Everything has gone to shit.
Randal Forger, High Mage of Euranis, the sage, tasted the words like iron as they formed in his mind. A moment ago the throne room had been a theatre of pomp golden banners, crystalline chandeliers, nobles perfumed and polished. Now it felt like a trap of glass about to shatter.
He knew fear well, but rarely admitted it. Randal was a High Mage, third among the exalted mage classes those rare few who can create and use elemental magic in battles thanks to the formation of three magic circle in their mana center. He'd clawed to that rank from nothing: a gutter-born boy who had slept in the ashes of smithies, whose brilliance with runes and spells had dragged him into the royal court. He valued his place as fiercely as the breath in his chest, and he would burn worlds to keep it.
So when the summoning circle first flared and the "Hero" appeared, Randal's sharp eyes catalogued every detail with the caution of a man who'd survived too much.
The young man looked ordinary enough long dark-haired, lean, strangely still. Yet there was something in his gaze, even then. Not wonder. Not confusion. A watchfulness, cold and precise, like a predator studying a cage.
Randal told himself it was nothing. A foreign youth, startled by magic. He had seen worse.
Then those eyes changed.
The memory struck him like a hammer: a sudden bloom of crimson irises laced with flecks of molten gold, glowing as if lit from some hell beneath.
Randal's breath caught and everything he thought he knew changed, because he had seen that before not in just any other other man, but a man who gave him endless nightmares for many nights.
The corrupted!
A result of the The Abyssal touch, he had fought one once. Years ago, a frontier village where the moon turned black and a single corrupted soldier eyes aflame with that same infernal shimmer slaughtered a battalion before collapsing into a shrieking husk. It had taken three Archmages and an entire knight cohort to end him, and still the earth there had never healed. Randal had not slept properly since.
And now, here it was again. Not a rumor. Not a memory. Sitting calmly on the marble floor in white armor, streaked with the blood of the shadow operative he had just killed.
Even though the Hero just finished spliting someone into two, gruesomely so, he looked calm and just stared coldly at the body whose entrails laid bare on the marble floor. That terrified Randal even more, he had never seen anything like that.
The king prattled from his throne, still convinced his careful plots held power. The courtiers whispered, some with hungry smiles. Only Randal truly understood the stakes. The Hero's eyes were the color of ruin, and the Sword of Light, which Randal knew was a replica rested easily in those blood-dappled hands.
But still Randal knew one thing
Everything has gone to shit.
Randal's mind raced. Months of delicate maneuvering, of rituals and sleepless nights to prepare Euranis for the coming clash with the demi-human hordes and to match the Empire's growing power, could very well crumble in an instant.
All the careful alliances, the secret stockpiles of armaments, the long game of positioning the "Hero" as their living banner… a single misstep now and it would all turn to ash.
His heart dropped, but he forced the panic down. Think. There was always a contingency. He had prepared for sabotage, for assassination he would even consider dark magic if necessary although he preferred not to. He would not let one blood-stained youth undo everything.
The royal family had to survive. The Hero had to be contained.
Randal forced his breathing steady. Months of careful plotting to fortify the court against the Empire could crumble in a single heartbeat. I can still contain this, he told himself. I must.
He pivoted toward Captain Bastien Marrow, the man standing like a wall before the throne. Bastien's polished breastplate caught the torchlight, his posture radiating a confidence earned through years of relentless training.
"Order your knights! Form the circle, Contain him!" Randal ordered, voice clipped.
Bastien gave a sharp nod. Around him, the Steel Knights the kingdom's finest, each capable of reinforcing body and blade with honed mana closed ranks. Their collective discipline was the shield of the royal family.
But Randal's eyes lingered on the captain himself. Bastien was no ordinary warrior. An Iron Knight the third highest achievement of what a magic swordman can achieve his strength already far surpassed common fighters, and rumor whispered that he was on the very cusp of awakening Aura that rare harmony of sword and magic reserved for the Arcane Knights.
