Nothingness, not darkness, swallowed Fabien. Rather than seeing darkness, he simply didn't see, rather than hearing silence, he simply didn't hear, rather than smelling air or feeling weightless, he simply did not smell and did not feel.

However, even as these thoughts came to him, he realized this was wrong. He could think, and he also felt the very subtle hint of something else, something external.

First, however, Fabien realized something surprising. He wasn't panicked. He wasn't particularly thrilled, however he knew that even if he had to spend the rest of time in this void, he would be able to manage it. Admittedly, he would go crazy as a part of that management, however only to the extent that he forgot who he was and where he was, as he lived countless lives in his own imagination. Isolation had never been a particular fear for Fabien, as he got along well with himself.

Keeping in mind his calmness, and his theory that he was currently dead, he carefully considered an extremely faint sense he got on his periphery. It is strange to describe, as although he saw nothing, felt nothing and heard nothing, there was a periphery to some strange sense that his other senses had always been too loud for him to realize he had. However, any attempt to focus on it failed, with the feeling fleeing, only to return hours later.

In those hours, Fabien did all he could to focus on anything other than his memories. Within his mind lurked the terrible darkness of the fate of his mother, his father's and his failure to avenge her and the betrayal of so many he had trusted so deeply. Every time he contemplated it, he came slightly closer to madness, however he was at least relieved that it seemed he was in no position to ever be betrayed again.

Something that occurred to him was the fact that the flash of light before he died had not been accompanied with any head pain, rather a burst of pain throughout his entire body as though the entire thing was being ripped apart all at once. To his knowledge, that was contradictory to the experience of being hit over the back of the head, and even a skilled assassin shouldn't have been able to kill him without him feeling it.

The more he contemplated that strange light and how he had felt at that moment, the more he realized how strange the experience was. Ultimately, he knew that he was currently floating in some void of nothingness with a strange somethingness, and that certainly did not coincide to any extent with his understanding of how a human was supposed to work.

Where was his brain? How did he have memories? How could he think without the energy to supply the thinking? A bodiless form in a void shouldn't really have any of those things, meaning that something else was supplying him. Whatever it was, it didn't seem physical to him, and suddenly his mind was drawn again to the feeling at his periphery.

Time passed, and he continued to struggle earnestly to reach out to that strange feeling. He felt more and more sure it was somehow sentient, and was teasing him. Every time he got anywhere with his thinking, it appeared again, distracting him and breaking his chain of thought. When he resolved to simply ignore it, it became more insistent than ever, and when he focused on it entirely, waiting in perfect silence like a patient hunter ready for his prey, it disappeared completely.

However, he did notice it slowly taking more and more time to appear, it seemed that the more strongly he brought it about, the less it bothered him afterwards. With nothing else to do for seemingly eternity, he figured he'd best try and get rid of it for as long as possible so he could immerse himself in day dreams, and perhaps eventually figure out how to fall asleep in this evil place.

Using the only means he knew, being seriously contemplating anything useful, he proceeded to deeply immerse himself in his knowledge of history, and asked himself what caused the fall of house Forlorn. Sure, some nobleman tried raping his mother and he could be blamed, but ultimately it was Whitmour and the neglect of the crown that truly brought about the destruction of count Forlorn. How could that have been prevented?

Further back and back he went, considering the first foundations of his house, a wealthy merchant building himself a fortress on a hill and hunting down local bandits with a force of loyal retainers. At the same time, house Whitmour was lead by a warlord, who raided merchants such as the Forlorn merchant for resources, travelling around the land growing rich on the labor of others. Ultimately, house Whitmour had set up its own small kingdom, before being defeated and integrated into the nation of Opros, one of the three major nations on the continent of Atua.

Initially, house Forlorn had chased the highest profit at any given moment, and yet house Whitmour had somehow far outperformed. When house Forlorn built two wooden homes, Whitmour built one out of stone. When house Forlorn was educating every member of their citizenry in how to read and write, house Whitmour educated just a fraction of their population in those things, in a highly advanced university. Ultimately, however, those wooden houses had needed replacement, and when larger construction works needed to be completed, it was architects from Whitmour who designed them. Simply put, Fabien realized that house Forlorn had focused on making the most out of every generation, whereas house Whitmour focused on the future of their grand children and great grand children.

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At this point, the incessant feeling on his periphery became a sort of pain, a terrible fire that he couldn't see and couldn't escape. Regardless, he pushed forward.

While Forlorn had prioritised economic growth, Whitmour had prioritized and used its military power. House Forlorn originally had more land than house Whitmour, but after a hundred years had passed that had changed, as house Whitmour conquered local tribes and won border disputes with its neighbors. Furthermore, the Forlorn investments had been productive on their own right, but never had the inter connectedness that house Whitmour had boasted.

