Before anything existed in the sense of “before,” there was a place.
The main corridor of the Mahallem Castle-Cathedral was two hundred and forty-seven meters long, its walls clad in marble carved from a mountain that existed simultaneously in two realities, and its ceiling high enough for smaller dragons to fly through without needing to bend their necks.
Noble Aldric Fennas walked through it with the posture of someone carrying bad news and already rehearsing how to say it in a way that would avoid being blamed for the news itself.
Aldric was forty-three years old, with brown hair starting to retreat at the temples, dressed in sober green noble robes that said I am important, but I am not competing with anyone.
He carried a scroll in his left hand with the firmness of someone holding both evidence and a shield.
His footsteps echoed.
Everything in that corridor echoes.
That is basically its main function.
The guards stationed every twelve meters followed him with their eyes without moving their heads.
Aldric knew that look.
It was the look of men who had seen enough not to be surprised anymore, but who still kept a private reserve of surprise for especially interesting days.
He reached the doors of the Throne Hall.
Two black oak leaves, ten meters tall, carved with reliefs depicting the Wars of Mahallem’s Foundation — battles that lasted ages and which historians still debate whether they were real or whether reality itself was fighting itself internally.
Two guards at the entrance.
Aldric gave a formal nod.
They opened the doors.
The Throne Hall of Mahallem had proportions that made architects cry in different ways: some from admiration, some from envy, some because they simply could not understand how it stayed standing and it unsettled them on an existential level.
Dark granite columns rose from the floor to a vaulted ceiling painted with a top-down map of the World of Naicity, Mahallem at the center and everything else arranged around it with the geographical modesty of whoever drew the map.
The throne sat at the far end, raised on seven white marble steps veined with gold.
It communicated power without needing to say anything: high back, wide arms, carvings that were both decorative and a quiet threat.
On the throne sat—
Aldric stopped.
Blink.
Looked again.
On the throne was a doll.
A nearly human-sized doll, dressed in an immaculate suit, equally immaculate white hair, a blindfold over its eyes, and an expression that suggested both transcendent indifference and the vague possibility it could, at any moment, do something absolutely devastating.
A mage doll.
Or rather: a highly detailed, unsettlingly faithful handcrafted representation of… something.
Placed on the imperial throne of Mahallem with the dignity of someone who clearly had every right to be there.
Aldric stood in place long enough to be uncomfortable, but short enough to preserve his professional dignity.
To the right of the throne — not seated, but standing in the posture all serious generals adopt — was someone Aldric knew very well.
Jerdon Baubar Vas de Baldal.
The General of Mahallem.
Better known, for reasons official history prefers not to explain, as João.
Twenty-one years old.
One hundred eighty-six centimeters tall.
Eighty-four kilos of athletic build, less the result of systematic training and more the result of years of doing things that forced urgent physical adaptation in order to survive consequences.
Pale skin, blue eyes the exact shade that maps use to indicate ocean depth, black hair slightly longer than military regulation strictly allowed — but no one had said anything, because no one wanted that conversation.
He wore the general’s uniform with the ease of someone born for the rank, which was partially true and partially the result of decisions his cousin-emperor had made with the energy of someone placing a plant in the right spot and then pretending it was planned.
At that moment, João looked at Aldric with a serious, questioning expression that clearly communicated: speak, and speak fast, and make it something I need to act on, because standing here next to a manga-looking doll on the emperor’s throne is starting to affect my professional self-image.
Aldric opened his mouth.
“Your Majesty,” he began, looking at the throne, processing what he saw again, choosing to continue as if the situation were normal because sometimes the only thing keeping civilization together is collective agreement to pretend things make sense, “we have a problem.”
João crossed his arms.
Stepped forward.
Opened his mouth to respond with the seriousness of a general about to ask critical strategic questions.
And then the floor happened.
Nothing was wrong with the floor.
The floor was exactly where it had always been, doing exactly what floors do.
But between João’s first step and his second, something in the interaction between boot sole and polished marble produced a force vector that physics treated with complete indifference.
João slipped.
Not a small slip.
Not a recoverable stumble.
A committed fall — legs up, arms flailing, the specific sound an eighty-four-kilo general makes when meeting throne hall marble in the most undignified way possible.
The echo in the hall was impressive.
Aldric did not move.
The guards did not move.
Everyone shared a collective refusal to acknowledge reality, the universal instinct of social survival when witnessing something too embarrassing to process.
Silence lasted exactly long enough to become unbearable.
João stood up.
With meticulous precision, as if deciding the event had not happened, he adjusted his uniform, repositioned his sword, straightened his posture, and crossed his arms again with the expression of a man fully in control of everything.
“What is the problem,” he said, voice unchanged.
Aldric opened his mouth.
And then the side door — a bathroom that definitely had not been there moments ago, but now existed with full certainty — opened.
And he came out.
Vahal Vas de Baldal.
Twenty-four years old.
One hundred eighty-seven centimeters.
Eighty-four kilos of muscle that wasn’t just trained, but trained in the very specific category of being trained by bored divinities.
Pale skin.
Blue eyes.
Black hair styled with suspiciously intentional casualness.
He wore imperial garments with the ease of someone wearing pajamas.
Liou.
That was what everyone called him.
The Emperor of Mahallem.
Number one of the Island.
A man who had destroyed primordial entities that made gods lose sleep — and who, in one memorable incident, had lost an argument to an ordinary ant.
He had resolved that problem in the only logical way available: by creating an imperial law that made it legally impossible for him to ever lose an argument again.
The law existed.
Registered.
Numbered.
Liou looked at the hall.
At João, who was definitely not falling.
At Aldric, holding his scroll like it contained his life insurance.
At the throne.
At the doll sitting on his throne with absolute sovereignty.
Then back at Aldric.
“What is the problem,” he said.
Not a question.
A statement that it was time to deliver the problem.
Aldric unfolded the scroll.
“Spreichem,” he said.
The name landed in the hall like a stone in still water.
João slowly uncrossed his arms.
His expression shifted in a way that suggested a muscle you didn’t know was tense had just tightened further.
“The baker,” João said.
The word came out like others say traitor or heresy or there is an ant in your argument, emperor.
“The baker,” Aldric confirmed.
“There is a new shipment.”
And thus began another day in the heart of the greatest empire in the World of Naicity — with a doll on the throne, a general who had not fallen in any official timeline, and a baker named Spreichem who, for reasons both legal and cosmically suspicious, remained the most persistent enemy João had ever faced.
Somewhere in the city, the bald, buff man protecting Spreichem yawned.
Somewhere farther away, the god Garman gained six new followers who were very confused about how they became religious but vaguely remembered excellent bread.
The day had every intention of becoming interesting.