The courtyard of the Governor's Estate was a boiling cauldron of noise, nerves, and steel.
Torchlight flickered along the marble columns, casting long, trembling shadows across the sea of armored bodies.
Some soldiers clutched weapons tightly, their knuckles pale.
Others held banners that drooped lifelessly in the heavy, damp air.
Above it all, the banners of Sarfin still hung—red and silver—but tonight, they were little more than tattered memories of loyalty.
Toji stood at the front of his line of soldiers, Nano-code shimmering faintly along his arms like veins of molten light.
His face was calm. Carved from stone.
Across the courtyard, Governor Helmund waited.
Surrounded by the silver-armored elite guards, Helmund still wore his official robes—black trimmed with white fur—but the way he clutched the folds near his chest betrayed his fear.
His face, normally smug and polished, had hardened into something brittle. Something desperate.
Frankie stepped forward, voice clear, carrying through the uneasy silence.
"In the name of the people of Gulmund and in the sight of the Old Gods," Frankie said, "we lay charges against Governor Helmund of Sarfin: treason against the people, alliances with demons, the blood sacrifice of innocents, and betrayal of his sacred oath."
Gasps fluttered through the ranks. Some soldiers looked away.
A single woman sobbed openly near the back.
Helmund raised his voice, but it cracked like thin glass.
"Lies! Lies spun by rebels! By a lunatic foreigner! By a man who knows nothing of duty!"
Toji said nothing.
He only lifted his right hand.
A shimmering sphere of light formed—a cracked memory crystal, plucked from Helmund's own corrupted archives.
Helmund's voice, twisted and raw with fervor, echoed across the courtyard:
"Sacrifice the children. It opens the passage wider."
A soldier retched violently behind Toji.
Frankie flinched as though slapped.
Helmund saw the crowd waver—and lunged forward, drawing a dagger from his sleeve in a wild, sloppy motion.
It never reached Toji.
In one fluid motion, as easy as breathing, Toji stepped forward and cut Helmund down.
A clean, single strike. No anger. No cruelty.
Just cold, solemn justice.
Helmund's body crumpled like a puppet with cut strings.
Blood oozed across the polished stones, black under the moonlight.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then whispers rose—first in Gulmundian, then Old Sarfin, then in languages Toji did not know.
Some soldiers cheered.
Others drew their swords with trembling hands.
Still others fell to their knees, weeping in gratitude or terror.
Toji turned from the corpse, his blade humming softly with Nano-light.
He did not raise it in victory.
He simply walked away.
Behind him, a kingdom's soul fractured.
As the chaos brewed in the courtyard, Elian stood frozen near the edge of the columns, heart pounding against his ribs like a war drum.
The blood on the stones shimmered strangely under the torches.
For a moment—it wasn't Helmund he saw lying there.
It was them.
The memory slammed into him without mercy.
The village fields. The roar of corrupted beasts—half-wolf, half-serpent—twisting through the crops.
His mother's scream. His father's final shout.
Blood. So much blood it stained the sky itself.
He remembered grabbing a broken hoe from the dirt, trying to fight, trying to protect—
—and the way the beast laughed when it tore his sister apart in front of him.
Not a human laugh. A monster's mockery.
He had crawled into the woods, broken, half-dead.
And there, under the gnarled roots of a twisted tree, he had sworn by the last flicker of his soul:
"I will kill them all. All who serve corruption. All who forget the cost of life."
He remembered the day he first ventured into a dungeon, clutching a rusted blade, blind with grief.
He remembered the day Frankie and Toji found him—half-mad, half-starved—still fighting, still alive.
They had pulled him back from the brink.
No.
He had followed Toji because he saw something in him.
Not just strength.
Not just magic.
Purpose.
Something Elian had lost the day his world bled out in the fields.
Now, standing there watching Helmund's blood soak into royal stone, Elian realized something chilling:
Maybe purpose... always demanded a price.
And maybe Toji was about to pay it.
Or maybe all of them would.
He closed his eyes and whispered under his breath, unseen, unheard:
"Forgive me, whatsoever God looking over me. I don't know if we're still the good men."
The three of them—Toji, Frankie, and Elian—sat in the crumbling shell of an abandoned manor overlooking the central square.
Smoke from distant fires curled upward in lazy trails. The scent of burning banners, cheap wine, and blood hung heavy in the air.
Below, the citizens of Gulmund swarmed like ants—some in mourning, others in feverish celebration.
From up here, the chaos looked almost peaceful.
Almost like a city being reborn.
Almost like a city dying.
Toji sat cross-legged by a broken window, polishing his blade with calm, methodical strokes.
The Nano-code etched into its steel flickered faintly, responding to his touch.
Frankie paced behind him, boots crunching over shattered pottery.
"You should have waited," Frankie said finally. His voice was too steady. Too brittle. "You should have held a trial. A council. Anything."
Toji didn't look up.
"He confessed," Toji said simply. "His guilt was absolute."
Frankie whirled on him. "Confession under duress! Fear twists tongues! Helmund could have—"
"Helmund killed innocents," Toji said, cutting him off. "Sacrificed them to demons. I saw it with my own eyes."
"You think that's enough?" Frankie's voice cracked. "The city thinks you're a monster now! Half of them pray to you; the other half curse your name! You gave them a martyr!"
Toji finally looked up. His eyes were empty.
Not cold.
Not cruel.
Just… emptied out.
"I gave them truth," he said.
Frankie scoffed, turning away.
It was Elian who broke the silence next, his voice rough.
