When Tom was thirty years old, he awoke to a piece of news that would alter the course of his life forever. A letter, delivered in the middle of the night, bore the seal of an unknown nation. This nation was, apparently, a place where riches were measured in terms of piles of money and rivers of blood.

Tom wasn't a man of magnificence. The old recliner in his tight apartment, its filling dissipating like a tired sigh, spoke of comfort rather than ambition. The calloused fingertips that traced the embossed seal on the letter indicated years of honest work, not ruthless manoeuvring. A glimmer of apprehensive excitement flickered in his normally sleepy eyes, fueled by the unexpected adventure rather than the prospect of enormous wealth. Here was a person who was going to be pushed into a world far different from his own, a man who, unknowingly, was about to be influenced by forces much bigger than himself.

The letter indicated that his inheritance was vast and unfathomable; he was now the king of a nation torn apart by strife and controlled by a bloodline marred by deception and lies.

Tom was always up for a challenge, well, he was when he could be bothered. Being for the moment, unemployed, he decided to follow the instructions in the letter. That was his single mistake. He walked into an empire of monarchs and conquerors, and the weight of this unanticipated load soon weighed him down like a stone on his chest. Tom was an average man who was put onto this throne after accepting the stipulations of a legacy.

Tom's accession was received with a chilly and uncaring disinterest by the kingdom as a whole, which, even as Tom arrived to take up his new position, had a sky filled with smoke from the fighting and fields soaked in the blood of countless people.

In the heart of the kingdom was a castle. Tom's so-called imperial residence. Neglect had left it in a state of decline. Old vines and decay now obscured the once-proud spires of the castle. There seemed to be shadows that moved like wraiths within the walls, bred from stories of betrayal and anguish.

Nonetheless, Tom was not the only one to lay a claim to the crown. Rivals lurked in the shadows, blazing with a desire for power and revenge. In the middle of shifting alliances and the continual, coruscating collapse of relationships caused by the weight of money and ambition, treachery remained in the air, a vile odour tarnishing everything. Tom was unprepared, but he learned quickly how to, Tom became entangled in a maze of lies and dishonesty as he attempted to exert his authority. Every ally was a potential opponent, and each win was too costly to endure. The throne, which had once symbolised power and majesty, now looked to be nothing more than a curse, a weight that threatened to engulf him whole.

Tom's rule was brief and, largely unwittingly, brutal. There was no changing hundreds of years of culture and the mistakes of his predecessors had tarnished his image long before he came on the scene. In the end, Tom could not resist the weight of his own weakness, the failures to act for good, produced by the draw of his newfound wealth, which he was now fighting to keep. The money that had been made on the backs of people who were oppressed and exploited. For some reason, while struggling to keep ahead of the endless plots and exhausting political chicanery, he was able to erase those unfortunate exploited masses from his thoughts.

However, Tom was at heart a decent man and eventually realised that the true cost of his money was a society rife with murder and treachery, where power was a transitory illusion and death awaited at every step. A cup brimming with poison.

All that remained was the bitter taste of regret, a constant reminder of the absurdity of ambition and the harsh reality of human existence.

A cabal of rich men fought Tom for power and in the end, an assasin's blade did its work. While Tom's last minutes ebbed away, he reflected on what his life had become, as well as the avarice and cruelty he had ultimately embraced.

He pondered whether or not there was any way to make amends for the agony that he had caused. In the final moment of his life, he was fully aware that redemption was never possible.