Adam had never seen what happened to a city fully consumed by Rot.

  Read about it. Heard about it. But never seen.

  This could be what awaits Penumbria if I fail, he realized, with startling clarity. The worst of three possible fates. Either his people would starve, Ciro's armies would sack the city and raze it to the ground...

  Or the Rot would overwhelm all.

  Compared to what he'd witnessed happen to Asteria City, starvation or slaughter almost seemed a mercy by comparison.

  He'd barely had time to process that before the Fallen Lord's memories continued. They weren't quite done with him yet.

  As if imploring him to bear witness, visions of another life surged up once more.

  –

  In the halls of Edmundo Crepusculo's opulent court, the Fallen Lord was little more than a relic – a trophy to showcase the Lord of Coimbargo's kindness.

  He sat in a far off corner, his hunched-over silhouette more akin to the ancient artifacts hanging on the wall than a person. The goblet of wine in his hands, cheap by the court's standards but extravagant by his new ones, trembled slightly.

  Yet not from fear. The Fallen Lord was past fear – past most things, really. All that remained was his wine, the infatuating atmosphere of a fanciful feast, and the knowledge that every sip drowned the man once known as Lord Gaspar.

  A week ago, his city had Rotted. His noble duty, his bloodright, his home. Gone. Reduced to blood, ash, and the faint, Stained screams of those whom he'd sworn to protect.

  He survived, though.

  Survived, Gaspar thought, rolling the word around his feverish brain like the dregs of wine at the bottom of the cup. Survival felt too strong a term for his present state of being. He was no more than a smoldering, hollowed-out husk, walking through the gilded cage of another man's palace.

  And what a palace it was. Once, Gaspar would have held a quiet contempt for it – for anything that wasted coin better spent on the people's safety.

  Exotic dancers fluttered about, swinging on vines from one end of the room to the other. Nobles exchanged clipped words with one another, careful conversations that danced over politics, it was a place of orbs, honor, and titles.

  This used to be where he was most feared. A place where his sternness would earn him enemies and admirers alike.

  'Have you no shame?' Gaspar may have said, in another life. 'To waste yourself in luxuries, when that drink in your hands could've saved even one more life?'

  But he wasn't that person today.

  He wasn't that person anymore.

  Now...now, the Fallen Lord was just a man. A man who drank before noon, unable to recognize the hoarse sound coming out of his throat as his own voice.

  Another sip. Another layer of himself he could forget about.

  "Why are you still wearing clothes, damned you!" Gaspar slurred at the dancers, amidst a cough that nearly suffocated him in his cup. "Come on, we've been waiting all night!"

  The dancers smiled back at him. Some nobles raised a toast in response, and the Fallen Lord laughed with them. It was an unfamiliar gesture, something almost foreign to his body – and mayhaps that was why he found it easier than if he'd acted truer to himself.

  To what had once been himself, his mind corrected.

  Gaspar watched the show for a while longer, his smile a performance for the sake of the rare curious courtier that aimed a glance in his direction. Slowly, as the dancers' performance heated up and the palace's fervor reached its peak, he retreated inside his own mind just long enough to think of a most alluring thought.

  Perhaps it would be better to die.

  The thought wasn't a new enemy. It had been following him like a stray cat ever since he'd stumbled through the gates of Coimbargo, bloodied, coughing ash, and clutching the remains of his dignity. Gaspar has never been much for cats, but this one – the ever-present option of death – had dulled the worst of his pain. There was something soothing about it.

  When it gets too much, I'll find the nearest balcony.

  It was only the knowledge that he could die at any moment that kept him sane. But why? Was he not just delaying the inevitable? It would be better for everyone, himself included, if he just excused himself from this feast, retreated to nowhere special, and quietly took care of things. Who would miss him?

  Not the few of his surviving citizens – they served other lords now, and cursed his incompetence. Not his loved ones – he had none left. Not other lords – why would they care for a rival?

  Gaspar had nothing unresolved, none alive who depended on him, and nothing else to–

  The First Painter. Lawrence.

