Scene: Delvaron — Presidential Detention Quarters (Underground Cell Block)
Kael Dran's POV
It smelled like stone.
Old, wet stone — the kind that remembers every secret spoken in panic, every footstep of a man who used to matter.
I sat alone.
No chair.
No table.
Just a cell with walls thicker than the pride I once carried.
They didn't torture me. That would've been expected. Predictable.
No — Blackwood was smart.
They gave me silence. Isolation.
And most of all?
Obsolescence.
My people hadn't heard from me in five days.
And in that silence, they accepted a new anthem.
Today, I heard it for the first time from a guard's comm unit — soft but sharp:
> "All hail the Blackwood Flame. One throne. One name. Forever."
I turned my face to the wall.
Not in defeat.
In realization.
Chris never came here himself. Not yet. He didn't need to. His bombs spoke first. Then his soldiers. Then the silence.
Now… now I wait for the crown.
I hear footsteps.
A high-rank B.A.M. officer appears behind the glass wall.
> "President Kael Dran," he says, with artificial politeness, "The King has summoned you. To his throne. He says... you may still be useful."
I chuckled.
Not because it was funny.
But because I knew what that meant.
I wouldn't die today.
That was worse.
I stood up slowly, joints stiff from cold and stillness. But I kept my head high.
Let them see the last flicker of a man who ruled once.
Let them watch it die… in front of their King.
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