The Empire was not born in glory—it was forged in fire and blood.

  Centuries ago, when the world was still young and the great powers of the age had not yet stirred, a warlord named Tiberius of House Valerian carved a kingdom out of the wild frontier. His rule was harsh but just, his vision clear—he did not dream of ruling a city or a province. He dreamed of dominion.

  When Tiberius died, his sons inherited more than a crown—they inherited ambition. They took his legacy and pressed outward, conquering borderlands, unifying city-states under one banner, and forging alliances through steel and marriage. In time, the Kingdom of Tiberia expanded beyond what the ancient maps could chart, and the once-kingdom was formally proclaimed an Empire.

  From then on, the Tiberian Emperors rode to war in every direction—north into the lands of ice and mead, south to the deserts where bones are bleached beneath crimson suns, east across the sea of grass where the wind never sleeps, and west into the shattered remains of older, forgotten empires. Every campaign left scars—but it also left the Empire stronger, wiser, more vast.

  But no empire grows without pain. Across the centuries, the Tiberian realm endured rebellions, famines, plagues, and even civil wars that split provinces and bloodlines in two. And yet, through it all, the Empire did not fall. It endured. It evolved. And in the darkest of times, it looked to its leaders.

  It was in the twilight of a crumbling era, when famine gnawed at the land and whispers of rot spread through the Senate, that a new dynasty rose—the Arcadians, a noble house from the central highlands, who claimed distant relation to Tiberius himself. Whether by blood or by blade, they seized the throne—and changed everything.

  Under Arcadian rule, decline was not only halted, but reversed.

  Among their line, two emperors stood above the rest, etched into marble and legend alike.

  The first, Emperor Florian III, known to the people as The Flamboyant, ruled from 5611 to 5642 IC. A man of contradictions—eccentric, theatrical, yet ruthlessly competent—Florian draped himself in silks and jewels while building the foundation of a golden age. He oversaw the construction of hundreds of fortresses, raised grain silos that could feed entire provinces, and expanded salt mining in the southern mountains until the Tiberian Empire became the greatest producer of salt in the known world—a commodity worth more than gold. It was said that under Florian, the Imperial Treasury groaned under the weight of its own wealth, and coin was so plentiful that beggars in the capital wore silver-threaded cloaks.

  A century later, his descendant, Arcadius II the Great, brought a different kind of prosperity. Crowned in 5758 IC, Arcadius was a philosopher-king, beloved by both scholars and soldiers. He expanded the Imperial legions, reformed the conscription laws to lessen the burden on farming families, and—perhaps most importantly—established over two hundred public academies across the Empire. For the first time in history, children of peasants could learn beside the sons of nobles, taught by the brightest minds of the age. Arcadius II didn't just build roads or armies—he built futures. And the people loved him for it.

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  Yet even the greatest walls can crack. And even the strongest Empire has its reckoning.

  In 6097 IC, the Great Blight began in the southern provinces. A creeping, black decay infested the wheat fields. No herb, no flame, no ritual could stop it. What began as a season of bad harvests soon became a continent-wide disaster. For twelve long, cursed years, the Blight spread. Crops withered into dust. Rivers turned black with rot. Herds collapsed. Forests died.

  The Great Blight was no mere pestilence of the earth—it was a living curse. Farmers spoke of black tendrils creeping beneath the soil, strangling roots, turning golden wheat into brittle husks that crumbled at a touch. The southern provinces, once the breadbasket of the Empire, became a wasteland.

  Then came plague—red-fever, bone-flux, black cough—each more terrible than the last. Millions died in their homes, in the streets, on the roads, unburied and unburned. Cities turned into mass graves. Starving parents abandoned children. Entire provinces were lost to silence.

  Even the wild beasts seemed to go mad with hunger. Reports flooded the imperial court from distant villages and towns—wolves hunting in daylight, bears wandering through fields, great cats stalking farmsteads. The people demanded protection, but the legions were already stretched thin, splintered, and growing insubordinate.

  In the north, the barbarian clans, long held at bay by imperial steel, saw weakness and descended like wolves. They razed fortresses, seized border towns, and declared themselves kings in lands the Empire could no longer hold. From the east came the horse-lords, nomadic warbands with sun-bleached banners, who conquered the steppes and pushed into the Empire’s heartlands, founding their own kingdoms atop the ashes of Tiberian outposts.

  Even imperial generals—once paragons of loyalty—sensed the fall and declared themselves rulers of breakaway states, turning their legions into personal armies.

  And in the south, where it had all begun, Emperor Arcadius V, the last of the Tiberian line, rode out to restore order.

  He would never return.

  In 6114 IC, Arcadius V was ambushed by nomads in the southern dunes and slain. His body was never recovered. Some say he burned. Others claim his bones were ground into dust as a warning to the world.

  But what came next was worse.

  The news of the Emperor’s death rippled like thunder across the land. In the capital, chaos reigned. The commander of the garrison—once a loyal servant—seized the moment. Drunk on ambition, he marched on the palace. There, he butchered the Emperor’s sons—Maximus, a child of six, and Leon, just four—then declared himself Emperor.

  The people did not rally behind him.

  They screamed.

  Every noble house, every provincial governor, every surviving general saw the blood on the throne and drew their swords. Among them was Lukas of House Nestor, Guardian of the Empire, and perhaps its last true patriot. With the loyal remnants of the army, he marched on the capital, not for power—but for justice.

  The siege of the Imperial City lasted forty-three days. When it ended, the usurper was dead. So was Lukas.

  And so was the Empire.

  It did not collapse in a single battle, nor in a moment of rebellion. It collapsed in silence, choked in ash, forgotten by time and swallowed by its own weight.

  And from the scattered embers of its ruin, a thousand new tales began.