The throne room had gone silent except for the rasp of strained breathing and groans. One by one, every person dropped to their knees as if an unseen giant pressed a mountain onto their backs.
Even the marble floor groaned.
Rafiel stood at the center of it all, a white vapor of light curling from his skin like mist from a furnace. His eyes glowed a molten red-gold, and the weight of his presence bent the air itself.Knights who had once faced wyverns and warlords now trembled, some retching as the pressure thickened.
Randal fought to stay upright. His legs shook, his ribs ached, but he forced himself forward an inch at a time.
I have to move. I have to get the royal family out…
The thought was the only thing keeping him from collapsing.
Across the room, Captain Bastien Marrow knelt with his forehead nearly to the floor.Moments ago he had felt the thrill of awakening his Aura the dream of every knight.It should have been his triumph, the first step toward the title of Arcane Knight.
But the instant Rafiel closed his eyes and that terrible white light bled from his body, Bastien understood the truth. The stranger had seen his awakening, studied it, and without effort he mirrored it. Perfectly.
Anger boiled with terror.
He just…copied me. The thought clawed at Bastien's mind. Aura was supposed to be the mark of years of training, talent, and relentless discipline.Yet this man had stolen it with a glance.
The dream of honor, of becoming one of the kingdom's proud Arcane Knights, cracked like glass under a hammer. What was his future compared to this monster who could learn in a heartbeat what had taken him a lifetime to grasp?
Rafiel didn't move. He didn't need to.The room was already his.
Then Rafiel opened his eyes.
The red-gold irises blazed brighter, a molten halo that seemed to drink in every flicker of torchlight.He looked less like a man and more like some heavenly demon gracious in posture, terrifying in presence. The glow painted the chamber in feverish hues, gilding the fear on every face.
A ragged sound broke the silence.The princess. Her mind was slipping, unraveling thread by thread.She stared at Rafiel with a hunger that made Randal's stomach twist. Drool gleamed at the corner of her lips as she whispered half-formed sentences, giggles laced with frantic breaths.
"My… my hero… mine… need… must have…"Her words tumbled out like broken glass.
Randal could hardly believe it. This was the radiant young woman the kingdom adored?Now she knelt in the spreading puddle of her obsession, her eyes wide and shining like a worshipper before a dark god.
Behind her, the king writhed on the marble floor, still trapped in the visions Rafiel had forced into his mind. His screams cracked against the stone walls, raw and hoarse, as if he could claw the nightmares away with sound alone.The queen lay beside him, unconscious, a smear of blood at her temple from when she collapsed.
This is falling apart. Everything is falling apart.Randal's thoughts pounded with the same desperate rhythm as his heartbeat. He had to act, but his limbs felt pinned by invisible weights.
Then Rafiel moved just a single gesture, but it sliced through the tension like a blade.He raised a finger and pointed at Bastien.
The crushing force around the captain eased, as if a noose had suddenly loosened.Bastien gasped and dragged in air, his body trembling from the release.
Rafiel's voice carried, smooth and cold. "Stand.Attack me with everything you have.Show me this mystical power you just awakened.I'll give you a chance."
For a heartbeat, silence reigned.Then Bastien's lips curled into a sharp grin.Opportunity burned in his eyes like a spark caught in dry tinder.
"You're going to regret that, you son of a "He cut himself off with a growl, planting one knee, then the other, until he stood fully upright.Aura flickered around him in raw, jagged waves newborn, unstable, but fierce.
The captain tilted his head back and laughed, the sound harsh and reckless."Fine," he said, drawing his blade with a ringing hiss. "You asked for it."
Bastien planted his right foot forward and drew the sword up to his shoulder, the blade catching the torchlight in a cold gleam. His grin was sharp and vicious, the look of a man who finally had a clear target for every scrap of rage boiling in his chest. The so-called hero stood there with his guard down, inviting death. Bastien's heart pounded, but not with fear. This was his chance. One perfect strike and the nightmare would end.
A low hiss filled the throne room as white vapor coiled around Bastien's body, wreathing his limbs like smoke from a holy forge. His aura ignited, bathing the steel of his sword in a pale light until it seemed to breathe with him. The sudden surge of power sharpened every sense he felt the stone floor under his boots, heard the faint crackle of torches, tasted the charged air as his magic and muscle fused into a single lethal purpose. The pressure of his own awakening pressed outward like a storm front.
