He’d done it. After thirteen years, Alex Halvet’s plans had come to fruition. Longer than that honestly, he had been planning how to retire by the age of thirty since he’d been in high school. Through his years in college, through the sleepless nights toiling under his bosses he hadn’t lost sight of that goal.

He had planned to make it big, work his way up the ladder, and reach the top. The trick was he wasn’t going to stay there. Just work it long enough to be set and comfortable for life. A few investments set up to keep him pulling an income, and enough set aside for plenty of comfort. There’s a lifetime of experiences he’s missed out on and dating twice in college hadn’t really counted towards romance.

After thirteen years of non-stop study and work to drag himself up from nothing. It was finally time, he’d set up a three-month tour across Europe with his parents that he hadn’t had time to see in five years and had lined up several photoshoots to pack out his dating profile with once he got back, he was thirty years old, he had just retired, he had a niece and nephew that he’d never met but was waiting to spoil, and life was looking good.

Alex Halvet went to sleep that night with aching bones, early onset arthritis in his hands, blood pressure high enough to kill, and a smile as over a decade of pressure and tension melted off of his shoulders.

That night Alex dreamt of a boy, a young prince. He walked through that young prince’s life in snippets. A smiling toddler with fey blond hair playing with a sister just a year younger. Learning to walk with proper poise and posture, growing jealous of his two older brothers who chuckled as he tripped over his own feet. A sparse dozen glimpses of a royal childhood, of a child attending banquets and lesson, learning to wield a rapier, a bow, and even casting gouts of red and blue flames from his hands before they sputtered out moments later. A young man growing jealous as his older brothers would wield heavier swords while calling lightning from the skies, and an older sister brought a blizzard to quail a blazing forest.

A young man who would enter his rooms and throw a goblet of drink at the elderly manservant who had catered him since he was young, screaming in impotent fury while hearing about how his younger sister had sung a tune to an orchard and the trees had flowered and grown a second harvest.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Alex watched, his mind coming more into focus as the young man attended to his queen mother as he met his infant brother for the first time, and the sleeping babe breathed out white-hot flame with each small breath, and the young royal was filled with a burning dread.

So it went that the prince would show promise in sword and bow, though less than his brothers, his magic was paltry, overshadowed by his sisters and younger brother. He tried his hand at diplomacy, tactics, and study, and in each, he fell short of a sibling. With each failure, the prince fell more and more into drink and sleep, with each failure the prince’s thoughts grew darker.

On the prince’s darkest night, he hatched a plot, a ritual to make him the best of his brood.

-

Prince Riven Bliss sat naked in the middle of his ritual circle, a carefully inked matching circle over his forehead. After tonight he would never have to be outdone by any of his too numerous siblings ever again. Everything was ready, now he just needed to take in the last preparatory pieces of the ritual, opening a silver flask he took just a splash of the dream tonic into his mouth, the foul liquid glimmering like stars as the light of the full moon fell through his window.

Breathing in he gathered the ambient mana of the room and led it into the entrance rune, in a flash the rune began pulling in the mana of the palace, powering the other runes as they lit one by one, and locking him in the center of the circle.

Exhaling he pushed out his fire mana and ignited the ritual. His mana caught and the circle erupted into flame, he felt the circle pull the concentrated mana towards him, directing it towards the circle drawn on his skin. As the magic rushed in the furniture in his room shook, the air rushed into his circle, and blew his flask to the ground.

The silver flask broke the circle, and the dream tonic, the astral liquor poured, flowing over the runes of his shattered circle while his mind was opened to infinity.

The concentrated mana burst out from the broken circle, and the castle awoke as the third prince’s bedroom door blasted out into the hallway, and the guards atop the parapets saw an eruption of magic the color of galaxies blooming outside his window.

Riven felt the world rush past him, and then another, and another, and he had a dream of a poverty-stricken boy in a strange world of glass and cement who clawed his way to the top, and walked away moments before he would have had everything Riven had always wanted.