The throne room was deathly silent after Bastien's screams had faded into nothing. The king slumped onto the cold marble floor, trembling, and muttered, "He… he really killed him." His voice was hoarse, disbelief and terror mingling.
Rafiel's red-and-gold eyes did not waver as he replied softly, almost pityingly, "Death was mercy for a man like that."
From the corner of the room, the princess stirred, her mind unraveling under the weight of Rafiel's aura. Her body shook as if caught between fear and obsession. She stumbled to her feet, hair matted, face streaked with tears and blood. Her voice rang out, shrill and commanding, "Stand down! Come to me! You will obey me!"
Rafiel's gaze remained steady. "The potion works?" he asked calmly. "Yes… I can feel it. Its effects are strong. But it relies on breaking the mind. It has no effect on me."
The princess blinked, her shock giving way to manic laughter. "Stupid! You're so stupid!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "You will obey me, and I will have you!" Her fists pounded the air, and she spun in a circle as though trying to trap him in her madness.
Rafiel began to walk toward her. Each step was slow, deliberate, the aura around him radiating heat and weight that pressed down on every living thing in the room. Blood streaked his face like war paint, but his expression was calm, terrifyingly calm. The king tried to rise, to intervene, but his body refused him. Every movement felt like wading through molten iron.
The princess shrieked and pointed at him, screaming commands, but Rafiel advanced unyielding. Randal, desperate, flung his hands in the air, casting a barrier spell around the princess. At the same time, he continued the subtle, quiet chant of his trump card spell, praying it would save them all.
The barrier shimmered, wavering under the pressure, and then like glass struck with a hammer it shattered. Rafiel's aura surged, a cold and oppressive wave that made everyone in the room hold their breath. Dust swirled, the marble vibrated under the power he exuded.
"He is no longer human," Rafiel said, his voice flat, cutting through the princess' screaming like a knife.
Before anyone could react, he thrust his sword forward. The blade pierced through her stomach with horrifying ease, silencing her orders in an instant. She fell back, her legs giving way, but even as she collapsed, a twisted, wretched smile lingered on her face.
The queen screamed, a mixture of fury and despair, rushing toward the princess as though she could undo what had just been done. "You monster! How dare you touch my daughter!" she shrieked, her own form shaking under the intensity of Rafiel's aura.
But Rafiel did not flinch. He withdrew the blade slowly, letting the princess' lifeless body crumple to the floor, the air thick with the stench of blood and death. The queen's cries echoed futilely across the throne room, her hands trembling as she reached toward a daughter who no longer existed.
The king, still on the floor, could only stare, powerless and broken. The weight of what had just occurred pressed down on him, heavier than any crown or throne could ever be. And Rafiel calm, merciless, and godlike in his terrifying presence stood above them all, the living embodiment of the prophecy they had summoned.
The queen staggered across the blood-slick marble, skirts dragging through her daughter's crimson trail. She fell to her knees, clutching the limp body. "No… no, my sweet girl," she sobbed, a jagged wail tearing from her throat. "You monster! She was innocent! An innocent child! How could you do this?"
Rafiel's gaze did not soften. "Innocent?" His voice was quiet, almost bored, but it cut like a blade. "You know better. You shaped her."
The queen's tear-streaked face twisted in fury. "You don't understand!" she spat. "You are no parent. A mother will do anything for her child's happiness. Anything!"
For a heartbeat Rafiel stood utterly still. A fleeting image flickered in his mind: a gentle smile, warm hands smoothing his hair, his own mother, long gone. The memory burned through him, a spark beneath the ice. His jaw tightened, but his eyes stayed cold.
"That," he said softly, "is your excuse?"
The queen wheeled toward the king, her grief turning to venom. "And you, you coward!" she screamed, voice cracking with rage. "All those nights you promised to keep us safe, to give her the world. You swore no harm would ever touch her. You let this happen!" She jabbed a trembling finger at him, face a mask of fury and despair. "You murdered your brothers for the throne, but you couldn't lift a single finger to protect your own blood! You are weaker than the rats that scurry in these halls. You promised me, promised that together we'd give her everything. Instead you gave her death!"
The king flinched under her words, blood still dripping from his eyes, but she was not done. "I curse you," she hissed, voice shaking with hate. "I curse the day I married you, the day you drew your first breath. May every crown you wear turn to ash, may every child you touch wither. May you live long enough to see everything you love rot away!"
Her grief-cracked scream echoed through the ruined hall.
Rafiel's frown deepened, the only hint of anger. "Enough."
