Xian hadn't known the full story behind why he had been sent to the Lotus Pond, only that his parents were no longer around to care for him, and the Gilded Emperor, in all his divine wisdom, had decreed he would go to the Lotus Pond.

  He was thirteen when he finally gathered all the pieces of the story, and finally understood why he would ultimately be doomed to be sent to Rathania.

  Xian had known his a-die had been a general in the Emperor's army, a decorated war hero who always had stories of adventure to tell Xian, and who often traveled to the capital to report to the Emperor personally. He remembered his mother with less detail: the scent of jasmine oil and the melancholy chords of the guzheng she liked to play in the evenings.

  Unlike the other children in the Lotus Pond, Xian had a happy, loving childhood.

  But apparently, it had all been a lie.

  Xian would never know if he managed to stumble across the documents detailing his family's demise, or if they had been purposely left in his path by the Gardener. It didn't matter, the result was the same, and Xian had learned the truth.

  His mother had been a member of the Mei Dai, a rebellious faction that sought to overthrow the Gilded Emperor and topple the heavens. She wasn't just a member, she had been a sleeper agent, sent to infiltrate the Emperor's court by any means necessary.

  It had just happened that A-die had been that means. And whether Xian had been an accidental by-product of that cover, or an intentional act to maintain appearances, Xian would never be able to ask his mother. Not after she had attempted to assassinate the Emperor.

  If anything, Xian was impressed by how well the assassination attempt had been covered up by the Emperor's court: there were no records of the event in any of the historical accounts available to the public or outer courts. In fact, Xian might have doubted such an event even occurred if he had not been present for the aftermath.

  Poor A-die. Burdened with so much dishonor, not just by being taken advantage of by an enemy agent, but being part of the reason why the Emperor's safety had been compromised, to say nothing of if the assassination attempt succeeded and resulted in the Emperor's death. There was no way one man could atone for that much shame, even in the taking of his own life.

  That was why Xian had to earn the gods' blessing. A-die's soul was most likely still wandering the Empyrean Citadel, lost in its twisting halls and doors to nowhere until it was time for him to begin his next life. Xian knew his A-die had always been a patient man, that wouldn't change in death, so his soul wouldn't rush the journey. Xian had time to earn as much blessing from Tanjoshi as possible, so A-die could live a happy life in the next cycle.

  But even though Xian knew why he needed to become a Lotus, that didn't erase the fear of being condemned to infiltrate Rathania.

  There were inherent dangers to all of the kingdoms in the realm. Zilynth was a sultanate built on a foundation of war tribes that permeated their culture. Uthwain was a frozen tundra that punished any who were unprepared for the unforgiving climate. Lanrutcon was teeming with secrets, to say nothing to the literal blood drinkers. The Haivai Islands had their confederation spread over hundreds of thousands of miles of open ocean that were nearly impossible to navigate without a native's guidance. Beleza and Aneia both had their dangers with their wildlife, to say nothing of the inherent dangers of their rainforests and deserts, respectively. Even Mecadet could be considered a major threat, given the number of advancements they made that nearly rivaled Semetra's own, to say nothing of the wealth they garnered from the Lapis City.

  Each of those kingdoms had their secrets that could prove dangerous to Semetra and her Emperor, and by extension, her people. They also held information that could make Semetra stronger if given to the proper people. That was the purpose of the Lotuses, after all.

  But of all the neighbors Semetra had, the most dangerous one of all shared their western border. After all, all the other potential enemies of Semetra: Zilynth, Lanrutcon, Anaeia, the rest… they all at the very least, understood the balance of the world. All of the other nations understood the land, its life, and the mathuat that connected everything in the realm.

  Except for Rathania.

  The day after receiving his tattoo of wild roses, Xian hadn’t recognized himself in the mirror. He never would again.

  When he reported for his usual lessons, instead of the Gardener or one of the usual tutors, there was someone else.

  “I will be your handler from now until the end,” The older woman said, “If you must refer to me by a name, you may call me Jangmi.”

  Xian nodded. Rose, it was fitting.

  “Now,” Jangmi grabbed several books from the table next to her, “There is much to learn about Xiaoshide before you stand any sort of hope of surviving long enough to be of use to Semetra.” Without any ceremony, Jangmi dropped the books into Xian’s waiting arms, and Xian’s studies began in earnest.

  Xiaoshide, that was the Semetran name for Rathania. But, as Xian’s studies would quickly reveal, that name had only been in use for the past forty years, a relatively modern change in title.