Simply put, a bandit in the lands of house Forlorn had to avoid the population centers. A bandit in the lands of house Whitmour had to avoid house Whitmour.

The difference this made in terms of encouraging trade could hardly be overestimated. Even though house Forlorn had taxed its people 5% and house Whitmour had taxed their people 10%, house Whitmour's people were still able to be wealthier due to the incredible interconnectedness of all their holdings, from their small mining villages to their capital city their roads were secure. It wasn't until count Smith that the infrastructure and military of house Forlorn were better.

The fire started seeping into his mind, Fabien could barely maintain his focus, but he managed, motivating himself with the thought of how far away this annoyance would be pushed by this endeavor. After all, he had just seen everything he loved destroyed, he could handle a bit of discomfort.

Something that was more difficult to understand was why house Forlorn had lost so drastically in terms of technology to their neighbor. Although the literacy rate of house Forlorn was very nearly 100%, and almost 50% of them could do basic arithmetic in accordance with the will of count Smith, it very rarely ever had an invention before house Whitmour did. As a result, house Whitmour was far more developed, and was able to invest into those inventions even more, resulting in foreign and royal investment prioritizing the smithies and universities of house Whitmour, rather than considering the more civilized house Forlorn. The current king had even been educated in a Whitmour university.

That being said, house Forlorn had not lost in everything to house Whitmour in the end. For one, the infrastructure had ultimately been better, as count Smith had removed his investment from subsidizing failing businesses so he had the sufficient funds to improve the roads, hygiene and military. Unpopular though this decision had been, the people who were unemployed as a result of this quickly found jobs elsewhere, they had no choice after all, and several new businesses were able to pop up due to the lack of tax-funded inefficient businesses crushing them every time they tried to establish themselves.

The result of this had been a time of prosperity for the Forlorn house such as had never been seen before. Furthermore, the improved hygiene and roads made their lands a pleasant place to live, and the population gained through immigration helped give the newly established businesses the workers they needed to expand, some even came and started their own businesses, further improving the employment rate and productivity of the Forlorn house.

Alongside this, the military was ruthlessly centralized. Anyone who could not be called to arms within a week was fired from the military, and the entire thing was restructured such that the count could easily give a command to his entire military through just one commander. What was left was about 100 men, however a solid foundation from which to build from, and soon the military force reached a thousand. Whenever a bandit force was discovered or an enemy raided, count Smith would soon be there, exacting vengeance for his people and re-establishing order in the region. In just a few years, the trade that house Forlorn received doubled.

Now, the fire was almost all-consuming, however Fabiens mind raced further, his understanding of economics and stewardship rapidly improving and he balanced and re-evaluated his view of how a county functioned.

The law of the nation of Opros was that there could only be 4 dukes at a time, so house Whitmour had had to take the place of a previous dukedom. The dukedom it had taken the place of was truly pitiful, already weaker than most counties by the time it lost its title, the reason for its fall was obvious.

Greed. While 10% taxation had allowed Whitmour to establish order in their lands, which invited prosperity, this fallen dukedom had 30% taxation, a truly staggering sum. Many farmers, unable to pay the taxes, had been driven out with their lands seized. Any business that wasn't immediately profitable enough to afford the hefty taxation was pointless, as it would close its doors long before it managed to achieve massive prosperity. Furthermore, trying to raise enough capital to set up a business was impossible for the vast majority of the population, resulting in extremely limited competition with the larger businesses, which were able to change their prices to almost whatever they wanted. The cost of things like food increased significantly, while farmers sold their produce for a pittance as they lacked the funds to market their goods due to the heavy taxation, and similar things occurred throughout the economy.

Ultimately, after the land itself had become unprofitable, those same businesses had simply moved to other dukedoms and some counties, to invest into more profitable markets.

Meanwhile, the duke at the time had been rich and arrogant, and failed to see the fall of his own lands. Not caring for the suffering of his people, he lived in comfort, maintaining control by using a fraction of the bounty he stole from his people to maintain some state businesses that prevented small scale entrepreneurs from growing any further, providing things like low-quality health care for free, ultimately resulting in private health care itself only able to specialise in high quality and expensive health care for the elite, while the common man was forced to deal with the extremely poor quality free health care that he paid more for in taxes than he would otherwise have to pay in fees in other lands.

After a significant amount of people left, the prosperity of the duke himself began to decline, and so did his military might. Soon, house Whitmour petitioned the king to demote that duchy and make them the 4th Dukedom instead, and the king agreed.

Having understood the importance of a balanced and humble approach to leading people, Fabien surrendered his mind to the fire that now almost entirely consumed it, and fell into a deep and fitful sleep.