  This thought froze him like a dose of sobriety through his veins. The Fallen Lord's hands trembled as he set down his wine cup. His lips quivered as he dared to think, to summon whatever remained of the man once called Gaspar.

  I'm the only one who knows of the First Painter. He...he might know of a way to save more people.

  Not his people. It was too late for them. But there were others who could yet be saved by what Lawrence knew.

  Dragons of Old...burn me to cinders, he begged. Reduce me to nothing. Do not do this.

  Do not give me a reason I must live.

  As always, his prayers went unanswered.

  Mayhaps this was punishment for his failures. To live just a little longer, and to find out more about the First Painter.

  Lawrence's existence was a fraying thread keeping Gaspar from falling into an abyss. The Fallen Lord knew not whether his weak hand clasped it desperately...or whether the string had chained itself around him mercilessly.

  –

  For many nights, Gaspar lay awake, every blink summoning him to an enveloping darkness that threatened to swallow whatever remained of his soul. Sleep refused to come – nor did it accept any invitations, offer as he might. Wine could blunt the conscious mind, sure, but the unconscious?

  No drink has the power to dull your dreams. Instead, it merely arms them with sharper blades than your mind is ready to parry. Nightmares bled through the Lord's every moment, waking and not, a riot of ash and fire.

  The city's death. He could hardly even think of it without breaking.

  Ode's death. He couldn't think of it without breaking.

  Memories twisted and snarled, clawing at the inside of his skull like wild animals demanding freedom. They were more relentless than any Ghost that ever haunted his old city's walls.

  "No," he thought, gripping the edges of his cot as if to anchor himself. The word came sharp and bitter, like a shard of glass lodged in his throat. I can't...I can't forget.

  But forgetting was all he desired, wasn't it? To scrape the memories away like old paint, to be new – to be clean. His trembling fingers reached for the bottle at his bedside, but he stopped. The wine couldn't fix this.

  His birthright could. His Talent could.

  His Divine Knowledge could.

  Gaspar hesitated. Even in this state, he remembered the warnings he was taught at the Academy. Divine Knowledge wasn't meant for things like this. It wasn't meant to be turned inward.

  It wasn't meant to rewrite.

  I should only use it to read or observe. Never to alter. By Imperial Law, forcing or stealing knowledge from another was forbidden.

  And for good reason. Most targets of a forced Divine Knowledge ended up with their brains damaged beyond repair. Throughout history, even Lords backed by the Noble Guard had fallen comatose, as such alterations were not necessarily viewed as an injury by the Realm's own definition of what it should heal. Such definitions were flimsily defined, hard to study, and impossible to play with.

  All of those rare cases where Lords paid the price for their hubris had happened hundreds of years in the past. Gaspar had heard of only one man mad enough to play with this taboo.

  'You're a goddamn genius!' Ode had once told him. 'No one's ever learned things as fast as you in the Academy!'

  'Aspreay did,' he replied, gesturing at the parchment with every written record of the last few years. 'If anything, Lord Arcanjo learned faster than I.'

  'Not traditionally, mind you,' Ode whispered. 'I heard that he got so frustrated with his lack of progress that he started forcing information into his own brain with Divine Knowledge...then killing himself to ensure Noble Guard triggers.'

  Just hearing that gave him shivers. 'What a lunatic. A person's Canvas disappears after death. You'd need to construct a Noble Guard that operates fast enough to resurrect yourself after you die, but before your Canvas vanishes. That's not even getting into how perfectly you'd have to time the Divine Knowledge – as well as your own 'murder' for any 'lessons' to stick in your brain. The margin of error would be thinner than a needle!"

  Ode shook her head in bemusement. 'Well, how would you do it, Gaspy?' she asked, with a smile. 'Using Divine Knowledge to forcibly modify your own mind, I mean.'

  'If I had to do it...suppose I would focus on getting it right the first try. Implant the Knowledge without harming myself. There'd be no need to heal or resurrect myself if I incurred no damage in the first place. It would be monstrously difficult, but...'

  She sent him an encouraging grin. 'But you can–'

  –

  I can do it, thought the Fallen Lord. I can...stash those thoughts away. Make them not hurt as much. I can visit them later, I won't forget, they just...won't be as painful.

