Sys

Ask anyone who the King of Ethora is, and they'll say Sys before they even think about it — steady, reasonable, and always the one still in the room when everyone else has left it.

As Ethora Knows Him

Ask anyone who the King of Ethora is, and they'll say Sys before they even think about it — steady, reasonable, and always the one still in the room when everyone else has left it.

He didn't inherit the throne so much as end up the only one still holding it. Ethora was ruled by three siblings once, with equal claim — himself, his brother Hidan, and a third no one living remembers the name of. When the hundred-year war against the forbidden practitioners ended and Hidan's role as soldier-king simply stopped being needed, Sys didn't take anything from him. He just kept doing what he'd always done — govern — and the kingdom, quietly and without ceremony, became his to hold alone.

He believes the Judgment Gods are a blessing, not a burden: a way for a fractured continent to hold itself together without needing another hundred years of war to do it. If that costs people some privacy, some individuality, he's decided it's a fair trade. He has never had to explain this position to Hidan. Hidan stopped listening long before Sys stopped trying to reach him.

What the Archive Doesn't Say

Sys leaned on his nephew more than either of them ever said aloud. Once the war ended, Velkss's talent for slipping past lines no one else could cross made him useful in a way peacetime rarely finds room for — and Sys used it, quietly, for years.

He watched his brother get pushed out of his own kingdom by people who wanted to forget the war Hidan had won for them, and he didn't stop it. He's never said whether that was a choice or simply something he let happen because he didn't know how to stop it. When Velkss finally asked for leave to go looking for his father, Sys gave it without hesitation — the closest thing to an apology he's ever offered anyone.

He governs a kingdom that no longer has three kings, or even two, and he has never once said out loud that he'd rather it did.