This history is not to be shared with others, Lady Horizon. Even in the imperial family, only a select handful know it, and that is why I, the Grand Scholar, am teaching it personally. You have the privilege because you are the heir apparent of your father, who will inherit the throne, and even should someone else succeed the throne, you will be an exalt without a doubt.

  The true history of the imperial family starts in another world. Our ancestors conquered it, and ruled it with an iron fist for generations. Our traditions and legacy of documenting everything ensured thousands of years of prosperity with only minor rebellions from time to time.

  This might seem laughable to you now, but once, even the longest-lived man rarely reached the age of eighty, and those who lived to see sixty winters were considered ancient. Such a world with people living such short lives was a vastly different place than this.

  We called this world Land. And like everything that lives long enough, Land started dying. Strange creatures appeared. First, in the dark places, swamps and deep forests, caves nobody knew the bottom of. They devoured man and beast alike. They tortured and dismembered, leaving ruin and grotesque mockeries which would make even one at your realm retch.

  Initially, we didn’t understand what was happening, but later, much later, we discovered they were the heralds of our approaching doom, of Land’s death. They were vultures, feasting on the still-dying carcass.

  The abominations roamed our lands for two centuries, sometimes leaving deformed survivors, people we gathered and burned at the pyres so their taint wouldn’t spread to the rest. But as time passed, more and more slipped past. We lost contact with the Kingdom of the Rising Isles first. No messengers or scouts ever returned, even the most competent men wasted on a fruitless task.

  Fifty million of our citizens, their products and taxes - gone, just like that.

  Kingdom after kingdom, duchy after duchy, our world-spanning empire shrank, nibbled away by the unnatural, but we held longer than the land did. Five centuries after the decay had started, we still controlled around a tenth of our old holdings. Then, the land itself started rotting.

  Monsters spilled not out of the deep and forgotten places, but out of basements and dungeons, out of watermills and mines in use. It was chaos, but we still held firm.

  Then, some of the deformed survivors came, offering our ancestor a deal. They told him the world would end in fifty years, one way or the other, but that there was a path to salvation. They could use the knowledge they had gained alongside their deformations and make a path, a portal to another world.

  The priests protested, calling the end natural, saying the price the cultists asked was too high, but our ancestor agreed. The priests of gods whose names we have stricken from the histories, for they were false and wanted us dead — those priests we sacrificed first.

  The emperor gathered his most loyal forces. The rest of the people he gave to the cultists as fuel for the portal, the material to make the bridge which would bring us here. We brought two million seven hundred twenty-two thousand nine hundred and eleven men, women, and children, sage and serf and soldier. Not a single priest or faithful. We burned the churches of the false gods and gave their devotees to the four cults.

  The cultists, as a payment for their services, brought forty thousand men and women, and not a single child. All of them were hooded and deformed, some looking like men flayed, others with miasma seeping from their bodies. You should recognize these features as the blood and ghost cult masters in their battle forms.

  The four cults are still the same and serve the same masters. The emperor planned to purge them, but we landed in a land of what our ancestors thought were dragons, but were really nothing more than oversized lizards. In the chaos and fighting, the cultists slipped away, and we suffered one hundred and seventeen thousand casualties.

  In the brutal new world, we had no time to cull the evil sleeping in our midst, and we focused on survival. A decade later, the cultists returned, stronger than ever. Our ancestor wrote that he had expected they would slaughter them, but instead, they shared saurian cores and the secret of awakening.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  Our forces led by the first prince tested it, and the gift did not seem poisoned. They grew strong, and on their own, they stumbled through realm shaping and the expansion, once more our ingrained need to document everything helping us learn faster and better than the other awakened.

  I will skip the centuries during which we carved our empire from the savage lands of the saurians, but I will tell you that the cults were the strongest by far. They slaughtered the toughest enemies, stealing their flesh or blood or bone or spirit, the final one I still don’t understand how they manage.

  Our emperor, by virtue of awakening, had lived for a thousand years. He was an old man, and he understood one thing: the old ways were gone. The cults were stronger than the rest of mankind put together, and the key to their power were the gods they worshipped. So, he asked the cultists to let him join them.

  The wretches were thrilled, maniacal as they were in their devotion, and our ancestor communed with the gods. He asked not to join the existing order, but to create a new one, to offer a new sacrifice.

  But the gods were already getting a tribute of flesh and blood and bone and spirit, what else was there left in a man that he could offer? Do you know? Can you guess? No?

  But our ancestor did.

  He offered them potential. He would foster potential, then strangle it, bleed it out and gift it to the gods. The cults did so through ghastly rituals, our ancestor did it with contracts. People with talent devoting their best years to pointless pursuits, working for scraps of what they could have earned had they steeled their spines and seized their fate, time trickling by all the while as power slipped from their grasp.

  Our ancestor acted as if he had refused to offer the sacrifices the gods demanded. He feigned his own demise and had his son ascend to the throne while the core of the family plotted their rise.

  The first institutions they created were the imperial guards, the imperial libraries, and the adventurers’ guild, even if they had different, less prominent names at the time. You might think execution would be easier, and while we do use it, albeit rarely, that method is flawed. Cutting one’s life does cut their potential, but the sacrifice is primarily that of blood and bone and flesh and spirit, something we don’t benefit from. No, keeping millions alive and bleeding them of the potential every day for centuries is much better than slaughtering them once.

  The brave souls who had explored the jungles, and deserts, and the hidden places, instead of treasures suddenly sought the guild. Instead of controlling their own fate, they shackled themselves to pieces of paper and trivial tasks, to guarding doors and hallways inhabited by those so much more powerful than they were that it made no sense, or sitting behind a counter and reading trite submissions by every charlatan who thought they could earn crystals by writing down what they guessed instead of seeking true power.

  The system was and still is wonderful, even if we have made it more complex, and it bore fruit. The emperor and his close confidants have gained power and knowledge in exchange for the sacrifice. When our ancestor’s death approached, we already had enough power hidden away to smash the four cults to pieces.

  And we did. It was too soon, but the oldest among our powerhouses were close to dying of old age when we launched the rebellion. We painted it as freeing people from the yoke of maniacal murderers, and in part that was what the ancestors had done. It cost us dearly, but we shattered the cults to pieces, established the basis for what would one day be heresy hunters, and also gave them the same job our servants had in the other world, keeping track of rising technology and destroying it.

  Remember, innovation is good for the whole, but bad for those at the top.

  Fearing they might notice my eavesdropping, I moved away. I don’t know what other sorts of secrets the Grand Scholar might have shared with the emperor-to-be, but what I heard was enough to shake my faith in the institution. Enough to make me think about what I had to do about leaving.

  The rest of my story is public history, some of which I have already hinted at here.

  I stopped using imperial resources, provided my services until I cleared my debt, and then with what I had saved, I found a perfect escape and the perfect explanation.

  Since my progress had stagnated, I purchased a legendary mountain that had nothing legendary about it, save for some manarium mines, too poor to be worth my time, too expensive for those at the lower realms. A perfect backwater nobody would look at twice.

  I fortified the position as best I could, hunted what manabeasts I could without triggering onslaughts and adapted the best techniques I knew for you, my descendant. I’m guessing you grew up surrounded by wealth, never facing a real problem, but know that the cults and the imperial family are one and the same.

  Be wary of all imperial gifts, of all their stipends, for they are poisoned. As for what you can do, build up the group you trust little by little. Perhaps one day, you will grow strong enough to fight them. I failed, and so might you. Perhaps your son might succeed where we fell, or, if not a son, then another, more distant descendant. Don’t lose faith and prepare the foundations for their future success.