  A quiet voice – a faint echo of who he once was – whispered caution. Imagining himself able to do it was arrogance. Wishing himself able to do it was cowardice.

  You're going to destroy yourself, was its final warning.

  Gaspar silenced the voice with a snarl. What was there left to destroy? The man he'd been, the woman he'd loved – all of that was already ash and rot.

  Thus, with the grim determination of a man carving his own epitaph, and with the nonchalance of a hopeless drunk reaching for what he half-knows and half-wishes could be his last bottle...Gaspar turned his Divine Knowledge upon himself. He felt the weight of it, the celestial rewiring of his brain circuitry, the sacred logic folding over his thoughts like a blacksmith's hammer.

  A hammer he himself wielded.

  He sifted through the wreckage of his memories with brutal efficiency. Gaspar couldn't erase them entirely – no, that was beyond him.

  But he could compartmentalize. Box the worst of it up. Hide it away in some dark corner of his mind where it wouldn't scream at him every time he closed his eyes.

  Bury the man you used to be. Think of him as another person. Forget the pain. Remember your missions, the little you can still do...

  And most of all, forget how much you wish you were dead.

  When it was done, Gaspar felt lighter.

  Not better, exactly. Not healed. But bearable.

  He could exist.

  The worst of it – the city, Ode, the person he used to be – was now stashed away. He could forget how much he had loved her, how much he had failed her. He could forget the man who would've once died before breaking this law. That man was gone now; just another thing left behind in the rubble.

  Gaspar took a deep, shuddering breath. His hands steadied. His gaze lifted. He wasn't whole, but he was still here. That would have to be enough.

  For now, it was.

  –

  The Fallen Lord managed to acquire a semblance of normality over the following weeks. Some nearly thought of him as a different person, and he couldn't blame them. No longer was there a haunting seriousness to his voice, instead replaced by an undying smirk that must've seemed callous after the death of his people.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Do they think I can keep on being the same person I always was, after he killed so many with his sinful incompetence?

  "Yes, yes, we should absolutely look for a bard, Edmundo," he told his host one day. "The Lord of Coimbargo deserves the best!"

  "Would that I could," Edmundo grumbled. "Bards are wary of traveling right now, what with the business in Penumbria."

  "Penumbria?" The Fallen Lord laughed dismissively, though he lifted an eyebrow with curiosity. "What did old Aspreay do this time? Has he lost his city to the Rot already? Would be nice if I wasn't the only living lord doomed to be known by that title."

  "No. He fell ill and had his duties taken over by his son." Edmundo smirked. "His bastard son at that. Mayhaps that's why he agreed to allow mine to waste his coin." The Lord shook his head. "Can you believe that thing fathered a child?"

  It was difficult to imagine Aspreay as a father, caring or not, but that wasn't the most curious point at the moment. "His son," the Fallen Lord began. A spark of curiosity – a measure of the old Gaspar – screamed back at him. "What do we know of him?"

  "He's not well educated, for one." Edmundo shrugged. "Seems like before this incident, Aspreay had been hiding him in his court as a painter."

  The word kindled a flame in Gaspar's heart. Painter? Could it be...?

  –

  Emperor Ciro stood before the kneeling Frontier Lords with a haughty look about him.

  "The Painter is a pretender," Ciro told them. "He is no more Aspreay's son than I, and he must answer for his crime against the Empire."

  The Frontier Lords all responded with a resounding cry of affirmation, promising to make good on their vows to the Empire – yet each lord stirred with a different motivation. Beatriz with hesitance, Helena with fear, Edmundo with excitement at the chance to obtain his revenge...

  And Gaspar with concern. A no-name Painter faked being Aspreay's son and usurped Penumbria from him?

  But then how would he have the Talent of a Lord?

  –

  Adam, the Painter Lord of Penumbria, eventually proved victorious.

  He had survived and won what would become known as the Battle of the Santuario, personally slaying an Imperial Hangman in single combat. Furthermore, the Heiress of Gama had carved out her own legend by taking yet another Hangman prisoner and announcing to the world her ability to use a Genius Realm.