"Divine Aura Strike : Lightning Barrage!" His voice cracked through the chamber like a clap of thunder.
Then he moved.
To Randal's eyes the captain became a streak of white fire. Even with a hastily cast vision spell, the sage could barely follow the blur; Bastien's speed bent the air itself, leaving after-images in his wake. The shockwave of his leap rattled the marble tiles and sent loose dust spiraling.
For a heartbeat hope flared in Randal's chest. Maybe the mad hero would finally be brought down. Maybe this would work.
But Rafiel never shifted. He didn't even raise the sword at his side. He simply watched, red-gold eyes steady, like a predator letting prey exhaust itself.
The arc of Bastien's strike split the air with a shriek of compressed wind. The glowing blade descended, wrapped in killing intent strong enough to cleave through stone and spell alike.
It stopped.
Not with a clash of steel, but with a soundless halt that turned every breath in the room to ice.
Bastien's sword hovered a hair's breadth from Rafiel's chest, caught fast against a single raised fingertip.
The white vapor of Bastien's aura hissed against that one finger as though striking iron. Sparks of raw magic danced and died in the silence. For a long moment nothing moved but the slow curl of smoke around them.
Disbelief twisted Bastien's face. His muscles strained, veins bulged, every ounce of strength and magic poured into the blade but it would not budge. The strike that could split boulders had been stopped as if it were a child's toy.
A low murmur rippled through the remaining knights before fear sealed their throats. Randal felt his stomach lurch, a cold certainty spreading through him: they were all standing before something far beyond human.
Rafiel tilted his head slightly, the faintest curl of a smile on his lips. "So that's how you do it," he said, voice calm enough to make the words feel like a knife. "All the energy you've built this aura you let it flood through every muscle, every fiber, every cell. It heightens your senses, sharpens every movement. Impressive. Thank you…for the lesson."
The quiet praise struck harder than any roar. Bastien's jaw tightened, his sword still locked uselessly against that single finger. A bead of sweat traced down his temple.
Randal's stomach dropped. That simple observation spoken as if discussing a recipe, made him want to surrender on the spot.Not only had the hero awakened his own aura without guidance, he'd forced Bastien to demonstrate its application like a patient tutor. A moment ago, Bastien's achievement had filled the sage with a fleeting pride for the kingdom's strength. Now that pride curdled to panic.
If he didn't act soon, it wouldn't just be the royal family at risk. It would be all of Euranis.
Randal knew the stories: when two fully realized aura users clashed, the land itself often bore the scars craters where cities once stood, forests flattened into lifeless plains. And here before him stood a newcomer with no training, no discipline, effortlessly holding the blade of a seasoned Iron Knight on the cusp of Arcane mastery.
A hero with no experience, gripping the weapon of a knight who had dedicated a lifetime to reach this level and making it look easy.
Rafiel's eyes glimmered like molten gold as he tilted the blade ever so slightly. "That's enough of the lesson," he said, voice soft and unhurried.
Before anyone could breathe, the sword flashed upward in a blur. No clang of steel, no trail to follow just a silver streak that vanished almost before it began.
Bastien's scream tore through the throne room. Both his wrists split open in a clean, merciless cut. Blood sprayed across the marble floor in a bright arc, pooling beneath him as his sword clattered uselessly away. His cry was raw, animal, the sound of a man plunged into a private hell of pain.
Rafiel let the knight's weapon fall from his grasp like discarded scrap and stood over him, gaze cold as winter stone. No triumph, no fury only a chilling detachment, as if the act had been nothing more than closing a door.
Randal could only stare. The world narrowed to the frantic pounding of his own heart so loud it drowned the echoes of Bastien's agony. Hope, strategy, every fragile plan he'd clung to shattered in an instant.
His eyes burned. He realized, dimly, that he was crying.
That strike… it hadn't just been fast; it carried the brutal certainty Randal had witnessed only once before, years ago, when he'd met a legendary Aura Blade Knight clad in radiant armor. A warrior of near-mythic strength.
Yet Rafiel this newly summoned "hero" had looked stronger and even more dangerous still.