An Iron Knight on the verge of Aura… Randal clung to the thought like a lifeline.
Aura when magic and blade fused into one seamless force. A single knight who reached it could shift the power of nations. One Bastien could tip a war. One Bastien could keep the royal family safe.
Few ever reached that state where mana and movement fused into one lethal current, and fewer still climbed beyond to the legends of the Aura Blade or the near-mythical Mythic Knights.
That was why the king always kept him at court, why foreign envoys measured their words when they knew Bastien was near.
Randal repeated it in his head, almost a chant. With Bastien here, the throne will hold. The family will live. We will endure.
Bastien's presence alone should have reassured Randal.
"Form in!" Captain Bastien's voice cracked like a whip. "Subdue the hero...now!"
Steel rasped in unison as the royal guard surged forward. Boots struck marble with explosive speed, each knight flickering as runnels of blue light coiled around their feet Swift Step, the battlefield art of veterans who knew that a breath's delay meant death, A type of magic where the user cast to enhance and make their footwork lighter for even greater combat efficiency and even greater chance of escaping in case things go wrong. They closed from every angle, no gaps, no retreat, a living cage of steel and magic.
Behind them, three robed Adept-class mages raised twin magic circles that spun like argent wheels. Their chant cut through the clash of armored boots, a low, resonant harmony. The air thickened as their spell settled over the knights, sharpening reflexes, lending strength to every stride and swing.
In a blink the throne room became a storm of motion shields locking, blades gleaming, arcs of enhancement magic sparking across polished armor as they converged on the lone figure at the center of it all.
Bastien's grin widened as the formation locked into place. The Infinite Net. A technique drilled into the royal guard for generations, said to close every gap and smother even the fiercest quarry. Flankers swept in with perfect timing, the Bearer mages' chants weaving strength and speed into every motion until the knights seemed like streaks of steel and light.
This was the method used to bring down rampaging warlords and rogue beasts. Bastien felt the familiar thrill of certainty tighten in his chest. No one slips this net. No one.
A low, self-assured laugh escaped him. "A child from another world, barely an hour in our realm what power could he possibly muster?" His voice carried easily across the chamber.
From the dais, King Belarion's own laughter rolled out, deep and approving. "Excellent, Captain. Show the court the strength of Euranis steel."
The captain's pride swelled at the praise. To him, the outcome was already written. All that remained was the hero's inevitable collapse beneath the unbreakable net.
Randal forced a thin, nervous smile as the knights closed in. This has to work, he told himself. The potion the Hero drank would soon tighten its grip surely the boy's strength would falter any moment now.
But then the hero's voice cut through the clang of armored boots."Was it like this?"
The words were quiet, almost curious. Randal's breath caught.
Rafiel lifted a single hand. "Bind."
Light flared at his feet pure, blinding and from the marble floor heavy chains of gleaming metal erupted upward. They coiled with a serpent's speed, snapping around every knight in the formation before a sword could swing.
Gasps tore through the chamber. Steel knights, Bearer mages, even Captain Bastien himself stood frozen, locked in place by their own intended trap.
Silence followed, stunned and absolute.
Rafiel lifted one hand, and the chains tightened with a sound like stone grinding bone.
The knights thrashed, muscles bulging, eyes wide and red as if ready to burst. Enchanted armor groaned. Their gasps turned to strangled screams.
Randal froze, every instinct screaming to act, but his legs locked. Beside him, Captain Bastien's jaw clenched, a vein pulsing at his temple. Both men knew step closer and the Hero might rip them apart next.
"LET. THEM. GO." Bastien's voice cracked like a whip, each word spat like fire.
Rafiel only smiled wider. He raised his other hand toward the vaulted ceiling and slowly closed his fist.
The hall filled with a sickening chorus wet snaps, sharp as breaking branches.Necks cracked. Armor split. Blood burst across the marble in dark, gleaming arcs. The chains shuddered, then wrenched tighter, tearing through flesh and steel alike.
