The Sovereign stood atop the tower until the last fires of celebration guttered into smoke.
The dawn broke — pale and cold — as if mourning what it must soon witness.
He descended unseen into the veins of the city, where only the lowest dared walk.
The undercroft. The slums. The broken end of Selvarad.
There, among the rats and hollowed-eyed souls, he planted the seeds of the First Trial.
He gathered the discarded, the maimed, the forgotten.
He healed no wounds. He gave no gold.
Instead, he spoke three words:
["Remember your worth."]
The words fell into their hearts like stones into deep wells.
Some wept. Some laughed bitterly. Some simply stared.
The Sovereign left them with nothing but their own awakened memory —
The ancient, invincible knowledge that they too were sons and daughters of destiny.
["Gold given melts away," he whispered as he walked, unseen, "but the gold within burns forever."]
Thus the First Trial began:
Would Selvarad lift its lowest, or trample them further into dust?
---
The Second Trial he planted within the king's own court.
At the city's sacred archive — a vast library where only nobles were permitted —
he set a simple thing:
a sealed letter, placed quietly among the king's favored scrolls.
None knew who had left it.
When the scrollkeeper found it, he hesitated but dared not destroy it.
Upon opening, it revealed only a single sentence:
["The tree that shades the mighty is fed by the blood of the unseen roots."]
The letter passed from hand to hand, whispered about in court, dismissed by fools, feared by the wise.
Some began to question their easy lives.
Some began to plot against each other, thinking treachery was afoot.
The Sovereign watched from afar.
If wisdom bloomed, Selvarad would be saved.
If greed rose instead... Selvarad would crack itself apart without a sword ever being drawn.
---
The Third Trial was the most hidden.
The Sovereign sought out a simple mason — an old man, forgotten, whose hands had once built Selvarad's first towers.
To him, he gave a task without command:
["Build one stone, pure and strong, at the city's heart. You will be mocked. You will be scorned. But endure."]
No reward promised. No threat given.
The mason, confused but moved, took up his tools once again after decades of exile.
At the crossroads of Selvarad, where the drunkards spat and the corrupt gossiped,
the old mason began to lay a single stone — clean, unmarked, undesired.
The people mocked.
The nobles laughed.
Children threw filth at him.
But the mason worked, silent and steady.
The Sovereign watched, unseen, the faintest trace of approval in his eternal gaze.
["The strength of a kingdom is not in its crown, but in the hands that build when no song is sung."]
---
Thus the Sovereign set his three hidden tests.
No army marched.
No banners were raised.
But already, the fate of Selvarad trembled upon the edge of a blade.
And in the silent spaces between breath and dream,
the city — so proud, so blind —
began to realize that a storm, unseen yet unstoppable, had entered its walls.