Rafiel's eyes glimmered like molten gold as he tilted the blade ever so slightly. "That's enough of the lesson," he said, voice soft and unhurried.
Before anyone could breathe, the sword flashed upward in a blur. No clang of steel, no trail to follow just a silver streak that vanished almost before it began.
Bastien's scream tore through the throne room. Both his wrists split open in a clean, merciless cut. Blood sprayed across the marble floor in a bright arc, pooling beneath him as his sword clattered uselessly away. His cry was raw, animal, the sound of a man plunged into a private hell of pain.
Rafiel let the knight's weapon fall from his grasp like discarded scrap and stood over him, gaze cold as winter stone. No triumph, no fury only a chilling detachment, as if the act had been nothing more than closing a door.
Randal could only stare. The world narrowed to the frantic pounding of his own heart—so loud it drowned the echoes of Bastien's agony. Hope, strategy, every fragile plan he'd clung to shattered in an instant.
That strike… it wasn't just fast; it was absolute. Years ago, Randal had witnessed an Aura Blade Knight one of the few living legends split a granite boulder with a single, shimmering arc of energy. The memory had haunted him ever since: the ringing air, the perfect precision, the power that bent the battlefield itself. He'd believed no mortal could equal it.
Yet Rafiel's casual swing was sharper, swifter, and somehow heavier, like gravity itself obeyed his will. The knight he once revered had trained for decades to reach such mastery. Rafiel had been in this world mere days.
Randal's throat tightened, tears stinging his eyes. He realized, dimly, that he was crying.
Randal could only regret now. Every choice, every word of counsel, every step that had led him to this cursed night weighed on him like chains. The king's persuasive talk of "a hero to save Euranis" replayed in his head, bitter as poison. He had believed. He had helped. He had escorted the circle of mages, prepared the rites, and welcomed the summoned one with guarded hope.
And for what?
If the alchemists' potion was ever going to work, it would have done so by now. Yet Rafiel stood there calm, unshaken, a silent storm behind those red-gold eyes as if the concoction were nothing more than spiced water.
Randal's stomach twisted. Every decision that had delivered him to this throne room felt like a betrayal of reason itself. His whole life, all the duty and discipline that had shaped him, seemed a cruel prelude to this single, dreadful moment.
But even through the ache of regret, something inside him refused to die. He gritted his teeth until his jaw trembled.
No. Not yet.
He lowered his gaze, fingers curling in the subtle motion of a practiced mage, and began to whisper the words of his most dangerous spell. Each syllable scraped his throat like glass, each gesture drew on the deepest wells of his power. It was his last hope, the final card hidden even from the king.
If the spell succeeded, he would likely pay with his life. He accepted that.
This wasn't about the royal family anymore. Their fates were already sealed beneath the hero's shadow.
This was for Euranis for the whole kingdom.
Because tonight he understood the awful truth:
they had not summoned a savior.
They had summoned a calamity.
The king lay sprawled across the frigid marble, every breath a rasp of pain and disbelief. Through the haze of blood-tinged visions, he asked himself the one question that clawed at his mind: where had it all gone wrong?
He had never been a gentle man. Mercy was a luxury he had burned out of himself years ago—back when the fight for the throne of Euranis turned brother against brother, child against parent. The Royal Succession War was supposed to be a contest of noble birthrights and parliamentary debate. It became, instead, a furnace of murder.
He remembered those first nights when the palace halls echoed with the screams of kin. Seven siblings he had, each one a claimant. By dawn of the second week, three were dead, not from open battle but from slow poisons slipped into wine and honeyed tea. He had been nineteen when he slipped the first dose into his eldest brother's cup, watching the man who had taught him to ride convulse and choke in a pool of his own vomit.
The rest fell like dominoes. One brother gutted in a midnight corridor his own dagger finding a heart while a paid maidservant looked the other way. A sister strangled in her sleep while the guards conveniently failed to hear a sound. Cousins who rallied under rival banners vanished on hunting trips, their remains found only by the wolves.
Even outside his bloodline, predators circled. Dukes and barons saw a young prince as an easy pawn. They tried to use him, then tried to kill him when he proved less pliant than they hoped. He bought assassins before his enemies could, turned spies twice over, and left a trail of corpses in silk-lined chambers. He remembered nights when the royal fountains ran red, and the kitchens reeked of iron instead of bread.