"You didn't give them truth," Elian said. "You gave them a story."
Both men turned to him.
Elian sat on the edge of a shattered bench, elbows resting on his knees, hands clenched loosely together. His sword lay forgotten at his side.
"A dead governor," Elian said. "A hero with a blade. A city torn between memory and survival. That's a story, Toji. And stories... they don't end the way you think they will."
Toji frowned slightly. "And what would you have had me do? Stand idle? Watch the corruption fester?"
"No," Elian said. "But maybe... maybe fight smarter. Make the people see it first. Make them want him gone."
Frankie nodded sharply, grateful for the reinforcement.
Toji's jaw tightened.
"I don't have time to wait for minds to change."
"You think you're racing the demons," Elian said softly. "But maybe you're racing yourself. Maybe you're trying to outrun something you can't beat."
Toji opened his mouth to reply—
—but stopped.
Because he knew.
Deep down, in the place he never touched even when alone… he knew.
He wasn't just fighting Helmund.
He wasn't just fighting demons.
He was fighting the fear that he would become what he hated if he didn't strike fast enough.
He lowered his blade into its sheath with a slow click.
Below them, in the square, a crowd had gathered.
Some carried Toji's likeness on crude banners—haloed in golden paint.
Others dragged his effigy behind horses, chanting curses.
The city was splitting open.
And it was too late to stitch it shut.
Frankie leaned against the crumbling balcony, sipping stale wine.
He watched as secret messengers galloped through the side alleys, torchlight trailing like comets.
Whispers already filled the taverns: Toji the Savior. Toji the Tyrant. Toji the Reckoner.
Elian cleaned his blade silently by the hearth, staring into the small, fitful fire.
The flames painted haunted lines across his face.
"Was there another way?" Frankie asked quietly, not really expecting an answer.
Elian shrugged.
"Maybe. Maybe not."
Frankie sighed. "If there was, we'll never know now."
Across the room, Toji stood alone, hands clasped behind his back, looking out over Gulmund.
The Nano-energy in the air tingled at the edges of his awareness, crackling softly against his skin.
In the far distance, he could already sense movement—military units, marching columns, magic signals flaring like silent stars.
The capital was moving.
And they were coming for him.
He didn't turn around when he spoke.
"They won't forgive us," Toji said. "Even if we save them."
Frankie said nothing.
Elian murmured, almost to himself,
"Forgiveness is for the dead."
The Palace of Sarfin towered over the capital like a frozen monolith, its obsidian spires piercing the starlit sky.
Inside, the air was colder than the stone.
Royal scribes in muted gray robes scurried silently along the marbled floors, carrying scrolls and whispered rumors between shadowed alcoves.
At the heart of it all, in the Grand Throne Hall, King Sarfin sat.
He was not a man who wore gold or jewels.
No, his authority radiated from the simple black cloak that draped over his shoulders—an unbroken symbol of the line of Sarfin kings stretching back to the Age of Stars.
His crown was thin. Almost an afterthought.
But his gaze, cold and cutting as winter's first blade, needed no ornament.
Gon Serene knelt before him, his head bowed low, one fist clenched against the polished stone floor.
Between them, resting on an obsidian plate, lay two objects:
A sealed scroll bearing the sigil of Gulmund.
Governor Helmund's severed signet ring, blood still crusted along its edges.
The silence stretched like a blade.
King Sarfin tapped a single finger against the arm of his throne, the sound echoing like a funeral drum through the vast, vaulted hall.
Finally, he spoke.
"And the people?"
Serene raised his head slightly, keeping his voice steady.
"Divided, Your Majesty," he said. "Half call him the light reborn. The other half—an omen of ruin."
The King's lips twitched—whether in amusement or disdain, none could tell.
"Good," he murmured.
He rose slowly, his cloak whispering along the ground.
"It begins," he said softly, more to himself than to Serene.
A figure shifted in the shadows behind the throne—a shape half-seen, cloaked in folds of woven mist.
The King did not look back.
"Shall we send the First?" the shadow asked, voice like paper tearing.
The King's answer was immediate.
"No," he said. "Send the Seventh."
Serene felt the cold punch of meaning behind the words.
The First—the strongest of the Ten Gods—was reserved for true annihilation.
Sending the Seventh meant something else entirely.
Observation. Containment.
Control.
Or, if necessary... disposal.
"You honor me with your trust," Serene said, bowing lower.
The King turned to him fully now, descending from the throne.
He studied Serene as a butcher studies meat—measuring strength, flaw, and weight.
"You have served me loyally," the King said. "And you will continue to do so."
A pause.
"And if he falters," the King added, "you will end him."
Serene's heart twisted—but he bowed deeper.
There was no choice.
There was never a choice.
"Yes, my King."
Serene stood alone in the palace gardens, the silver moons hanging low behind the distant mountain peaks.
The rose vines curled around marble statues of old heroes, now crumbling and forgotten.
In his hand, Serene held a sealed black scroll—the King's personal command.
He hadn't opened it yet.
He knew what it would say.
"Watch him. Measure him. Judge him."
He closed his eyes.
In the dark behind his lids, he could still see Toji's face—the stubborn fire, the unbreakable will.
Not a tyrant.
Not yet.
But fire, left unchecked, consumes everything.
Even itself.
Frankie shivered as a sudden chill swept through the city.
He leaned against a ruined wall, watching Toji pray silently on the balcony overlooking the battered city square.
The stars seemed to flicker uneasily tonight.
The air tasted of copper and smoke.
Change was coming.
Change—and war.
And none of them would escape it unburned.