For Randal, it was like watching a door to hell swing open only the monster was already here, wearing a hero's smile.
Randal stood frozen, breath ragged, as crimson sprayed the white marble.The Hero stood in the center of it all, blood flecking his gleaming armor, his eyes glowing red-gold, calm, deliberate.
He looks like a demon, Randal thought, stomach twisting. Worse than the Abyssal he'd faced years ago. That thing had raged like a mindless beast. This one calculated every heartbeat.
Heat surged through him anger, fear, confusion. His teeth ground together until his jaw ached.
"HOW COULD YOU!" Randal's voice cracked across the hall. "HOW COULD YOU KILL THEM SO EASILY? YOU ARE A HERO—A HERO OF LIGHT! HOW CAN A HERO SLAUGHTER WITHOUT A SHRED OF REMORSE?"
The words echoed off the marble, swallowed by the stench of blood.
The Hero's eyes held Randal as if pinning him to the floor."There's something you need to understand," he said, each syllable slow, deliberate. "Your plan to subdue me? Beyond stupid. It was never going to work."
Randal's breath caught. "W-what?"
"From the moment you dragged me into this gilded cage, I saw everything," the Hero continued. "Every weak link. Every clumsy intention. Whoever thought this through was incompetent."
The room seemed to shrink around them. Randal's pulse hammered in his ears. From the moment he was summoned… he knew?
"H-how?" The question slipped out before he could stop it.
Rafiel's lips curved, not quite a smile. "Because you don't know me. You never did."He leaned forward slightly, voice dropping to a near whisper that carried like a blade."Your summoning didn't call a hero. It simply… opened a door."A faint glint of crimson-gold flared in his eyes."And from the hell I came from, I stepped through."
Rafiel tilted his head, the faintest crease of disgust twisting his mouth."Good men?" The words came out almost like a cough, dry and venomous. "That's what you call them?"
The chamber went still. Even the drip of blood from the shattered chains seemed to pause.
"Good men," he repeated, softer this time, as if tasting something rotten. "You think I can't see what clings to them? I see everything."
His eyes those molten rings of red and gold seemed to deepen until they were no longer eyes at all but burning apertures into something older, crueler. The air itself felt heavier.
"I see through them," Rafiel continued, voice low enough to make the marble floor feel colder. "Through every polished plate of armor and pretty vow. Filth. That's what they are."
Slowly, he lifted one blood-slick hand and pointed to the nearest corpse."My eyes show me villages they burned to cinders. The houses where they kicked in doors and dragged mothers into the streets."
He pivoted, the finger moving from knight to knight, his gaze never blinking."I see the women they took screaming, clawing while these 'good men' laughed. I see children clutching each other in the dark as the fires ate their homes."
Randal's breath caught. He wanted to look away but couldn't.
Rafiel's finger finally stopped, an arrow aimed at Bastien Marrow."And all of it," he said, voice sharpening to a blade, "was done on the orders of that man."
The captain stiffened, jaw tightening, but Rafiel spoke over any protest.
"My eyes don't lie. They show me the stains no water can wash. I watched it all—the screams, the smoke, the long night of knives. It is written in their bones, in their blood, in the echo of every step they take."
The red-gold glow flared for a heartbeat, as if the truth itself burned there.
"You call them good men," Rafiel whispered, each syllable deliberate, "but I see what they really are. And now…" His gaze swept across the room, unhurried and merciless."Now you see what I am."
Bastien's face darkened like a storm front, a low growl rumbling in his throat before the words even formed. "Who the hell do you think you are, boy?" His voice cracked through the hall like a whip, sharp enough to make a few of the trembling courtiers flinch. "You're nothing but a green-blooded whelp with a title you don't deserve."
He took a heavy step forward, the iron of his boots striking the marble with a clang that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Each step carried the weight of a man who had bled for the crown and survived a dozen battlefields. His eyes cold, steely gray never left Rafiel.
