17th Veyra, 495 IC, Dawnsworn
[Emerald Castle]
The first thing Alden registered was air. Clean. Cold. Laced with incense. Not the ash-choked stench of the ruined capital.
"This is... my room." The words came out as a whisper when his eyes opened to velvet curtains and familiar stone. Not frost. Not lava. His bed was too soft. The silence, unnervingly gentle.
He turned his head. The imperial calendar rested on the nightstand, exactly where he used to keep it decades ago, 'perhaps longer, since time moved uniquely in the Abyss'. He grabbed the calendar.
Seventeenth Day of Veyrn's Grace, Year 495 IC, Dawnsworn Era.
A date from before everything burned. Before she vanished, cursing him.
He stared at the date for a long time.
He had done it. He was back. Not as he was, broken, hollow, carved empty by loss, but reshaped, younger.
All the pain, all the years spent clawing through layers of madness in the Abyss, had delivered him to this singular moment.
He could no longer feel the endless cycle of agony, being burned and frozen alive by her Curse, that had consumed him until his final breath in the Abyss.
The memories rushed back unbidden, of how he had finally reached her land...
---
Before he entered the Abyss, after years wandering the scarred earth, he had found it at last: the path to reclaim the one who had forsaken him. He crossed the rift without hesitation, into what had once been sacred ground.
Antithesis.
But it was ruined, no, this was desecration. Barrels were shattered, chains were embedded in the soil, and weapons were rusted mid-swing. A few human bodies remained, preserved in ice, while the rest had collapsed into mounds of bone, charred and decayed for decades. The two great Trees, their barks scored and blackened, each bleeding a different color.
'An army had been here,' he concluded. 'A war had taken place, with overwhelming numbers on the human side.'
Even the count of frozen bodies vastly outnumbered the angels, no... the Saelaris he had known.
The invaders hadn't cared about the sacrifice, all to achieve their prize, their own guardians.
The sight did not stir him. He only whispered in recognition, "So my empire had reached here too."
Then he turned his gaze upward to the Blood Tree, now cracked with wounds that hadn't healed.
"Virelya," he called out, his voice low and sharp. "Return her to me." It was a demand, as if asking for what was rightfully his.
The Tree remained silent.
He did not wait. He sat, seized a knife from the wreckage at his feet, and with one clean motion cut the palm of his right hand. Blood welled and sealed itself instantly. He dipped his finger and began drawing symbols in the soil, never breaking his stare at the blood tree, the mother of the woman he had come to claim.
---
[Cease your actions this very moment.] An ancient female voice like an echo of eternity pierced Alden's ears.
He paused, slightly annoyed that even while weakened and bleeding, she had not broken her rule of silence until he threatened to drag the chaos beings into her roots.
"Finally deciding to talk..." he said with a smirk.
Then another sound like groaning bark and sighing wind passed through the Tree's limbs.
[You arrive tardy, O wretched prince of cinders.]
Alden saw Nhalrien, the Tree of frost whose leaves used to shimmer like flowing water, now lifeless.
Virelya spoke again in her ancient but sharp tone:
[Last Emperor of Earth, your kind has wrought what even chaos dared not attempt. And you dare petition for her?]
Alden raised a hand. "What my kind did, huh?" He knelt and resumed drawing the circle in the scarred soil, symbols that started getting dark as his blood began pulsing.
"Virelya, you should already be aware of this... I am fully capable of opening the rift here and letting chaos beings in even without this circle." He spoke while touching his pendant, Ichor that was glowing red on his neck with his other hand. "...And we can all get ruined together... So choose."
The hidden threat was clear: If you want me to stop, return her.
The bark cracked again, this time not in pain, but in warning.
[You are not the architect of this ruin. Yet you remain complicit in what led her to this fate.]
Alden didn't answer. He didn't deny it. He simply kept drawing with his blood.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with decades of grief and fury, each side carrying their own share. Alden's hand moved steadily, each symbol deeper than the last, each stroke a promise of destruction. Beneath his fingertips, the chaos energy hummed, eager to spill into this wounded realm.
Finally, as if in reluctant resignation, Nhalrien answered:
[She dwells not here. Her essence has long departed, scattered beyond my grasp. She was never ours to command from the beginning...]
Alden froze, processing the words. A slow, creeping anxiety returned to him, fear that he hadn't felt in a very long time, fear of losing her completely.
"...Explain." Alden's voice was colder now, trembling. "There must be a way..."
[O wretched cursed soul... The sole means to find her... is to traverse back through the river of time.] Nhalrien responded to him as if in pain. [Before all of this came to pass.]
He looked up, finally still.
"...Then turn back time. What are you waiting for?"
[It is beyond our power. We no longer possess the strength to reverse time's flow. There exists but one path... Yet...]
Alden didn't want to play her games, but he had no choice. "Tell me..."
But Nhalrien kept silent.
