Before the Empire, there was a heavens.
Before the Empress, there were gods.
And before the gods abandoned the earth, they cursed the blood of man—marking one family to carry their wrath and their will for all eternity.
The Salvadors were not born.
They were forged.
Centuries ago, the first of their name, Azarios Salvador, defied heaven itself for love. He was a warrior-turned-seraph, chosen by the Moon Goddess to lead the celestial armies. But Azarios fell—not in battle, but in devotion. He loved a mortal priestess. Loved her enough to hide her, to lie to the stars, to turn his back on fate. And in doing so, he broke the ancient law: no divine blood shall lie with the unworthy.
He was cast down from the heavens in chains of moonfire. His lover was turned to ash in his arms. And his descendants—every Salvador born from his ruined legacy—were bound by what the Goddess called the Echo of Betrayal.
They would serve the heavens. They would fight, bleed, and obey.
But they would never love.
Not freely. Not until they had proven themselves worthy.
If they broke this oath, the punishment would be crueler than death.
Generations passed. Empires rose, fell, then rose again under the Empress Divine. And still, the Salvador name endured—whispers of it curling like incense in court halls and battlefield camps. The people called them blessed. The gods knew better.
They were bound.
Caelion Salvador was the newest link in that sacred chain.
The Empress' Sword.
The Blue Paladin.
And the Empire's most flawless failure.
He was carved from tradition and steel—tall, broad-shouldered, with sapphire armor forged in the celestial forges of Mount Aurix. Each piece was blessed by flame-priests, bound in ritual, and sealed with moonstone. His helm bore the ancient crest of his bloodline: a flaming sword that was pointed down, crescent moon above it, wings unfurled behind the crest, and a broken chain encircling the symbol.
At twenty-seven, he had never lost a duel, never once dishonored the Empress, never once succumbed to earthly pleasures.
Not even a kiss.
Not even a name whispered in darkness.
He was as untouchable as he was deadly, with a voice that rarely rose above a calm murmur—but when it did, even kings knelt.
But power came with price.
Every night, Caelion closed his eyes and saw memories that were not his own.
He saw Azarios falling from the sky, weeping flames as the Goddess turned her face away.
He felt his ancestor's anguish each time he blinked.
Heard his screams echo inside his ribcage when desire so much as brushed the edges of his thoughts.
There were rules, after all.
No lover. No warmth. No mortal touch.
Only the soulmate chosen by the Moon Goddess, the one promised at the end of the path of trial—a woman not yet named, not yet seen.
If he wanted to claim her, Caelion must wait. Must suffer. Must endure.
Until the day came when the heavens deemed him worthy of love.
Until then, he was a sword.
Nothing more.
The mission to the northern border village was supposed to be routine.
A report of missing grain shipments. Bandit rumors. A shrine defiled.
Caelion and his men—ten paladins of the Ivory Order—arrived at dusk, riding steeds clad in silverlight armor. His banner fluttered behind him: a silver sword wreathed in blue flame, framed by twin wings—one white, one star-dark—on an unblemished ivory field, its edges stitched with crescent moons. The people in the surrounding provinces had long since learned to scatter at the sight of it.
And yet, there was no one left to scatter.
The village was a graveyard.
Huts burned down to skeletons. Livestock butchered, not for meat, but for cruelty. The old shrine at the edge of the woods stood broken, moonstone offerings shattered across the altar.
But something in the air didn't feel… finished.
The hairs on Caelion's arms prickled under his armor.
He stepped into the shrine alone, gauntlet brushing the desecrated altar.
His breath caught.
There it was again.
A whisper not spoken by any human tongue—just beneath the surface of silence. The divine tingle of Fate moving before its time.
He reached instinctively for the hilt of his sword.
It wasn't danger.
It was… something else.
A shift. A disturbance.
Something ancient that stirred in his blood like desire denied.
"Commander," his lieutenant called from the edge of the ruins. "Tracks heading north. Someone left recently. Not soldiers. Civilians—two sets of footprints. One large. One small."
Caelion didn't answer.
His eyes locked on a single mark carved into the broken stone of the shrine.
A symbol.
Crudely etched by a mortal hand, but undeniably sacred: a broken moon cradled by flame.
Not a symbol of any temple.
But one he had seen only once before—
—in a vision the night before he killed for the first time.
The Echo pulsed inside him.
