Chronicle of the Kingdom of Astra
From the ashes of the Old Empire to the arrival of Princess Asagao Lionheart
The Old Empire did not spring from nothing. For nearly three centuries, it loomed like a heavy shadow over the Land of Prosperity, devouring lesser kingdoms, absorbing city-states, and reducing entire peoples who had once known independence to servitude. Its emperors considered themselves chosen by the gods, though none had ever witnessed a true divine manifestation. They ruled from the City of Black Towers, a capital built of volcanic stone and plundered gold, where the avenues were paved with the bones of those who had dared to rebel.
The structure of the Empire was a perfectly calibrated pyramid of oppression. At the apex stood the Emperor and his sacred lineage. Immediately below him was a caste of pure-blooded nobles who possessed vast lands and private armies. Further down was a voracious bureaucracy that levied taxes on everything imaginable: the air breathed in the cities, the water from the wells, even the right to bury the dead. At the base were the vast majority of the people: peasants, artisans, petty merchants, and slaves. The latter were not prisoners of war in the classical sense; many had been born into slavery because their grandparents had been unable to pay a tax debt.
Corruption wasn't a flaw in the system; it was the system itself. Judges sold verdicts. Generals sold military positions. Priests of the imperial cult sold indulgences promising divine forgiveness in exchange for gold. Those without money or influence simply vanished. The Empire's prisons were legendary for their cruelty; it was said that the walls absorbed the screams of the condemned and that, on nights of the new moon, echoes of those who had died decades before could still be heard.
For generations, the people endured. Some adapted. Others became complicit. A few attempted to rebel and were crushed with exemplary brutality. The heads of rebel leaders were displayed on pikes along the main roads for months. The message was clear: the Empire was eternal.
But no empire is eternal.
The last Emperor, whose name almost no one dares to utter aloud, was a man of boundless pride and unchecked greed. Under his reign, taxes reached unsustainable levels. Harvests were confiscated in their entirety to feed the armies guarding the borders, while the people starved. Rebellions multiplied. Some were crushed. Others, however, found an unexpected leader.
Ashfon Lionheart was not born a prince or a highborn nobleman. He was the last survivor of a minor house that had been nearly wiped out by imperial purges. His family had owned land in the foothills of the western mountains, a poor but strategically important region. When imperial tax collectors came to demand an impossible tribute, Ashfon's father refused. The Empire's response was swift and absolute: the house was burned, the servants executed, and the family members dragged to the capital's prisons. Ashfon, then a teenager, narrowly escaped. He spent years in the shadows, learning to survive, to fight, and above all, to hate with icy clarity.
He wasn't a legendary hero from the start. He was a pragmatic commander, a strategist who understood that victory wasn't achieved through grandiloquent speeches, but through supplies, discipline, and the ability to inspire loyalty in men who had nothing left to lose. He rallied deserters, peasants armed with pitchforks, disaffected mercenaries, and a handful of minor nobles who had been humiliated by the imperial court. What began as a guerrilla force transformed, over the course of three bloody years, into an army capable of facing the imperial legions in open battle.
The decisive battle took place on the plains of Kael'dor. The Emperor, confident in his numerical superiority and the blessing of his cardboard gods, sent his best generals. Ashfon not only defeated them, he annihilated them. It is said that the Emperor himself tried to escape disguised as a common soldier and was recognized by the quality of his boots. His execution was public, swift, and unceremonious. Ashfon did not allow him to become a martyr.
With the head of the Empire severed, the body crumbled. Provinces surrendered one after another. Some nobles tried to negotiate. Others tried to resist. All learned, one way or another, that the new order would not tolerate the old corruption. Ashfon was no saint. He executed those he deemed beyond redemption. He confiscated lands. He redistributed wealth. But, unlike his predecessors, he did not do so to enrich himself. He did it to build something that could last.
Thus the Kingdom of Astra was born.
Only five years have passed since the kingdom's official founding. Five years is a very short time on the scale of history, but enough to transform a devastated land. The capital, built upon the ruins of the ancient City of Black Towers, was renamed and rebuilt. The black towers were demolished. In their place rose light-colored stone buildings, wide avenues, and a sewer system that still amazes foreign visitors. The royal palace, though imposing, is not an intimidating fortress but a functional seat of government.
Ashfon Astra Lionheart, the First King, the Knight King, the Unifier, rules with a peculiar blend of severity and pragmatism. He possesses an ability few know in detail: he can detect lies. He doesn't read minds or see the future. He simply knows, with visceral certainty, when someone is lying to him. This ability has proven devastating to the remnants of the old nobility who attempted to infiltrate the new court. Many who claimed kinship with the king or ancestral rights to land vanished from public life after a brief private audience.
