[Somewhere in the Royal Library inside Blachernae Palace, Constantinople]
Five Years Later
Time, John had come to understand, was a deceiver. It moved neither swiftly nor slow but according to its own strange cadence—unconcerned with the memories of a soul that no longer belonged to the century into which it had been cast.
Five years. Five cycles of sun and moon. Five winters of stillborn freedom.
He had adapted—not out of comfort, but necessity. There was no point in resisting the absurdity of his circumstances anymore. He had accepted the bargain, whether it had been whispered by fate or thrust upon him by some uncaring power cloaked in lightless void. The wheel had turned. His life, such as it was, belonged to the past no longer.
But acceptance did not mean peace.
"How my predecessors endured this dull routine defies all mortal logic," he muttered, the words half-formed behind a child's teeth and buried beneath the etiquette of silence.
Royalty, he had learned, was not an inheritance—it was a cage lined with velvet, perfumed with incense, and watched over by suspicious eyes.
His days unfurled like scripture: rigid, ritualized, immutable.
Wake. Eat. Study. Train. Eat. Pray. Sleep. Repeat.
Over and over, like a monk in golden robes. Like a prisoner wrapped in silk.
In the sacred stillness of the Blachernae library—its columns like the ribs of a fossilized titan—John sat among dust-laden manuscripts, a child with the soul of a man twice dead. The palace, for all its splendor, was no sanctuary. It was a crucible designed to burn away weakness.
"To call it lofty," he thought dryly, "is the understatement of an epoch."
He had once watched kings in films and read of emperors in books, imagined their lives as endless opulence and orchestrated drama. What childish notions they had been. This was no place of grandeur. This was a place of quiet madness. A theater without an audience.
His every movement observed. His every meal tested. Guards followed him like his own shadow—silent, tense, as if he might suddenly vanish into smoke or be knifed by some phantom assassin.
Even his most private moments—relieving himself like any mortal being—were under the unblinking eye of ceremony.
"They watch me shit," he thought darkly, "as though I were planning to tunnel into the catacombs."
Royalty, it seemed, did not mean dignity. It meant surveillance. It meant isolation wrapped in protocol.
Freedom? That was for peasants. For shepherds and bakers and drunkards pissing in alleyways. They could disappear without notice, speak without record. But he? He was a future emperor. A symbol. Symbols do not breathe freely. They are kept polished, protected, and paraded.
"Life is cheap here," he whispered under his breath. "Even the gods feel distant. And even a prince must watch his cup for poison."
And yet, he understood. How could he not? He had inherited not only blood and name, but the slow, crushing logic of an empire that had outlived its soul. Paranoia wasn't madness here—it was wisdom. Power was the only antidote to an early grave, and even power bled when stabbed in the back.
In the end, he realized, monarchy was never about ruling. It was about surviving long enough to try.
His gaze drifted toward a stained-glass window. Outside, the sea whispered against Constantinople's walls, eternal and uncaring. The same sea that had watched Rome rise, fall, and rise again. It would outlast them all.
"So this is what it means to be born again," he murmured. "Not as a savior. Not as a warrior. But as a child in a collapsing world, with no sword, only silence."
He had been thirty-two when he died. A man. He remembered that clearly—his thoughts, his pride, his small triumphs and bitter regrets. And now, he had spent five long years imprisoned in a form that could not yet wield a sword, let alone change the fate of nations.
"What am I supposed to do as a baby?" he had once cried in silence. "Coo my way into reform?"
The injustice of it gnawed at him. Not because he wanted glory, but because it all seemed so pointless. To be reborn at the twilight of an empire, to watch history drown again from the inside. If this was divine providence, then the gods had a cruel sense of humor.
Still—despite the cynicism, despite the frustration—something in him endured.
Hope, perhaps. Or defiance. Or simply the old, primitive will to live.
He turned the brittle page of the book before him, feigning interest for the guards who stood at the threshold. He didn't read the words. He had read them all before.
He was waiting.
Waiting for the moment he could act. Think freely. Move without a chain at his ankle.
Until then, he endured.
