“Freed or broken, there can be no in-between. We hold their chains, all of them, and so long as they have the strength to do so, they will pull at their chains. They will yank and tug at the collar we have fitted them with until either they or their collar break. Even if they were freed, I don’t doubt in my heart for one minute that they would try to attack us with the broken chains. I should have known this. I should have curtailed your mercy, as every history book had taught me. This was my fault. My heart was weak to your plight, and you to theirs. I’m sorry Isabel. I tried to appease them, to be good. For your sake, to make you happy, I wanted our lands to be a paradise for all people of all kinds. But I couldn’t keep them happy. As soon as our poverty demanded I tighten the slack on their chains again, they— I’m sorry.”

Lucas felt his throat lock up as he stared at the page, reading the lines over and over again. A rebellion, he concluded as he went over the paragraph. His wife died in a rebellion. Those ideas, those pages . . . they weren’t hopes and dreams. He had done them. They were records and memories. He had done them all, and when he ran out of money and couldn’t keep doing them, they rebelled. Lucas sighed, unable to control his own heart as he imagined what Kegan must have gone through. It had been hard reading that. Out of all of the villains of the Imperium on noob island, this particular noble’s earlier days had been that of a saint in comparison. The woman who had pushed him to do the right thing, who had encouraged him to throw away the Imperium’s bigotry, was dead because of it.

The next three or four pages were blank, and then Lucas reached one more page with text. It was only a single sentence this time that read: “I will break them all.” Each letter left such a deep imprint that it might have been dug out with a fingernail before ink ever touched the paper. There were more writings on the pages after, and Lucas wanted to keep reading, but he had already reached the tavern and knew he had to get to work.

Lucas had the whole place to himself due to the fact it was the middle of the afternoon, so he posted up at the same table he had eaten at earlier after giving Hermann a nod. He reached into his bag, took out a bottle of ink, a quill, and a blank book that he had bought during his first days in the game world when he had thought that he might want to draw as well.

“Will you be wanting something to drink?” Hermann asked, coming over while Lucas was still setting up his workspace.