I was thinking about my father today. He crosses my mind often.

Before our younger siblings were born, it was only Auren and myself. He was always the one who could move between people without friction. He treated merchants the same way he treated visiting dignitaries. He spoke to guards the way he spoke to engineers. Nobles received no more of his attention than dock workers, and somehow none of them ever felt slighted by it. I have never understood how he does this. I have watched him my entire life and I still cannot do what he does naturally.

Auren exhibited extreme emotional and social intelligence even then. He understood people in ways that could not be taught. He knew when to speak and when to wait. He knew what someone needed before they asked for it. It was obvious since we were boys that he would be selected to inherit and that I would be the one who supported him in being successful. This was never stated. It did not need to be.

I understood early that my purpose would be to advance things. To ensure there was never regression under his reign. To build what he envisioned. To solve what others could not.

I was reading about the Neron earlier today. Homo relicta thermophilus. A species that completely devolved. Generation after generation, there were people among them who allowed regression instead of maintaining what they had. Instead of advancing. What a shame.

They live in the geothermal vents of Kela now, in the ruins of structures their ancestors built when they were still capable of building. Vestigial gilled necks suggest prior aquatic adaptation. Powerful lungs for processing toxic atmospheres. Pale brown skin and silver-orange hair. They craft basic tools from local materials and can learn simple Geban language, but they cannot produce complex speech. The ruins are extensive though. Architectural. Planned. Someone built those. Someone with foresight. Someone with engineering capacity. Now their descendants flee from solitary encounters and become aggressive only in groups. Apex predators of vent fauna and nothing more.

What caused it? What sequence of decisions or environmental shifts permitted a species with architecture to lose architecture? With language to lose language? The metabolic cost of maintaining advanced cognition is significant. If caloric scarcity persisted across enough generations, if selection pressure favored brute survival over abstract planning, if those who could think ahead were not the ones who reproduced, the math becomes simple. Regression is possible. It has happened before. It will happen again if no one prevents it.

I was writing about my father.

He lived longer than most emperors before him. The early longevity studies had succeeded in him through cellular regeneration protocols, metabolic stabilization, telomeric maintenance across extended temporal baselines. The methodology was crude by current standards but the outcomes were undeniable. He carried that success into an age most rulers never reach.

Unlike those who came before, he did not wait to die. He understood in his extreme old age that succession during decline produces instability. Power vacuums generate competing inheritance claims, administrative confusion, factional maneuvering. He chose to give the throne to Auren while he still had the clarity to manage the transition. This was not sentiment. This was him ensuring that what he built would not collapse the moment he was gone.

Where he sowed the seeds, Auren had the vision. And I had the mind to make application of it. He saw this configuration and planned for it. The three of us were never meant to operate independently.

He once took us to the Kelan coast to observe the Northern Sea Phantoms. Kela is easy for maintaining a low profile, no matter who you are. We watched them from the cliffs for hours.

He told us what they used to do during the battles of the Imperial Conquest era. They would wait under ships because they had learned to recognize the pattern. Fleet formations, cannon positioning, the vibration signatures that preceded naval engagement. They did not attack preemptively. They waited for bodies to hit the water. They knew what ships meant. They knew what came next.

He was making a point. He told Auren that when it was his time he would have to remember this. He said that Auren would be those ships, and the people would be the sea phantoms waiting beneath him, patient, watching for a slip or a step they disliked enough to justify attack. They would not strike preemptively. They would wait for him to fall into the water.

Then he looked at me.

He told me not to allow my older brother to fall into the water in the first place. He mentioned my mind and said that it would be possible to protect Auren in the same way Auren had always protected me, but with thought rather than positioning. I would have to think ahead of what was beneath the surface. I would have to see the patterns they were waiting for. I would have to ensure those patterns never completed.

Auren shielded me even as young boys. He saw what I was before anyone else did and made sure I had the space to think without interruption. He never made me feel strange for the way my mind worked. He just made room for it.

I visited an Emperor's Wrath facility not long ago. I was almost disturbed by how hard they train. As far as natural-borns go, these are as good as it gets. There were several Frost Sentinel instructors which surprised me, but it makes sense.

I asked what made them so effective, especially historically. One of the master instructors pointed toward the children who were training and explained that instead of making them lethal and unfeeling, he teaches them to be completely dependent on each other. "To the point where they will protect each other no matter what. This creates an effect where each one is always making sure the next one is fine. It is much easier to go into certain death when everyone you care about is also going and you know you can trust them no matter what. Most of their parents are here or died expanding the relay. This is all they know, and all they want to know."

He also mentioned that the social dynamic and culture within the Emperor's Wrath is such that many of them can no longer function socially with those outside of it. So it keeps them together. And it passes on to their children.

"If I am being honest, their care for each other is so deep they would likely be inclined to save one of their own over you or even the Emperor. But they understand that the interest of the Empire must come first, regardless of feelings."

They love the same things. They hate the same things. They constantly reinforce this loop with each other. When they were first deployed during the Imperial Conquest era, it makes sense how they could exterminate entire cities and feel nothing. They only care about each other. Even more so than the Empire itself.

Terrifying. And fascinating.

Not exactly the same as the Northern Sea Phantom lesson for us, but worth a thought.

I think I will go sit with Auren and Kaelera tonight. We do not need to speak of anything in particular. I simply want to look at their faces and remember what it was like before all of this.