Thus began the true education of John VIII Palaiologos—the emperor-to-be, not yet crowned, but already entombed in fate.
That was until—
Thwack!
"Ow! What the fu—"
The curse died in his throat as a sharp pain bloomed at the back of his skull. John whipped around, clutching his head, face twisted between outrage and disbelief.
"Oh? Did the imperial heir just swear?"
John froze. Jaw clenched.
There stood the perpetrator: an elderly man, smug as sin, twirling a thin wooden staff like a knight brandishing a blade.
The bastard had struck him.
Damn it… this decrepit menace again…
"Daydreaming, are we?" the old man asked.
"What giv—ouch! You senile old goat!"
"Master Pavlos, young despotes. That's M-A-S-T-E-R. Learn it. Live it. Love it. You've got no choice otherwise."
Despite his frail frame, Pavlos swung that staff with unholy strength. Each strike stung like it carried divine judgment. Or maybe just sadistic pleasure.
This is abuse, I swear.
John seethed in silence, gripping the sore spot.
He was thirty-two, for God's sake—mentally, at least. And yet here he was, being smacked like a rebellious altar boy. In his past life, this would've been a lawsuit. Now? A daily ritual.
To be disciplined like some errant child by this grey-bearded fossil was humiliating enough. But as a future emperor? It was blasphemy.
Never—never—in either of his lives had someone dared to treat him like this.
But here he was. Again.
So who the hell was Pavlos?
Not just a tutor. A scholar-monk. A relic of the court who had outlived three generations of emperors. He'd advised John's grandfather, tutored his father—Manuel II Palaiologos—and now had taken it upon himself to reform John.
His reputation wasn't just palace-wide. Even patricians deferred to him. Emperor Manuel himself sought his counsel.
In short: Pavlos was no doddering old fool. He was an institution.
And for John? A daily pain in the imperial ass.
"Wait till I tell Father—ouch! Hey!"
Another strike. Pavlos didn't even blink.
His eyes screamed, Try it.
Not even the threat of imperial wrath fazed him.
This damned monk…
John scowled, his pride bleeding alongside his bruises.
"Now," Pavlos said, deceptively light, "what did we learn today?"
"…"
Silence. Glare. Fists clenched.
Pavlos simply stared back, calm as a marble statue, letting the silence stretch like taut rope.
"You serious?" John snapped. "We haven't even started!"
Frustration boiling, he flailed his stubby arms at the old man. It was less an attack and more a tantrum.
Pavlos didn't move. He glided. Sidestepped like a ghost.
John stumbled forward—then slammed face-first into the cold marble floor.
Thud.
Dignity: annihilated.
Then came the encore.
Thwack!
A clean strike to the backside.
"Gah! My ass!" John yelped, rolling over and rubbing the new welt like a wounded animal.
Pavlos sighed, shaking his head.
"And to think," he muttered dryly, "you're supposed to be an emperor in the making."
"You've got the dignity of a flailing chicken."
"What was that for!?" John shouted.
"Patience."
Pavlos' voice was suddenly steel. The mischievous spark in his eye dimmed, replaced by cold gravity. The clown was gone. The mentor had arrived.
"As a ruler," he said, each word landing like a hammer, "you must calculate every move—and strike with certainty."
John sat upright, the tone shift impossible to ignore. His scowl wavered. Pride softened into reluctant attention.
"What you lack," Pavlos continued, sharper now, "is patience."
He stepped closer.
"And worse still..."
He narrowed his eyes.
"You are a fool who cannot recognize dignity, even when standing naked before his enemies."
The insult landed with a quiet, brutal finality.
John's eye twitched. But he didn't lash out.
Instead, he smiled—a cold, brittle smirk.
The game was still on.
"Don't you know what people say about your face, Pavlos?"
Unfazed by the blatant attempt to shift the topic, Pavlos arched a brow, unimpressed.
"Oh? Enlighten me, young despotes. What do they say?"
John smirked wider.
"That your face looks like someone tried to merge a toad with a goat—and gave up halfway."
Pavlos said nothing at first. His face betrayed no emotion—no irritation, no injury, just the quiet calm of a man long immune to childish barbs. Then, with a slow, deliberate step, he approached, sandals tapping lightly against the marble floor.