And through it all, he never wavered. He moved his pawns with a gambler's precision and a butcher's certainty. Patience was his sword, fear his shield. By the time the war ended, the once-golden palace of Euranis had become a mausoleum of silent corridors and shuttered rooms. No brothers. No sisters. No rivals left to challenge him. Only the young prince who had clawed his way from the shadows to the throne, his crown earned not by destiny but by cunning and the cold arithmetic of survival.
He ruled as he had risen: ruthlessly. Whispers of dissent disappeared like smoke. Ministers who grew too ambitious met sudden accidents or swift exile. He studied every alliance as if it were a blade aimed at his heart, because he knew it was. Power, he learned, is not taken once; it must be seized anew every day.
Then came the demi-human invasion. The tide of claw and fang swept across the frontier, cities falling like brittle glass. The Empire vast, ancient, and merciless declared itself humanity's vanguard and demanded soldiers, grain, and gold. Euranis bled to fill its quotas. Still the Empire wanted more. When he refused, their emissaries spoke with smiles as sharp as knives: annexation would follow disobedience.
And as if the threat of conquest was not enough, the Grand Oracle delivered a prophecy of calamity: a shadow vast enough to wipe out mankind. His throne, his life's bloody work, teetered on the edge of ruin.
That night in council, the air itself seemed to taste of panic. Ministers shouted, nobles bickered, and fear thickened the candlelit chamber. Then a quiet voice cut through the noise.
"We can summon a hero," said a young man in priest like robes. His dark hair was perfectly combed, spectacles gleaming. "A champion powerful enough to shatter the Empire, repel the demi-humans, and meet this prophecy head on. With the right… precautions, we can bind his mind and wield him as our sword."
The chamber fell silent. The Summoning of a Hero was a forbidden rite, performed only once every three centuries. The Empire guarded its secrets with blood and iron. Yet this newcomer, freshly named head of the Shadow Unit, simply adjusted his glasses and proposed theft on a scale that could doom them all.
The king had not hesitated. Here, at last, was a solution worthy of his ambition. He approved the mission instantly, promising the clever young man a reward beyond imagining if he succeeded.
That was meant to be the dawn of triumph.
Now he lay on the marble floor, broken and bleeding, visions of his daughter's sins clawing through his mind. The throne room reeked of smoke and terror. Through the haze he glimpsed the silhouette of the summoned hero an unearthly figure wreathed in red-gold light, judgment made flesh.
The king, once the most ruthless man alive, could only wonder how every calculated murder, every ruthless decision, every stolen breath of power had led to this moment.
Where, in all his careful climb, had doom truly begun?
Randal's lips moved in a silent chant, his last desperate spell forming in the pit of his gut. Even as he worked the incantation, a thought gnawed at him: where had it all gone wrong? He had asked himself that question a hundred times since the summoning, but never with such hollow certainty as now. Somewhere across the marble floor, the king writhed, blood seeping from the corners of his eyes, and Randal knew they were both thinking of the same figure the one responsible for all of it.
Rafiel's voice cut through the heavy air, cold as tempered steel. He stood over the kneeling Bastien, sword leveled at the knight's throat. His presence filled the hall like a second heartbeat, slow and crushing.
"All those sins you carry," Rafiel said, each word like a blade drawn slow. "How shall you atone?"
Bastien's breath came ragged through clenched teeth. Pain shook his body, but fury hardened his eyes. "What the hell are you talking about now?" he spat. "Isn't this enough for you, watching me suffer?"
"If you truly wish to know," Rafiel replied, his crimson-gold eyes gleaming like molten metal, "turn to your king."
The throne room seemed to shrink around them. The king, trembling and blood-stained, forced himself upright on quivering arms. Rage twisted his face as he glared at his knight. "It was you," he rasped, voice rising to a roar that bounced off the vaulted ceiling. "You slaughtered Rosegreen!"
Silence crashed down like a falling stone. Bastien lowered his head, his expression lost in shadow. Then a sound soft at first, then jagged broke from his throat: a laugh, low and wrong, growing into a cracked, wild cackle that scraped at every nerve.
"So the hero showed you," Bastien said at last, a crooked smile cutting across his bloodied face. "Good. Let him show you everything."
