[Part two]
In the heart of Garcia's sprawling capital, Galaria, the rain fell in long, silver threads, streaking the sky with a melancholy brilliance. Within one of the city's grandest apartments, perched high above the winding streets and whispering canals, a man sat alone. His posture was relaxed yet deliberate, the kind of calm cultivated through years of discipline. Before him rested a piano of exquisite craftsmanship: its polished white surface gleamed under the soft glow of chandelier light, delicate golden lines etched in intricate, almost imperceptible patterns across its body. The reflection danced like liquid sunlight over the ivory, and he let his fingers trace these lines absently, as though memorizing every nuance of its form.
Finally, after a moment that seemed to stretch and contract simultaneously, he opened the piano's lid. A soft sigh escaped him, almost a whisper of reverence. His hands hovered above the keys, tracing each with careful familiarity, and then he began to play.
The notes floated like a warm breeze through the room—soft, deliberate, each one shaped and placed with painstaking care. The music carried the weight of memory, nostalgia, and unspoken longing. It filled the space with a fragile intimacy, one that seemed to stretch across time and place.
When the last note lingered and dissolved into silence, a slow, deliberate clap echoed behind him.
"Wonderful. Beautifully played," said a woman, her voice poised, tinged with amusement. She wore a black and grey coat, tailored with an elegance that suggested both nobility and danger. Her pink hair, short and striking, framed her face like a splash of impossible color against the muted tones of the room. Despite her youth—no older than twenty-two—she carried herself with a sophistication that was more learned than inherited. Her eyes glimmered with an intelligence that weighed each word, each gesture, each pause.
The man closed the piano's lid gently, his expression softening into a warm, yet quietly powerful smile. "It has… always been special to me," he said, eyes closing briefly as if to savor a memory.
The woman's gaze shifted, curious. "And how is your fiancée?"
Though his eyes remained shut, the shift in his posture betrayed a flicker of displeasure. "Grace is nothing but a failure," he said, voice low and dangerous, carrying the kind of disdain that could slice through steel. "No different from a commoner. I am ashamed to call her mine."
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the distant patter of rain against the windows. Then, almost casually, as if the thought amused him, he added, "But soon… soon, she will meet an unfortunate end, and I will finally be free of her." A wicked grin tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"My, my," she said, a soft lilt in her tone, "you are cruel indeed." Yet the amusement behind her words was unmistakable.
"The third princess may be even crueler than I," he said, still keeping his eyes closed. "They say you once attempted to kill the first princess. Is that true?" His voice was a mixture of curiosity and a subtle, sharp amusement.
"Who knows? Perhaps. Rumors are just that—rumors," she replied, shrugging elegantly. She was unfazed, her composure never faltering, as though the question had little power over her.
"Is that so?" He opened one eye briefly, catching a glimpse of her figure before returning to the piano, letting his hands ghost across the keys again with gentle affection. "I have no interest in your family affairs, even if you are a princess."
"You truly love your sister, don't you?" she asked, her voice carrying the weight of both observation and subtle judgment.
"Compared to you and your sisters? She is my whole world," he said, a faint, almost imperceptible fire igniting behind his closed lids. "And now… she is promised to someone else. One day… I will deal with him."
"Right now, the gap between you and him is immense. He wouldn't even let you approach," she said, her words precise, almost clinical in observation.
"Only for now," he murmured, as if speaking to a private echo. His hands returned to the keys, brushing them tenderly, as if drawing comfort from the smoothness beneath his fingers.
"But doesn't your sister… care for him? They were close, weren't they?" Her voice softened, tinted with nostalgia.
"Yes. They were inseparable during school years, just a year apart from us. Then… everything changed. She found someone… and it consumed her world. Something I… never had," he replied, finally halting his hands above the keys and sighing softly.
The princess pressed a hand to her chest, a small, wistful gesture. "And now, she is renowned far and wide, touching lives in ways most cannot. And he… became one of the most prominent knights of the realm. I… once admired him, too." Her cheeks tinged with the faintest pink, she shook her head as if banishing her own memories.
