Adamite is a curious crystal, by all means it has no greater properties compared to its cousins in the rare mineral trade, and its creation isn’t anything special either. Oxidized in zinc-copper deposits, and yet it is so very precious.

  It is the emperor's jewel, found in the depths of The Expanse, where only immortals dare tread, its rarity precipitating its ridiculous price. Few are the nobles that carry jewellery with even a hint of the mineral, Erin has only seen it a few times, each instance it was a different color, with green being the most common, and the one that’s used to mint coins.

  Adamite coins are pointless in common trade, there is nothing so expensive that it would require its spending, but they serve as a kind of reserve to the empire’s treasury. In all of Rikidan there are only a dozen minted adamite coins, carved with arrays so complex only the great script masters could even begin to understand them, all to prove their authenticity. Half of them sit in the coffers of Goroka, while another two lie in Zarkan, the rest being scattered across the empire in their respective kingdoms.

  One sits in Erin’s palm, light as a feather yet heavy with purpose.

  It is both a gift and bribe, given to her through a simple letter, the courier unlikely to have recognized the wealth he was carrying, else he’d have long fled Ralth, becoming the richest individual besides the emperor himself. She’s genuinely surprised the Jade Sol was in possession of one, not all of them are accounted for, but she was pretty sure none lied within the reaches of Ralth.

  This small, unassuming, translucent coin, rolling between her fingers with reverent grace, represents hundreds of millions of gold.

  Around thirty-five hundred thousand platinum, to be precise.

  Platinum is something only carried by nobility and cultivators, and even then it’s a surprise to reach more than a few hundred at a time, it is for greater contracts and deals and is in no way traded lightly. The metal itself isn’t that rare, but its value doesn’t depend on its own rarity, set at exactly one thousand gold no matter the abundance.

  It too has scripts, so counterfeits aren’t an issue.

  The marquis’s house probably has around a few thousand platinum, and she was under the impression the Sol clan was the same, not nearly enough to possess an adamite coin, certainly not enough to simply hand one to her with the care of a drunkard.

  She’s served for a long time, eight hundred and fifty six years, almost a third of Jorik Theokal’s reign as emperor. In that time she has seen many things, she’s seen wars, famine, disease, and so much more. She’s quelled six rebellions with her blood alone. She’s killed immortals permanently, when they present an issue to the empire. She’s overseen times of prosperity and times of hardship.

  She has seen Adamite a few times.

  Only once before did she ever have a coin in her grasp, to do with as she pleases. Funnily enough the previous one was given to her by a merchant clan that has long dissolved, for largely the same reasons the Sol clan is giving it to her now.

  Do not interfere, such a simple request that’ll lead to such disastrous outcomes

  Her fragmented vision looks over the precious coin, examining it in all its opulent glory, tears streaming down her cheeks and staining it with blood.

  MY BLOOD FLOWS FOREVER

  That mutation’s been rather inconvenient once it integrated into her body, she has to be cautious when handling documents or missives, so the papers aren’t stained with crimson. Unfortunately, this also means she tends to track blood in the little pagoda the emperor gave her to oversee the peace of this city.

  A peace she now has to weigh against an adamite coin.

  The last time she did this went catastrophically, but she had more than enough coin to rebuild and bring prosperity to the city once the dust was settled, a kind of prosperity Ralth hasn’t seen in centuries.

  All because of one simple bribe.

  It’s so light, yet so very heavy.

  -

  Revolution.

  Such a simple word, such a dangerous word. It denotes the spilling of blood, the screams of babes, and the deconstruction of society as it is understood. A few have happened in Ralth, all of them brutal, where nobles were hung to wagon wheels, limbs broken and left bleeding for the crows. Where peasants were culled by cultivators and knights alike, captured if need be, only to be tortured for no discernable goal but satisfaction. In each revolution the Sentinel has been there to stem the tide, to prevent a catastrophe from turning into an outright scene from the hells.