"My men weren't felled by strength," Bastien went on, his words gaining momentum, the sneer spreading across his scarred face. "They were caught by a cheap parlor trick. A moment's lapse. A boy's trick that drained what little mana you have. You think we don't know the limits of magic? You're standing there on fumes, and soon you'll be nothing more than a carcass waiting to fall."
The smell of blood and scorched metal hung thick in the air, but Bastien didn't so much as glance at the mutilated knights around him. He moved with a predator's confidence, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword as if it were an extension of his will.
"The king's potion is already working its way through your veins," he said, a cruel smile twisting his lips. "It will break you from the inside out, and when it does you'll learn the price of defiance."
He tilted his head back and laughed a deep, grating sound that clashed with the frantic heartbeat of the room. Even the torchlight seemed to waver, shadows flickering across his armor as he took another deliberate step forward.
In one fluid motion he drew his blade, the steel singing against the scabbard as it slid free. The edge caught the torchlight and threw it back in a crimson gleam, as though it had already tasted the blood around them. He leveled the point at Rafiel's chest, holding it perfectly steady despite the tension coiled in his muscles.
"I was going to take you alive," Bastien said, his voice low and deadly, each syllable pressed like a dagger against the silence. "But I've changed my mind. I'll carve you to ribbons first leave you breathing, but just barely. Enough to remember who brought you low."
"Captain!" the king barked from the dais, his voice cracking with urgency. "Do not kill the hero!"
Bastien didn't so much as turn his head. "Relax, Your Majesty," he replied, eyes still fixed on Rafiel like a hawk's on prey. "I'll only drag him to death's door no further. He'll live… if you can call it that."
The captain lowered into a fighter's stance, his blade a silver arc aimed straight at Rafiel's heart. Every muscle in the room tensed, the hush broken only by the drip of blood onto cold marble and the slow, measured breath of a man who believed he could bend death to his will.
Bastien moved before anyone could blink.
A flash of steel faster than Randal's seasoned eyes could follow cut through the haze of blood and smoke. The air cracked with the force of his swing.
CLANG!
Metal screamed against metal.
Every head in the throne room snapped toward the sound. Rafiel stood perfectly still, his stance unshaken, the so-called replica Sword of Light raised in a single-handed guard. The captain's strike had been clean, merciless, a blow that could cleave a warhorse in two, yet the boy hadn't budged an inch.
Bastien's eyes widened for a heartbeat, then narrowed to slits. "Hmph. So you can lift it after all."
Without a pause he shifted his grip, a low incantation spilling from his lips.
Flames coiled around the blade, hungry and bright. In the next instant he thrust his free hand forward and unleashed a spell at point-blank range.
The fire roared like a living thing.
A thunderclap of heat and light consumed Rafiel, blasting outward in a shockwave that rattled the marble columns. Smoke billowed through the hall, acrid and thick, swallowing the scene in choking gray.
From the dais, the king threw back his head and barked a laugh. "Magnificent, Captain! That whelp can't possibly survive a strike like that not in that imitation armor."
But the sound of his own mirth faltered when he caught sight of his daughter.
The princess stood trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks, her silken sleeves damp and clinging. Yet her lips curved into a smile wide, radiant, and unsettling, as though some secret joy had split her composure in two.
"Father…" she whispered, voice quivering between sob and giggle. "It isn't… fake."
The king's brow furrowed. "What?"
"I—" She hiccupped a wet breath, the strange smile never fading. "I switched them. The sword. The armor. I gave him the real ones."
Her admission hung in the smoky air like a spark in dry tinder. The king's face drained of color as the truth settled, the echoes of his laughter dying into a stunned, hollow silence.
SLAP!
The queen's jeweled palm struck her daughter's cheek with a sound like breaking porcelain.
"Why?" she demanded, voice cracking between fury and fear. "Why would you dare this?"
The princess's head hung for a heartbeat, hair veiling her face. A tremor shook her shoulders not with shame, but with laughter.
