"He's busy," Azuleth said, calm but cold; the kind of answer that carved away any chance of argument.
She did not look at the Magi when she spoke. Not out of insolence. Not even out of pride. But out of calculation.
She knew him too well. The moment he laid eyes on the boy - and worse, the moment the boy's gaze locked with his - she would vanish from their thoughts entirely. The world would shift, orbiting them instead. She would be reduced to nothing but the echo of a name, spoken faintly in their absence.
"You can meet him at the wedding," she added, this time turning to him fully. Her eyes were honed steel, and her words landed like a drawn blade. "Not a second earlier."
The chamber shifted, subtle as a ripple through still water.
A declaration.
To the Magi.
And it unsettled them. Even Captain Lastrange, who had served through the full span of her reign, blinked, not in disbelief, but in recognition. He had watched her eccentricities rise and fall like tides. He had seen her lead armies, seen her command wars. And yet… this. This was madness of another order.
She was commanding the Magi.
Few thought, even fewer dared.
But Azuleth did not waver. She had chosen her stance, and now the world itself would have to bend around it.
The Magi's expression softened into something curious. He tilted his head, watching her with a quiet bemusement, like a man watching a little girl cling desperately to a tattered doll while fate itself tried to wrench it from her grasp.
"Not even a little spying?" he asked, his voice a whisper of amusement, lips tugged toward a grin that never fully formed.
Azuleth didn't flinch. "No."
And then-
"Sister…"
The voice struck the silence like a stone breaking the surface of a still lake.
Princess Selina.
She stood frozen, her disbelief raw, her words tumbling out in a storm.
"You're marrying someone?!"
It wasn't outrage in her tone. It wasn't even disappointment. It was disbelief — the kind that rattled the foundations of what she thought she knew.
"I-what? When? You hate being touched. You won't even hug me! And now suddenly-marriage?" Her voice pitched higher, sharper. "Is this some scheme? A contract? A curse?"
Azuleth exhaled, patient, not annoyed. She turned, eyes softening - slightly. "You wouldn't understand."
Selina stepped forward, hurt cutting through her shock. "I wouldn't-? How can you be so selfish, Azuleth? You of all people. You, falling to… to desire? You told me love was weakness. That we didn't have the luxury of it. You made me promise-"
Azuleth's hand rose, silencing her.
"Should you really be the one lecturing me about selfishness?"
Her words landed heavy. Not venom. Weight.
She stepped forward. Not looming, but her presence forced Selina back nonetheless.
"After I spared you from this burden?" Azuleth lifted one hand, gesturing at the crown - the golden circlet mocking her from atop her head. "This thing that chained me to this accursed nation, while you roamed free in the world, chasing your dreams?"
Selina's face faltered. The words cut too deep.
"I gave you a life," Azuleth said, quieter now, but every syllable was fire wrapped in velvet. "Not out of pity. But because it was the last ounce of humanity I could muster, in memory of our mother."
Selina's lips parted. No words came.
"And you know what?" Azuleth's eyes glimmered, not with warmth, but with a velvet madness that shimmered like a tapestry of grief. "I have repaid my debt."
The Magi had watched in silence, but Azuleth turned her fire back to him. Her voice cooled, the storm dimming into embers.
"So no. You don't meet him early. Not you. Not her."
She swept past them both, calm as a closing book.
"Now, if you're done with your questions, I have a wedding to prepare. What kind of bride would I be if I didn't look my best?"
She didn't wait for reply. The doors opened. She vanished into the corridors, leaving sunlight spilling across the Solarium tiles like liquid gold.
The Magi remained, unreadable. Then, at last, he chuckled softly. Not in mockery. Not in amusement. But in understanding.
"I see," he murmured.
And with a strange kind of wonder, he whispered:
"…then tomorrow will be quite the day."
[Narrator's Voice]
Disbelief.
By dawn, the world was already in uproar.
The proclamation had been nailed on the palace gates, but before the hourglass could spill its first sand, it was already carried on a hundred voices and scrawled onto a thousand slips of parchment.
In the guild halls of Alkavia, where rough-handed mercenaries usually jostled over contracts and tankards of ale, the notice silenced the din. Men who feared no monster and women who laughed at death itself stared dumbly at the words, as if the parchment were cursed.
"A wedding? Tomorrow?" one young archer muttered, earning nothing but blank stares from her companions.
In the market squares, hawkers forgot their cries, their wares abandoned mid-sale. Bread went unpaid for. Coins fell and rolled into gutters. But no one stooped to chase them, because every tongue was repeating the same impossible phrase: "The Queen is to marry."
In the universities of Aetherfall, learned scholars and magisters abandoned their scrolls, peering over each other's shoulders to make sure they were reading correctly. "A union without naming the groom? Absurd!" one scholar scoffed, only for another to whisper, "Absurd... or deliberate."
In border forts and taverns alike, hardened knights and drunken travelers muttered that no wedding this sudden was ever just a wedding. "It's a move," they said, voices low. "She's playing a game again."
Even in the farmlands - where peasants seldom cared for the squabbles of kings and queens - the words carried a strange weight. Mothers hushed their children, fathers stared at the horizon. For even those untouched by politics could feel the tremor in the air, the stillness before a storm.
It was not simply news. It was a signal.
Every guild hall, from the grandiose marble towers in capital cities to the dingiest roadside outposts, bore the same parchment nailed across its boards:
"Her Royal Highness, Queen Azuleth of Alkavia the First, proclaims her marriage."