This time Virelya spoke, her voice carrying a mocking edge. [The deepest sanctum of the Chaos Realm is named the Abyss, and at its heart lies the Abyss Core. The core is what you require.] The echo lingered. Alden stared motionless as he listened.
[No being has survived its depths. Should you step into the Abyss, you shall forfeit all—your flesh, your spirit, your very identity—wandering without purpose through eternity, until you can cling to what you desire with sufficient strength.]
She added, mirthful, as if daring him.
[And should you falter, or should your conviction prove frail, you shall never reclaim them. You shall forget you ever loved her, and you shall become one of the chaos beings you fought to reach this place...]
Her voice shifted, serious now, like dry leaves rattling:
[I can only send you to the threshold of the Chaos Realm. Should you still desire to venture forth, forge a 'DEAL OF MEMORY' with us, and we shall reveal the path, and the means, to bend time backward.]
Alden stepped forward, dragging the Chaos Threads he had collected from Earth into his fingers, threads that wouldn't be destroyed even when burned or frozen.
"If I succeed in bringing that core, you will send me back to the past?"
[Nay, that shall not be necessary. Should you triumph in claiming the core, you shall wield the power yourself. Be forewarned, success is scarce. Will you still forge the pact, Last Emperor of Earth?]
Alden stared up. "Tell me the way."
[Hm...] Virelya had strange surprise in her ancient voice at his lack of hesitation. But then, as if understanding something, she continued. [Think again, Last Emperor. You shall receive no second chances. Once you enter that realm, there is no retreat, no rescue.]
"State your condition. I will go... now..."
And thus the deal was made. Alden jumped into the depths of the Abyss of his own accord, a place where even deities did not gaze.
He had not failed.
---
The memories faded as a knock came at the door.
"Your Highness? Are you awake?"
Elara.
His mother's handmaiden, a loyal, calm, and kind old woman.
Alden didn't answer. He stood and pulled the curtain aside.
The capital sprawled beneath him, alive, sunlit. The people moved as if nothing had ever gone wrong. Because nothing had. Not yet.
"The Empress," Elara's voice cracked behind the door. "She passed quietly. In the night."
Alden paused only to remember: this was the day his mother died.
He'd lived through this moment before, felt this loss tear through him like a blade. But now, it felt distant. Like watching rain through glass.
Alden walked out without dressing. He moved past Elara's startled gasp, past her fumbling attempts to follow with a robe. He passed down the halls he knew by heart, vague, but his body remembered, every stone, every shadow, every servant who would bow and every guard who would rush into position. All of them had died in the timeline he'd erased. They looked at him with concern, with pity, with the careful distance reserved for the newly bereaved.
He strode from Emerald Castle, the crown prince's residence, toward Arabella Castle, where his mother lay.
On his way, he kept trying to remember the face of the woman who had always lain in bed, paralyzed for seven years, ever since he was ten. A powerless count's daughter who had risen to Empress. Despite the Emperor's numerous women, she had somehow held her title. And by doing so, had kept him the sole legitimate heir. He tried to summon her face and found only fragments, pale hands stroking his hair during childhood fever, eyes gentle even when the world demanded hardness, a voice whispering angel-stories each night until he slept.
And her face? He couldn't remember. A face he'd seen decades ago in his last timeline, though it felt like centuries had passed in that timeless place.
In the midst of his reverie, Alden reached Arabella Castle, its familiar architecture still whole and unscarred. He walked past the hallway, entered her chamber and sat by her bedside.
And then he saw his mother's face again...
She was not striking, her lips gray from long suffering, her features just above average at best. But hers was a soul that had cherished him more than anyone else ever had. Her closed eyes looked as though she might wake up any moment and call out to him, "Alden, my baby, the loveliest blessing. Be always kind and good, and make mother proud..."
When had she said this to him? He couldn't remember. It felt like an echo of a voice so blurred that it couldn't even leave a wave in the air.
He touched her cheek with fingers that trembled only slightly. It was cold. Like a chilly Helmra morning. In his first life, this moment had shattered him. He'd wept until his throat was raw, had raged at the gods and fate and the cruel joke of timing that had taken her just as he was about to come of age.
Alden closed his eyes. He could feel no grief, nor did his heart ache. He silently opened his eyes again and gazed at her face, trying to fully set her features in his memory, so he would never forget them again.
Then he stood up, stood vigil by his mother's bed as the sun climbed higher, watching shadows shift across her still face. Servants came and went, speaking in hushed tones about preparations and protocols. He ignored them all.
"I'm sorry, Mother. I cannot be a good person. Not anymore."
The heavy passing of time allowed him to sort out his emotions and thoughts. It was time to say goodbye. For the last time. Again.
"Even though I couldn't make you proud, mother, no... mom... I hope you would understand..."
He looked through the window, gaze distant. Detached.