  Little surprise that Gaspar was called upon by Ciro again. He soon found himself kneeling before the Emperor once more, together with his host Edmundo.

  "Your mission is to assassinate the Painter," Ciro ordered them. "Worry not, as your recompensation will be plentiful – Orbs shall be dispensed so as to improve your Lordly Rank. Accept his invitation into his city, pretend to consider his offer of rebellion, then slay him."

  "It will be my pleasure," Edmundo solemnly promised him.

  Gaspar was not so quick. "We'll be inside his Realm. Will he not find out everything we're planning the second our Canvases pass through his Walls? Divine Knowledge should allow him to–"

  The Emperor yawned lazily. "Not with a casual glimpse. He would have to dive deep into the recesses of your mind to uncover your designs. At that point, open aggression on his part would prompt Gregorio and the others to rally behind your cause."

  It wasn't a convincing notion, yet it didn't need to be. Ciro's meaning was plain – he wanted the Painter dead, and he cared not whether Gaspar and Edmundo would need to risk their lives to do so.

  "Even so," Gaspar insisted, "I think there is no reason to assume the Pretender won't immediately guess our plans. Merely stashing our thoughts away isn't a secure enough measure."

  "It isn't," the Emperor agreed. "But using Divine Knowledge to forcibly make yourself forget...that is secure. You would know, wouldn't you?"

  Ciro's question was mocking, his smirk a dagger. "Every time before you meet with me, you prune your memories so as to not make your motives easy to discern."

  That wasn't entirely true. Gaspar liked his privacy, yes, and he misliked his chances of keeping something hidden from the Emperor of the World when it came to a matter of Realms. Yet his real reason for burrowing his memories was much simpler.

  He just didn't want Asteria's destruction to haunt his nightmares every night.

  "I am the Emperor of the World," Ciro warned him. "I will ensure that your true intentions are hidden in the farthest corners of your mind – for the first few days you are there. After that...mount the Painter's head on the Penumbria castle ramparts, you hear me?"

  Gaspar glanced over at the excited, would-be avenger in the shape of a Lord beside him. Edmundo's intentions to murder Adam were so clear that there was a good chance the Painter might mistake the Emperor's orders for the Lord of Coimbargo's own natural bloodlust. Stashing away the most damning of his memories might give them a chance to survive.

  "Ah, fine," said the Fallen Lord, with a resigned shrug of his shoulders. "We'll try it. Onwards to our death, then."

  –

  Gaspar arrived in Penumbria with half-a mind to fulfill the Emperor's request, half-a mind to question the new Lord of Penumbria about the First Painter – and a full mind that wished to die.

  His emotions were long detached from his heart, his memories carefully sealed away. Even his sense of duty had started to fade, like a faint threat ready to snap.

  By the Dragons...have I not punished myself enough yet?

  But the flickering embers of his soul – of the person he used to be – burned ever brighter when he first laid his eyes upon the new Lord of Penumbria.

  He and I aren't so far apart in age, Gaspar mused. We both took over our father's territories quite young. Arguably too young.

  "I am pleased you've found the time to join our meeting," were the first words spoken by Adam the Painter. "It will be done when matters regarding the lives of thousands are dealt with, and not a moment sooner."

  He somewhat reminds me of how I used to be. The notion brought a faint smile to the Fallen Lord's face. Sweet at first, although the bitterness reached him soon afterward, as it always did.

  For a moment he thought of speaking with Adam privately. To warn him of the Emperor's treachery, and to see if the rumors of his ability to fight against the Rot were true. Maybe there would be something good that could come out of that still.

  Another moment, he thought of killing him as was ordered by Ciro.

  The two versions of himself he'd crafted in his mind swirled within a dark whirlpool that threatened to pull him under. Gaspar made no effort to fight against it. Mayhaps the carefree opportunist would win. Mayhaps the ghosts of promises he once made would manifest once more.

  He didn't care either way.

  So tired. I...I just want it to be done.

  When he spoke to the Painter again, it was with the intention of finding out more about the man's intentions. If Adam truly was capable of saving the innocent from the Rot, then it was Gaspar's duty to fight alongside him.

