Foreword: Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a good game, with an exceptional story. However, because that story is told through the medium of a game, it suffers a bit in some places. The goal of this work is to adapt that story into a friendlier medium. This fanfiction is an adaptation of the story of Three Houses, not a novelization. It will quote verbatim from the game wherever doing so will serve to improve the story, and it will diverge liberally from the game wherever doing so will improve the story. Spoilers abound, obviously.

Disclaimer: I do not own Three Houses, nor its excellent characters.

Flower Red in Blood and Fire

Prologue

Verdant Rain Moon, Imperial Year 1175

It was a dark and cold place, Ionius observed with grit teeth. The torches seemed dimmer than normal down there beneath the imperial palace, and the stone corridors were filled with constantly moving shadows.

"This way, Your Majesty." His guide murmured. Ionius' rage simmered, as he followed the Marquis down. The head of house Vestra had once been his closest ally and a trusted friend. Then the man had personally led an assault on the palace that had reduced Ionius to a mere figurehead. The Insurrection of the Seven, as it came to be known, had destroyed his happy marriage and put an end to his ambitions.

If that had been all, perhaps Ionius could have forgiven him. But it had not ended there.

He was led into a small chamber filled with stone tables. Dried blood painted their sides in streaks, and he could see several bodies, gruesome remnants of a torturous experiment, that had not even been removed yet. The sight turned Ionius' anger to despair. He had long since lost any power to stop this madness.

His eyes caught on one of the forms, which lay still and small, resting on a far table. It was only a child. He contemplated it sadly. He had never held any illusions abut himself. As Emperor, Ionius had given orders that had caused the innocent to suffer, and the ease with which those orders had come to him frightened even him. He had lost many a night's rest to an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

But even his soul shrunk at the sight of this horror.

Unexpectedly, the child moved. She pulled herself into a sitting position slowly, as if the motion pained her. And her wide lavender eyes met his as they widened in shock.

That was his daughter.

His body moved instinctively, taking two swift steps forward in an effort to reach his daughter, but he was physically intercepted by the Marquis' men, who seized his shoulders in restraint.

"Your Majesty. Please restrain yourself." Marquis Vestra sounded pained, yet the guilt Ionius could see upon his old friend's face did nothing to assuage his rage. His eyes flickered over to his poor girl, turned thirteen just two moons prior.

He almost didn't recognize her. She was dressed in a simple white smock that was smeared with blood and dirt, unbefitting her station, but it was her hair that had changed the most…

Her hair was white.

Ionius fists clenched tight, fingernails cutting into flesh as he beheld his beloved Patricia's daughter. She had been the spitting image of her mother when last he saw her, with brown hair and a smile. He could still recall the look on her face as her laughter echoed in her eyes…

Now her eyes were as cold as the stone around her. His blood drained at the very sight. His daughter!

"You monsters." He growled.

"Please, Your Majesty." An unwelcome voice drawled out behind him. "The Prime Minister is only working to strengthen the Empire. Your heir will need to be exceptionally strong."

Ionius slowly turned, trembling in anger, to face Volkhard Arundel, one of the men responsible for this monstrous butchery. Volkhard didn't even seem to notice, displaying no emotion at all on his face.

It was Volkhard who supervised the 'work' of the experiments which Duke Aegir had ordered. He had watched as each and every one of Ionius children bled beneath the knife, not to mention countless other innocents.

To this day, Ionius couldn't understand it. The Volkhard he knew years before would never have accepted such a task, but the way this man could face his victims without any sign of emotion gave Ionius nightmares.

"And has it?" He demanded. "Has your work strengthened the Empire?"

Perhaps he shouldn't push, not when he had no real power at all, and yet Ionius was losing his grip. It was feeling harder and harder to remember why he held himself back. He was losing any reason he once had to maintain what little power remained to him. He had just returned from burying the last of his sons, another victim of this mad plot to enhance the imperial succession.

But again, Volkhard was unfazed. He merely gestured some kind of signal to someone beyond Ionius.

"That is what we are about to find out, Your Majesty."

A pair of men in dark robes stepped forward to grasp his daughter. They pulled her, unresisting, from the stone slab upon which she had rested and carried her to the center of the room. There, Ionius saw that a device of some sort had been installed.

The two men stood his daughter up before it, then stepped back into the shadows. The girl stood as still as a startled fawn. Other than her eyes, which danced to and fro, she didn't show any sign that she noticed she had been moved about at all. It made his heart ache that she was reduced to this wild thing. That he couldn't protect her.

"Step forward." Volkhard ordered her, his voice brooked no disobedience. The girl flinched, then stepped into the analyzer, whereupon its magic activated with a recognizable whirl of light. Ah…it was a device for identifying Crests then. Ionius had never seen one so compact before.

Crests were the manifestations of power that passed down through noble blood. The Prime Minister, Duke Aegir, had initiated this bloodthirsty experiment in order to produce an imperial heir that bore a powerful crest.

The Crest of Seiros manifested quickly, as it always had in his daughter. A minor manifestation, but the only one of any of his children. The analyzer's magic detected the crest and displayed it high in the air for all to see. Ionius had once received the news of his youngest daughter's crest and rejoiced. Now it was nothing but a bitter reminder of all that he had lost.

The analyzer continued, it's magic still swirling in the air, and a larger crest began to manifest. Ionius' eyes widened as a major crest was displayed in the air. He couldn't identify it, wasn't familiar with it, but it didn't matter. Nobody held two crests.

Nobody but his daughter. Somehow, Volkhard's experiments had succeeded. It left a bitter taste in his mouth to consider that his ministers would now feel vindicated in their butchery. His buried sons and daughters would see no justice now.

"The Crest of Flames." Volkhard sounded exceptionally pleased. Something twisted in Ionius stomach to hear that tone. Would this be enough?

"Are you done?" He demanded.

Volkhard didn't bother to respond, he merely gestured to the Marquis and his men.

"Marquis, please show the Emperor out, if you would. There are a few more tests we need to run before we can return his heir to him."

Ionius fought to keep his tongue, both enraged and yet simultaneously hopeful. After all they had done, they were just going to…let her go? His daughter, his only remaining child, was going to survive?

He was too faint with the sudden release to resist the Marquis men, who ushered him out. Even if he had been, he wouldn't have dreamed of antagonizing Volkhard now. His daughter's life had been restored to him, and with it hope. He couldn't risk that.

The men in dark robes returned to their work shifting bodies as Volkhard exited the room, deep in discussion with his favorite surgeon. As the witnesses all departed, a change came over the girl who stood abandoned in the center of the room. Her shoulders set, and her body stilled, and she dared to raise her eyes for the first time that day.

The surgeons and the others didn't like it when she resisted them, and they made her suffer for it, so she had learned to do as she was told. This was the first time she had been overlooked in a long time, a first step on the road to her freedom.

But Edelgard didn't care about any of that. She stood perfectly still, gazing upward at the new crest. A crest for which she had watched all of her siblings suffer through long and painful deaths. A crest for which countless innocent lives were sacrificed before her eyes. And now, at the end of her torment, those very eyes gazed upon that crest with an overwhelming feeling of hatred. Hatred that burned.