The throne room doors shut behind Adam, muting the queen's fury to a distant, buzzing hum. The antechamber was empty, cool and quiet. For a moment, he just stood there, breathing in the silence. The performance was over. For now.
His feet carried him forward, not toward the exit, but back toward the main hall, through a different, smaller archway that led to the gallery overlooking the throne dais. The room was empty now, save for the silent, hulking shape of the throne itself.
It was a massive thing, carved from the pale heartwood of the Aethelgard oaks and inlaid with gold. The Lion of Eldoria, its muzzle frozen in a silent roar, crowned its high back. It was just a chair. And it was everything.
Adam walked down the gallery steps, his boots soft on the rich carpet. He stopped before the dais, looking up at it. He could still smell the incense from the funeral, the ghost of the crowd's fear.
"Quite the seat," he murmured to himself.
He climbed the steps, not with reverence, but with a casual curiosity. He reached out and traced the grooves in the wood, the cool, smooth gold. This was the prize. The thing his half-brother would kill for, his stepmother would scheme for. The focal point of this little kingdom.
He turned and sat.
The wood was hard, unyielding. It wasn't comfortable. But a low thrum of power vibrated through the floor, a latent energy from ley lines that crossed beneath the castle, focused here. It was a faint trickle, but he felt it. A spark trying to ignite tinder.
He leaned back, resting his elbows on the arms of the throne. He looked out over the empty hall, imagining it filled with bowing lords and terrified enemies. A slow, cold smile spread across his face.
Yeah. He was tempted. It would be so easy. To take this chair, this castle, this kingdom. To grind Lenore and Cedric under his heel. A satisfying little project.
But it was small.
The memories of this new world, once a confusing jumble, had settled into a grim, exciting map in his mind. Eldoria was just one kingdom on a continent of squabbling nobles. That continent was one of many on a world twenty times the size of Earth, a world teeming with empires of men, elves, and beasts he couldn't yet imagine. This was the Warring Period, a time of chaos and shifting borders.
Why settle for a kingdom when you could have an empire? Why be a king when you could be an Emperor? A King of Kings. The title echoed in his soul, a perfect fit for the ghost of a man who had already burned one world.
He was not here to be a pawn. He was here to make this world his bitch.
He closed his eyes, reaching inward. The power was there, sleeping deep in his core. Not the world-ending inferno of his past life, but its fundamental essence. Elemental Manipulation. The absolute authority over the base materials of reality. He didn't need to call flame. He could command the air in a man's lungs to turn to stone. He could pull the moisture from their body until they crumbled to dust. He could open the earth beneath an army and simply let it swallow them. It was clean, efficient, and utterly, terrifyingly final.
He opened his eyes.
The world sharpened, the colors becoming almost painfully vivid. The faint flow of energy from the ley lines beneath the throne glowed like a soft, silver river in his vision. This was another power, native to this body. The bloodline gift of the royal family of Eldoria: the Oculus Tempestas—the Storm Eye.
In its base state, it granted enhanced perception, the ability to see the flow of magical and life energy. It was why they were the right hand of the previous empire, valued spies and commanders. He knew from the memories that it had stages, each one unlocking a more profound and dangerous ability. Cedric, with his pure blood, would have it.
His, as the bastard, was supposed to be stunted. A faint glow, if it worked at all.
He focused, letting the energy rise. A faint, silver light began to glow from his irises. Then it intensified, shifting, morphing. A single, comma-shaped symbol, black as midnight, swirled into existence around his pupil, followed by another, until three of them orbited the center of his eye. The First Stage: Perception. But it didn't stop there. The three tomoe began to spin, faster and faster, before merging and flaring out into a pattern of concentric, storm-grey rings.
The Second Stage. The Oculus Procella—the Gale Eye.
A rush of information flooded his brain. He could see the individual threads of dust in the air, count the fibers in the tapestries across the hall. He could feel the minute shifts in the air pressure, predicting a draft before it moved. He could see the weak points in the stone pillars, the stress fractures in the throne itself. It was a combatant's dream. See everything. Predict everything. Break everything.
A low laugh escaped his lips, echoing softly in the empty hall. They thought he was just a bastard with a bad attitude. They had no idea what was sleeping in their midst.
He let the glow fade from his eyes, the world returning to normal. The thrill of power settled into a cold, hard certainty in his gut.
He stood up from the throne, giving it one last, dismissive glance.
"A nice start," he said to the empty room. "But I'm not in the market for a chair. I'm here for the whole damn house."
He descended the dais and walked out of the throne room, his path clear. The first step wasn't to challenge the queen. That was a distraction. The first step was to find leverage. To find soldiers, resources, and information. To build a foundation away from their prying eyes.
This world thought it was in a warring period. It had no idea the war hadn't even started yet. And he was going to be the one to declare it.