"Would you shut up already?" His voice cut through her reflection, low and sharp.
"Oh, getting heated?" she teased lightly.
"No," he said, tilting his head slightly. "I am telling you to shut up. The leader is here."
Her eyes followed his pointed finger to the window. A man stood there, tall and immobile, cloaked in darkness and rain. His mask—a perfect, haunting visage of a human face—was black with red lines etched sharply along its edges. He had been there the entire time, hidden in plain sight, as if the apartment itself had swallowed him whole. His presence radiated authority, and yet it was more than just authority—it was a tangible, suffocating command of the air around him.
The princess's breath caught. How did he enter without being noticed? she wondered, regaining her composure only by bowing lightly. The man at the piano mirrored her gesture, standing with the poise of someone trained to react instinctively to power.
"Hello, my dear followers," the masked man said, voice calm, hypnotic, compelling. His gaze remained fixed on the rain outside, each word resonating with quiet menace.
"Leader, everything is ready. I have a question," the man at the piano said, voice lowered but firm, maintaining his bow.
"Go ahead," the leader replied, not turning, the rain reflecting across his mask like a fragmented mirror.
"Why did you have us plant the device in that village? We could have targeted the city itself."
The leader did not respond immediately. He continued to look out, the rain sliding off the glass in streaks, unheeding of the conversation behind him. Then, in a voice calm yet charged with authority, he finally spoke:
"Do you know the strongest man in the Central Continent?"
"Yes. Alistair Caeloria, of the Caeloria household," the man replied promptly.
"And where does he reside?"
The leader remained silent, seemingly pondering the implications aloud. "If we are to win this war… we must remove him first. Your sister resides in the capital, does she not? And your fiancée… in the same vicinity. It will achieve two objectives with one action." His hand rose, fingers brushing the glass as the rain streaked down beneath his touch. "And this city… it must remain intact. For what is coming… will require it."
The masked man turned slowly, the movement almost imperceptible, yet it commanded the room. "Stand by. Behave as you always do. In a few years, the end will come. Slowly, surely… inevitably."
As he passed them, his presence seemed to linger, a spectral weight pressing down even after he was gone. The two followers remained still, absorbing the gravity of his departure. After a moment, the princess broke the silence.
"Leader… he truly is terrifying, isn't he?"
"..." The man at the piano remained silent, eyes fixed ahead, then finally spoke. "We should leave. You go first. Surely a princess requires vigilance beyond what is normal." His voice was calm, yet carried the subtle awe and respect of someone who had glimpsed power beyond comprehension. "Sometimes… one must cherish, yet fear, those they follow."
Even as they moved toward the door, the memory of the leader lingered in the air—an intangible force of will, ambition, and menace, the kind that could bend the course of nations without a single battle. And for the first time, both understood that loyalty to such a figure was as much a burden as a privilege.
[ Part Two - The Quiet Storm]
The rain had been relentless all day, hammering against the roof and windows as if the sky itself wanted to purge the city of every trace of warmth. Inside, the house was suffused with the soft scent of wet earth and old wood, mingling with the faint aroma of my mother's tea. My mother, Christina, was sitting in her usual chair, a book resting delicately in her hands. The cover bore the title The Noise of the Night, a love story that promised heartbreak from the first page to the last. She was utterly absorbed in it, yet I could feel her awareness stretching out toward us, a gentle, unspoken watchfulness.
Lila, my older sister, sat on the rug at my feet, her brows furrowed as she tried to make sense of her own book. It was a simple one, meant for early learners, yet she approached it with the solemnity of a scholar. Her pink tongue poked out in concentration, tracing the letters as though trying to summon their meaning with sheer will. Mother cast us a fleeting glance, the hint of a smile brushing her lips, before returning to the book, her expression serene and unbothered.
