Married to the Empire's Greatest Failure

Chapter 1: The Price of a Peaceful Life

The Undercity market smelled like rusted iron and rotting fish. Asher stood in front of a fruit stall, turning a bruised apple over in his blistered hands.
"Two coppers," the merchant grunted.
"It's half rot," Asher said. "One."

He dropped a single copper coin on the wooden planks, shoved the apple into his canvas sack, and walked away before the merchant could argue. He was nineteen and bone tired. All he wanted was to go home, boil some cheap stew, and sleep.
His motive was simple, bordering on pathetic: keep his head down, ignore the rot of the world, and live a quiet, peaceful life.

As he navigated the crowded, muddy streets, he passed a pair of city guards leaning against a tavern wall.
"...heard the Duke is calling in the old debts," one soldier muttered, lighting a pipe. "Even the ones from the merchant districts."

"Good luck squeezing blood from stones down here," the other laughed.
Asher ignored them. Let the nobles play their games. It didn't involve him.
He pushed open the splintered front door of his house. It was a miserable, rotting shack, but it hadn’t always been this way.

Four years ago, when Asher was fifteen, the house had been warm. His father, Caelum, was a respected merchant, famous among the commoners for his fair prices and charismatic enough to hold good relationships with the minor nobles. But then Asher’s mother, Lyra, got sick. A wasting disease that no standard cleric could cure.

Caelum had been desperate. He went to the eastern elites, taking out a massive loan from the Vance Dukedom to pay for high tier healers.

It hadn't worked. Lyra died anyway.
Caelum broke. He spent two years at the bottom of a bottle. The merchant business completely collapsed. When he finally sobered up, it was too late. He took out a second, riskier loan from the Duke to restart the trade routes, but without his old reputation, the business failed violently. Now, the debt was a mountain they couldn't even see the top of.

Asher walked into the cramped kitchen and froze.

Caelum was sitting at the rickety wooden table. He wasn't pacing. He wasn't panicking about the debt collectors roaming the streets. He was just staring at a cup of cold tea, eerily calm.
Standing behind him were two heavily armed soldiers wearing unmarked armor.

Sitting across from Caelum was a man Asher had never seen before. He wore a plain, dark grey coat, but his posture was rigidly straight.

"Who are you?" Asher asked, dropping his canvas sack. The bruised apple rolled across the floorboards. "Why are there soldiers in my house?"

The stranger slowly stood up. He looked at Asher with cold, dismissive eyes.
"You speak without being spoken to," the man said, his voice flat and grating. "Your father clearly failed to teach you manners. It matters little. From today, you are no longer his son."

Asher’s stomach dropped. He looked at his father. "What is he talking about?"
Caelum wouldn't meet his eyes. He stared at the cold tea. "I'm sorry, Asher. Forgive me. The debt... It was too much. They were going to kill me. I had no other option." Caelum’s voice didn't crack. It sounded rehearsed. "I sold you."
They had reduced his entire existence to a variable in an equation a tool to balance a ledger. Human worth erased by a signature on a contract.

The air in the cramped kitchen grew heavy. Invisible, violent currents of wind magic power he usually kept buried began snapping at his ankles.

"You sold me," Asher repeated. It wasn't a question. It was just a hollow, ugly sound.

Suddenly, Caelum slammed his hand on the table, his fake calm shattering into defensive rage. "What did you expect me to do?! Die for you? I raised you! I put food in your mouth after your mother died! You should be grateful I’m giving you a chance to repay the favor!"

"You raised me?" Asher yelled, his voice cracking. He didn't sound like a hero. He sounded like a furious, heartbroken kid. "You spent two years drunk in a gutter! You never even looked at me because I reminded you of her! You blamed me for the medical bills! You aren't worthy of being called a parent!"

Caelum’s face went purple. He lunged out of his chair, raising his hand to slap Asher across the face.

The stranger in the grey coat didn't even take a step. A razor sharp gust of pressurized air materialized.

Crack. It slammed into Caelum’s chest, launching him backward into his chair.
Asher’s breath hitched. Wind magic.
"A touching family moment," the stranger said coldly, adjusting his cuffs. "But you will not damage the merchandise. He belongs to us now." The man turned his dead eyes to Asher. "Pack your belongings. We leave in two minutes."
Asher’s hands were shaking. He didn't fight. If he fought, they would slaughter him.

He walked into his tiny bedroom. He didn't own much. A few worn shirts, a spare pair of boots. He shoved them into a bag. At the bottom of his cot, sitting against the wall, was a small, crudely stitched teddy bear. Lyra had made it for him when he was a child. One of the button eyes was missing.

It was embarrassing. He was nineteen years old. But his chest felt like it was caving in, and the shack suddenly felt like a graveyard. He snatched the bear, shoved it deep into the bag, and walked out.

The soldiers escorted him out of the slums and shoved him into a heavily armored, unmarked carriage. The stranger got in across from him. They rode in heavy, suffocating silence until the sounds of the Undercity faded, replaced by the smooth, quiet cobblestones of the upper districts.
The carriage lurched to a halt.

"Get out," the stranger commanded.

Asher grabbed his bag and stepped out into the freezing night air. The street was empty, save for another carriage parked ten feet away.

"You will sit in that carriage," the stranger said.

Asher kept his head down, staring at the wet cobblestones. He was a slave now. A piece of property. He started walking toward the second carriage, his shoulders slumped in absolute defeat.
"Raise your head, child."

The voice wasn't grating or cold anymore. It was completely different, smooth, authoritative, and terrifyingly calm.

Asher stopped. He slowly raised his head.

He wasn't looking at a plain merchant's carriage. He was staring at a massive, breathtakingly expensive obsidian carriage. Stamped into the heavy iron door was a crest he had only ever seen on the coins he scraped together to survive.

The Three Eyed Raven. The crest of the Imperial Family.

Asher’s mind scrambled, slamming into the brutal realization of a massive political mind game. The man hadn't been a debt collector for the Duke at all.
The stranger stepped into the dim light of the streetlamp. He pulled a silver badge from his coat, bearing the same imperial crest.

"Please forgive our rudeness," the man said, offering a deep, respectful bow that made Asher’s brain short circuit. "We could not reveal our true identity in that rotting house. Your father had to believe he was signing his debt over to the Vance Dukedom, so that the contract would be legally binding when the Crown inevitably seized it."

The man straightened his coat. "Allow me to formally introduce myself. I am Silas Vane, First Aide to His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Valerius van Aethelgard."
Asher’s lungs locked. The latent wind swirling around his ankles instantly died.

Silas Vane. The name was a legend in the slums. In a world where fire and earth magic dominated the military, wind magic was incredibly rare. Silas Vane was known as the second strongest Wind Mage in the entire Empire.

"Why..." Asher choked out, his grip tightening on his bag. "Why is the Emperor buying my debt?"

Silas offered a small, terrifyingly polite smile. "The Emperor does not buy debts, Asher. He acquires assets. Please, get in. The Crown Princess is expecting her new husband."

Asher stood frozen on the cobblestones. The wind howled through the empty street, carrying the weight of a cage he could never escape.

[From that moment, my dream to live peacefully was completely, undeniably dead.]