Without warning, he leaned in—close enough for John to feel his breath.
"Is that so?" he said, voice low and mildly menacing.
"GAHH—!!!"
John shrieked, flailing backward in sheer panic. His arms windmilled, legs kicked, and down he went, landing hard on his back with a graceless thump.
"Dude, really?" he blurted, splaying his arms in dramatic disbelief.
Pavlos blinked. "Dude?"
He repeated the foreign word like it was something sour in his mouth.
Realizing his slip, John winced. The bravado drained from his face.
"I don't know what that was," Pavlos said, his tone sharpening, "but I'll let it pass—for now. Still, young symbasileus, remember who you are. If your father, the emperor, saw you like this, he'd be… thoroughly unimpressed."
It wasn't a threat. It was a reminder—firm, measured, and disarmingly sincere.
"Yeah… sure," John muttered, looking away, embarrassed.
"Good. Now take your seat."
And with that, the storm passed. The room shifted back to normalcy as mentor and pupil returned to their routine.
This time, John sat upright, less the rebellious brat and more the dutiful student. He listened. He asked questions. He nodded, even when he didn't quite agree. It was a remarkable shift, and Pavlos took note.
For all the chaos and complaints, John's mind was keen—too keen, even. The boy absorbed information like a sponge to water. Pavlos had tutored emperors, diplomats, and prodigies, but few ever showed such relentless curiosity.
John wasn't like other court children. While they frittered away their days with games and indulgence, John devoured books. At two, he spoke in complete sentences. At three, he was reading unassisted. Now five, he had already consumed half the imperial library—philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and beyond.
It wasn't natural.
But then again, Pavlos thought, this boy wasn't natural.
He carried himself with the weariness of someone older, as if he'd already lived a lifetime. There were moments—too many—when he spoke less like a child and more like a man in miniature.
Of course he was advanced. He should be. He was a man reborn. A modern soul in a world of marble and iron.
Among the sons of the patricians, not one could hold a candle to him. Most couldn't even write their names without help.
A gifted child? No. A phenomenon. A cursed miracle.
Pavlos, though slow to admit such things, felt something stir in his chest—a guarded pride. He hadn't expected this. When Emperor Manuel had foisted the boy upon him on his fifth birthday, Pavlos had scoffed. He was too old for babysitting, too dignified to waste his twilight years on nursery duty.
Even Manuel himself hadn't begun formal study until nine—and that had been rudimentary at best.
So Pavlos had taught John the bare minimum, assuming it was all the boy could handle.
He'd been wrong.
But now, as Pavlos watched the boy's mind at work—quick, curious, razor-sharp—his earlier doubts had long since vanished.
The more he taught this defiant little rascal, the more impressed he became.
"…And that marked the era of the Komnenoi—the last golden age before our Empire began its long descent, dragged into ruin by their successors, the Angeloi," Pavlos concluded, voice steady with the weight of history.
Then, with a pointed look:
"Well? What do you learn from this?"
John didn't answer right away. His gaze drifted, his small brow furrowed with thought. But what stirred inside him wasn't confusion—it was disgust.
Idiots, he thought.
A dynasty of morons. Enemies at the gates, and they choose to butcher each other instead. Typical. The medieval mind—paranoid, power-drunk, too blind to see beyond their own ambitions. They'd rather sit on thrones of corpses than rule a kingdom of the living.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Power without wisdom is just madness in robes.
No different now than it was then. Maybe… maybe that was always the beginning of the end.
TWACK!
"Ow! What the hell, old man?!"
"Speak," Pavlos said dryly. "I see the gears turning behind those smug little eyes."
John glared, stunned by the audacity—but this time, he didn't fire back. Instead, he let the thoughts spill forth, unfiltered.
Pavlos listened, expecting nonsense.
What he heard… was anything but.
John's words came slow at first, but then gathered momentum—a tide of critique and clarity that far exceeded his years.
"…Even with the empire on the edge of collapse, they clung to their power like children hoarding toys, squabbling over titles while invaders stormed their gates. And Justinian I—people love to praise him, but he was no different. For all his accomplishments, he let ambition blind him. The cost of his conquests? Never paid by him."