Iron chains erupted from the floor with a metallic shriek, wrapping the queen in a lattice of dark magic. They coiled around her limbs and torso, lifting her struggling form into the air.
She thrashed and spat one last volley of hate. "Curse you, king of nothing! Curse your bloodline and every breath you take!"
Rafiel raised one hand, his expression unreadable.
The chains constricted with a sickening crunch. The queen's final scream ripped through the throne room, then cut off abruptly. Her body went limp, hatred fading to glassy emptiness.
Rafiel lowered his arm, the chains releasing their hold to let her corpse fall beside her daughter's. Blood pooled across the cold marble floor a dark testament to a family that had ruled in cruelty, and to the man now passing judgment.
The king's scream ripped through the throne room, raw and jagged, a sound that didn't belong to a ruler but to a man being torn apart. He dragged himself across the slick marble, knees slipping in the blood pooling around the bodies of his wife and child. Each movement left a crimson smear, yet he didn't care. His trembling hands reached first for the princess, then for the queen, pulling them against his chest as though the warmth of his own body could bring them back.
Tears mixed with the blood on his face, streaking down in dark, muddy trails. He rocked them gently, whispering broken fragments of their names, the words strangled and meaningless. He had seen everything—Rafiel had shown him their sins, their cruelties, the silent screams of innocents who had died because of their orders. He knew the rot of his court, the murders and betrayals he himself had orchestrated. Still, knowing did nothing to soften the blow.
"They were mine," he choked out, voice splintered. "My… my girls…"
The knowledge of their guilt couldn't stop the weight crushing his heart. He couldn't forgive his wife for what she had done. He couldn't forgive the princess for the blood she had spilled. He couldn't forgive himself for letting it all happen. And yet, as he clutched their lifeless bodies, the grief was unbearable. It drowned everything else duty, rage, even the icy hatred he felt for the hero who had taken them.
Randal, standing a few paces away, felt his own chest tighten. He too had witnessed the truth of their crimes, the corruption that had hollowed the royal family from within. But seeing the king's shoulders quake, hearing that guttural sob, he felt a flicker of pity he couldn't smother. For all their sins, this was still a father and a husband losing everything.
The king bowed his head over them, silent now except for the low, uneven sound of his breathing. Around him the throne room reeked of iron and magic, but he seemed deaf to it all. In that moment he was no monarch, no schemer, no murderer just a broken man cradling the ruins of his life.
Rafiel stood bathed in the cold morning lght spilling through the shattered windows, his sword glinting crimson. He raised a hand."Come forth."
Iron chains erupted from the marble like serpents. They lashed out with terrifying speed, coiling around every soul in the chamber knights, merchants, nobles, servants no one spared. Screams filled the hall as the chains constricted. Bones snapped like dry twigs. Blood slicked the floor until it shone black in the dim torchlight.
"Stop this! Please!" Randal shouted, voice cracking."Enough!" the king bellowed, raw with grief.
But Rafiel's face was a mask of cold purpose. "I cannot."
The chains tightened. The cries dwindled into gurgles, then silence. When the last body hit the floor, the throne room resembled a vision torn from the deepest circle of hell.
The king's rage overcame his terror. He snatched Bastien's fallen sword, the steel slick with drying blood, and charged. "Monster!" he roared.
Rafiel barely moved. He caught the king's throat in one hand and lifted him like a child's doll, forcing him upward until his feet dangled in the air. Above them, the great portrait of the ancient founder-king loomed in shadow, a streak of blood from the carnage splashed across the painted face, as though the ancestor himself wept for the kingdom's ruin.
"Let him go!" Randal cried, staggering forward.
Rafiel's eyes flicked to the court mage, but he didn't notice the subtle movement of Randal's fingers, the quiet murmur of an incantation beneath the chaos.
In that moment, Randal revealed why he had earned a place at court. Though only a 3-circle High Mage by title, his mind worked with the precision of a master. Hidden behind the sound of death, he wove a spell beyond his rank a 4-circle Arch-Mage construct layer upon layer of invisible sigils forming with every breath.
The air trembled. All the swords scattered across the floor shuddered, lifted, and aimed like a forest of steel at the hero.
Rafiel sensed the sudden danger. He hurled the king aside and spun, blade flashing. Metal shrieked as he cut through the storm of weapons, each strike ringing like a bell of doom. Steel clattered to the ground in a rain of sparks.
The king, coughing on the floor, lurched toward Randal in desperation. "What are you doing? We must..."
