The Hollow Throne

The rulers of Europe sat atop their shattered kingdoms, gazing upon the ruin they had wrought. The war had drained everything—men, resources, even the will to fight—but still, they refused to admit defeat. Their palaces, once symbols of power, stood empty, their halls echoing with the ghosts of a fallen generation. The people no longer listened. What use were speeches to a starving man? What comfort was a flag to a child who had never known a home?

In the streets, silence reigned where once there had been life. The great capitals, once centers of art, commerce, and philosophy, had become husks, their streets patrolled not by armies, but by scavengers. The ones who had survived the war did not live—they endured.

Yet, even as the world crumbled around them, the rulers clung to their illusions. They issued decrees as if anyone still cared. They declared new victories in battles that no longer mattered. They surrounded themselves with whatever remained of their loyalists, hoping to delay the inevitable. But power is meaningless when there is nothing left to rule.

Then, the uprisings began.

Not in grand revolutions, not in triumphant marches, but in quiet defiance. A baker in a ruined town refused to surrender his last loaf to the soldiers. A mother struck down a tax collector who came demanding payment in a land where currency was worthless. A group of men and women, weary of war, walked away from the banners and the battlefields, choosing exile over servitude.

The rulers sent their enforcers to crush these acts of rebellion, but they found themselves chasing ghosts. The people no longer feared them. What more could be taken from them that hadn’t already been lost?

And so, one by one, the palaces fell silent. The rulers, abandoned by their own guards, slipped away into the night, vanishing into the very ruins they had created. Some tried to escape, seeking refuge in foreign lands, only to find locked doors and empty promises. Others perished, clinging to their crowns even as the fires consumed them.

The world did not mourn them.

What remained of Europe was not a nation, not an empire, not even a collection of warring states. It was a broken land filled with broken people, left to piece together whatever future they could. There would be no great rebuilding, no grand unification, only the slow and painful process of survival.

The war had ended.

But peace had not yet begun.