That roiling pool of arcane in the centre of the room held him in a tight grip, claws of regret and horror sinking deep into his chest.

  A library.

  He didn't want to believe it. Not with any depth of his soul. Oh, he'd never been the most scholarly or studious of men. There wasn't much to be had in the way of reading material out in the Arboreal Sea, at least not counting the things that his father had written out for him directly. Still, knowledge — he had a respect for it. Respect for the place it held in the betterment of people and society.

  After all, he had felt its boundless rewards more than almost anyone, and the gutting hole that could be left behind in its absence.

  Kaius clenched his hands, driving his fingers deep into his palms.

  What if, in the brutish destruction of the crystal library, they had cut off the Castellan from knowledge of his family? Here and now, in the most unexpected of places, he finally had a morsel to drive him onwards. Ancient history, yes, but a history of his name regardless. Anything and everything was precious when he had nothing. Other than his legacy, the only thing that Kaius could lay claim to was his name and a smattering of vague stories and anecdotes that his father let slip every now and again.

  If he had ruined that…

  Kaius breathed out heavily in an attempt to expel his regret. The sound was devastatingly loud amongst the shocked silence that held him and his team.

  It didn't work. Clearly, the Castellan still knew more, so it wasn't a total loss. But this would be a moment he would remember for the rest of his life. No matter what happened next, there would always be that niggling question. What could he have learned if they'd just taken a little more time to understand what they were looking at?

  Gods, how could they have been so stupid? How could the bloody thing be a library in the first place? The Guild had no records of such structures in any of the archives. Yet, at the same time, how would they know? Only the gods knew how much had been lost by over-eager adventurers seeking to squash any potential threat they found.

  A thought occurred to him. If they had destroyed the core and left the mainframe untouched, there was a good chance he never would have learned anything anyway.

  Who knew if the strange artifice the Empire used to record their histories would have stayed intact without a power source. More importantly, the devastating surge of mana the Castellan created when it had teleported into the room might have been impossible without additional support.

  In another life, he might’ve never learned even this much.

  The will of the gods was fickle and cruel at times. He shook his head — at least then they would have been ignorant of the loss.

  While he and his team grappled with the enormity of their actions, the Castellan simply waited patiently. Doing his best to push his feelings aside, Kaius contemplated the creature.

  It was strange: an artificial life, but one with a mind. At times it felt viciously intelligent, and he could swear he felt emotion clouding its voice and shining in its eyes. Yet it was so even-toned that he could never forget what it was.

  It had none of the raw chaos that came with flesh and blood.

  He was no philosopher, and he had no intention of declaring it inferior — regardless of the ridiculousness in making such a statement about a creature so much stronger than him.

  It was just different. Alien. Even its deference perturbed him. Perhaps for one of his ancestors millennia dead it would have been simple and mundane to be served by a Mythril being, but he lacked that context.

  There was still so much they needed to know.

  “If we had known, we never would have destroyed it,” Kaius said. “The creations of the Empire far exceed anything in the world today. Not even the dwarves come close to the artifice that can be found in these ruins. Even their automata are supposed to be less elegant.”

  The Castellan focused on him.

  “The Drozag Protectorate still exists?”

  Yet more revelations, spoken so casually. From what he knew,it was suspected that the Empire encompassed all the races of Vaastivar, but the method and function of how that played out was unknown.

  So they had been a vassal state. He wondered if the elven conclaves had been another.

  “In a sense,” Kaius responded, “the name itself has survived, in that it is what we call the mountain range. It cuts Vaastivar from east to west, separating the Altier plains of the Hiwiaan from the untamed jungles beyond. From the little I know, the deep holds are largely independent. Small kingdoms, made up of a handful of cities, stretch through the rock of that mountain range. More importantly, how much do you know? How much of this library was lost? You still seem plenty knowledgeable.”

  “To stretch the metaphor, the librarian survived, and I have a broad knowledge of much of its contents, though I lack much in specifics. Common knowledge, mostly, and a few deeper specialties that were used regularly in this facility. Unfortunately, much of that is advanced knowledge, and the fundamentals they rely on have been fragmented. It is difficult to explain. Some of the data is salvageable, but it will require the crystal flumes to be repaired and regrown before the mess can be untangled. What is totally lost is gone forever.”

