The Emperor's Return

Ashravan awoke to familiar chambers, yet everything felt wrong. The silk sheets against his skin, the distant sounds of the palace—all correct, yet hollow. He raised his hand, studying it in the morning light streaming through latticed windows. This was his hand. His body. His life.

But was it his soul?

The memories were there, perfect and complete. Childhood lessons with stern tutors. The day he'd ascended the throne. Every treaty, every decision, every triumph and failure of his reign. They nested in his mind like birds in a familiar tree. Yet somewhere beneath them lurked the terrible knowledge: these memories had been painted onto him like pigment on canvas.

Shai had restored him. Or had she created someone new?

His advisors noticed nothing amiss. For three days, Ashravan played his role perfectly—because the stamp ensured he would. He signed documents with his characteristic flourish, spoke with his measured cadence, even laughed at the same jests that had always amused him.

On the fourth morning, standing before his private mirror, Ashravan made his decision.

He reached for the concealed blade he kept in his desk—the one only he knew about. The stamp had given him that knowledge. But as his fingers closed around the hilt, he paused. The secret of this blade's location hadn't been in any record Shai could have studied. She couldn't have known.

Unless the original Ashravan truly had survived within him.

Or unless Shai's artistry had been so perfect that the stamp itself had extrapolated what he would have hidden, where he would have hidden it, based on his essential nature.

The distinction, Ashravan realized with sudden clarity, no longer mattered.

He was Emperor. Whether born or made, he would rule with wisdom and strength. The blade returned to its hiding place. Ashravan straightened his robes and walked toward his throne room, each step more certain than the last.

Behind him, in the morning light, his reflection smiled.

The reflection that was—or wasn't—truly his own.