Few days before Cael Virel died.
The city celebrated the end of the war with flowers. Red petals fell from the balconies of the Imperial Palace, fluttering like silent applause as the soldiers marched through the capital gates. People cheered. Banners flew. But none of it felt like victory to Cael Virel.
He stood at the center of it all, draped in a cloak heavy with rain and blood. The cheers were not for him. The empire did not applaud men like him, not truly. They feared him. They needed him. But they never loved him.
Behind the mask of celebration, there was silence. The kind of silence that always came before a betrayal.
Cael had returned from the battlefield a hero, but he already sensed something was wrong. The Emperor had not come to greet him. His allies kept their distance. And the man who approached him with a smile colder than steel was the last person Cael wanted to see.
Prince Alric wore victory like stolen armor. He extended a hand to Cael in front of the crowd, his voice smooth and full of poison.
"You survived after all. Impressive."
Cael shook the prince's hand because he had no choice. He knew what Alric was doing. The prince wanted to be seen. He wanted to claim the war as his own.
"I did not survive for your praise," Cael said quietly. "I survived for my men."
Alric leaned closer, his smile twisting.
"And that, Strategist, is why you are a fool."
That night, the empire turned on him.
He was summoned to the palace under the pretense of receiving honors. Instead, he was dragged before a tribunal. No one met his eyes. His hands were bound before he had spoken a single word in his own defense.
The accusations were absurd. Treason. Collusion with foreign sorcerers. Sabotage. The very empire he had dedicated his life to now painted him as a traitor.
He had bled for them. He had carved victory from impossible odds with nothing but his mind. He had commanded armies that shattered kingdoms. But all of that meant nothing because Cael Virel had no Gift.
In a world where power was determined by magic, his intellect had always been an uncomfortable truth. The nobles hated him because he proved their power was not absolute. The generals feared him because he saw through their every move. And Prince Alric envied him because Cael did what he could not.
They did not want a genius. They wanted a weapon. And now, that weapon was inconvenient.
He was sentenced without trial. Stripped of his name. Beaten in silence. Tortured for confessions they knew he could not give.
Cael did not scream until the third night. Not from pain. From betrayal.
On the seventh day, they dragged his broken body through the catacombs beneath the city. Past the dungeons, deeper than the tombs. Into the earth.
They threw him into a pit with walls too steep to climb and a ceiling of cold, damp stone. He landed on shattered bones. Some of them were still fresh.
He looked up and saw Prince Alric's face above the opening.
"You should have stayed dead on the battlefield," the prince said. "Now you will rot where no one will ever remember you."
The stone slab closed. Darkness swallowed everything.
In that pit, time lost all meaning.
He did not know how long he lay there. Hunger twisted inside him like a knife. His body failed piece by piece. He could not feel his fingers. His throat was too dry to scream anymore.
He thought of the empire. Of the marble halls he had helped design. Of the walls he had reinforced. Of the soldiers he had trained. And he realized he had built every part of his own grave.
They had used him. Discarded him. Buried him.
He whispered into the darkness, his voice a broken thread.
"Let them suffer."
The silence shifted.
A presence stirred in the pit. It slithered into his mind like smoke.
"Do you mean it," the voice said.
Cael could not speak. He only breathed.
"You want them to burn."
He managed to nod.
"I can give you the power to make that happen," the voice said. " A power born from your hatred."
Light appeared. It was not the light of the sun. It pulsed red, like veins glowing beneath flesh. A screen flickered before him, written in symbols and letters that changed even as he tried to read them.
"Your time is nearly gone," the voice said. "But I can offer you a System. One that will carry your mind beyond the limits of your body. In exchange, your soul will belong to me. And you will have exactly one year before the fire consumes you."
Cael looked into the darkness.
"I accept."