  But there was one where she didn’t interfere, where nobles and peasants alike called on her name and she ignored them. It is known today as the year of demons, because so much suffering was present that it summoned true demons from the hells, grey things of horrific shapes and violent disposition. There have only ever been a few in Rikidan, during the great wars, times of famine, or, as previously stated, a revolution.

  They always bring so much death, joining in the suffering so that it might multiply.

  Revolution isn’t something to be taken lightly, not at all.

  It is a thing of death and destruction.

  Yet it is also a tool for change

  Doman’s only fifteen, barely a blip to some, but even he can see the pervasive need for change amongst not just the nobility, but the peasantry. To an outside observer Ralth may seem prosperous, if only taken at a glance, but it is a place of rot so deep it infects its bones. Coin is the only king here, any tragedy can be waved away with just a few coins, and not to the victims. Doman likes to explore the city with Rimi, pretending that he was some sort of servant to the cultivator girl. At first it was out of curiosity, to see the grand thing that house Farlagh rules over in all its splendor.

  It was the first time he bore witness to an execution.

  She was a young woman, barely older than Doman is now, she had wavy auburn hair and puffy brown eyes, she was crying and begging so much as the soldiers tied ropes to her ankles and wrists.

  All it took was two strikes from a whip, and the bulls trudged along, tearing her in half. That wouldn’t be the last time he’d bear witness to human entrails. There was so much cheering from the crowds, like a starving mutt being given satisfaction.

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  It…shocked him, how could such a grand place as Ralth resort to such barbarism? Surely there must have been a reason, must have been some justification for such a brutal execution.

  Turns out there was.

  The woman was a prostitute, and she bore the bastard child of his father.

  The child died a more humane death, slit through the throat as it were, when he confronted his father about this he didn’t seem to care, brushing off Doman’s trauma as though it were the tantrum of a child.

  As though he were weak for caring.

  His image of an honourable and dedicated noble caste was shattered that day, as it was with every consecutive visit to the streets of Ralth. So much time spent playing politics and hosting asinine tea parties while those on the streets of the city they rule suffer and die, so much pageantry to hide the apathy inherent with power.

  No more, there must be laws, there must be order.

  His father’s surprise death has given Doman an opening to do just that.

  This city cannot be a playground where the nobility are free to do as they please and the peasantry is forced to gnaw on the scraps. Not when the Farlagh estate alone has enough power and coin to solve so much of the hunger, so much of the deaths.

  He refuses for any more.

  He’s signed the death warrants of so many of his kin, and so many others, all for the sake of a true prosperity, of something to be proud of.

  There’s just so much suffering.

  So Doman has to do this, it’s nothing so benign as a choice, all his siblings are too focused on their scheming to focus on what matters. That leaves him, he has to correct the course this city’s set for however long now, he has to end the suffering.

  Even if it’ll bring so much more before it gets better.

  Even if he had to sign a contract with the devils themselves.

  So why doesn’t his foot stop tapping against the wooden floorboards like an ineffectual hammer? Why do his hands shake and lips sweat at the thought of what he needs to do?

  Because it’ll be revolution,

  And revolution brings with it so much suffering.

  -

  It started with a scream.

  Tantra walked along with the procession of false tears, mourners wailing and nobles trudging along to the cadence of a dirge. All of it theater, a display of pain for their fellows, so that none may be the subject of scrutiny or rumors.

  Tantra, of course, is not free from this asinine practice.

  She had to teach her friends how to carry themselves, so they don’t draw any unwanted ire to Synthia. They may just be cultivators kept to bloat the mansion's numbers, but they are still under the ladies name, and she doesn’t need the kind of scrutiny that comes with being the subject of rumors interrupting her scheming.

  The death of her father put the woman in a frenzy of political machinations, grasping for any and all the empty promises she can from earls and viscounts, blazing through her agenda with a tongue of…not quite silver. Tantra’s pointed out on multiple occasions that the woman carries herself with too much pretentious pride, but the advice has gone unheeded so far.

  Still, it is impressive, compared to her siblings, she's been carving out a significant amount of her fathers political capital. If you ignored how society worked you’d think she was aiming for the seat of marchioness, an idle fancy, one that doesn’t have a chance of actually happening.

