Supreme Viking System-Chapter 73 - 76: Arthur

Arthur woke before the light.

That alone told him where he was.

In his own halls, dawn announced itself with cold—breath fogging, joints aching, the quiet fear that came with wondering whether the fires had held through the night. Here, the air was warm and steady, as if the room itself had decided that morning would arrive gently.

He lay still for a long time, staring at the ceiling.

No bars.

No chains.

The door was closed, but not locked in the way prisons were locked. It was the sort of door meant to keep drafts out, not men in.

That was the cruelty of it.

He rose and crossed the room barefoot. The floor did not bite him with cold. It held his weight without complaint. When he placed his palm against the wall, it was not clammy stone but wood warmed from within, heat carried through hidden veins.

Pipes, he thought.

Always pipes.

He poured water from a vessel and drank. It was clean. Not boiled to kill sickness. Simply clean, as if the city itself refused to tolerate filth.

This was not how captives were meant to live.

This was how men were meant to live when someone had already won.

Arthur pressed his forehead to the window.

Outside, Skjoldvik was already awake.

Steam rose in thin white ribbons from vents set into streets and walls. Workers moved in patterns that repeated themselves—men replacing men without confusion or shouted orders. Children ran in lines toward training yards, laughing, wooden weapons bouncing against their backs like toys instead of burdens.

No one looked up at the palace windows.

That struck him harder than any insult.

In Britain, a king’s presence bent attention. Heads turned. Whispers followed. Power demanded acknowledgment.

Here, the city functioned without him.

Without Anders, too.

That was the thing he could not stop circling.

He had ruled by will.

He had held together fractious nobles with speeches, with oaths sworn on swords and relics, with threats barely disguised as unity. Every winter had been a gamble. Every harvest a negotiation. Every war a desperate attempt to ensure the next year would exist at all.

Anders ruled by continuity.

Arthur closed his eyes and saw the map again.

The table.

The world carved in wood.

England—his England—no larger than a man’s hand.

He had spent his life defending that hand against fire and iron, believing the shape itself was sacred. Believing that borders were truths rather than conveniences.

Anders had not even asked why England mattered.

It was simply next.

Arthur felt anger rise, sharp and familiar, and for a moment he welcomed it. Anger meant he was still himself. Anger meant there was still something to defend.

But anger needed a target.

And Anders was not a tyrant he could hate.

That was the problem.

A tyrant burned villages to feed his pride. A tyrant demanded worship, crushed dissent, ruled by fear.

Anders fed his enemies.

Anders warmed them.

Anders showed them toilets.

Arthur almost laughed, a hollow sound that never made it past his chest.

He imagined the alternative Anders had offered—not death, not chains, but comfort. A life reduced to demonstration. A king preserved like an artifact, pointed at when others hesitated.

This is what refusal looks like.

Arthur’s stomach turned.

He had faced death before. Death had been clean. Death had been honest.

This—this was erasure with breath still in the lungs.

He sank onto the bench beneath the window.

Was stewardship betrayal?

He had asked himself that question a hundred times already, and it always led him back to faces.

Farmers bent under winter hunger.

Children with frost-cracked hands.

Villages that would burn if Anders decided resistance was inefficient.

And Anders would decide.

That truth cut through pride like a blade through cloth.

England would change whether Arthur agreed or not. Roads would come. Armies would come. Order would come. The only question was whether England would arrive at that future intact—or shattered and rebuilt by strangers.

Arthur pressed his hands together until his knuckles ached.

What was a king if not the one who chose which wounds his people would endure?

He thought of legends—of kneeling kings cursed by bards, remembered as weak.

But legends were written by men who had never seen a city like this.

Men who had never felt warmth at sea.

Men who had never watched a kingdom function without belief.

He bowed his head.

"Gods," he murmured, the word sounding small in the room. "If this is a test, speak."

Silence answered him.

No thunder.

No vision.

Only the steady hum of a civilization that had already moved past prayer.

Arthur laughed quietly then, bitter and tired.

Perhaps this was the answer.

Perhaps the gods had already chosen.

He stood again and looked out over Skjoldvik one last time before the thought could slip away.

Steam.

Light.

Children unafraid.

A future that did not ask permission.

If he knelt, it would not be to fear.

It would be to judgment.

Not of Anders—but of himself.

Arthur straightened his shoulders.

He would speak again.

And this time, he would not speak as a king defending the past.

He would speak as a man deciding whether his people would survive the future.