His voice hardened, each word steeped in cruelty. "My sword exists for the royal family's enemies. Mercy is weakness. When the princess told me that village stood against the crown, I did what duty demanded. Their lives were a gift to the kingdom." He laughed again, a sound like splintering bone and rusted chains.
The king staggered to his feet, visions still clawing at his mind visions of Bastien's blade carving through screaming villagers while his own daughter shrieked orders behind him, her eyes alight with mania. The smell of smoke and blood clung to the memory like a living thing. "You… enjoyed it," the king whispered, then shouted, "You enjoyed every moment! Both of you!"
Bastien's grin widened, teeth red with his own blood. "And you, my king," he hissed, "gave the order for me to slay every enemy in your path. Did you not?"
"It was never meant for such suffering!" the king bellowed, voice cracking. "Not like that!"
At that, Bastien slowly turned his head. Red tears welled in his eyes, running like fresh wounds. "And yet," he said softly, almost lovingly, "the hero shows me your sins as well. Your brothers. Your sisters. Your kin. One by one you murdered them all to seize the throne. Tell me, my sire, what makes you any different from a lowly knight like me?" His laughter returned, ragged and mad, echoing off the stone until it was impossible to tell whether he was laughing or weeping.
The king bit his tongue, a copper taste flooding his mouth. He turned toward the queen, his voice trembling now with something colder than fury. "And you," he hissed. "I know you can hear me. I know what you've hidden. The daughter you shielded. The prisoners in the dungeons their screams, the tortures you oversaw." He shuddered, the phantom cries ringing in his skull. "So much suffering. How… how could there be so much?"
The queen raised her head at last. Red tears streaked her pale face as she met his gaze, silent and unflinching. In her eyes there was no apology only a quiet, icy recognition. Around them, the hero's crimson-gold light bled into every corner of the hall, staining the marble like a sunset that would never end. The great chamber, once built for royal decrees and celebrations, now felt like the inside of a coffin.
The queen stirred, her body trembling as though something dark clawed its way out from inside her. Her face twisted, the once-serene features contorting into a mask of pure malice. Horn-like shadows seemed to ripple beneath her skin, and when she opened her mouth, the sound was a shriek half human, half something far older and crueler."You think this is only my sin?" she howled, her voice cracking like a storm-torn bell. "I did it for her! For our daughter! I gave her everything she desired, and you....." Her eyes burned red, the whites swallowed by veins of black.
"You knew. Maybe not in words, but you suspected. And you turned your precious, royal eyes away. Do not pretend you are innocent."
She staggered forward, clutching at the air as if pulling unseen threads. "Every life in this kingdom belongs to us. Every breath, every beating heart. They are ours to break and ours to keep. And I...." she hissed, her grin widening to a hideous rictus,
"I see every soul you butchered for that throne. I see them all, screaming inside you. You are no different from me. You are the same."
Her laughter rose, jagged and mad, joining the fractured cackle that still bled from Bastien's throat. Their voices twisted together in a sound that was not quite human, an unholy chorus echoing through the marble hall until the air itself seemed to warp. Randal clutched his temples, his unfinished spell flickering as if the sound might shred his mind.
Bastien's own mania surged. He threw back his head, red tears streaking his face, and screamed at the king with the fury of a rabid hound. "Kill him! Kill the hero! End it before it's too late!" He lunged, the veins in his neck standing out like cords, spittle flying as he repeated the command over and over. "Kill him! Do it! KILL HIM!"
Rafiel did not move until the final, broken shout. Then, with a motion so swift it barely registered as movement, his blade traced a silent slice through the air. A cold shimmer of steel, a breath of crimson and Bastien's voice cut off mid-word.
For a heartbeat, the hall went still. Bastien remained kneeling, mouth open in an unfinished cry, before his head slid from his shoulders with a soft, sickening thud. His body, already missing both hands, toppled forward onto the blood-slick marble. The scent of iron filled the room like a suffocating fog.
"That's enough from you," Rafiel said, his tone as flat and cold as the blade that dripped red at his side.
And just like that, Bastien Marrow : the Iron Knight, once the kingdom's proud defender was nothing more than a mutilated corpse sprawled at the hero's feet, his name destined to fade into whispers and nightmares.