Under his reign, extreme poverty has decreased significantly. Taxes are predictable and proportionate. Corruption has not been completely eradicated—no kingdom ever is—but it is no longer the oil that greases the wheels of the state. The courts, though imperfect, operate with relative independence. The army, reorganized and professionalized, is not a tool of internal oppression but of external defense.
However, Astra's relative peace is not absolute. The real problem doesn't come from within, but from the center of the world.
There is a continent that no race claims. A vast, desolate, and profoundly hostile territory located in the geographical heart of the planet. For centuries it was ignored. The magical beasts that inhabited it were dangerous, yes, but manageable. About a decade ago, something changed. From that continent began to emanate a warlike aura, an invisible pressure that spread like a slow tide toward all the other continents. And with that aura came the Devils. This chapter is updated first at novelping(.)com.
They are not demons in the sense of the race that inhabits the Land of Mana. The Devils possess no civilization. They have no cities, no kings, no common language. They appear out of nowhere: sometimes emerging from spatial rifts, sometimes materializing around pockets of residual evil, sometimes simply… appearing. Some are mindless beasts. Others, the most dangerous, are intelligent, capable of speech, of planning, and of organizing their kind. They do not negotiate. They do not surrender. They do not understand the concept of a treaty.
Their presence has altered the balance of power across the globe. Borders that were once secure now require constant vigilance. Trade routes have become more perilous. The lords of each continent—humans, elves, dragons, dwarves, faeries, mana demons, and beastmen—have maintained a pragmatic peace for over a century, based on trade and the mutual recognition of spheres of influence. The Devils threaten to shatter that peace not through conventional warfare, but through a steady erosion of security.
Ashfon did not face this threat in a vacuum. During his youth, even before the rebellion against the Empire reached its peak, he traveled across the continents. He did so not as a prince or ambassador, but as a wandering warrior seeking strength, knowledge, and potential allies. On these journeys, he personally met several of the current Species Lords.
With the Lady of the Elves of the Greenwoods, she maintained a relationship of mutual respect. The Lady valued her refusal to plunder the sacred forests, even when her army starved. With the Dragon Emperor of the Valley of the Ancients, the relationship was more tense: two predators recognizing each other. They exchanged sharp words and, on one occasion, nearly came to blows. However, both emerged from that encounter with a clear understanding of each other's boundaries. With the dwarves of the Iron Range, the connection was more practical: Ashfon respected their craftsmanship, and they respected her word. The arms supply contracts that Astra maintains today are based on that early trust.
His contact with the fairies of the Healing Jungle was brief but memorable. The Fairy Lady offered him a healing blessing that he still carries with him, though he rarely speaks of it. With the Beast Lord of the Thousand Islands, he shared wine and discussions about trade routes. And with the leader of the Land of Mana, a demon of formidable magical power, he maintained a relationship of cautious admiration. She was one of the first to recognize that the young human before her was no ordinary conqueror.
These personal relationships, forged in adversity and hard-won respect, became the foundation of Astra's diplomacy. When the Devils began to emerge with greater frequency and intelligence, Ashfon didn't have to send cold emissaries to unfamiliar courts. He could write direct letters to individuals who already knew him. The response wasn't unanimous or immediate, but it was enough to lay the groundwork for an eventual coalition.
Even so, the king understood that not even the unity of civilized races would be enough. The Devils were not an enemy army with whom peace could be negotiated. They were a calamity. And against a calamity of that magnitude, something more was needed.
That's when the name Nyvalis came into play.
Nyvalis, the Spiritual Goddess of Hope and Light, is one of the few deities whose existence is not disputed in serious academic circles. She is not a goddess of war or judgment. She is the goddess who, according to the oldest records, observed the suffering of mortal races and decided to offer them a tool of last resort. It was she who devised the ritual of summoning heroes. Not as a gratuitous gift, but as a balancing mechanism: when a threat threatened to extinguish the very hope of civilizations, the ritual could open a path to souls from other worlds who, at the moment of their death, fulfilled certain inscrutable requirements.
Archmage Violetta, the king's right-hand woman and one of the few living people capable of understanding the ritual's complexity, oversaw its execution. The process didn't summon bodies, but souls. The bodies were reconstructed in this world, free from the deformities that passing through the Dimensional Rift might have caused. The price was high: the summoned souls had died in their original realities. And, upon crossing, particles of emptiness adhered to them, temporarily sealing their magical potential.
The result was fourteen individuals.
Fourteen heroes.
The news spread across Astra like wildfire. In taverns, markets, barracks, and noble halls, there was only one topic of conversation: the summoned beings. It was said they possessed enormous potential, sealed away for now. It was said that Nyvalis herself had guided the ritual. It was said that with them, the war against the Devils could turn in favor of the civilized races.
But among the fourteen presences there was one that stood out above all the others.
A girl.
