The Blue Parlor was a small, unassuming room located in the heart of the palace. It was decorated with sapphire-blue tapestries and held a single, high-backed chair and a small table. It was here that the true "Trial" began.
The first to be summoned was Count Hesper, a man who had made his fortune by selling faulty armor to the border guards. He entered the room trembling, his expensive silks damp with sweat. He expected a tribunal, a row of stern judges, and a headsman. Instead, he found a teenager sitting calmly by a small fire, reading a book.
"Sit, Count," Livius said, not looking up from the page.
The Count sat, his teeth chattering. "Your... Your Majesty. I am a loyal servant of the Dragon. I have always—"
"You have always skimmed twenty percent off the iron contracts," Livius interrupted, his voice as sharp as a razor. He finally looked up, his golden eyes pinning the Count to his seat. "In the winter of my tenth year, three hundred men died at the Northern Pass because their breastplates shattered like glass. Do you remember their names?"
"I... I don't..."
Livius pushed a piece of paper across the table. "I do. I spent my nights in the archives recording every casualty report. You didn't just steal gold, Hesper. You stole lives. Now, we are going to discuss the 'repayment' plan."
The "repayment" wasn't gold. Livius demanded the Count's entire estate be turned into an orphanage for the children of the soldiers who had died. He stripped the man of his title but left him his life, under the condition that he work as a common laborer in the very mines he had exploited.
"If you ever touch a piece of iron again, Nexus will know," Livius whispered.
As the Count stumbled out of the room, broken and sobbing, Cian stepped from behind a tapestry, holding a checklist. "One down. One hundred and ninety-nine to go."
Livius leaned back, closing his eyes. This was the "long game." He wasn't just killing the corrupt; he was recycling them. He was turning the waste of the empire into the soil for its future. This was the tedious, heavy, and silent work of a ruler that the history books usually skipped over. But in the Chronicles of the Ghost, every name mattered.