The flame of the future felt so far away. Like a star whose luster was so unimaginably distant that none of its warmth accompanied the light.

Once, in a time that you lost grasp of in memory in spite of it only being a few years ago, you and your best friends had been at that clifftop café in Lapizlazulli- you, Leo, and Cesare, speaking of- what else- the forthcoming, and futurism, the vehicle which would bring forth such to Vitelia, and then the world.

“If anywhere is to bring about the Dawn,” Cesare said emphatically, “Would it not be Vitelia? Look at us at this table. Anywhere else on this continent, we would be two different peoples, but since our grandfather’s grandfathers, we have become one people. It can’t be much further to become one Class, surely. Greater obstructions have been conquered than stand before us now.”

“I concur,” Leo said, “Even if the Professor won’t let us write what he considers to be <span class="mu-i">insurrection</span> material, the nobility are the ones who stand the most in the way- and they have the most to lose. Yet fall they must, either gracefully or no. As the First Empire did to smash the barriers between peoples, so must a bomb shatter the castle of the nobility if they stand in the way of the Forthcoming Dawn. It’s just a fact. It will happen whether they like it or not.”

Cesare put a hand on his cheek and leaned on the table and gave his coffee a contemplative look. “Although, is that truly the way forward? Did the First Empire do it, or did it simply happen because the First Empire existed?”

Leo was a big, brutish looking man, but appearance belied truth. “I’m sure that at least some of it was a result of the Empire’s active effort.”

“Yet,” you observed, “It was also led by nobility above all the others. I imagine any highborn would have aspirations of being Emperor if the highest office now was not that of King, his ministry, or the <span class="mu-i">Signore Delle Opinioni</span>.”

“Or <span class="mu-i">Vilja Domkarl</span>,” Cesare added, “But what I was getting at, is that perhaps our unity comes from the fact that it fell, as did the Second Empire that sought to become the First. What I believe, the thesis for my Contemporary Vitelia class, is that our unity comes from an idealized vision of what once was, and an unwitting working towards the future based off of an imperfect vision of, well, what we think was perfect.”

Leo frowned and pondered his own coffee- it was empty, and he waved towards the café where the waitress was watching the lot of you talk. “That’s a disquieting thought,” he said, “Because if that’s true, then the way towards the future requires not a great triumph, but a tragedy so ruinous it reaches everybody and unites them in ashes.”