It had been a month since Lore returned to Windas.
The days hardened into routine—training until his muscles trembled, meetings with officers who weighed every word, and long hours spent preparing for a future that no longer waited for him to grow into it. Being Head Squire was no longer a title of promise.
It was a burden.
Garron was still working.
Lore had expected the old smith to finish within days. Instead, the forge burned without rest. Demon Snow Lion pelt hung curing beside racks of bone and fang. Corrupted remnants were burned clean and reshaped under deliberate flame. Whatever Garron forged would not simply be equipment.
It would be armor against what came next.
Windas appeared unchanged.
Glass towers still caught the sun and shattered it across the streets. Patrols still walked their routes. The Magic Knight Headquarters still stood like a monument to order.
But the city no longer felt quiet.
It felt restrained.
When the world grew still for too long, it was never because danger had passed. It was because danger had learned patience.
Rumors spread in fragments. Scouts returned with hollow eyes. Reports vanished into sealed channels. Conversations died when Lore entered a room.
All of it pointed east.
To MalWar.
The present could not be understood without the past.
Internia had not always been whole.
Once, the continent was four separate kingdoms, divided by land, magic, and fear. They ruled themselves, guarded their borders, and trusted nothing beyond necessity. Their alliances were temporary. Their wars were frequent. Survival came before unity.
At the center stood Windas.
Even before it ruled, Windas sought control over chaos. Magic there was not celebrated—it was bound. Studied. Disciplined. Where other realms endured magic, Windas tried to master it. Order was not a virtue.
It was a weapon.
To the south lay Adobis, the Kingdom of Sand, carved from endurance and burial. Its cities rose from dust and were swallowed by it again. Earth magic did not flourish there—it endured. Adobis learned to survive what would have broken other lands, and in doing so became a kingdom that listened when others spoke and remembered when others forgot.
To the southeast, where volcanic ranges rose closer to the eastern wastelands, stood Firoxy, the Firebound Realm. Though still separated from MalWar by distance and broken terrain, Firoxy was nearer to its influence than any other kingdom. Ash-stained mountains and unstable land made its borders a constant concern. Fire was not merely wielded there—it was worshiped. Strength ruled. Weakness did not last. Warriors were forged where stone melted and ambition devoured mercy.
To the west lay Safaris, a kingdom of sails and secrets. It fed on trade and movement, but survived on information. Cultures mixed. Magic collided. Truth was bought and sold as easily as spice. Freedom was its creed.
Deception its currency.
For centuries, these four crowns balanced on the edge of fracture.
Then rose the First King of Windas—the progenitor of the Chromas line.
History did not remember him for conquest. It remembered him for defiance.
He looked upon a divided Internia and saw not kingdoms, but prey.
He did not bind Adobis, Firoxy, and Safaris through chains. He bound them through fear of what waited beyond their borders. Through treaty, bloodline, and oath, the four kingdoms were drawn together beneath Windas—not erased, but forced into unity by the knowledge that separation would mean extinction.
Thus the Chromas family rose—not as tyrants, but as wardens of survival.
And it was in this age of union that the east answered.
Beyond Internia lay MalWar.
Not a kingdom.
A hierarchy of corruption.
MalWar was shaped by Daemons and ruled by their upper castes—creatures that fashioned themselves into courts and noble houses, though none of it was born of honor. They mimicked mortal hierarchies only to mock them. Titles were worn not as duty, but as proof of dominance.
To these Daemonic lords, mortals were unfinished things.
Crude attempts at thought and purpose. Brief lives clinging to law and sentiment because they lacked the endurance to exist without them. Daemons believed themselves superior—more advanced, more intelligent, more complete.
Not kings.
Evolution.
They did not rule MalWar to protect it.
They ruled it to reshape it.
Their cities were not centers of culture, but laboratories of corruption. Magic was not taught—it was imposed. The land itself was bent to reflect their belief that chaos was a higher form of order, and that suffering was evidence of refinement.
Where the Chromas line bound kingdoms together, MalWar's nobility sought to prove that such binding was unnatural—that all unity was a lie.
Internia was not their rival.
It was their contradiction.
Contact was inevitable.
Envoys met beneath banners of false truce. Treaties were carved from suspicion and delay. The Chromas crown sought time. The Daemons sought understanding.
Not of peace.
Of weakness.
The breaking point was never recorded the same way twice. Some chronicles spoke of a ritual uncovered. Others of a frontier city erased before dawn. But all accounts agreed on what followed:
MalWar did not seek coexistence.
It sought collapse.
War devoured the eastern reaches. Magic was driven past reason. Bloodlines were erased so completely that even their names vanished from record. The land itself learned pain. It was in this slaughter that the Magic Knight Order was forged—not as conquerors, but as the last wall between mortals and annihilation.
When the war ended, it did not end with victory.
It ended with exhaustion.
MalWar withdrew. Borders were sealed. Wards were raised. Watchtowers replaced cities. The Daemonic nobility retreated into their corrupted dominion, convinced that time itself would finish what war had begun.
The lesson passed through generations of Chromas rule:
Daemons do not need to conquer kingdoms.They only need to break them.
Silence followed the final words.
Only then did the voice change.
"And that," the speaker said, no longer distant or ceremonial, "is why you are being told this now."
Lore realized he had not moved. His hands were clenched.
"You are Head Squire," the voice continued. "You are being prepared to defend more than borders. You are being prepared to defend unity."
A pause.
"MalWar does not fear Windas," the speaker said. "It fears what Windas represents."
Lore lifted his gaze.
"Four kingdoms bound against it."
Another pause, heavy as stone.
"And MalWar exists to teach them how to fall apart."
Lore drew in a slow breath.
The road ahead no longer felt like a path.
It felt like a blade laid across his shoulders.
And far to the southeast—beyond fire-scarred mountains and corrupted lands—something ancient and arrogant had begun to remember the shape of unity, so that it could learn how to unmake it.