The marble floor trembled as the last of the summoned swords clanged to rest. Smoke from scorched air stung the king's throat. He pushed himself up on shaking arms, heart hammering, just in time to see Randal swaying in the ruin of his own magic.
The mage's lips were crimson with blood. Veins stood out along his neck and temples as though the very force of his spell was trying to burst free. The 4-circle sigils still hovered around him, glowing a searing blue, far beyond anything a mere 3-circle High mage should have been able to sustain.
"Randal!" the king rasped, terror cutting through his grief. "Stop this! survive! I order you to live!"
Randal didn't answer. He only coughed hard, splattering dark blood across the cracked marble, and raised one trembling hand. The intricate circle of a 4 circle spell unfolded beneath them, each rune burning hotter than the last.
The king felt the air tighten an ancient power that hummed like a storm about to break. "Enough!" he barked, staggering forward. "You'll kill yourself!"
Muscles in Randal's arms tore audibly, tiny ribbons of flesh parting under the strain. Blood welled through his robes and dripped down his fingertips. His face twisted, not in fear but in absolute resolve.
"Forgive me, my king," Randal whispered, voice hoarse but steady. "For taking a commoner like me into your court… and trusting me with this."
"Randal, stop!" The king lunged toward him, desperate. "I will not lose you too!"
But the mage only offered a faint, sad smile. "I owe you everything… and this is all I have left to give."
The magic circle blazed white, brilliant enough to drown the shadows of corpses and chains. The air roared like a waterfall. The king's outstretched hand met only blinding light as the world dissolved around him.
His last sight of the throne room was of Randal bleeding, shaking, yet unbowed sanding like a lone pillar of defiance while the hero watched with unreadable eyes.
Then the king was gone.
The chamber lay in a terrible hush, broken only by the wet rasp of Randal's breathing. He sagged to one knee, blood streaking his chin, and let his staff slip from numbed fingers. The polished oak clattered against the marble and rolled through a slick of crimson before coming to rest among the bodies.
Morning light seeped through the shattered windowpanes, striping the hall in cold silver. It caught on the heaps of twisted corpses, on the black chains still hissing with residual magic, on the wide dark stains spreading across the floor. The whole throne room looked like a painter's nightmare of hell made real.
Rafiel's boots clicked softly against the marble as he crossed the carnage. He stopped a few paces from the mage and studied him with a calm, curious gaze.
"I should have known," Rafiel said at last, his voice low but cutting in the silence. "You were the only one who stayed calm from the start."
Randal gave a thin, breathless laugh, then doubled over with a cough that spattered fresh blood on the stone. "Impressive? It's suicide," he croaked, wiping his mouth with a trembling sleeve. "But… someone had to do it."
Rafiel tilted his head. "Why save a king who would never care for you? Who treats lives like coin to be spent?"
The mage leaned on his blood-slicked palm and looked up, eyes bright despite the fatigue eating him alive. "Because he must survive… for the kingdom's future." He paused, a ghost of a smile twisting his lips. "Or maybe… I don't really know why. I was desperate."
Another cough wracked his chest. He laughed through it, ragged and defiant. "Just… don't make me regret it, Hero."
The two locked eyes: the dying court mage 'the sage' of Euranis and the man the world would one day call a calamity, their breath mingling in the eerie stillness as sunlight pooled over the dead.
From somewhere in the shadows of the ruined throne room came the sound of a single pair of hurried boots fading into the distance. Rafiel didn't bother to turn his head. He only gave a short, cold laugh.
"So," he said, voice echoing against the blood-slick walls, "there was more than one rat."
Randal forced his head up, wiping the blood from his chin with a trembling sleeve. "The leader of the Shadow Unit," he rasped. "Fast as ever."
Rafiel's eyes glowed faintly, the strange red-gold light catching the edge of the shattered throne. "What's your name, mage?"
"Randal," he answered, voice hoarse but steady.
"Randal…" Rafiel stepped closer, studying him. "You're interesting." His gaze sharpened, and the strange golden fire in his irises flared.
Randal stiffened. He felt something an unseen weight pressing against his very soul. Rafiel was peering straight through him.
After a long silence, Rafiel's mouth curved into a small, almost respectful smile. "We aren't so different, you and I."
Despite the blood on his lips, Randal let out a dry chuckle. "Did you see everything?"
"I saw enough," Rafiel replied. "Enough to know I don't need to look deeper."
There was no mockery in his tone, only a quiet recognition. "You had so much to lose," he said softly, "yet you chose to save another life instead of your own. You could have teleported yourself to safety, but you gave your life to the king."