A breathless giggle slipped out, swelling into a bright, jagged laugh that startled the entire court. She raised her chin, eyes glittering like fevered stars.
"Because those fakes were hideous," she spat, each word sharp as glass. "Clumsy, dull things. How could a true hero my hero! be dressed in such filth?"
She took a step forward, voice gaining a frantic rhythm. "Do you know how many nights I stayed awake reading the old chronicles? Every line about heroes radiant as dawn, their armor like sunlight, their blades singing with beauty. I read every legend until I could recite them in my sleep. The hero of light is supposed to be magnificent, untouchable, perfect."
Her gaze slid toward the smoke where Rafiel's silhouette loomed. Her smile widened. "And when I saw him my prize, my destined treasure how could I let him wear something so…disgusting? Father wanted to cover perfection with trash." She let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "I gave him what the legends promised. The real treasures of Euranis. Because he is mine. Mine to behold. Mine to—"
"Enough!" the queen barked, her voice a lash across the air. Yet her eyes betrayed a flicker of pride, or perhaps recognition.
But the princess only pressed on, her words pouring like molten silver. "Everything belongs to me. The hero. The court. The kingdom. Everything. Father, Mother, you are all just pieces on my board. And he " she pointed toward the shadow of Rafiel "is the brightest piece of all."
The queen's fury faltered. In a swift, almost instinctive motion, she swept forward and wrapped her daughter in an embrace. "Hush, my daughter. My precious." she whispered, her tone suddenly velvet-soft. "You will have everything. All you desire."
The princess clung to her mother, trembling with manic delight. The queen stroked her hair, eyes cold and unreadable as they swept the room.
In that quiet horror the truth revealed itself to all who dared look: this was no sudden madness. The princess's selfish hunger had been fed and praised since birth, nurtured by a mother who had never allowed the world to say no. The queen's embrace was not comfort it was confirmation.
Around them, the courtiers stood frozen, faces pale, as the truth seeped through the marble air. Mother and daughter shared a smile, a single gleaming thread of love and ownership, while the room held its breath.
The king's breath caught in his throat. Randal's pulse thudded like a war drum as the weight of the princess's confession sank in. The hall had gone deathly silent until a voice, low and cutting as a drawn blade, rolled through the smoke.
"I see you."
The words slithered across the chamber, cold enough to frost stone.
From the gray haze, two burning lights appeared eyes, red as molten iron with veins of liquid gold threading their depths. They did not merely glow; they pierced, reaching into the marrow of every soul that met them.
A collective breath caught.
Someone whimpered.
Armor rattled as seasoned knights stumbled back a step despite themselves. One young guard dropped his spear with a clatter, the sharp sound snapping nerves already stretched thin. The acrid stench of urine joined the copper scent of blood he wasn't the only one who'd lost control.
The silhouette drifted closer, each footfall measured, impossibly quiet on the marble. It wasn't the gait of a warrior. It was the glide of a predator.
From that black outline, a pale hand emerged startling against the smoke, almost luminous in the torchlight. Slowly, deliberately, one finger rose and leveled at the princess.
"All those lives," the voice said again, quiet as a knife drawn in the dark.
"All that blood… on your hands."
The words struck harder than a shout. The king's jaw tightened until the veins in his neck stood out. Randal's stomach churned, sweat slick on his palms. A knight near the dais gagged and dropped to one knee, eyes wide with terror.
The princess didn't move.
No one dared to breathe.
The king finally found his voice, though it quavered beneath the weight of those burning eyes.
"What… what are you trying to say?" he demanded, confusion and unease twisting every syllable.
Through the drifting smoke, Rafiel didn't move. He kept his gaze locked on the princess, those red-gold eyes unblinking, almost glowing.
"I've seen things," he began, his voice low and deliberate, carrying to every corner of the throne room. "Things a human shouldn't have to see."
He stepped forward once. The marble floor seemed to shrink beneath him.
"I've seen children lying dead in the gutter, their bodies kicked aside like trash because they blocked the road.
