For most of the recruits, this was the first ti they laid eyes upon the man whose na had reshaped the fate of the realm—Prince Alpheo, the little fox.
To them, he was legend co to life. The man said to carry the divine spark of the Warrior God in his veins. The man who had never known defeat.
The prince who ca from nowhere and changed everything.
They did not know of his past, none except those close to him had such privilege , sothing that added motion to the belief in his divine blood.
And now he stood there in the flesh, clad in his masterfully wrought black armor etched with the sigils of the crown , a deep purple cloak flowing like a river of dusk behind him. He stood motionless atop the rise overlooking the training field, silent as a statue of obsidian, his presence both a blessing and a trial in itself.
His gaze swept across the field where the last trial unfolded.
The day could not have been more beautiful.
The high sun painted the sky in blinding gold, and the southern breeze carried with it the scent of salt and the sharp fragrance of sumr bloom. Birds soared above the treetops, wheeling lazily in the warm currents. In another world, it would have been a day for lovers, for songs, for lounging in the shade of vineyards and dreaming of wine.
But not here.
Here, the dreams were different. And they ca at a price.
The field rang with pain—raw, echoing, unfiltered. The screams of n who had shed not just sweat and blood but identity, trying to burn away what they were to beco sothing more. Sothing useful. Sothing deadly.
It was not a field, truly. It was a crucible, the last barrier to divide the ttle from iron.
At the center of it stood a twenty-five-ter road, paved in salt-slicked sea-stone—polished, wet, and jagged. A brutal path designed not rely to test endurance but to break spirit. Saltwater soaked the road constantly, turning it into a treacherous gauntlet where every step promised agony. Blood, already spilled, pooled in tiny depressions between the stones, carried away in rivulets.
The final trial was cruel in its simplicity.
Barefoot , shirtless, and with arms and legs bound to their back the recruits had to cross the road.
The salt water would bite into the lashes on their backs, the cuts on their feet, the bruises along their ribs. Pain was a given; failure, however, was not permitted. Not if one wished to claim the white and black crest of Yarzat’s elite, to embrace their new life.
Most of the recruits still stood on the edge of the proving grounds, their breath sharp, quick—too frightened to look directly at the Prince, too ashad to look away.
They watched in tense silence as one among them scread across the slick stones, blood saring behind him like a trailing cloak.
He scread but did not stop.
Watching over him like a god in judgnt was, after all, the prince.
He said nothing. He did not need to.
His silence was louder than trumpets. His stillness more commanding than a hundred shouts. Every recruit knew: today, the Prince would decide whether they were worthy of a new na or whether they would return to the mud, to obscurity, to nothing.
This was the proving.
And only those who bled enough to dye the sea-stone red would be allowed to stand tall when the sun fell.
He was not just a prince who was good at war, for the people of the Crownlands, to the farrs who sowed barley and wheat in fields once scorched by war, he was sothing greater.
He was the Kind Prince, as so called him.
A ruler who did not bleed them dry but breathed life into their coin purses. While others ruled by the blade and branded the land with fire, Alpheo ruled with coin, trade, and tact. Grain caravans rolled not from command but from comrce, silver rolling through villages like rivers in flood season.
Differently from many lords and princes, he bought it before he took it from his subjects.
In fact he preferred to use his great amount of coin to buy grain and spread coins through his lands, rather than to simply take it by raising taxes.
War had beco a distant thing too, strange if one was to consider just how many battles the prince had fought in just four years. Still, no foreign army had passed through their lands, burning villages, looting, and raping.
Each one that tried was stopped at its gate by the man himself.
And so now, as the recruits—his hopefuls, his forged-from-dust and bled-for-honor children—crawled across the final stretch of that sacred ground, they did so not with hatred for their pain, but with a silent, burning reverence.
Their knees and chests scraping over the sea-stone, each jagged edge carving fresh fire into their flesh. Saltwater, hurled by the bucketful, washed their wounds raw and deeper still. The sun bore down with no rcy, searing the stone until it shimred like glass.
And yet—they crawled.
Not for glory alone. Not for coin or title or even the blade and shield that awaited them should they survive.
They crawled because at the end of that road stood the man they wanted to serve.
He who they called the ruler. The one who others called a savior. The man so whispered that might be more than mortal.
It was no longer just a test.
It was a pilgrimage.
They bled not for survival, but for ascension. They endured not to prove they were strong, but to prove they were worthy—worthy of serving him.
He would give them honors, coin, renown. He would offer them purpose, kinship, a na in history.
But in return, they would give him sothing far rarer.
A throne earned not by birthright, but by the agony of thousands.
A crown not forged in gold, but in flesh, salt, and sacrifice.
Of course, sowhere in the middle of that brutal, glistening road of sea-stone, so of them faltered.
Knees, raw and torn to the pink of flesh, trembled as they probably tried to press forward, they tried hard, teeth smashing until jaws ached.
And yet—many could go no further.
With a heaving sob, they would push themselves to their knees, then to their feet, arms still begging for help to put an end to it.
They would be escorted away with the calmness of ceremony—no jeers, no horn blown to announce failure, no kicks or sha. Only the quiet removal of one who had given all he could, and had simply not been enough.
The others parted without needing to be told. A gap ford in the line as the failed ones were led aside,heads bowed in disgrace.
And behind the next recruit would already step forward into place.
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rza fell to the stones with the silence of a prayer.
He was the next unlucky one.
His arms, bound tightly behind him, had long since numbed. His knees were open wounds. His chest scraped raw with every inch forward.
Each lurch forward was less a motion than a vow.Not to falter. Not to fall.Not here.
He did not think of honor. He did not think of coin. He thought only of the next stone—the next grooved, gleaming piece of sea-polished agony. His whole world had beco that small road .
The path ant to flay the body and reveal the soul.
The roar of pain behind him blurred to silence. The watchers, the guards, the rows of future comrades—gone. It was only him. Him and the stones. Him and the blood. Him and he that waited at the end.
He had no sense of how long it took—whether it was a minute or a lifeti—but at last, with his face pressed to the final slab, he felt hands beneath his shoulders.
Strong hands.
They lifted him—not roughly, but with a solemnity that felt like ritual. Two n in white tunics pulled him gently to his feet. Not strangers now. Not overseers. Comrades that would now march and fight beside him.
In their eyes there was no jeer or superiority that ca from their experience, as they just saw what their new comrades had accomplished for the honor that they currently held.
He swayed in their grasp, eyes lifting—past the road, past the pain, past the shimring horizon—to the figure in black and purple, standing still as iron at the end of the world.
Alpheo.
The prince.The victor.The god they would serve.
rza stood now, not as a boy, not as a farr clawing for purpose—but as one of Yarzat’s chosen. A weapon, forged in pain. Anointed in salt and blood.
And he was not alone.
Behind him, across the stones and the screams and the silence, 310 others had done the sa, laying eyes on the dream that would now be theirs.
And so they stood, chests bleeding, filled with dozens of cuts, looking up at the man who only felt pride at the sight of the army that would bow the world to his will.
The first batch of what will be known as the strongest army to ever bless the South.
The one who would fight n and monsters alike, adhering to the duty that none, not even the prince, could ever hold grasp of knowing.
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