Randal exhaled, the sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "Well… that's how it went. I told you not to make me regret it."
He coughed hard, crimson spattering the marble, then tilted his head with a curious, almost boyish look. "Tell me one thing, Hero. How… how did you become so strong? It's been what, an hour since you arrived? No one gains power like that in an hour."
Rafiel's eyes drifted for a moment, as if looking past the ruined hall into a memory no one else could reach. "That," he said quietly, "is where everyone is mistaken."
He let the silence hang before he continued, voice lower, like the memory itself carried weight.
"For me, it wasn't an hour. Not even close."
His gaze turned distant, cold. "When I died..when I should have died..I was surrounded by the bodies of everyone I'd killed. Their faces. Their blood. I stood there on the edge of madness, ready to end it myself… and then the circle of light appeared."
He inhaled slowly, his words sharpening. "But it didn't take me here. Not yet. I found myself in a place of darkness so deep even memory felt like a lie. A void where no light reached."
Rafiel's fingers tightened briefly on the hilt of his sword. "I wasn't alone. There was… something. I heard it whisper. And I knew it wasn't a man."
Randal listened, eyes widening despite the pain tearing through his body.
"The thing in the dark," Rafiel went on, "showed me everything that haunted me. Every face, every scream. Over and over, like a wheel of guilt meant to break me."
He gave a small, bitter smile. "But it didn't. I didn't regret anything. I accepted it all every death, every choice. Not because I was proud. Because I knew life was already done. And I should have died."
Rafiel's gaze grew strangely bright. "Yet it let me live. And it asked me a single question: what do you want?"
He paused, but whatever answer he'd given stayed locked behind his eyes.
"The thing," he said finally, "liked my answer. It told me of the world I was heading to Solmir. It spoke of magic, of how power flows. It said I would find the truth of the world there and it granted me a gift… my sight. But it warned me: do not succumb to madness when you use it."
He let the words hang like a shadow. Here Randal had understood, they were already fucked from the start. Even b
Randal swallowed, throat raw. "The… truth of the world," he whispered.
Rafiel said nothing, only watched him, the faintest trace of something unreadable in his crimson-gold eyes.
Randal drew a ragged breath, his voice thin but steady. "How… how do you plan to find this great truth, Hero?"
Rafiel tilted his head, the crimson-gold light in his eyes flickering like a distant flame. "It's simple," he said. "Destruction. Death. When the world lies in ruins, the answer will reveal itself."
Randal blinked, stunned. "That's madness," he whispered, horror edging his words. "You'd spill oceans of blood for answers you might never even get?"
"Perhaps," Rafiel replied without a flicker of hesitation.
Randal shook his head weakly. "You can't take the whole world on alone."
"Maybe," Rafiel said again, calm as stone.
The mage coughed, the sound wet and heavy. He felt the darkness closing in, but Rafiel's next words startled him awake.
"I can save you," the Hero said. "Join me."
Randal froze. For a heartbeat, the offer almost tempted him. But he saw the glint in Rafiel's eyes—the quiet hunger of a man who would use anything, anyone, to test the world. "No," he said finally, his voice low but certain. "Let me be. If you looked into me with that cursed sight of yours, then you know I deserve what's coming. I don't need forgiveness. I don't deserve a second chance rspecially not from you."
His eyes darkened with old guilt. "I listened to the wrong person. Plotted to control. Clung to a dream too fragile to survive. And for what? Nothing. Nothing but this ruin."
Rafiel studied him. "Do you regret it?"
"Of course," Randal said, coughing blood onto the marble. "But I'm about to die. What use is regret now?"
Rafiel gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. Then, to Randal's surprise, the Hero sank into a crouch so that their eyes met on the same level. "You're a peculiar man," Rafiel murmured. "I saw your ambitions, and how easily you could have escaped and kept chasing them. Yet you chose the king instead."
A thin smile tugged at Randal's lips. "Don't make me regret it," he said hoarsely. "If you do, maybe I'll haunt you."
For the briefest moment, he could have sworn the Hero's mouth curve just a faint, fleeting smile but it was gone before he could be sure.
After a long pause, Randal asked quietly, "Where… where do you come from? What kind of place makes a man like you?"
Rafiel's eyes shifted, the glow softening with memory. "A city of corpses," he said. "Where bodies piled in the streets like broken branches. Where corruption was as common as breathing, and people betrayed those they loved for scraps of power. My home was a place where love was just another weapon."