  But no. That wasn't the whole story.

  Truthfully, deep inside his mind...deeper even than where he'd buried the worst of his memories...there was a part of him that wished for a different outcome.

  A part of him that wished for Adam to kill him.

  "You're going to have to force the knowledge out of me." I already know he can help people. Why am I even fighting him? "A harsh task, that one. It's rather difficult to force someone who's already lost everything." I...I don't want to fight anymore. "Realm Reconstruction." Just end this.

  Just end me.

  –

  Adam stood over the fallen lord.

  Gaspar remained crumpled on the floor like a toppled statue. His impressive Realm had been shattered in the Clash, and his Canvas was now too Stained to attempt at lifting a finger, let alone reconstruct a Realm.

  Yet the Painter didn't feel relaxed. Gaspar was defeated, true – but so was Adam. Exhausted. Worn down to the bone.

  This is where my job actually begins.

  "You have won, my lord..." Gaspar rasped, his voice like cracked marble; elegant despite its fractures. He coughed and spat out something near to laughter, though it came out closer to a fragmented wheeze. "No, that's not very fair of me. My father would be ashamed of this behavior."

  He shifted on the cold stone floor, the smirk on his lips too faint to reach his eyes. "In the name of my bloodline, of the beautiful city of Asteria, I admit it. You have bested me, Adam Arcanjo of Penumbria, King of the Frontier."

  The words hung in the air like incense, heavy and strange. Gaspar's tone was smooth – too smooth for a man laying atop what could be his grave.

  Yet it felt...earnest. Earnest in a way that was almost worse than defiance.

  "I accepted the Emperor's treasonous order of murdering you," Gaspar said, the confession slipping from his mouth as casually as one would admit to a jest. "For this transgression, and for the crime of violating Penumbria's hospitality, I am prepared to be executed under the rightful authority of your rule, my King."

  Adam fell into thought. His hands flexed at his sides, the weight of Gaspar's words settling onto his shoulders like a yoke.

  Killing him would solve a few of my problems, he thought. More than a few. The Empire would respect him more. His enemies would whisper of his ruthlessness. The other Frontier Lords, the ones that actually had Orbs and soldiers to their name, would pledge themselves more readily out of fear. A neat, clean conclusion to a messy, bloody chapter.

  But Adam wasn't the sort of man who loved neat endings.

  Gaspar looked up at him, eyes dull and tired. As if he'd accepted this was how he would die – and was almost annoyed that it hadn't happened yet.

  Am I supposed to just let his life...end, like that? Adam wondered. He went through so much. Way too much. And now I'm supposed to just kill him?

  Well, that is what a lord would do, wouldn't they? A real lord. A lord bereft of doubts. The kind of lord people sang songs about.

  That was fine by Adam. He meant to be remembered by his own art – not the music others wrote of him.

  Aspreay is going to hate me for this. So is Tenver. Probably Solara, too.

  Adam sighed. Even I'm going to hate me for this.

  "As your life belongs to the Kingdom of the Frontier," Adam began, each word slow, deliberate, and heavy, "it falls onto the crown to decide what to do with it."

  He paused, the weight of his own voice surprising him. "And I have another fate in mind for you."

  Gaspar blinked, confusion flashing across his face. The smirk was gone now, replaced by something brittle and wary. Disappointment, perhaps.

  "Pray tell, Your Majesty," Gaspar murmured, his weak voice dripping with a defiant sarcasm. "What would you punish me with?" Unspoken yet plain in his tone was, 'What could you punish me with that I haven't unfortunately survived already?'

  Adam met his gaze. "Knowledge."

  The word landed like a stone in a quiet pond, ripples of implication spreading out between them.

  Gaspar frowned, his confusion deepening. "What do you–"

  His scream echoed throughout the hall. It wasn't the scream of a man in pain – it was the scream of a man being remade against his will.

  "I will curse you with a reason to live," Adam said. "You will know everything you've wanted to know about the First Painter, ever since the day you first learned his name."

  Divine Knowledge crashed onto Gaspar like a tidal wave.