I've seen women and men dragged into the street, heads severed while the crowd laughed because they inconvenienced someone powerful."
The knights shifted uneasily, armor scraping in the silence. Even Bastien, his knuckles white on the hilt of his sword, did not interrupt.
Rafiel's stare sharpened as it pinned the princess.
"I've seen the worst of what humans do to each other. And you—"
He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
"I saw through you the moment I arrived. It didn't take some grand magic or mystical sight. No prophecy. No 'gift.' Just a look."
The princess trembled, her fine dress whispering against the floor.
"A mere girl," Rafiel said, his tone edged with contempt, "who can take the lives of so many… and for what?
Because it amuses you?"
He took another step forward, the shadows trailing him like a cloak.
"Such perversion. It's always the ones who have everything who still want more."
His words hung heavy in the air, cold as iron. No one dared break the silence not even the king, whose confusion had curdled into dread.
Before the king could form another question, the princess's voice cut through the haze sharp, cracking like a whip.
"Stop talking to me like I'm some commoner you can scold," she snapped, her eyes blazing. "He.." she jabbed a trembling finger toward Rafiel.."has no right to judge me. I deserve everything that's given to me. Their lives were nothing. Nothing! And I'd do it again if I pleased."
Her voice climbed higher, a brittle, manic pitch that rattled the jeweled windows.
"No girl should be prettier than me. No man should stand higher than me or even near me!"
The words echoed, dreadful in their clarity.
Rafiel's gaze did not waver. His voice, when it came, was icy and flat.
"Did they deserve what you did to them?"
The question slid across the chamber like a drawn blade.
The princess threw back her head and laughed a sharp, unhinged cackle that sent a chill through even the battle-hardened knights.
"Yes," she spat between fits of laughter. "Yes, and I'd do it again. Every. Single. Time."
The king, pale as carved stone, turned slowly to look at her. His mouth opened and closed as though the words were too heavy to lift.
"My… my child… what… what have you done?"
But his daughter only smiled wider, her laughter rising like a storm.
"Soon," she said, eyes gleaming with a feverish light, "the hero will be mine. The potion will make him mine. He'll be my plaything, my perfect prize."
The king staggered a half-step back, gripping the armrest of his throne until his knuckles blanched.
"What… what are you saying?" he asked, voice cracking. "The village… Rosegreen out on the outskirts… tell me you had nothing to do with that."
The laughter died in an instant.
The princess froze, lips parted but silent, her stillness more damning than any confession.
A hush fell over the hall so deep that even the torches seemed to shrink from the cold weight of it.
The king's mind churned as he stared at his silent daughter. A memory, long buried beneath years of indulgence, rose like a corpse from dark water.
Years ago, he had sent her, his cherished heir to the outskirts to fulfill a royal duty: a routine survey of the borderlands. She'd returned days later, her silk riding cloak singed at the hem, faint streaks of dried crimson staining the cuffs of her dress. Her face had been calm, too calm as she explained that a rogue monster had razed the village of Rosegreen.
He'd believed her without question. Of course he had. She was his only child.
Still… the details had unsettled him. Out of caution he dispatched the Shadow Unit to investigate. They returned grim and tight-lipped: the village was nothing but blackened ash. Only a few bodies remained and those few bore stab wounds, clean and deliberate, nothing like the savage mauling of a beast.
Perplexed, he had wondered if bandits were to blame, or some darker force. Yet when she looked up at him with those wide, luminous eyes and assured him it was an unfortunate accident, he let the matter drop.
Because she was his daughter. His beloved, brilliant daughter.
But the unease never quite faded. He remembered the occasional nights when she would vanish from the palace for hours, returning with that strange, secret smile and a faint smell of smoke on her skin. He had asked, gently, where she went. She had only laughed a lilting, careless sound and changed the subject.
And still he had trusted her. Always.
Now, staring at the wild gleam in her eyes and the twisted pride in her grin, the king felt every one of those buried doubts crash down upon him like a collapsing tower. His throat tightened until he could scarcely breathe.