Father was stationed near the window, leaning slightly against the frame, staring at the rain as it streaked the glass in shimmering rivulets. There was a quiet pride in the way he held himself, a deep-seated contentment that seemed to tether the house to its roots. The rhythm of the rainfall, his gaze, my mother's soft breathing, the quiet shuffling of Lila's pages—it all felt like the kind of peace I had imagined in dreams I barely remembered.
I knelt beside Lila, watching her struggle. "How are you so clever even though I'm older than you?" she asked, curiosity twisting her features into a question. Her voice carried a soft, almost wistful tone, as though she wondered if the world was naturally unfair to those born later.
I shrugged, offering only a small, teasing smile. "Who can say?"
Her eyes sparkled with wonder, and she nudged my shoulder playfully. "I want to be as smart as you!"
I reached over and lightly tapped her cheek, a gesture meant to reassure her and tease her simultaneously. "Then you'll have to try harder."
Mother's gaze flicked up briefly, observing the moment, and then she returned to her book. The atmosphere was calm, yet there was a subtle undercurrent of tension in me, a whisper from memory that made me sit a little straighter, breathe a little deeper. Lila's magical attributes had not yet awakened fully. She had the potential for earth and light magic, but her command over them was raw, untrained. Under the light attribute, she could only heal, like Mother, and even that required focus and intention.
Her sigh carried a hint of defeat. "I'll never understand this," she murmured, eyes fixed on the strange symbols in her book.
"Magic isn't just about knowing," I said gently, brushing a stray lock of hair from her face. "It's about learning to feel it, to let it speak to you. When it awakens, you'll understand."
She smiled faintly, a mixture of hope and frustration. "I want to learn so I can help people… like you and Mother."
I reached out, grasping her small hand in mine. "You will, Lila. You already are."
We fell into a playful scuffle, the kind that only siblings can have—light, teasing, unrelenting. Lila lunged at me, and I feigned defeat, letting her topple over onto the rug with a triumphant giggle. Father, unable to resist, joined in, landing on both of us and making us collapse under his weight. The house filled with laughter, pure and unfiltered, the kind of laughter that seemed to lift the weight of the world, if only for a moment.
Mother set her book aside and rose gracefully, moving to embrace us all at once. Her arms wrapped around Father, Lila, and me, and I felt the kind of warmth that reminded me why family mattered more than titles, wealth, or power. "You two are finally getting along," she whispered, her voice carrying both relief and quiet pride. "I knew you would."
Father chuckled, his arms encircling us. "It was inevitable," he said, his eyes crinkling with amusement and affection.
For a while, the world outside ceased to exist. The rain's pounding became a distant murmur. My thoughts drifted—memories of another life, another family, shadows of loss and resentment. I thought of my father from that life, my brother, the bitter anger I had carried for years, the feeling of abandonment that had never left me. Even now, as I held my family close, I felt that familiar ache, the knowledge that some wounds ran too deep to be healed by time alone.
And yet, in this moment, I felt something fragile but profound—hope. Perhaps the world could be different this time. Perhaps love could exist without betrayal, without loss, without the gnawing emptiness that had followed me all my life.
Then it came. A sound unlike anything I had ever heard, slicing through the rain's rhythm and the warmth of our embrace. It was a deafening, overwhelming force—a vibration that seemed to originate from everywhere and nowhere at once. My heart leapt into my throat, and the room's light warped strangely, the edges of everything shimmering as if reality itself had become fluid.
I instinctively closed my eyes, bracing against the intensity. When I opened them, the scene around me had shifted. The rain continued, but the surroundings were… unfamiliar. The floor beneath me was smooth, unnervingly cold, and the air carried a strange metallic tang. A faint white light emanated from the ground, pulsating softly, as if the earth itself were breathing. My eyes adjusted, focusing on the source, and then I saw it.
A body lay before me, unnervingly still. The figure was drenched in crimson, the blood spreading across the ground in patterns that made my stomach churn. Its eyes were wide open, frozen in a silent scream that would haunt me forever. I staggered backward, the air thick with the coppery scent of iron, my stomach rebelling against the scene.
"This… this isn't real," I whispered to myself, though my voice trembled. "It can't be…"