On and on John went—sometimes admiring, sometimes condemning, always with unnerving detachment.
Pavlos found himself stilling.
In all my years tutoring the heirs of the Palaiologoi… I have never seen a mind like this.
Most children worshipped emperors like saints. Even John's own father, the reigning emperor, was treated with reverence by his peers. Criticism? Heresy. But here sat a five-year-old—cool, precise, and entirely unimpressed.
He dissected history like a surgeon with a blade. No awe. No fear. Just brutal honesty.
A gem, Pavlos thought, born into an age of rust and ruin.
For a while, he said nothing. He watched in silence, caught between contemplation and awe.
John continued, unaware of the way his tutor now regarded him—no longer just a student, but something else entirely.
A moment passed. Then two. Then hours.
By the time the session ended, Pavlos finally spoke.
"That will be all for today, Your Highness."
John slumped over the table, too drained to argue. His head lolled to the side as he let out a long, exasperated sigh.
How the hell does this ancient fossil still have the energy of a man in his prime?
He leaned back, breathing deep, relishing the end of the lesson. But Pavlos wasn't done.
"Despite your brilliance," he said, voice both amused and sharp, "do not forget your discipline. Or one day, you'll become just like the very fools you've condemned."
"Yeah, yeah. Sure…"
John rolled his eyes, too tired to argue. Pavlos' brow twitched.
Tch. What blessing? This boy is a damn devil in disguise.
The old monk exhaled through his nose, suppressing the urge to thwack the child again. As infuriating as the boy could be, Pavlos still clung to a flicker of hope.
Maybe—just maybe—this unruly little tyrant could save what was left of the Empire. Rise from its ashes like a phoenix. Restore the shattered eagle standard of Rome.
But first…
I need to beat the arrogance out of him.
Tsk, tsk. Where in God's name did he even learn to be this insolent?
Not even the emperor had been this cheeky at John's age. Pavlos had tutored three generations of emperors, princes, and warlords—and never had he encountered a child so maddeningly sharp-tongued, so frustratingly willful.
Where had this boy gotten such defiance?
The irony, of course, was lost on him. The one who had most shaped John… was Pavlos himself.
But then, who ever thinks to blame the mirror for the reflection?
[Blachernae's Training Ground]
Fresh from the grueling intellectual gauntlet laid by Pavlos, John's day continued without pause—this time on the field of steel and sweat.
Typically, children of noble blood didn't touch a sword until ten. But John wasn't typical.
He didn't know why the regimen started so early. Then again, he had only himself to blame.
Ever since his reincarnation, he had discovered something unexpected—beyond the curse of memory and foresight. Muscle remembered what even the mind hadn't consciously learned. He moved like someone who had trained for years. Fighting wasn't just instinctual; it was familiar.
And it had all started when he was four.
It happened by accident.
While aimlessly wandering the palace one afternoon—much to the despair of his ever-harried attendants—John stumbled upon the imperial training grounds.
There, warriors drilled in rhythmic unison: squires, veterans, even some of the famed hetaireiai—Imperial Guard elite.
John stood in the shadows at the edge of the courtyard, spellbound. Blades cut through the air with precision, shields slammed like thunder, boots struck the ground in perfect cadence. The boy drank it in with wide, unblinking eyes.
So enthralled was he, he didn't hear the footsteps behind him.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing here, runt? This ground is for warriors, not palace brats."
The voice was sharp—irritated. A trainee, older by several years, stood glowering at him.
John didn't even look at him. His eyes remained locked on the drills.
The trainee's brow twitched.
"Are you deaf or just stupid? Where's your nursemaid, huh? Who even are you?"
"Demetrius!"
A commanding voice cleaved the tension like a blade.
Both boys turned. From the stone hallway strode a tall, broad-shouldered officer in polished armor.
The trainee stiffened immediately, snapping into a soldier's stance. But John? He didn't move an inch.
The officer's eyes flicked between the two boys.
"What's the ruckus?" he asked curtly.
