Divine Judgment of Sovereignty
Two centuries before the present day, the Kingdom of Alveron collapsed inward under the weight of uncertainty and ambition. When King Aaemon II died, he left no acknowledged heir—only whispers. Rumors of illegitimate sons spread quickly, each one seized upon by opportunistic nobles seeking to legitimize their own bids for power. What began as court intrigue turned rapidly into open conflict.
The war that followed, later named the Bastard Uprising, was not a clean struggle of banners and battle lines. It was a grinding, seven-year descent into brutality. Fields were burned not for strategy but for denial. Villages were razed simply to prevent them from feeding rival armies. Lords crowned their own “kings,” only to see them butchered months later. The peasantry, caught between competing claims, learned quickly that loyalty offered no protection.
By the war’s fourth year, much of Rovamir had become a wasteland of ash and trampled grain. In the capital, factions within the Church itself began to fracture, some backing claimants, others retreating into rigid neutrality. The kingdom was not merely divided—it was unraveling.
Deep within the most restricted archives of Themis’ clergy lay a ritual long considered too severe, too absolute to ever be used. Known as The Right of Themis, it was not a ceremony of coronation, nor a blessing of rule. It was judgment—pure and final.
The rite called forth an Angel of Themis, a being bound not to politics, nor persuasion, but to divine law itself. It did not interpret. It did not weigh context. It answered a single question: Is the claimant the rightful sovereign?
The ritual had never been performed in Alveron’s history. Not because it was forgotten, but because it demanded a price few were willing to pay.
The Right of Themis could only be invoked under strict and unforgiving conditions. It required a claimant willing to stake their life on their claim, and a priest of Themis willing to act as the summoner.
That priest would not survive.
The ritual consumed the summoner entirely—body and soul offered as the cost of calling divine judgment into the mortal world. There was no mitigation, no protection, no promise of mercy. The act was total.
Once invoked, the Angel would appear only once. It would hear the claimant’s oath, and it would respond without hesitation.
The oath itself was stark in its simplicity:
“Before your divine judgment and mortal witness, I claim rightful sovereignty over the Kingdom of Alveron. If I lie, let your sword strike me down.”
If the claimant spoke truth, the Angel would declare them rightful ruler. If they lied, they would be slain instantly—cut down by the Sword of Themis before any could intervene.
There was no appeal. No second attempt. No survival through clever words or political maneuvering.
Truth, or death.
Bartra did not emerge from noble lineage in the traditional sense. He was raised as the son of a miller in Rovamir, his life defined by the rhythm of grain and river rather than court and conquest. No banner marked his home. No knight swore to his name.
The war came regardless.
When soldiers reached his village, they did not ask who he was. They burned the mill, cut down those who resisted, and moved on. In the aftermath, as his mother lay dying from a wound taken in the chaos, she revealed what she had concealed for years. She had once served in the royal kitchens, and during that time, King Aaemon II had taken her into his confidence.
Bartra, she told him, was the king’s son.
It was not a revelation of pride, but of burden. With her final strength, she made him swear not to chase the crown for vanity—but also not to allow falsehood to destroy what remained of the kingdom.
With nothing left to anchor him, Bartra left Rovamir and walked into a land already broken.
Bartra’s path eventually crossed with Maria, a priestess of Themis whose devotion lay not in power, but in law as a means of preserving order. She did not believe him at first. Men claiming royal blood had become common in those years, most of them liars or pawns.
But Bartra did not speak like them.
He did not ask for followers. He did not seek advantage. What drove him was something quieter, heavier—grief sharpened into resolve. As they traveled together, Maria saw the same devastation repeated across the kingdom: hollow villages, conscripted boys, fields abandoned to rot.
It was not ambition that convinced her. It was the absence of it.
In neglected archives, far from the reach of war, Maria uncovered the liturgy of the Right of Themis. She understood immediately what it meant—not only in power, but in cost.
Bartra refused the idea outright. He would not accept a crown purchased with her life.
Maria did not see it that way.
To her, the ritual was not a transaction. It was truth, given form. If Bartra lied, he would die. If he spoke truth, the war would end. The cost was terrible, but so was the alternative—a kingdom slowly bleeding itself into nothing.
She chose.
The ritual was performed in the capital, at the High Altar of Themis, before nobles hardened by war and clergy worn thin by indecision. There were no celebrations, no certainty—only exhaustion and the faint possibility that something final might end the conflict.
Maria began the rite.
There was no spectacle in its early moments. Only words—precise, ancient, and binding. When the final invocation was spoken, the air itself seemed to tighten. Light gathered, not gently, but with a force that erased shadow entirely.
Maria did not scream. The radiance consumed her completely, leaving nothing behind.
Then the Angel came.
It manifested not as comfort, but as inevitability—an embodiment of law stripped of mercy. Its presence silenced the cathedral. Even the most hardened lords could not look upon it without fear.
Bartra stood alone before it.
His voice did not carry like a king’s. It carried like a man with nothing left to lose.
He spoke the oath.
For a moment, nothing moved. Then the Angel’s sword ignited, its light cutting through the cathedral like judgment made visible. Every breath in the chamber seemed to halt.
Then it spoke.
Bartra was named the rightful son of Aaemon II. The rightful sovereign of Alveron.
The sword dimmed. The Angel vanished.
Maria was gone.
The war did not end in celebration. It ended in surrender.
Within a month, the remaining claimants either bent the knee or were abandoned by those who once supported them. The nobles did not follow Bartra out of loyalty, but because there was no argument left to make. Divine judgment had spoken, and none dared challenge it.
Bartra was crowned not by the will of the Church, nor by the strength of armies, but by something far more absolute.
The Right of Themis has not been invoked since.
Its existence remains known only to the highest ranks of the Church, guarded not as a tool of power, but as a last resort—one that demands a life for truth, and offers no certainty of salvation.
In Alveron, it is remembered not as a miracle.
But as a moment when the kingdom came so close to ending that even the gods were forced to answer.