All Chapters of The Gilded Crown: The Rise Of The Bastard Prince: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
20 chapters
Chapter 1: The Wine-Soaked Corpse
The smell of stale ale and vomit was the first thing Julian felt. Or rather, the man who was Julian.In his previous life, he was Arthur Vance, a man who moved markets with a phone call and collapsed regimes with a whisper. He had died in a high-rise office in Manhattan, a silencer’s bullet through his temple. He expected darkness. He expected the void. He did not expect a splitting headache and the feeling of cold stone beneath his cheek."Look at him," a sneering voice drifted from above. "The Emperor’s 'Little Mistake' can’t even hold his liquor. How fitting that he dies in his own filth."Arthur opened his eyes. His vision was a blurred mess of flickering torchlight and shadows. He wasn't in New York. He was in a drafty, damp hall that smelled of wet dogs and burning tallow.He tried to push himself up, but his arms felt like twigs. His hands were pale, thin, and trembling. This wasn't his body. This was the body of a boy—perhaps nineteen—dressed in silk rags that had seen b
Chapter 2: The Price of Loyalty
The cold night air bit through Julian’s thin tunic as he dragged Marek’s body toward the back of the cellar. His lungs burned, and his muscles screamed in protest, but he couldn't stop. In the world of politics, a corpse was an invitation; a missing person was merely a question.He shoved the body into a ventilation shaft that led to the old, dried-up well. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it would buy him twenty-four hours."Now," Julian whispered, leaning against the damp wall to catch his breath. "The 'Waste Prince' has no money, no guards, and the First Prince is already sending cleaners. I need a shield."He closed his eyes, digging into the hazy memories of the original Julian. Most were useless—blurry nights in taverns and the smell of cheap perfume—but one memory stood out. It was a face: scarred, stern, and filled with a silent, burning rage.General Elena Vance.No relation to his modern name, but she was a legend in Valerius. She had led the Southern Legion to thre
Chapter 3: Liquid Gold
The sun had not yet risen, but the air in the manor’s kitchens was thick with tension. Julian had managed to smuggle Elena into a hidden servant’s quarters—a cramped, dusty room behind the pantry that the original Julian had once used for trysts. Now, it served as a war room.Elena sat on a wooden crate, sharpening a rusted kitchen knife with a whetstone. Even in her weakened state, her presence was suffocating. "You promised a miracle, Julian. But all I see is a man stealing copper pots and sacks of fermented grain from his own pantry."Julian didn't look up. He was busy assembling a strange contraption: a large copper pot, a coiled lead pipe he’d scavenged from the plumbing, and a bucket of cold well water."In war, General, the most powerful weapon isn't the sword. It’s the supply chain," Julian said, tightening a seal with a strip of wet leather. "The Empire’s wine is weak. It’s watery, sour, and half of it turns to vinegar before it reaches the front lines." He lit a small fi
Chapter 4: The Drunken Inferno
The footsteps echoed in the corridor—rhythmic, heavy, and arrogant. Steward Harlen was a man who smelled of expensive cologne and cheap cruelty. He had served the First Prince for a decade, and his favorite pastime was making the "Waste Prince" crawl. He kicked open the door to Julian’s chambers, his silk handkerchief pressed to his nose."Your Highness," Harlen sneered, his eyes scanning the room. "The smell of wine in here is offensive even by your standards. Where is Marek? He was supposed to report to me an hour ago."Julian didn't look up. He was slumped in a chair, a half-empty bottle in his hand. He looked pathetic—the very image of a royal failure. "Marek?" Julian slurred, his head lolling back. "The big one? He... he said he was thirsty. I told him there’s a whole barrel in the well. Or was it the cellar? I forget."Harlen’s eyes narrowed. He looked at the four guards behind him. "Search the room. Tear the floorboards if you have to."As the guards moved past Julian, o
Chapter 5: The King of the Rat’s Nest (Expanded)
The Rat’s Nest did not just look like a slum; it breathed like a dying beast. As Julian, Elena, and the boy Leo rode their horses through the crumbling stone archway that marked the edge of the capital's lower district, the air changed instantly. The scent of woodsmoke and roasting meat from the upper districts was replaced by the cloying, heavy stench of open sewers, rotting fish, and the sharp, metallic tang of unwashed bodies and desperation. This was the "gut" of the Valerius Empire—the place where everything the city consumed was eventually excreted.Julian pulled his hood lower. In his previous life as Arthur Vance, he had visited the favelas of Brazil and the slums of Mumbai to negotiate land deals. He knew that beneath the filth lay the most potent political tool in existence: the rage of the ignored."Keep your hand on your hilt, General," Julian whispered, his voice barely audible over the squelch of his horse's hooves in the black mud. He didn't look like a prince anymo
