Prince Okasa once had everything. Wealth, power, and status bent to his will with the flick of a hand. In Kairos, no royal matched his riches, and no desire of his ever went unfulfilled. Servants prepared feasts of Horsechicken: creatures bred in the Deimos outer lands for both their massive eggs and tender, smoky meat, while the empire's finalist-ranked chefs perfected every bite. To Okasa, this was not luxury but normalcy.
But this is not a story of what he had. It is the story of how he lost it all.
The day began badly, though Okasa wouldn't have called it an omen. The morning sun rose too quickly for his liking, slipping through his bedroom curtains as though mocking his unease. Worse still, his butler Aeros had the audacity to serve breakfast late.
Okasa, accustomed to his meal precisely at dawn, sat waiting with a frown that could curdle milk.
"Aeros, I expect better from you," he said, his tone cutting.
The older man bowed his head. "Prince Okasa, I am gravely sorry for my mistake. Such a delay will not occur again."
Okasa dismissed the apology with a wave, but inside, some tiny, buried part of him wondered if he was merely drunk on privilege. Was it really such an offense? Or just the voice of my gold speaking for me? Not that he would ever admit it aloud.
Moments later, Aeros delivered the long-awaited breakfast, seared Horsechicken thighs with sun-grain porridge, before preparing Okasa for the day's royal errands.
The first obligation was the Urana Gala, an annual affair that Lady Marna insisted all royals attend. Okasa found it insufferably dull. He neither trusted the gala's food nor had any interest in mingling with the court's shallow elites.
Instead, he arrived carrying his own lunch: a pterosaur breast sandwich drizzled with golden honey, pressed between slices of century-aged rye and topped with crushed marksman wasp seeds. The meal alone, he often boasted, cost more than half the guests earned in a year.
The gala dragged on for hours, and Okasa endured it only to avoid Lady Marna's scolding. By the time he left, the thought of facing the rest of his royal duties weighed heavily on him.
That day's final task loomed in his mind: a trip to the marshlands to find a reputable potion seller. His house, renowned for its military might, needed a stronger supply of alchemical remedies. The right potions could turn a fatal wound into a mere inconvenience. Legends even spoke of Dick Whale's healing blood, a substance so potent it could revive soldiers from the brink of death.
Okasa was exhausted, but the prospect of improving his armies' strength, and his own infamy, was too tempting to ignore.
He could not have known that the choice to venture into those marshlands would unravel everything he thought he was.