  Before that, Rathania was referred to as Hoangda by those in Semetra. Hoangda, the wild. Because that was Rathania at its heart; wild and unpredictable.

  Semetra had long ago perfected the art of understanding the world, of following the mathuat through the land and using the world’s abundant resources to craft wonders that enriched the lives of the Semetran people: clothes woven from the silk from the Lizan spiders could stop an arrow; bamboo grown in the Vungchuc forests could only be cut with tools smelted from Zuanshi steel, but the resulting goods from said bamboo would be lighter than cotton, yet neigh unbreakable; any pigments mixed with eizoku ink would never fade, not from paper if painted, not from fabric if dyed.

  Because Semetrans knew the mathuat that flowed through the land, that connected all life. Because Xuewen had gifted them with knowledge and his son Zhiyin had gifted them with craft and taught their ancestors in the infancy of humanity how to create from the world’s mathuat. Because Semetrans obeyed the teachings of the gods and the balance of life.

  Rathanians flouted the balance of life and mathuat, thriving in the chaos they created for themselves. Even in the earliest records of Rathania’s history, written in an archaic form of language that took Xian ages to decipher, the mathuat of Rathania had been victim to madness. Rathanians pulled the mathuat wherever they pleased, forcing it to double back on itself and undo the very laws of nature and the design of the gods. Or Saints, as the Rathanians called them, though Xian failed to see what could possibly be holy about anything in Rathania.

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  Especially the Four Thrones.

  Everyone in Semetra understood the role of the Gilded Emperor: he and his line were the mortal emissaries from heaven, the guidance of the Gods in the flesh. But Rathania... they were not content with one throne but instead insisted on four, one for each element: air, water, earth, and fire. As if having four thrones was not already an insult to life, the Rathanians didn't even have all four thrones filled at any given time; yet even when there was only one king (or, more often than not in Rathania's matrilineal society, queen) in any of the thrones, they insisted on being referred to as the Four Thrones. Even their line of succession did not follow the natural order: not by birthright of the eldest heir, not by the strongest surviving. It seemed at random which Rathanian prince or princess was declared heir. There were even times when a child of one throne would be declared heir to a completely different throne. And there was no record of any sort of protests against the line (or meandering scribble) of succession.

  Completely illogical, to say nothing of the perversions those kings and queens committed against the world's mathuat. Unraveling the very fabric of life to stop the flow of rivers, reshape the land itself, call hellfire from the ether, and even change the direction of the winds. In a way, it was as if Jabidanche herself granted mercy upon the realm by only having one or two thrones filled throughout most of history; having all four thrones filled at once would surely cause Rathania to destroy the very fabric of reality through their own hubris and madness.

  And that was just the ancient history that Xian had studied. He already had a basic understanding of more recent history.

  Starting when Rathania had managed to make itself completely vanish from the face of the realm.

  It was bound to happen eventually, the gods could only abide by such arrogance for so long before divine punishment would have to be rendered. In the fifteenth year of Queen Gaae li Aveline, Crown of Water, Semetran intelligence had only been able to make note that there had been some minor instances of unrest throughout the kingdom. Enough to worry the pregnant queen.

  But apparently, one day, towns and cities around the Rathanian border began to report a vast wall of nothingness where Rathania had once been. No one could even see beyond the black miasma, let alone penetrate it.

  The Shadow Wall, as it would later be called, brought chaos upon the realm. Rathania, for all their transgressions against nature, had been blessed with a very central location within the realm, and had many trade routes through its borders. With Rathania gone from the map, trade routes had to be completely redrawn; land routes were almost useless for longer routes, and more and more trade was done via sailing. Anaeia's navy and the wayfaring Haivaians had benefited the most from this change in trade. But while there had been suspicions that Anaeia, a longtime ally of Rathania, had been in cahoots with the vanishing kingdom, even the Anaeian's were unable to predict just how long this new normal would last.

  Twenty years, as it turned out.

  For twenty years, Rathania did not exist to the rest of the realm. The land of wild roses was nothing by a wall of darkness. That was when the name for Rathania changed from Hoangda to Xiaoshide. From the wild to the vanished.

  Then, two years before Xian was born, as suddenly as it appeared, the Shadow Wall fell, revealing Rathania once more to the realm as if it had never vanished to begin with.

  Of course, the moment the wall fell, every kingdom in the realm organized expeditions into Rathania to investigate, to try and make sense of the twenty-year mystery.

  Only to be confronted with a vastly different Rathania than the one that had vanished all those years ago.