  Despite that it’s clear Synthia has some sort of grand agenda, gathering political allies into the tight grip of a tyrant, using the vacuum of power to plot something against her siblings.

  It’s a good thing Tantra won’t be here to suffer the blowback.

  She looks over at Erick, the boy that’s been in her charge for what feels like forever now. He’s grown, actually passing her in height, much to his delight.

  The little shit.

  He’s almost at foundation, Tantra can smell it when she uses sensory overload, just a little. His Qi smells of mint, as she’s learned all Qi unaffected by dao does, and he’s getting close to a kind of threshold where the Qi is more…pungent. That’s what happens when a part of the body is fully saturated, the Qi goes from filling the cracks to merging with the tissue. It can still be trained of course, but now it’s to increase the body's tolerance to Qi, rather than trying to make it capable of tolerating Qi in the first place.

  Only a few months now and he’ll have crossed the threshold, they could be faster, If Tantra was willing to push him to his brink. But…that’s for the sect to do, she doesn’t have to set her expectations so high, not when they have practically an indefinite amount of time to train. Why make him suffer when he’s already so far ahead of his peers?

  He’s only twelve, the same age when Tantra started her journey, he’s doing just fine at his current pace.

  Then, once he’s hit foundation, they can trek the journey back to the sect. Tantra refuses to bring any mortals along with her to the DarkWoods. She still remembers the bear, everyday when she has to look at the scars it left on her body, she isn’t strong enough to fight one of those on her own, let alone protect anyone from it.

  She has a map of the greater beasts territories, the one Rakan used to navigate the Woods when they started their journey. But that was six years and a beast tide ago, meaning the likelihood of them crossing into another thing like the bear tremendously likely.

  Lucky she has her friends then, with their strength combined it won’t be impossible to take one down. But she isn’t traveling with a mortal, because she can’t protect a mortal.

  She needs Erick to be durable, in case anything goes wrong.

  They walk to a luxurious graveyard, easily spanning the size of the Sol estate, with a multitude of graves to represent the millennia of marquis’s and marchionesses who have passed through the annals of history in Ralth, most of them are, quite frankly, unremarkable. Enjoying their luxurious positions while doing little else other than maintaining the status quo. Not that that’s a bad thing, order is always better than chaos after all, and change is rarely a peaceful thing, not with the convoluted bureaucracy of nobility.

  Tantra’s standing pretty close to where the grave’s been dug, on account of being Synthia’s guard, her friends were even permitted to tag along.

  How serendipitous.

  The procession stops, surrounding the grave as the coffin bearers slowly lower the coffin into the grave of Roth Farlagh, at the front Erin stands, broken eyes ever bleeding as she postures behind the coffin.

  She is the only one who doesn’t have to play along with this theater, being as ancient and powerful as she is.

  She looks over the sizable crowd of nobles and their retainers with the broken rubies that float in her eyes, little fractals glowing red.

  “Greetings,” She starts, a voice of torn viscera echoing throughout the procession, “today we gather to commemorate the late marquis, as he rejoins the cycle like so many before him. I would offer my condolences, but he was truly an unremarkable man, doing little and taking little. He’s left nothing to mark his name in Ralth’s history other than being someone of importance. I, personally, detest these kinds of people. So much power yet so little substance, truly it is a waste, I can only hope that the one to take his seat would have more zeal for the growth of this city.”

  No one comments on her speech, no one dares, immortals get to say whatever they want, and it wasn’t unexpected that she say something to disparage the marquis. She’s done it plenty of times before according to the history books, rarely ever giving praise to any particular ruler.

  It is with the end of her speech that Garlan, the first son, walks up to the grave and prepares his speech, he drones on about the greatness of his father, despite the very clear disparagement the immortal next to him had delivered, on and on his speech goes, until even Tantra’s eye’s start to droop.

  But then he is finished, and it is Dimis’s turn.

  The boy takes a deep breath and starts to speak-

  Only to be cut off by a scream.