Chapter 6: The Merchant Queen’s Tithe
The scent of "Liquid Gold" was a double-edged sword. It brought the coin Julian needed to feed Silas’s men and keep Elena in fresh whetstones, but in a city as predatory as the capital, a new scent in the air always attracted a bigger shark.Seven days had passed since the fire at the manor. The warehouse in the Rat’s Nest was no longer a ruin; it was a humming, soot-stained factory. Julian had spent his last coppers on five more copper pots, and under his direction, Silas’s "rats" had become a disciplined assembly line. Some tended the fires, others monitored the cooling coils, and the children—the swiftest of the lot—scrubbed the clay jars clean in the river.Julian sat at a makeshift desk—a door balanced on two barrels—mapping out the city’s trade routes. He was interrupted by the heavy thud of Elena’s boots. She didn't look like a prisoner anymore. She wore a suit of boiled leather scavenged from the slums, her amber eyes sharp with caution."We have a problem at the perimeter
Chapter 7: The Ghost Legion
The silver from Isabella Thorne’s first deposit arrived in heavy, unassuming iron-bound chests. It was the first time the warehouse in the Rat’s Nest had smelled of something other than charcoal and fermented mash—it now smelled of cold, hard currency.Julian sat in the dim light of his "office," watching Elena inspect a crate of standard-issue imperial infantry swords. She handled them with a sneer, testing the balance before tossing a blade aside like a piece of refuse."Soft iron," she spat. "The First Prince’s smiths are skimming from the treasury. These would snap against a Northern shield in a heartbeat.""Which is why we aren't buying from the imperial smiths," Julian said, not looking up from his ledger. He was calculating the "burn rate" of their current operation. "We are buying people, Elena. Not scrap metal. Are they here?"Elena wiped her hands on a rag and nodded toward the heavy curtain that separated the office from the main distillery floor. "The ones who survive
Chapter 8: The Harbor’s Shadow
The docks of the Valerius Empire were a labyrinth of rotting wood, salt-crusted iron, and the perpetual fog that rolled off the Azure Sea. At midnight, the area was supposedly under the jurisdiction of the Harbor Watch, a group of guards notoriously famous for two things: their love of Isabella Thorne’s bribes and their habit of sleeping through anything quieter than a riot.Julian stood on the roof of a dilapidated fish-packing house, his eyes fixed on the "Sea Wraith," a heavy merchant vessel currently unloading crates stamped with the Imperial Seal. Behind him, the Ghost Legion moved like smoke. Kaelen and his twenty veterans didn't make a sound; their armor had been blackened with soot, and their boots were wrapped in thick burlap to dampen the clatter of footsteps on the stone."Six guards on the gangplank," Kaelen whispered, his voice barely audible over the lapping of the waves. "Two more on the deck. They aren't Harbor Watch. Look at the way they hold their pikes—vertical,
Chapter 9: The Alchemy of War
The warehouse in the Rat’s Nest had been transformed. What was once a simple, illicit distillery had become a clandestine laboratory. The smell of fermented grain was now joined by the acrid, metallic tang of sulfur and the earthy scent of saltpeter.Julian stood over a long stone table, his sleeves rolled up, exposing arms that were slowly gaining lean muscle from weeks of manual labor. In front of him lay the ten crates of black powder they had liberated from the docks. To Kaelen and the Ghost Legion, this was a substance used for palace fireworks or crude, unreliable siege mines. To Julian, it was the raw data of a revolution."The ratio is wrong," Julian muttered, staring at a small pile of the black dust.Kaelen, who was sharpening a massive broadsword nearby, looked up. "Wrong? It’s the finest powder in the Empire, boy. The Alchemists’ Guild guards that formula with their lives.""The Alchemists’ Guild is stuck in the dark ages," Julian countered, not looking up. "They use
Chapter 10: The Shadow King’s Coronation
The smoke from the black powder hung over the Rat’s Nest like a funeral shroud. It was a heavy, acrid fog that refused to dissipate, clinging to the damp walls and the bodies of the fallen. For the first time in the history of the Valerius Empire, the elite Red Cloaks—the personal pride of the First Prince—had been routed. They hadn't been defeated in a glorious charge or a test of knightly skill; they had been dismantled by a "waste" prince using the laws of physics as a butcher’s cleaver.Julian stood at the entrance of the warehouse, his face pale and streaked with soot. His ears were still ringing from the concussive force of the hand-cannons. In the modern world, Arthur Vance had seen the aftermath of corporate "slaughter"—layoffs, bankruptcies, and the cold destruction of lives through spreadsheets. But this was different. This was raw. This was the cost of his "hostile takeover" rendered in blood and iron."Count the casualties," Julian ordered, his voice sounding hollow eve