Before the king could give voice to the suspicions clawing at his chest, a sharp, silken voice sliced through the tense chamber.
"The audacity," the queen hissed, stepping forward, her jeweled gown whispering across the blood-slick floor. "To even think such a thing of your own flesh and blood how dare you."
Her eyes hard as polished onyx never left his. There was no plea in them, only a cold command.
The king faltered, breath catching. He had seen that look countless times before: when whispers of Rosegreen's ashes first reached the court, when the Shadow Unit asked to continue their search, when he himself once wondered aloud if their daughter's late-night disappearances deserved scrutiny. Each time, the queen's gaze imperious and unyielding had stopped him. Each time, her subtle words had smothered his doubts like a damp cloth over a flame.
And now, again, she moved with quiet precision, gliding to his side.
"Do not let that outsider poison your thoughts," she murmured, low enough for only him to hear. "He knows nothing of us. He seeks only to break this family, to weaken our throne."
The king's heartbeat hammered in his ears. Logic screamed that the stranger's accusation and the memories it awoke were too sharp to dismiss. But the queen's presence, warm and commanding at his shoulder, steadied him guided him back to the familiar comfort of certainty.
He straightened, jaw tightening. "Yes… yes, you are right," he said at last, voice rising with forced authority. He turned on the hero with a glare meant to reclaim his dignity. "How dare you," he thundered. "You have been in this world for the span of an hour and dare to speak of our affairs as if you know them? You think to sow discord in my house with baseless slander?"
The queen's lips curved in a faint, knowing smile as the king's words echoed off the marble walls.
"I'll show you," Rafiel whispered.
The words barely stirred the smoke, yet they carried like thunder.
Before anyone could blink, his shape flickered and vanished.
A collective gasp rippled through the chamber.
"Behind!" Randal's warning came too late.
Rafiel now stood at the king's shoulder, a silhouette cut from shadow. No footstep, no rush of air... simply there. The king stiffened as a cold hand settled lightly on his collar.
"Look at me," Rafiel said.
The king tried to turn away, but the hero's red-gold eyes caught his like hooks. The throne room dimmed. Sound thinned to a long, hollow ringing.
Faces around him began to shift.
First the knights. Then the nobles. Then even the queen.
Their jeweled masks melted like wax. Eyes sagged and tore. Skin blackened. Every courtier's face warped into the anguished visages of peasants burned, beaten, scarred. Their mouths opened in silent screams. Children with blood-streaked cheeks reached toward him, eyes wide with a grief so deep it split the soul.
The king staggered back, choking on a scream that wouldn't come.
The marble floor seemed to drip with soot and ash. The scent of smoke filled his lungs. Everywhere he looked, the court had become Rosegreen: a hall of the dead, each figure a victim of his daughter's cruelty.
He clutched at his crown as if it might steady him. It only burned cold.
Outside the vision, Bastien saw his sovereign's knees buckle.
"Your Majesty!" he shouted, stepping forward, but an invisible pressure held him still. Randal felt his own magic recoil, the hair on his arms rising as though the air itself refused to move.
Rafiel leaned closer, voice low and merciless.
"Do you see them?" he asked. "The lives she took…they stand before you."
The king could only stare, trembling, as the nightmare faces crowded in pleading, accusing until he could no longer tell if he stood in his grand hall or the smoking ruin of a murdered village.
A scream ripped from the king's throat raw, animal.
He clutched his head as if trying to tear the vision out by force. Blood welled at the corners of his eyes and streamed down his cheeks like crimson tears.
"Stop! Please, stop!" His voice cracked under the weight of it.
"Enough… I beg you!"
But Rafiel's gaze held him fast.
The nightmare deepened. Among the writhing crowd of tortured faces, one girl's image sharpened until it filled his world a child of maybe fifteen, skin like moonlight, her beauty startling even through the horror. Her limbs were bound. Her eyes pleaded for mercy. And then he saw another figure silhouette with a hand wearing delicate jewels who drag a blade across that flawless face, carving it in a fit of jealous rage. Before the girl could die she turned towards the king with her mangel face and softly she said "look what you made her do. You let this happen!"
