​If the palace was a silent tomb of gold, the city of Byblos was a screaming riot of mud and iron.

​By the time the first grey light of dawn began to bleed over the horizon, Luca and Liam had successfully traded their heavy infantry armour for the salt-stained rags of dockworkers. The trade had cost Luca another gold coin, and the old woman who ran the pawnshop had looked at him with a mix of greed and suspicion that made his skin crawl. Now, dressed in coarse hemp and worn leather, Luca felt the bite of the morning wind in a way he never had before.

​They walked into the heart of the Great Market. It was a sprawling, chaotic arena of trade, but it was far from the prosperous image the royal heralds described.

​Luca stared, his heart sinking with every step. He saw children with hollowed eyes and bellies swollen from hunger, picking through piles of rotting fish guts for a morsel of food. He saw men with backs permanently bent from hauling stone to the King’s ever-growing fortifications, their faces masks of grey exhaustion. The air was a thick, suffocating soup of coal smoke, unwashed bodies, and the metallic tang of the "Blood-Tax" collectors who stood on every street corner.

​"Is this it?" Luca whispered, his voice caught in his throat. "Is this the peace my father brags about?"

​"This is the reality of the Sun-Throne, My Lord," Liam replied softly, keeping his head down. "The palace is fed by the hunger of Byblos. Every golden plate on your table was paid for by the sweat of a thousand men who will never see a coin of their own."

​Luca felt a sudden, sharp spike of shame. He remembered the fine wines he had poured down the drain when they weren't to his liking. He remembered the silk sheets he had complained were too rough. Here, a single silk sheet could feed a family for a year.

​His internal crisis was interrupted by a sound that made the entire market go silent: the rhythmic, heavy thud of purebred warhorses.

​"The Cavalry," Liam hissed, grabbing Luca’s arm and pulling him toward the shadow of a spice stall. "Get down. Don't look them in the eye."

​A squad of royal riders thundered into the square. They didn't slow down for the pedestrians. At the front of the line was a man who looked as though he were carved from obsidian. General Henry, the "Iron Hand" of Lorendo. His black armour was polished to a mirror finish, reflecting the miserable faces of the peasants he rode past. He was the man responsible for the King’s security, and for the disappearance of anyone who dared to complain.

​As the horses charged through the centre of the market, a fruit vendor’s stall was smashed into splinters. An elderly man, too slow to move, was knocked into the gutter. His small bag of grain, likely his only food for the week, burst open, spilling into the filthy, mud-filled water.

​The soldiers didn't stop. They laughed, their voices echoing off the stone walls of the surrounding tenements.

​Luca’s world turned a deep, vibrating red. The years of suppressed anger, the hatred of his father’s cruelty, and the injustice of his own existence boiled over. Before Liam could stop him, Luca stepped out from the shadows and planted his feet in the middle of the road.

​"Halt!" Luca roared.

​The command was so sharp, so full of the authority of his bloodline, that the lead horse reared back instinctively. General Henry hauled on his reins, his horse’s hooves missing Luca’s chest by a mere inch.

​The market was so quiet that the dripping of water from a nearby roof sounded like a hammer blow.

​Henry looked down at the boy in rags. His eyes were like chips of flint, cold, hard, and utterly devoid of humanity. He didn't recognize the Prince, but he recognized the defiance. It was a thing he was paid to crush.

​"You have a death wish, boy?" Henry’s voice was a low, dangerous rumble. He reached for the heavy, leather-braid whip at his saddle. "Out of the road before I make an example of you."

​"The Royal Decree of 412," Luca said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline surging through his veins. "It states that no member of the military shall wilfully destroy the property of a citizen during a time of peace. Do you consider yourself above the laws you were sworn to protect, General?"

​A ripple of gasps went through the crowd. Liam looked as though he wanted to melt into the cobblestones.

​Henry leaned forward, his leather armour creaking. A cruel smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. "You speak like a scholar, but you smell like the docks. I don't care about ink on parchment, boy. I care about the King’s road. And right now, you are a blockage."

​Henry raised his whip, but then he paused. He looked closer at Luca’s face. There was something in the bridge of the nose, the set of the jaw, a ghost of a resemblance that made the General’s smile falter.

​"You look familiar," Henry whispered, his eyes narrowing. "Too familiar."

​"I am just a man who is tired of watching his neighbours be treated like cattle," Luca lied, though the lie felt heavy on his tongue.

​"Is that so?" Henry turned to his men. "We're short on labour for the Mountain Project. This one has a strong back and a loud mouth. Chain him. We'll see how much he likes 'The Law' when he’s breaking rocks for the King’s new wall."

​Two soldiers dismounted, their iron shackles clinking with a terrifying finality. Luca prepared to fight, his hand drifting toward the small knife hidden in his rags. He knew he couldn't win, but he wouldn't go back to a cage.

​"I believe the boy is spoken for, General."

​The voice was thin and dry, like old parchment being crumpled.

​An old man stepped out from a narrow alleyway. He wore a grey, tattered cloak that seemed to absorb the morning light. He carried a wooden cane that looked like it had been pulled from a lightning-struck oak. His eyes were cloudy, covered by the white film of cataracts, yet he moved with a strange, unerring certainty.

​General Henry’s face went from arrogant to deathly pale in a second. He gripped his reins so hard his knuckles turned white.

​"The Prophet," someone whispered.

​"Prophet," Henry said, his voice losing its edge. "This is army business. The boy interfered with a royal patrol."

​"The boy is my new apprentice," the old man said, tapping his cane twice on the stone. Thump. Thump. The sound didn't just echo; it seemed to resonate in the bones of everyone standing in the square. "He was sent to fetch my medicines and got lost in his own youth. Surely the great General Henry doesn't wish to quarrel with an old man over a dock-hand?"

​Henry looked at the Prophet, then at Luca, then back at the Prophet. Fear, real, primal fear, flickered in the General’s eyes.

​"Take him," Henry spat, gesturing for his men to remount. "But keep him off my road. If I see that face again, I won't ask questions. I'll simply take the head."

​The cavalry thundered away, leaving a cloud of choking dust in their wake.

​Luca stood shaking, the adrenaline slowly leaving his system. He turned to the old man, who was now watching him with those strange, sightless eyes.

​"Who are you?" Luca asked.

​The Prophet smiled, revealing a row of surprisingly white teeth. "A friend of your mother’s, Prince Luca. And a man who has been waiting eighteen years for you to finally walk out of that gate."

​The Prophet turned and began to walk away, his cane tapping a rhythmic beat on the stones.

​"Follow me," the old man called back. "The mountain is waking up, and we have very little time to teach you how to speak to it.”