She is near.
The voice was soft. Female. Terrifyingly familiar.
Caelion turned away from the shrine. His sapphire cape dragged ash behind him.
He did not know her name.
He had not yet seen her face.
But something in him ached.
And for the first time since his initiation into the Ivory Order, the Blue Paladin felt something that was not duty, or fear, or pain.
He felt longing.
And worse…
Curiosity.
That night, while the men rested by the campfires and the wind whispered over the bones of the dead, Caelion stood beneath the broken moon, eyes closed, the sword in his hand humming.
He should have prayed.
He should have resisted.
But his thoughts wandered, again and again, to the shadow in the forest. The flicker of a soul who should not matter. Who could not.
And yet…
The moon above him looked down.
As if waiting.
As if watching.
| ☾ |
In the ivory halls of Sanctum Caelestis, where marble pillars kissed the heavens and stained-glass moons cast colored light over velvet floors, the Empire's ruling bloodlines drank wine like holy water and traded secrets like coin.
The Court of the Divine Throne was in session.
And as always, the topic of the Salvadors slithered into conversation like an unwelcome shadow.
"He's too quiet. Too cold. Even for a Paladin," murmured Lady Veressa of House Ilyan, swirling crimson wine in a gold-rimmed chalice. "If you ask me, Caelion Salvador is less a man and more a relic."
"A relic with a sword that has ended rebellions in a day," Lord Desmon countered, raising a dark brow. "You forget what happened at the Siege of Eloran. Five thousand heretics silenced with a single command. That's not coldness, my lady. That's control."
"And control that absolute," the Grand Seeress of the Moon Temple interjected, "comes only from those who know fear more intimately than desire."
They all went quiet for a moment.
A silence settled—not of boredom, but of reverence. And unease.
For no matter how high they sat on the food chain of the Empire, the name Salvador never failed to tighten throats and sour wine.
The Salvador Family was a paradox—exalted by the Heavens, yet cursed by them.
The nobles called them The Empress' Executioners. The priests called them Heaven's Servants. The people called them The Blue Line of Damnation.
But all agreed on one thing: they were not like other men.
While other families bought their power with coin and marriage, the Salvadors were bound by celestial law.
They took no brides. Attended no feasts. Danced at no masquerades.
Each heir was raised within the sacred fortress of Velanor Keep, where they were taught not to feel, but to endure.
Where they were stripped of name until proven worthy. Where the Echo of Azarios whispered into their dreams and carved its memory into bone.
Caelion, the current heir, had emerged from Velanor at seventeen. A man already more myth than flesh. Chosen to wear the Sapphire Armor—the mark of a Salvador who had mastered his divine burden.
No Salvador had worn it in sixty years.
And some in court whispered that this one might be the last.
"He's dangerous," said Prince Sevrael, the Empress' nephew, whose tongue was as sharp as his hunger for power. He leaned back in his throne-side seat, bored and bitter, eyes glinting beneath silver lashes. "Mark my words. When men start looking too much like statues, they forget how to bleed."
"You sound threatened, cousin," the Empress said smoothly, her voice as soft as crushed velvet and twice as lethal. She sat high above them all, on her moonstone dais, dressed in silvers and whites, her crown a halo of pearls and steel.
"I'm not threatened," Sevrael muttered. "I'm watchful. There's a difference."
The Empress only smiled.
She knew what they all thought. What they feared.
That Caelion Salvador, stoic and untouchable, had more influence in the Empire than half the royal bloodlines combined. That the Ivory Order—devoted to him, not the crown—would move on a single word from his lips.
He was not a politician. He did not scheme or seduce or grovel. But he was a symbol. And symbols were harder to kill than men.
Still, the Empress did not fear him.
She pitied him.
"Caelion is exactly what he was meant to be," she murmured at last, eyes drifting toward the great mural above the chamber—a painting of Azarios falling from the sky in chains, his sword shattering as he reached for the mortal woman already turning to ash.
"A sword forged by tragedy. Loyal. Beautiful. Lonely." Her gaze sharpened. "And so long as he is mine, the Empire is safe."
And somewhere, far from court, under a broken moon and a ruined sky, the tool they spoke of was dreaming— of touch he should not crave. Of laughter that did not belong to him. Of a girl whose name he did not yet know.
And though he did not yet wake…
His heart was already burning.