The king's knees gave way. He collapsed against the cold marble, palms sliding in a slick of his own tears and blood.
"Make it stop… please…!" His voice was a broken whisper.
Rafiel did not move, his silhouette a black flame against the fading smoke.
"You asked what I meant," he said quietly, each word cutting like ice.
"Now you know what she is."
Around them, the court stood paralyzed.
Knights who had faced charging wyverns trembled openly.
One young guard sank to his knees, armor rattling like dry bones.
Even Bastien's sword arm quivered, sweat beading beneath his gorget.
The princess, wide-eyed and breathless, did not cry.
Instead she watched with something darker than fear a strange, fevered fascination while her mother clutched her, murmuring frantic prayers that died in her throat.
The king could only stare upward at Rafiel, vision swimming red, the image of the mutilated girl burning behind his lids no matter how tightly he squeezed them shut.
The monarch collapsed like a marionette with cut strings, shoulders shaking, crown clattering across the marble. His sobs echoed off the high stone walls, raw and broken.
Bastien's fury cracked the stunned silence.
"Son of a bitch! Enough!"
Bastien's roar cracked through the chamber like a war drum.
A pulse of power hot, sharp, undeniable rippled outward, rattling glass and bone alike.
Randal felt it at once.
For a single heartbeat, pride surged in his chest.
He's done it. Bastien… has awakened.
Their Iron Captain, the kingdom's steadfast shield, had crossed the threshold that few ever reach.
The air hummed with Bastien's newborn aura, and Randal almost dared to breathe hope.
Then he noticed the hero.
Rafiel's crimson-gold eyes flicked toward Bastien with the cool curiosity of a predator observing prey.
Slowly, almost lazily, he closed his eyes, as if committing Bastien's awakening to memory.
And then he inhaled.
Randal instincts fully kick and he could sense something was terribly wrong.
The room tilted.
A deeper pressure rolled out, crushing and absolute, as if the very stone beneath them exhaled its last breath.
The warmth of Bastien's aura was snuffed like a candle before a hurricane.
'No… no, that's not'
Randal's stomach turned to ice.
'He's...he's copying it.'
'No. Gods, no.'
"Bastien stop!" Randal shouted, voice breaking. "Don't push it! It's too late—"
But the captain, drunk on the rush of his own awakening, didn't hear.
The pressure deepened until the chandeliers above rattled like bones in a tomb.
White vapor began to leak from Rafiel's skin, not mist but light made tangible, curling and hissing like a living thing.
It was beautiful, and utterly alien.
A soundless boom rippled through the throne room.
Gravity seemed to spike, tenfold, twentyfold, until knees slammed against marble with bone-jarring force.
Chandeliers rattled like teeth in a skull.
Rafiel's body began to glow not with fire, but with a blinding, pearly light-mist that hissed like boiling water.
It poured from his skin in tendrils, coiling through the air like luminous smoke, distorting the space around him.
The scent of ozone and scorched metal filled every lung.
Knights who had faced a hundred battlefields gagged violently, their faces purple as they vomited onto the floor.
Mages clutched their heads, eyes rolling back as blood beaded at their noses and ears.
Courtiers and servants simply collapsed where they stood, some already unconscious, their bodies twitching under the unseen weight.
Randal's ribs screamed with every breath, his heart pounding like a trapped animal.
He's awakening aura.
Not struggling, not striving but simply choosing to awaken.
The young man stood bathed in his own searing brilliance, eyes still closed, as if gravity itself bowed to him.
Bastien, once radiant in his hard-won power, now looked pale and small, his own aura drowned beneath the blinding storm that was Rafiel.
Randal understood then, with a despair deeper than fear:
This was no duel.
This was the birth of something their world was never meant to hold.