And beneath, line after line of honeyed words: promises of alms to the poor, declarations that no soul in her kingdom would want for food or water during the celebration, and an invitation - not just to the nobility, but to all. Though her palace could not possibly hold the entire nation, she would "share a piece of its Peace with every soul under the sky."
Yet all the generosity, all the illusions of grace, were poisoned by one line.
"...as tomorrow marks the date..."
One day's notice.
The first line rattled thrones. But that final sentence shook the foundations of the continent.
Tomorrow.
Insanity.
[Unknown POV]
"Has she gone mad?"
The old voice cracked against the vaulted chamber walls, echoing around the long oak table where ten figures sat, all aged, all worn, and all bound by titles that weighed heavier than crowns.
They were the High Council of Nala; the ten dukes who, together, steadied the kingdom whenever the throne trembled.
"She was always mad," another replied smoothly, this one clad in deep blue robes that shimmered faintly in the candlelight. His eyes glimmered the way a mage's always did, radiating a quiet menace that even age could not dull. "But you are correct, Duke Highland. This is... unlike her. As much as it pains you to admit, she has been an excellent ruler since the day she ascended."
Murmurs rippled. None called him out. Treasonous words for most men, but not for him. For to silence him was to start a civil war, and none in that room were ready for such folly.
"Other than the occasional border skirmish, she's kept her blade sheathed," the mage in blue continued. "Her armies idle. Her coffers swell. No grand invasion. No reckless campaigns."
"She ruled unlike her father," another voice cut in, this one in a robe of deep crimson. The resemblance to the mage in blue was uncanny; twins, though age and wear had carved their faces differently, like two statues of the same sculptor.
"Despite our fears since the Great War, that she would resume her father's bloody conquests, she has sat, coiled, like a serpent beneath her palace tiles."
"And yet," muttered a younger lord in brown, streaks of white threading his hair, "you still think she plans something?"
The man in red did not hesitate. His eyes burned with memory. "I don't think, Duke Lamnt. I know. You did not see her in battle. Even my brother's tides could not quench her flame."
His words drew an annoyed glance from the man in blue. But he let them stand.
"Regardless," the red mage continued, "this is her move. Not what I predicted, but her move nonetheless."
"Aye, I concur," said a man in a merchant's attire, standing out among the cloaks and crests. A polished monocle rested against his chest, swaying slightly as he spoke.
"I had assumed it to be some sort of conference," he continued, his tone almost casual, as if lecturing apprentices at a guildhall. "Perhaps a royal summons to drag those recluses out of their towers and force them to share their knowledge among one another. Bold, certainly - risky, yes - but progress seldom comes without peril. Just look at the economic influx her kingdom has enjoyed these past years. The sheer volume of royal spending speaks volumes to their prosperity."
He adjusted his monocle with a wry smile, leaning back in his chair as though this were all a matter of business rather than impending war. "I had already prepared an action to conduct something similar with our own coalition of nations. I was going to bring it up at our next gathering; but to think we would be meeting again so soon..."
The humor in his words did not carry far. The rest of the council remained stone-faced, their silence heavy.
It was broken at last by a voice like gravel grinding on steel.
"This is not the time to look back. We must act."
The speaker was the one figure in the chamber who looked utterly out of place - no scholar's cloak, jewel of office, or merchant's attire. His garb was plain, weather-worn, and rough-hewn, more befitting a warlord than a duke. He looked like a barbarian who had been handed a seat of power and never bothered to disguise what he was.
All but for one detail. His left arm was missing; gone not from the shoulder, not from the elbow, but vanished entirely at the joint as if erased from the world itself.
His gaze, dark and unflinching, swept across the table.
"Forget your schemes. Forget your ledgers. Forget these games of predicting the witch's next move." His teeth clenched as he spat the word. "You all know as well as I what she is capable of."
The air in the chamber tightened. Several of the dukes frowned openly at his words, for they knew his history all too well, their gazes inevitably slipping towards the missing.
"There is only one thing that matters now..." His tone was raw, scarred, murderous.
But Duke Highland's hand shot up, silencing him.
"Not what matters. Who. Who will attend this wedding?"
The room went still.
All eyes turned - inevitably, almost ritualistically - toward the twins. Blue and red. Water and flame. Balance and ruin.
The fire mage's lips curled into a smirk. "Tempting. I would be up to it."
The water mage added, voice low and measured, "So would I. But it would not be in the nation's best interest."
A murmur rippled. One of the dukes, face drawn in confusion, leaned forward. "Why? Why not?"
Duke Highland answered before they could. His voice was grave, his words heavy enough to sink the room in silence.
"Because if they left..." He let the thought hang, like a noose above them all. "...no one would be left to deploy the siege weapons."
Faces hardened. Jaws clenched. Every man around the table knew what that meant. The world had changed overnight. There would be no more waiting, no more pretending at peace. The continent now teetered on the edge of war, and one misstep, one wedding, could topple it.
Duke Highland cleared his throat. His voice was steady, decisive.
"Fine. I'll go. Everyone agree?"
"I concur," came the first reply.
And then another.
And another.
One by one, hands rose, until all ten had voted.
The fire mage's eyes flickered with something dangerous as he leaned forward.
"Duke Highland. Take one-" he paused, then corrected himself, "-no. Take two of the four Heavenly Knights with you. You can decide which ones to take."
Highland's eyes widened.
The weight of such power was not lightly given. Two knights of the heavens were worth more than armies.
He swallowed dryly once, then nodded slowly.
"...Ok."
The chamber fell into silence, the gravity of the decision pressing down on them all.
And somewhere, beyond stone and candlelight, the continent itself seemed to hold its breath.