Prologue elements based on storyline and characters written for Final Fantasy Tactics licensed to Square Enix. Original story and characters set in universe by Square Enix. No for-profit ownership is claimed over any of them.

Chapter 1

It was a beautiful autumn morning, the leaves of the trees fiery amidst a pristine blue sky. A soft breeze wafted through the ruins of Zeltennia Chapel, brushing gently against toppled stone and weaving through the vines that slowly started to reclaim its foundations for nature. A single rider and his chocobo approached the chapel from a dirt path in the forest, perhaps looking out of place dressed in his royal, ceremonial armor.

For Delita Hyral, King of all Ivalice, this was a greeting as good as any set of heralds with their trumpets as he rode under what was once a grand arch. There were no lush carpets rolled out for him, only grass and moss-covered stone. There were no lines of nobles, advisors, princes and princesses and their small armies of servants lined up to cater to his every whim.

Only a single woman knelt before what was once this chapel's altar, with her back turned to him, the sun softly reflecting off of her bright red cape and golden locks. He smiled warmly as he spotted her, having found the one person he spent the better part of the morning searching for.

He dismounted from the chocobo, his royal robes flowing smoothly off the saddle as he dropped to his feet. He observed her concealed beauty for but a few moments as he straightened himself out, brushing off any debris that might have found a temporary nest in his robes or his neatly-brushed brown hair during his journey here. After taking a deep breath, he greeted her with all the stern charm required of a monarch.

"I thought I might find you here, everyone has been looking for you," he said, thoughts of when he first met her in these same ruins many years ago aiding him in keeping up his tone.

He reached under his cloak and pulled out a magificent bouquet of flowers, picked from the finest gardens in the castle yet resilient to the constrictions of his attire.

"Today is your birthday, is it not? I brought you-"

His words were cut off when he realized too late that what at first appeared to be his wife Queen Ovelia Hyral running to lovingly embrace him was actually an angry charge with the ornate dagger presented to her as a gift after their coronation.

The bouquet fell from his hand as the dagger found its mark squarely in his gut, landing softly on the chapel's cobbled floor as the King gazed stunned into his Queen's eyes.

"O-Ovelia?" he choked through the blood welling up in his organs, slowly escaping through his mouth.

"How could you? You...you used them, and all the others!" she cried, her rage mixing with her tears, "And someday you'll cast me aside, just as you did with him!"

Instead of politely submissive affection, he saw nothing but fire in those eyes, burning through every mask he had put on, every facade he had erected in his quest to seize power.

And it was in that moment as he dangled by a thread over the abyss itself that his mind began to take form around a realization as grave as his wounds. But such a revelation could not arrive soon enough, as the initial shock had given him a sudden burst of strength.

Out of reflex, he clutched her wrist with one hand and the dagger with the other. She tried to push the dagger further, but her efforts amounted to naught against someone who trained from childhood alongside the finest in the deadly arts of melee combat.

With little effort, he wrested the dagger from his chest and her hand, pushing her away before swiftly - and literally - returning the favor through her heart. With a pained gurgle, the Queen slumped forward onto her knees, her life trickling from her body and soaking into her clothing.

She used her remaining strength to look into the face of the man who had promised to build a kingdom for her before she fell onto her side and breathed her last. Neither love nor fire could be found in eyes that quickly glazed over in deathly blindness.

Only silence. A void where once a person and her life and all she loved once stood.

Blood trickled from her body into the fallen bouquet, nudging loose petals away as it formed a small stream that disappeared between the cracks of the old stone floor.

Delita backed slowly away from his handiwork, the unexpected end result of a master plan that had elevated a mere commoner to royalty amidst the chaos of the war that nearly rent Ivalice in two. And it was here that the revelation he had noticed only seconds prior began to settle in after all the chaos had settled.

He was king, the great unifier of the realm. The singular leader of virtue in a conflict bestrewn with corruption. Yet no great ambition came without an equally great price to pay. In war, such a price was paid in blood. The blood of Queen Ovelia Atkascha, of the two Dukes of Ivalice and all their peons, of the corrupt officials of the Church of Glabados trying to play them all for fools.

And yet it was here, in the throes of death itself, that Delita realized he was not the only one to escape the strings that pulled him in fulfilling his ambition. He was the only one to escape untainted by society, to be sure, and up until the moment when cold metal pierced his flesh he knew quite well that he had become quite the puppetmaster.

Yet the mere act of escape dwarfed its consequences, and he wondered what such consequences were for the man he once called a brother and his only real friend.

"Did...did you get your end in all of this, Ramza?" Delita gurgled, his vision blurring the colors of the world into a hideous mixture of brown and gray as blood started to trickle from his mouth, "I...I got...this..."

Then he too collapsed forward onto the cobbled stone floor of the chapel, the light rumble of his royal guard's footsteps the last thing he heard as his grip on consciousness slipped away.

And then, finally, there was only silence.

Chapter 1 End

Trying to go for a shorter chapter format, see where that takes me. More soon.