  Kaius nodded and shifted to look at his friends. Each of them had come out of their shock and so far had been listening in interest. There was so much they could ask.

  “Any ideas, Ianmus?”

  The mage breathed out slowly. “Mostly that I want to hurl myself into that pool for the travesty we have wrought. Otherwise, no, not really. Everything is valuable, and there is so much that can be inferred from casual conversations. Most importantly, against all odds, this is your family history. Ask what you need to. The rest can wait.”

  Kaius gave his friend a thankful nod and settled back in. So the pressure was still there. It was still on him, then. He would just have to manage.

  He went to drum his leg on the floor, only to remember it was missing as the limb twitched.

  The sudden disorientation brought something to mind. The Castellan had warned him about rejection — it knew something about his abilities. Potentially even his legacy.

  “My leg. How did you know it would be rejected so quickly?”

  The Castellan nodded. It was a measured thing, though he needed no reminder. It was a creature that differed from himself and his friends. There was no emotive expression, no unconscious tics or slight adjustments.

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  “It is a known flaw of Greater Regeneration, a skill that every Unterstern receives once they manage to evolve its lesser variant. One of the few skills with a natural progression.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Kaius caught Ianmus and Kenva sharing a look of surprise. Understandable, really — how in the hells did it know his legacy? Potentially even better than he did?

  It was a strange and heavy feeling — the vulnerability of secrets being exposed outside of his own will. It was joined by a burning need to know more.

  Beside him, Porkchop shuffled a little closer, bringing some comfort with his physical presence before Kaius even had to ask.

  “How can you know that?” Kaius asked.

  “My lord, it was a requirement of all noble houses to report their legacies to those above them. For Risen Houses such as yourself, that was only with your fellow ducal seats and the Imperator. As Castellan I was granted access to that knowledge, to better assist.”

  The Castellan paused for a moment, as if it was deciding how to phrase its next statement.

  “Officially, all legacy skills were sourced from the Imperator, and their knowledge remained his property. Only the houses were allowed access. All others found with such skill were put to death for theft of imperial property.”

  “Well, that explains a few things,” Kenva muttered.

  It did indeed. If nobles’ capabilities were known by others higher up in the hierarchy, that sounded... malicious. And for others to be put to death? Well, no wonder people were desperate to hide.

  More importantly, the Castellan had mentioned the term Risen House again. What did it mean?

  “The Risen Houses,” Kaius asked. “How was that structured in the imperial court? What separated them from those below them?”

  The Castellan’s explanation came swiftly. The imperial court seemed like a rigid and inflexible thing, one almost senselessly brutal. To his surprise, there were sixteen Risen Houses, but Kaius supposed that for an Empire that stretched across the entire continent, that wasn’t an overly large amount of dukes. Beneath them were sixty-four Minor Houses, and then two hundred and fifty-six Lesser Houses at the bottom, all under the lead of the august Imperator.

  Even more interestingly, each tier of nobility was limited in the skills they were granted by the favour of the imperial throne. All legacy skills were the direct property of the Eternal Emperor. The lowest rung of nobles were only granted a legacy of four skills, with a maximum merge of the same number. For Minor Houses, it was six, and for the Risen, it was eight.

  But if it was eight, then how in all of the gods’ names did he have ten? The chaos that followed the collapse of the Empire — there was no way that Rapid Adaptation and Warforged had been discovered then. For one, it was simply ludicrous to think that somebody with a legacy of eight skills would throw that all to the wayside to gamble on a single merge. No, the Untersterns had hidden their most powerful cards somehow, in some way.

  Still, Kaius shared a sharp look with his team, begging them not to say a word. The Castellan’s position on the board was a confusing one. On one hand, it still acted like it was bound by the strictures of the Empire. On the other hand, it sounded like its loyalty was directed more towards House Unterstern than the Emperor himself. Still, it was a risk they didn’t have to take, and he was thankful that his friends seemed smart enough to hold their tongues.

