The Weak Prince Is A Cultivation God

A tower was silent, high above the rest of the Imperial Palace.

Not the silence of peace, but of distance—a kind that stretched between mountain peaks and made the stars feel closer than people.

Xavier Aregard stood at the balcony, robe half draped across his sculpted frame, golden pauldrons glinting faintly in the stormlight. Below him, the Imperial City breathed in coils of fog and firelight, its veins aglow with enchantment.

He did not look at it.

Instead, he watched the sky—the churn of stormclouds gathered by the palace's ever-turning wards, the slow spin of runic constellations carved into the air by invisible forces.

They responded to his presence, reacting in subtle shifts of light. The heavens knew him. They had to.

Behind him, a bell tolled. Deep. Measured. It wasn't from the temples below but from the Spire of Assembly. Its echoes rolled across the sky like distant thunder.

One day.

He turned his head slightly, just enough to see the polished obsidian mirror across the chamber.

He caught his own gaze and held it. Pale gold eyes. A stillness so complete it felt inhuman.

The Ninth Circle wasn't a place of mastery. It was a realm apart. A height beyond ambition. Most mages broke long before they reached it.

Xavier had stepped past the limits, not by brute force but by the weight of will—like a god pulling himself through a needle's eye.

And yet…

A single obstacle remained.

He didn't speak the name aloud.

Maximus.

The second son. The patient spider. The illusionist whose strings wove through every court, every merchant house, every whisper between lovers.

Xavier had crushed armies with his hand. But Maximus had no armies—only leverage.

People. Promises. Poison.

He walked back inside the tower chamber, letting the storm curtain behind him. The room was stark. No paintings. No comfort. Only weapons—blades and armor and relics collected over a life of conquest.

Every item in the chamber had been used to kill. Some had slaughtered beasts, others kingdoms. Some still whispered.

In the center of the room, the floor bore a spiral crest: the Sigil of the War Crown, marked in molten silver. Beneath it was a seal—an enchantment from the First Emperor's era. Ancient. Still living.

Xavier sat on the stone bench before it.

From a side table, he took a small, leather-bound codex. It was thin. No title on the spine. Only a symbol: a snake biting its own tail.

He opened it.

Inside were pages filled not with spells or treaties, but profiles.

House Salivan.

The Guild of Imperial Bankers.

The North Fleet Admiralty.

The Ashen Garden Society.

The Bloodmirror Oracles.

The Outer Colonies.

Each marked. Categorized. Aligned. Most had been neutralized. Bought. Threatened. Or made dependent on war.

All but one.

He turned the page.

Maximus Aregard – The Second Son.

The handwriting here was not his own.

It belonged to a woman. Long dead. A mentor from his earliest campaigns, whose mind had dissected courts like battlefields.

"Maximus builds no ladders. He will wait until the tower collapses, then walk through the rubble."

"He does not lose."

"You cannot defeat a man who does not need to win."

Xavier shut the book.

No expression crossed his face. But his knuckles whitened where they rested on his knee.

For years, he'd tolerated Maximus. Not out of love—there was none—but because the Empire had required stability.

But now? Now, the Absolute Assembly approached. The Grand Council would convene in a day. Every noble family, every Circle mage, every major house would be present. And at its close, a vote.

Not for the next Emperor—yet. But for something more important.

Designation of Succession.

The official title. The moment the Empire placed its weight behind a future.

Not legally binding. But real. Once named, the others would fall in line or break.

Xavier stood again.

He crossed to the wall and pressed his hand to a black rune embedded in stone. With a hum, the air parted—and a panel slid open. Inside, sealed in stasis, hung a cloak of war.

Gold-threaded black. Embroidered with the sigils of every region he had conquered. Twelve.

He hadn't worn it since the Ash War.

But the time had come.

---

Minutes later, he stood in the war chamber below the tower.

This one was different. No walls. Just a circular space carved into the mountain bedrock, deep and silent, lit by floating spheres of violet light. Here, his closest strategists waited.

Three men. One woman. All of them killers in their own right.

One stepped forward, bowing. "Your Highness."

"Report," Xavier said.

"The Eastern border is quiet. No movement from the Tide Witches or the Crescent Rebellion. House Zoral signed the neutrality pact yesterday. The nobles of the Highmist Range have sworn fealty."

"Maximus?"

They hesitated.

The woman spoke. "His agents have been seen in the western ports. Rebuilding old trade lines. Also… he met privately with the Oracles. No one knows what was offered."

"Bribes?"

"No. They turned down gold from three houses last month. They've stopped caring about coin."

"Which means he's given them something more dangerous—truth," Xavier said quietly.

The room fell still.

Of all tools in Maximus' arsenal, truth was the rarest. And most devastating.

He looked up. "And the vote? What does the latest projection say?"

The strategist cleared his throat. "Split."

"How many?"

"Forty-eight votes are locked for you. Twenty undecided. Thirty-two likely for Maximus. The rest… are in flux. Small houses. Fringe votes. The Sorcerer-Matriarch of Glaine hasn't spoken in a decade. The Aether-Pact delegates might abstain entirely."

"Then we move them," Xavier said.

He stepped into the center of the room.

"Bring every envoy home. Tighten the grain supply to the outer colonies. Start famine projections. They need to understand what neutrality looks like."

"Yes, your Highness."

"Release the border regiments. Quietly. No banners. Only encamp near the capital but not within it. Just close enough for the nobles to hear their drums."

"Yes, your Highness."

"And prepare the Hall of Steel. I'll address the Guard early tomorrow."

He turned to leave.

"Your Highness—" the woman strategist stepped forward again. "What of your brother?"

Xavier paused.

In the shadows of the room, it was hard to tell if he smiled or not.

"There is only one throne," he said. "And only one blade that may sit upon it."

He did not say Maximus' name. That would be giving the shadow shape. He merely turned and walked away, his cloak trailing firelight behind him.

---

Outside, the storm had grown thicker.

He stepped back onto the balcony, this time not looking at the sky, but down—toward the heart of the Imperial City, where the Assembly Hall's spires stretched like spears into the gloom. The banners of every imperial house flapped in the wind.

He could almost hear them whisper.

Soon.