Approximately nine years old. Hair as white as freshly fallen snow. Eyes the same sky blue as the king's own. A face of almost unsettling beauty in its childlike perfection. And, most shocking of all: she had presented herself at court with the surname Lionheart.
Asagao Lionheart.
In a kingdom where the royal name had been the target of countless usurpations, the coincidence was too striking to ignore. The king himself, a man who had seen his entire family die and executed dozens of imposters, found himself face to face with a girl who not only shared his name but also remarkable physical features. For the first few days, the court speculated in hushed tones. Some whispered that she was a secret daughter. Others, more cynical, suggested it was a particularly audacious attempt at infiltration. No one dared say it aloud in front of the king. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
Then the unexpected happened.
Ashfon Astra Lionheart, the monarch who had rejected all notions of lineage for five years, announced his decision: he would formally adopt the girl as his younger sister. Not as a daughter—the age difference and the nature of the summoning made that option complicated—but as a sister. With all the rights and privileges of royal blood. From that moment on, Asagao Lionheart ceased to be merely a summoned heroine. She became Princess of Astra.
The news shook the kingdom.
In the streets of the capital, the popular reaction was mostly one of astonishment and, soon after, of enthusiasm. The people of Astra had learned to love their king not for his speeches, but for the tangible results of his rule. Seeing him display a human—almost paternal—side toward a girl from another world generated a wave of sympathy. Hasty prints of the little princess's face were produced. Improvised songs were composed in the taverns. Market women spoke of how "angelic" she looked. Children tried to imitate her white hair with flour. For days, the dominant topic of any casual conversation was the new princess.
Among the soldiers, the reaction was more restrained but equally positive. Many of them had fought under Ashfon's command since the days of the rebellion. They saw the adoption as a sign that the king, despite his reputation as a harsh man, was still capable of acts of tenderness. Some, the more superstitious, interpreted the arrival of a girl with the same surname and similar features as a favorable omen from Nyvalis: the House of Lionheart, which had been on the verge of extinction, once again had a future under the watchful eye of the goddess of hope.
The reaction of the nobility was, as expected, more complex.
The newly minted nobles—those who had supported Ashfon from the beginning—received the news with cautious optimism. They understood that the king did not make impulsive decisions. If he had decided to adopt the girl, he must have sound reasons, whether emotional, political, or both. Some even saw opportunities: a young princess meant, in the long run, potential marriage alliances, although the idea of marrying off a nine-year-old girl seemed premature and even repugnant to most.
The remnants of the old imperial nobility, those who had managed to survive the purges and adapt to the new order, reacted with a mixture of alarm and calculation. A princess of blood (albeit adopted) strengthened the king's position. It made any future attempts to question the legitimacy of House Lionheart more difficult. At the same time, the girl's otherworldly origins presented a weak point: could a princess brought from another world by magic truly be considered legitimate? The more astute whisperers began to discreetly sow doubt in the private chambers.
At court itself, the Royal Guards and Archmage Violetta watched the proceedings with expressions difficult to interpret. Edelweiss and Lily, known for their ferocity on the battlefield, showed an almost maternal interest in the little girl. Violetta, ever pragmatic, simply pointed out that the adoption resolved the issue of the surname match at a stroke: it was now official, and any malicious speculation could be treated as an attack on the crown. In private, however, the Archmage didn't fail to mention that the Nyvalis ritual rarely produced such… personal results.
Beyond the borders of Astra, the news also traveled.
The elven emissaries from the Land of Greenwoods received the announcement with diplomatic courtesy and barely concealed curiosity. The Lady of the Elves, still remembering young Ashfon respecting her forests, sent a brief but warm letter. The dwarves of the Iron Range inquired, with their usual pragmatism, whether the new princess would have any influence on supply contracts. The Dragon Emperor sent no official reply; when dragons take an interest in something, they usually do so in ways that don't require letters. The leader of the Land of Mana, however, sent a coded message that only Violetta could fully decipher: a mixture of congratulations and a warning about the dangers of binding a kingdom's fate to a summoned soul.
And in the streets, in the houses, in the fields of Astra, the people continued talking.
Some said the girl was a gift from Nyvalis, the goddess of hope. Others, more realistic, claimed she was simply an orphan from another world whom the king had decided to protect. A few, the most cynical, suggested it was all part of a larger political calculation. But even the cynics had to admit an uncomfortable truth: ever since little Asagao Lionheart had been presented as a princess, the king seemed… different. Less alone. Less trapped in the invisible armor he had worn since his family's death.
Five years after the founding of the Kingdom of Astra, the monarch who had unified a shattered continent had found, in the most unexpected way possible, someone to call family.
And the entire kingdom, from the palace halls to the humblest taverns, watched with interest what this would mean for the future.
Because in Astra, the king's decisions were never just personal.
They always, in one way or another, became history.