  There was a hidden story there, he knew it. It was one he was only brushing up against the edges of. His house was one of the highest, yet they had hidden their strongest skills and ensured their direct control over the Empire’s greatest and most famous creations — superseding even the Emperor’s authority?

  Ianmus, it seemed, had other questions.

  “How could the houses have been so absolutely fixed in number for what sounds like millennia? If I know nobility, there must have been some form of social mobility — they would riot otherwise.”

  If it could have, Kaius would have sworn that the Castellan smiled.

  “There was mobility,” it replied. “But the number of houses remained fixed all the same. Whenever one managed to rise to a new rank, or a commoner was elevated, the least favourite was culled, and the newly initiated was granted additional skills befitting their rank.”

  Kaius could have groaned. No wonder the bloody Empire collapsed. Regardless of how strong he was, the Emperor must have seemed insistent on painting the target on a set as wide as half the bloody continent.

  If that wasn’t enough, the Castellan was clear: any individual caught possessing legacy skills — of stealing from the imperial throne — was put to death, from the lowest commoner to the highest duke. That was illuminating. No wonder legacy skills were so desperately hidden — it was a cultural remnant backed by millenia of slaughter.

  He wondered at the mystery of his own skills. Had they, too, come from the Emperor, like all else? His Risen House was a grand one, it sounded like. And they must have been old, to have gained two high-merge skills before the Empire was even founded.

  “How would that even work?” Kenva asked. “That many nobles is too many to control through fear alone.”

  “I doubt it was just fear,” Kaius replied. “And with that many, and their skill sets being broadly known, and the stakes of the game being clear, they would have had as much to fear from their contemporaries as the Emperor himself. Plus, I imagine the Emperor was overwhelmingly powerful. It’s not hard to imagine the nobles would have been too focused on tearing at each other’s throats to do anything else.”

  “It is as you say, my lord,” the Castellan added. “Though things get a little more complex for the Risen Houses. No Risen House had ever fallen, and each was founded by supporters of the Emperor during the unification of Vaastivar in the early days of the integration.”

  “I was wondering if they were that old,” Porkchop said. “The Empire, that is.”

  Kaius had other things on his mind. If his house was formed from original supporters of the Empire, why so many plots? Sure, the court sounded brutal, but at the same time it sounded like the Risen Houses were largely insulated from the madness beneath them. There was something he was missing.

  “Fascinating,” Ianmus said, trailing off, before he snapped his gaze back to Kaius. “Do you think that they could have earned Honours?”

  Kaius’s eyes widened. Of course. If his dynasty had been founded by a powerful supporter of the Emperor from the integration, even if they weren’t Observed themselves, they would have had to have come across several. Even fought them. If they truly united the continent under one banner. Hells, it was more likely they had them than didn’t, considering the strength they would need to do such a thing.

  Unfortunately, the Castellan only shook its head. “Apologies, I don’t know what you refer to by Honours.”

  Nor did it know much in depth about the legacy skills themselves. Kaius was moderately interested in the names of the other Risen Houses, but... that felt less pressing.

  Porkchop nudged him. “Hey, what about that override that the alarm mentioned as we descended through the stairs?”

  Kaius blinked — he’d forgotten about that. In the chaos that had followed their descent it had slipped to the back of his mind.

  “Castellan. Do you know anything about what the Broken Sceptre Override is?”

  “Apologies, my lord,” the automaton started to say, before it stiffened.

  Bronze eyes blazed with radiance, and Kaius nearly hurled himself from his chair as a projection alighted on the table in front of him.

  It showed a man standing in his office. An ornate wooden thing, it was filled with overflowing bookshelves and a wide desk, as well as a section of cabinetry to the left.

  Of all things, the lights jumped out to him. They differed from the normal ward-lights he was used to, closer to what lay on the ceiling above him — though less industrial.

  The figure was tall and broad-shouldered, with black hair and stern features, and bright green eyes that seemed to cut right to his core. Kaius recognised that shade. The very same he saw in the mirror. The same as Father’s — and, he had heard, his ancestors’ too.

  “For my successor to be asking a Castellan about Broken Sceptre... either our plans have failed, or the ghost of poisoned factionalism has followed us to Locrua.”

  Kaius froze.

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