  Queen Gaae had been dead for twenty years. Some sort of coup, according to reports, though the details left much to be desired.

  There had been a war within Rathania's borders during those twenty years.

  And Rathania had not just one queen filling the Four Thrones. No, apparently Gaae had given birth to quadruplets (Xian suspected that could have been Gaae's cause of death, but he had not been asked his opinion on the matter), and those quadruplets had then inherited each of the Four Thrones.

  Needless to say, having all four thrones filled was nothing short of chaos.

  Within the first year of the rule of the Daughters of Gaae, there had been reports of catastrophic wildfires, earthquakes, floods, and even hurricanes along the coast. That had actually been the year Xian had been born; his A-die had once told him that he had been stationed near the Rathanian border at the time, waiting for word from the Emperor on what they should do if Rathania's chaos spread to Semetra.

  Thankfully, that had not happened. The natural disasters stopped as suddenly as they started, and according to reports, the queens themselves traveled the kingdom repairing the damage left behind.

  Then there were recorded sightings of dragons within Rathania. Xian had been a year old, and enamored with images of dragons. Apparently, his mother had been horrified at that.

  Mercifully, after the return of what the realm had previously considered legendary (and very extinct) beasts, the reports of Rathania's chaos had dwindled considerably. Not to nothing, of course, there was still the odd report that Xian would read that made him question the mental stability of the Lotuses who came before him when they wrote said reports, but for the most part the reign of the Four Thrones had been more or less peaceful for the past fifteen years.

  It was that last fifteen years that Xian had to become an expert on, as well as the current state of affairs within the land of the wild rose.

  Jangmi quizzed Xian daily on aspects of Rathanian life (how many provinces made up Rathania? Twelve. How many Saints make up their pantheon? Thirteen Saints comprise the main pantheon, from which the Rathanian calendar drew the names for the months.), and Xian was made to spend entire days conversing only in Common, specifically focused on incorporating more and more Rathanian idiosyncrasies into his dialect.

  It was only when Jangmi had decided that Xian had grasped the "basics" of Rathanian culture that his lessons turned to the structure of their government. Besides the Four Thrones, Rathania also utilized a secondary court of government called the House of Nobles. Said court was comprised of the Lords tasked with overseeing each of the twelve provinces, with said noble houses being named after the province rather than just the family name. Each province could have countless minor lords overseeing the smaller cities within a given province, though it appeared that the number varied depending on the landmass and population of a given province.

  When the House of Nobles met, at least one of the Four Thrones would be present, though intelligence could not identify a pattern of which throne would be present at any given time. If the report was to be believed, the Queens personally reviewed each and every law presented to them, and would only be passed if all four could agree.

  Xian wasn't sure how much he trusted that particular report. It had been the last report given by that particular Lotus before she had vanished, the next document in that collection of files was Jangmi's report of the Lotus exhibiting mental instability before ultimately disappearing, taking no belongings with her. The Lotus was declared Lost in the Line of Duty.

  That was only Lotus number three who had a similar report ending their files. From the time the reign of the Daughters of Gaae had begun, six Lotuses had ultimately suffered the same fate.

  Xian would be number seven.

  It was a poorly kept secret in the Lotus Pond, that Lotuses sent to Rathania did not return. Semetrans were people of order, of the natural world. Being immersed in Rathania's chaos was taxing on the mind, even in the best of cases. For Lotuses, who had the daunting task of trying to collect information and decipher it enough to create order from the madness...it plucked at the fraying edges of sanity.

  The worst part, Xian had concluded, as he read the report logs, or even the private journals of the Lotuses who came before him, was the sense of euphoria that seemed to permeate the end stages of their madness. Some Lotuses had the mental wherewithal to try and conceal their delusions with neutrality, but others could not hide their crumbling sanity. They wrote of how alive they felt, how desperately they craved more of...something (perhaps the Rathanian magic, it was unclear). Whatever it was that corrupted the Lotuses, it was clearly addictive in nature.

  Xian made a note to not eat anything he had not prepared himself, but he knew that could not last forever. The chances of all six Lotus’s before him becoming addicted to something they ate or drank were slim, but it made sense to limit his risk factors.

  The longest any of the Lotuses who came before him had served prior to Xian was five years. That had been the second Lotus. The time between each Lotus after that showed a pattern of decline. Lotus six had not lasted a year.

  Xian had to last at least a year, he had to show that he was stronger than the ones who came before him. Perhaps if he could prove he was dedicated enough to stave off the madness long enough, the gods would consider his service worthy of balancing out A-die’s dishonor.