The victory parade had lasted three days, but the silence that followed was far more profound.
In the weeks following the Battle of the Broken Crown, the atmosphere in the Capital shifted. The cheers of the common folk remained loud, but in the halls of power, the air grew cold. Jaden noticed it first. The Council meetings he was once invited to lead were now held behind closed doors. The knights who once looked at him with awe now averted their eyes, whispering as he passed.
He was a hero who had become a shadow over the throne.
The arrest happened not on a battlefield, but in the dead of night, within the "safety" of the inner palace. Jaden was led to the Great Hall under the guise of an emergency briefing. Instead of maps and generals, he found a circle of High Mages and the King himself, flanked by the Royal Guard.
They didn't charge him with a crime he had committed; they charged him with the crime of his own existence.
The day of the sentencing was gray, the sky heavy with the threat of a storm that refused to break. The Great Plaza, where Jaden had once been showered with flower petals, was now lined with pikes and heavy infantry.
Jaden stood upon the raised executioner's block, but there was no axe. Behind him, four Grand Mages channeled a swirling, obsidian vortex—a rift into the Void, a dimension of nothingness from which no soul had ever returned. He was bound in Slayer's Iron, heavy shackles that burned his skin and suppressed his mana, making every breath feel like inhaling broken glass.
The King stepped forward, reading from a scroll with a voice that shook—not with sadness, but with the desperate need to be rid of a superior man.
"Jaden of Aethelgard," the King proclaimed. "You are deemed a threat to the stability of the realm. Your power is an affront to the natural order. For the safety of all, you are sentenced to eternal exile within the Void."
Jaden looked out at the crowd. He saw the citizens he had saved. Many looked down in shame, but many more looked at him with a terrifying, hollow fear. They had been told he was a monster in the making, and they chose to believe it because it was easier than being grateful.
Jaden took a step toward the edge of the platform. His voice, even without magic, rang out like a strike on an anvil.
"Look at me!" he commanded, and the plaza went still. "You stand here today to watch the 'Genius' fall. You call my strength a crime because it makes you feel small. I spent my youth bleeding for your borders. I gave you a peace you didn't have the courage to fight for yourselves. You treat me like a disease because I am the only one who can see the rot in your golden chairs."
He looked directly at the King, his eyes burning with a cold, predatory light.
"You think the Void will hide your cowardice? You think that by throwing me into the dark, you can keep the light for yourselves? You aren't sentencing a traitor. You are discarding your shield. May your walls hold when the next war comes, for when you scream my name into the night, only the silence of the Void will answer you."
"Enough!" the High Sage hissed. "Begin the displacement!"
The mages chanted, and the purple-black gravity of the rift began to tug at Jaden's hair and cloak. The ground beneath him cracked.
"JADEN!"
The cry tore through the air. Alyssa appeared at the edge of the plaza, a blur of desperate motion. She hadn't been told; she had smelled the betrayal in the wind. She drew her sword—the black-steel blade they had used to save the kingdom—and cut through the first line of guards like they were made of parchment.
"Let him go!" she screamed, her mana flaring in a violent, crimson aura. "You cowards! You dare touch him?"
She reached the base of the platform, her eyes wild with a grief that surpassed words. But before she could leap, the Royal Guard swarmed. Not ten men, but fifty, armed with suppression nets and enchanted pikes. They bore her down by sheer weight of numbers.
"Alyssa, stop!" Jaden shouted, his body already beginning to blur into the dark energy of the rift. "Don't die for this! Don't let them take you too!"
"I won't let them do this!" she shrieked, her face pressed into the cold stone of the plaza as five knights held her limbs. She looked up, watching as Jaden's feet left the ground, pulled backward into the yawning mouth of the nothingness. "JADEN!"
As the light of the world began to fade from Jaden's vision, the rift let out a final, deafening roar. The "Once-in-a-Lifetime Genius" vanished into the absolute dark.
The rift snapped shut. The silence that followed was heavier than the stones of the palace.
Alyssa stopped struggling. She stood up slowly, the guards backing away from her as if she were a ticking bomb. She looked at the King, her chest heaving, her eyes no longer the eyes of the girl on the bench. They were the eyes of a widow of war.
"You've killed the only man who truly loved this kingdom," she said, her voice a low, vibrating growl that made the nearest soldiers tremble. "You think you've won? You've just signed your own death warrants."
"He was too strong, Alyssa," the High Sage said, stepping forward to justify the sin. "A hero is like a sunset—beautiful to watch, but eventually, the sun must go down so the stars can rule. He was a god among men. And men cannot live in the shadow of a god."
Alyssa looked at the empty air where Jaden had stood. A single, crimson spark of his mana lingered for a second before winking out.
"Then I hope you enjoy the night," she whispered, her voice cold enough to freeze the blood in their veins. "Because the sun isn't coming back. And I will make sure the stars never shine again."