a carcass. Betting on which son would die first.
None of them bet on Hector. He was too quiet. Too cold. Too dangerous.
He turned to his steward, Kirel, a eunuch born in the city-warrens and raised on cruelty.
"How many slaves in the hold?"
"Eight hundred. Half marked for labor. Half for pleasure. All young."
Hector nodded.
"Send ten to my quarters."
"Male or female?"
"Yes."
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DAEMON VEL'ZORATH – ELSEWHERE
While Hector sailed toward war and glory, another boy stood alone at the edge of a salt plateau, naked to the wind, watching a noble's garrison burn in the distance.
Daemon Vel'Zorath had no army. No land. No birthright.
But he had blood.
And blood, when awakened, could rewrite empires.
He knelt beside the corpse of a girl—a common whore by her dress, but his sister by blood. Her body was broken, discarded by the noble's guard after they used her.
He whispered nothing. Only pressed his palm to the wound on her chest.
And from it, a black tendril of mystic light surged up his arm.
Daemon screamed. And the ground beneath him cracked.
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DATHAR-KAI – THE BLACK PALACE
It took Hector two weeks to reach his province.
He arrived to find rebellion, starvation, and a fractured noble council barely keeping the region from collapsing.
He dismissed the council. By fire.
He executed twenty-seven rebellious barons in a single banquet, having each flayed alive before their wives and sons. The women were given to his soldiers. The sons? Given blades and forced to duel to the death for freedom. None survived.
By morning, Dathar-Kai bowed.
And Hector began construction of his palace—not of marble or gold, but of blacksteel and obsidian, each stone inscribed with the name of a prince he intended to bury
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In the fourth week, Hector lay naked on a throne made of chained bodies, five girls around him—two imperial cousins, one foreign slave, one local noble's daughter, and a mute assassin he spared for her beauty.
He drank wine laced with soft venom, letting it numb the edge of his already-dead emotions.
His advisor entered. A gaunt man with parchment skin and crimson tattoos along his neck.
"There's movement in the north," the man said. "A peasant boy… burned a keep. Rumors say he tore open a noble with his bare hands."
Hector's eyes lit up—not with fear. With interest.
"Send a scout. I want to know what he eats, h
ow he fucks, and what language he screams in."
The boy was Daemon, of course.
And Hector, beneath his sadism and hunger, already knew:
This world would not be big enough for both of them.