Randal closed his eyes as the words settled over him like ashes. "No wonder," he whispered.
Randal gave a rasping, half-laughing cough. "Sounds like a shit place to live," he said, voice dripping with weary sarcasm.
Rafiel's lips twitched, almost amused. "It was," he admitted. His gaze drifted for a heartbeat, softened by a memory only he could see. "But… not all of it was bad."
"I see," Randal murmured, the strength in his words beginning to fray.
He drew in a shallow breath and fixed his dimming eyes on the Hero. "Tell me, then was it really necessary to kill them all? For their sins? There wasn't another way?"
Rafiel's answer came without hesitation. "It was the only way. Every choice has consequences, no matter how small."
Randal's eyes sharpened despite the weakness in his body, a final spark of defiance. "There's always another way. One that doesn't drown everything in blood."
Rafiel did not reply.
"You're insane," Randal said, a faint smile breaking through the crimson on his lips. "That much I know. I don't know what you're planning or how far you'll go to chase it but I promise you this…"
He gathered what remained of his voice, each word a fragile blade. "You don't know this world yet. You don't know Soloris, or its people. One day, someone will stop you. Someone will finish what I couldn't today. The Hero will fall. Everyone falls."
The light in his eyes dulled. The defiance remained.
Rafiel watched in silence as the mage's final breath slipped into the heavy air. For a long moment, he did not move. Then he lowered the body to the cold, blood-slick marble with deliberate care and rested a hand on the man's chest.
A quiet prayer wordless, almost foreign passed his lips.
"I'll look forward to it," he said at last.
Rafiel rose slowly, boots slick with blood, and walked to the high, shattered window. He stood motionless, the pale light washing over his face. Beyond the glass the sky stretched wide and impossibly blue, a serene contrast to the massacre behind him. His eyes, sharp and unblinking, reflected none of it no triumph, no sorrow only an endless, icy stillness.
The scene pulled outward.
Through the fractured windowpane the royal castle of Euranis came into view, smoke trailing from its towers like dark banners of ruin. Below, the courtyard swarmed with chaos. A ring of steel-clad soldiers encircled the fortress walls, shields raised, their commander's voice cutting through the clamor: "Surround the keep! Find the royal family alive!"
The perspective widened again, spilling over the city of Berina, the proud capital now wracked by terror.Streets once filled with music and the scent of spiced bread now boiled with panic. Merchants abandoned their stalls; half-toppled carts lay scattered with fruit and broken glass. Children cried as mothers dragged them through the press of bodies. Bells tolled frantically from the high spires, their mournful clang swallowed by the roar of thousands of voices. Smoke from the burning castle drifted across the skyline, turning the late-afternoon sun a sickly orange.Rumors shot through the crowd like arrows: The king is dead No, the hero has gone mad The gods have forsaken us.Barricades of overturned wagons and splintered doors sprouted at every cross-street. City guards struggled to keep order, their own eyes wide with fear, as the capital of Euranis once the jewel of the continent began to unravel into pure, trembling chaos.
The view lifted higher still, riding the wind across the distant countryside. Snow-crowned mountains glinted in the failing light; wide rivers carved silver ribbons through endless forest where two vast armies clashed in a frenzy of steel and smoke. Drums pounded like distant storms, the heartbeat of a continent in turmoil.
Far from the din, the vision swept into a quiet woodland at the forest's edge, where late-day sunlight spilled through a canopy of gold and green. There, a boy stood in a small clearing, head tilted back as he watched a lone hawk circle against the fading blue. His ash-grey hair shimmered faintly as the light touched it, and his eyes clear, unguarded held the stillness of someone who did not yet know what the world had become.
"Brother, you should see this," a small voice called.
He turned. His little sister stood at the edge of the trees, but her usual playful smile was gone. Her face was pale, eyes wide with a worry that tightened his chest.
"What's wrong?" he asked, stepping toward her.
She glanced over her shoulder toward the deeper woods, then back at him, voice low and trembling. "There's… someone in the forest."
The young man's expression sharpened. He gave a single, steady nod and moved to her side. Without another word, he followed as she turned and led him into the shadowed trees, the fading light of dusk slipping behind them.
---
And as the forest swallowed their footsteps, the world itself seemed to whisper:
This is Soloris a realm of blazing magic and unshakable might, where kingdoms rise on steel and sorcery, and where the ambition of men can unravel it all.
Here begins the tale of a hero summoned to save a world… and the madness that turned him into its greatest doom.