The Duke's laughter rang bright across the ballroom, rich and booming, but unease tugged at him all the same. Too many kings. Too many heirs. Too much fate gathered beneath one roof.
And Lupin had not been seen since yesterday.
He leaned toward his captain."Regard. Find Lupin. Bring him here at once."
Regard bowed. "Yes, my lord."
Beyond the music, the corridors lay dim and narrow, torchlight smearing gold across stone. Boots echoed softly as Regard moved. At Lupin's chambers, only one squire stood guard, a boy with sharp eyes and a stiff spine.
Aquarius.
"Where's your partner?" Regard asked.
"Inside," Aquarius replied, unease threading his voice.
Regard opened the door.
The smell came first.
Blood, thick and coppery, clung to the air. Lupin lay sprawled across the floor, crimson soaking his silks. Beside him stood another squire, Leon, frozen in place, a teacup trembling in his grip, face drained of all color.
Leon's eyes snapped up. "Captain, I swear, it wasn't me. I came in and found—"
Steel answered him.
Regard's blade flashed once. Clean. Final. Leon collapsed without a sound. A single tear burned at the corner of Regard's eye before his face hardened again.
He dipped Leon's sword into Lupin's blood, pressed it into the boy's lifeless hand, then straightened.
When he stepped back into the hall, Aquarius looked up."Where's Leon?"
"Inside," Regard said flatly. "He killed Lupin."
Aquarius stared. "That's… impossible. Leon would never—"
He rushed past.
The sight broke him. Lupin dead. Leon dead. The sword crimson between them.
"You see," Regard said.
Before Aquarius could speak, patrol boots thundered down the hall. Torches flared. A captain barked, "What happened here?"
Regard did not falter. "The squire turned traitor. I was too late to save Lupin. But I ended it."
Aquarius shouted, voice cracking. "No! This is wrong. It doesn't add up!"
No one listened.
Hands seized Regard's arms. His blade fell, ringing softly against stone.
"Captain Regard, you will be held for questioning."
He did not resist.
The cell swallowed him whole, stone pressing close, iron biting shut. Above him, the music swelled. Laughter roared. Soon, blood would follow.
Regard leaned his head back against the wall.
Evangel, he thought. You'd better know what you're doing.
The ballroom gleamed like a jewel cracked open. Crystal chandeliers burned with candlelight, their reflections dancing across polished marble. Gold-and-white banners draped the vaulted ceiling, embroidered with the royal crest: a sun crowned by twelve rays. Music floated through the air, too refined, too gentle, for what fate had planned.
The kingdom's great and powerful gathered in bright knots of silk and jewels. Laughter rose. Whispers followed.
At the edge of it all stood Mathis.
Five years old, dressed in white ceremonial cloth trimmed with gold, he held himself straight despite his small frame. Elise clung to his side, nervous eyes darting. Nearby stood the Falsies princess, emerald insignia gleaming against her gown, pride warring with curiosity.
The murmurs began.
"That's the Duke's boy, isn't it?"
"They say he went into a dungeon."
"He's five."
"Five or not, look at him. He stands like an heir."
The royal family had arrived. King Aldros in crimson. The queen beside him. Their eldest son watching the hall with a falcon's gaze. Even dukes bowed deeper in their presence.
Not all with sincerity.
Across the room, the Falsies matriarch tapped her goblet, jeweled fingers clicking softly."The Duke flaunts his children like royalty."
"If the boy wins the people's love," another murmured, "what place remains for us?"
The words hung heavy.
Mathis listened. Watched. His father had taught him to recognize wolves even when they smiled.
Far from the light, Garin watched.
He stood near the outer gates, dressed in servant's gray. Invisible. Forgotten. His hands shook.
Inside his chest, a black seal burned, etched into flesh and soul alike. A spell. A sentence. A bomb shaped like a man.
He looked up at the glowing windows, at the life he had never been allowed to taste.
"I was born among ashes," he whispered, voice trembling like a prayer, "and to ash I return. If my death must be fire, let it burn a path for someone else."
Lightning split the night.
A Tier-Six spell shattered the ceiling. Stone and timber rained down as nobles screamed. Chandeliers crashed, fire blooming where elegance had lived moments before.
Mathis grabbed Elise, shouting for the princess to move. A slab of roof tore loose, plummeting toward them.
Someone stepped beneath it.
Garin braced himself, the seal in his chest screaming. Muscle tore. Blood spilled. He held just long enough.
The children escaped.
Mathis turned, breath hitching, eyes meeting Garin's for the first and last time.
"Why are you helping us?" the boy asked.
Garin smiled, tired and gentle, like a candle at the end of its wick."Because even a shadow wishes to guard the sun."
"What's your name?"
"Garin. A name no noble will remember."
He spoke quickly then, words spilling like a confession carved into bone.
"I dreamed once. Of fields. Of horses. My mother said the world was kind. It stole her anyway. Hunger taught me how to kill. Do not pity me, little prince. Pity the world that makes men like me."
Mathis trembled. Tears burned.
"Promise me," Garin said softly, raising a finger, "build a world where boys do not become bombs."
The seal flared.
Garin staggered back, heat devouring him from within.
"Even a candle," he whispered, "can defy the night… for a breath."
He ran.
Fire became dawn.
The ballroom shattered. Gates collapsed. Nobles and guards were thrown like dolls. Smoke swallowed the hall.
The Duke screamed orders. Steel rang. Blood painted marble.
From the ruins, the Horsemen rode
The ballroom lay in ruin, smoke curling into the vaulted ceiling. The Duke's screams echoed off shattered walls. Fire licked the edges of silken banners. Steel clashed as the Horsemen rode through the wreckage.
And on the floor, where Garin had fallen, his body lay still. Blood matted his hair, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths—or so it seemed.
Then it moved. Slowly. Unnaturally.
Limbs bent at angles that should have shattered bone. His torso twisted like molten wax, elongating, condensing, a misfigured echo of a human. Fingers stretched, spines arched and splintered, a new silhouette crawling toward impossible proportions.
The shape rose, tall, grotesque, a shadow of the man he had been. It writhed, merging flesh into itself, folding in on angles reality should not allow, a living metaphor of desire and decay.
And then—without a sound—the form collapsed inward. A final shiver of impossibility, a hollow sigh of paradox.
Where Garin had stood, there was nothing. No flame, no smoke, no shape. Only the faint scent of burnt iron and memory, a whisper of a candle that had burned too bright.
The hall was silent for a heartbeat. Then chaos resumed. The kingdom had burned. The boy had seen. And the world, somehow, had felt the absence of a
man who had given up on his own life and left behind a wound that reality itself remembered.