The Southern Flame
It began with whispers—disappearances in Rad County, trails of bloodless corpses, and symbols carved into barn doors and temple walls. David, ever restless and always itching for fieldwork, offered to investigate under the guise of inspecting border trade routes.
He went alone, with only a disguised badge and a single sword.
Rad was not like Littlefoot. Here, eyes watched from windows with suspicion, and mouths closed the moment coin hit the table. But David, for all his humor and chaos, was a master of disarming suspicion. He played the fool, drank with locals, shared jokes—and in doing so, learned everything.
What he uncovered chilled him.
A secret network beneath Rad's noble court—a cult tracing back to the same forbidden practice Jacob and he had uncovered in the bogs. But it was deeper now. More organized. More political.
The cult called itself The Golden Veil.
And at its core was a twisted theology: the belief that magic and cultivation, banned by the Empire for a thousand years, was the true divine right of rule. The nobility, they said, had a sacred inheritance—one stolen by law and replaced by bureaucracy.
And they wanted it back.
David barely escaped the raid he triggered. He returned to Littlefoot, wounded but burning with righteous fire.
---
A Southern Judiciary Reborn
While David hunted darkness, Jacob expanded the light.
Now holding the honorary title Marquis of Law, Jacob traveled between counties, holding courts in rural temples and mountain towns where Imperial law had become little more than a rumor. He appointed commissioners with backgrounds as blacksmiths, herbalists, even former criminals—people who understood the land and the people, trained by the best of Littlefoot.
A new legal code, dubbed The Southern Accord, was proposed—streamlining trials, separating land disputes from criminal ones, and emphasizing restorative justice where possible.
Some sneered at his reforms, saying they were idealistic.
But when the southern crime rate dropped by nearly 40% in a single season, and farmers received equitable pay and protection from corrupt taxmen, the Empire took notice.
---
The Prince Arrives
It was in the early weeks of harvest when Prince Leonard arrived in Littlefoot.
His arrival was unannounced, save for the Imperial seal and the thunder of hooves that preceded him. Third son to Empress Regina, Leonard was known in the capital as The Silent Flame—rarely speaking in court, but always watching. A scholar of history, a tactician in disguise.
He arrived wearing only a travel cloak and a plain blade at his waist.
Joseline welcomed him personally, flanked by Jacob and David. The plaza fell into hush.
Leonard's words were few:
> "I have watched what you've done here… from far away. Where once we feared the South would fracture, it has found its spine."
"Rad County resists. I expected as much. But you"—his gaze passed over all three—"you are not simply administrators. You are reformers."
"The Empire needs such people. And more than that… it needs a new example."
He then handed Jacob a scroll sealed in obsidian wax.
Within: an Empress-signed decree formally recognizing Littlefoot as the Southern Judicial Province, making it an official extension of the High Courts of the Empire.
> "You are no longer a test," Leonard said. "You are the seed of what comes next."
---
The Storm to Come
But even as cheers rang through Littlefoot's tower and bells tolled in the streets, a letter from a hidden informant reached Joseline's desk.
One line written in hastened script:
> "The Golden Veil is moving. They know about the Prince. They're coming."
And far away, in the caverns beneath Rad's cathedral ruins, a figure robed in shimmering gold opened a map of the South… and marked Littlefoot with a blood-red cross.