"S-Sir!" Demetrius stammered. "This kid wandered in here. I tried to send him off, but he ignored me."
The officer turned to John, eyes narrowing.
"And who is this?"
"I… I don't know," Demetrius admitted, his voice faltering.
The officer took a slow step toward John. "Name. Now. And tell me which fool is responsible for letting you roam the grounds unsupervised."
John didn't reply.
Instead, he reached into his tunic, withdrew a small object, and held it aloft with casual precision.
The officer leaned in.
His eyes widened the moment he saw it.
A royal insignia.
He froze.
Then, straightening with mechanical precision, he placed a fist to his chest and barked:
"I salute you—the Sun of the Empire!"
His voice rang across the courtyard like a battle cry.
Silence fell.
Every soldier, squire, and instructor halted, weapons mid-swing, footfalls arrested. Heads turned in a ripple of confusion and dawning realization.
Demetrius stared, dumbstruck. Moments ago, he had expected the little brat to be scolded—or dragged off. Now, he was watching his commanding officer salute him like an emperor.
He slowly turned back to John.
The boy's face was unreadable.
But his eyes?
His eyes said it all.
And then—realization dawned.
Oh... shit.
John exhaled, slow and composed. His voice, when it came, was distant, almost disinterested.
"Be on your way. Forgive my unintended visit—and forget that I was ever here."
He didn't look at them. His eyes remained fixed on the warriors, as if the officer and the trainee weren't worth acknowledging.
The officer hesitated. "But… Your Highness, forgive me. Why are you here? And where are your guards? This area is strictly off—"
His voice strained to stay even, but the panic was seeping through. A despotes, unsupervised, in a restricted zone? Someone's head was going to roll.
John didn't turn.
"Officer," he said, tone flat as cold iron, "don't tell anyone I was here."
"But—"
"No buts." His voice cut like a blade. "That wasn't a request."
The officer froze. Sweat beaded on his brow. This wasn't just above his pay grade—it was above existence. If word reached the Emperor, he was finished. Facts wouldn't matter. Just consequences.
Demetrius, who had been silent through the exchange, clenched his fists.
"Why are you acting like this is normal?! Just because you're a despotes doesn't mean you get to treat people like they're beneath you!"
"Demetrius!"
The officer barked like a man on the edge.
"Stand down! Do not speak that way to the despotes! That's treason! Forgive him, Your Highness. The boy lacks proper discipline."
But Demetrius didn't back off. "But sir! He disrespected you! Rank or not, he wasn't supposed to be here!"
"I said—stand down!"
The tension in the courtyard snapped taut. The air crackled with unsaid consequences.
And then John moved.
He turned—finally—eyes meeting theirs for the first time.
A smirk ghosted across his lips.
"I said I don't want anyone to know I was here. But…"
His gaze flicked between them, cold and calculating.
"If I'm discovered, you will be blamed."
Silence. The sort that makes your stomach sink.
And then, with a calm that bordered on madness, John said:
"I want to train with you."
Dead. Silence.
The officer stared like he'd just heard a lunatic whisper state secrets.
"I… beg your pardon, Your Highness? Surely you mean, 'Escort me inside and punish my useless guards,' yes?"
A nervous chuckle escaped him, desperate for sanity.
John didn't even blink. "You heard me. I want to train—with you."
He didn't flinch. He doubled down.
That was when Demetrius burst out laughing.
"Oh, this is rich! A duel, then, Your Highness?"
John's smirk widened. "Even better."
The officer looked from one to the other, jaw slack. His brain tried to reboot but failed.
He could already see the imperial summons:
Explain why the heir to the throne was dueling a ten-year-old in the dirt like some common squire.
This was it. His career. His life. Over.
Tears formed in his soul.
And just like that, John found himself with yet another entry on his already-absurd daily schedule: combat training.
A four-year-old dueling a ten-year-old?
It should've been a joke. A complete mismatch.
But what happened that day—no one could have predicted.
Not the squires.
Not the officers.
Not even Demetrius himself.
John won.
Despite being smaller, weaker, outmuscled—he emerged victorious.
How?
Well…
That's a story for another time.