Many unsaid words passed through his calm eyes. And then slowly... very slowly he turned back with a whisper.
'Aurenya.'
Her name was a prayer and a Curse, the only thing left in the wasteland of his soul. Everything else, love, loyalty, honor, mercy, had been burned away in service to that single, consuming need.
This time, he was here to build.
A cage.
For an angel.
---
Imperial Chapel
The funeral had lasted the entire day. As crown prince of Leonhelm and son of the late empress, Alden's presence had been demanded at every moment. He stood beneath the vaulted arches of the Imperial Chapel, walked at the head of the procession, receiving the nobles' endless condolences.
Even while the empress had lain paralyzed for the last seven years, he had stood tall. Now a master of the blade, he had grown into steel. Yet voices still drifted like cautious smoke.
"Now they call him a swordmaster; who could even dare to touch him?"
"But he is just a boy of seventeen, poor thing, now motherless."
"A new empress will soon fill that vacancy."
"Why was it empty in the first place? Wasn't she already bedridden..."
"Shhh... There are things you shouldn't speak out loud."
Those murmurs curled around the chapel as nobles tried to gauge Alden's face for any crack the words might open.
They had all watched him carefully: lords and ministers with eyes sharp as hawks, searching for any weakness or opportunity.
The four dukes stood just behind Alden, closest to the crown prince as a show of station and duty. Unlike the whispering crowd, they betrayed no cunning; only sorrow was written on their faces, an honest, public grief, though their eyes shimmered with politics beneath the mask. Duke Varik of the southern province, Duke Ashvale of the eastern province, Duke Helbart of the northern province, and Duke Viremont of the western province formed a solid line: pillars of the realm arrayed behind the heir, but each with a different goal in mind.
Aran lingered a pace behind the dukes, his bow flawless, his expression the picture of perfect pity, enough to satisfy any casual glance but never enough to reveal the ember of envy beneath. Prince Jeremy, another half-brother of Alden, shifted in ceremonial black, jaw tight, whispering under his breath to Princess Jenna, "Everyone is only looking at him. As if we don't exist."
Princess Jenna, veiled and semi-composed, kept her answer measured: "For now, brother, patience. Wait until our mother becomes the empress."
Her eyes flicked toward Aran with cold disdain. Quietly, in a voice meant only for Prince Jeremy, she added, "And Aran, that leech, look at him crying. He plays the dutiful son as if it's his mother that died. He thinks that posture will buy him everything. He should learn his place."
Prince Jeremy's face lit with a small, cruel grin. "Then shouldn't we teach him?"
"Someone should teach him." Jenna's smile was thin. "The best lessons are personal, don't you think?"
Jeremy caught her meaning immediately. "Very personal." His whisper was eager, before his tone shifted, hesitant. "But won't Alden catch us? He protects him like his own brother."
"That's only if he has proof." Princess Jenna smirked, her eyes bright under the veil.
The priests of Zerath Church intoned the ritual, voices echoing beneath the vaults. They wore faces of genuine pity; how much of it was real, no one could tell. Their eyes kept sliding toward the crown prince.
But Alden gave them nothing. His expression was carved from obsidian. He did not flinch at the weight of their stares, nor when the courtiers bent low with condolences thick with calculation. He stood as the empire's pillar: unassailable, untouchable.
Only when the coffin sank into the earth did his gaze flicker. Once. Only to return to nothing.
---
[Emerald Castle, Prince Alden's Bedchamber]
Late that night, the palace lay still. His chamber drowned in shadow, curtains drawn against the moonlight. Alden sprawled across the bed, boots still on, coat loosened, one arm thrown over his eyes. Black hair spilled untamed across the pillow. His chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of someone too weary to dream, yet his eyes, when revealed, were voids, deep and lightless, with a faint glimmer within, like a hidden star glimpsed in an abyss.
The air carried the scent of earth, the burial grounds clinging to him like a second skin.
A pendant at his throat, the Ichor, glowed faintly red before dimming again.
Alden's voice broke the silence, low and rough, yet softened as though spoken to someone impossibly near, like a whisper meant for a lover who was not there.
"It was a long day..." He who had shown no change all day gave a single shuddering breath, as if a thousand words clung to his throat like small knives. "How are you doing?" he asked, swallowing them all.
Then he continued with muted calm, "My mother died today. She was kind, told me stories about angels, how they grant wishes to good children."
The words carried no grief, no trembling, only a strange, quiet weight, the weight of someone who spoke not to remember, but simply to be heard.
'Will my wish be fulfilled... if I am good?'
The thought pressed at him but never reached his lips. He knew the answer. He had known it for decades.
No one entered his room, no one sat by his side. And still, he spoke on. As if a dam had broken, words kept spilling from his mouth, gazing toward somewhere unknown, yet nowhere in particular. Alden kept talking to the dark air of this room where not a soul was present.
He told stories.
Of a boy who walked beside rivers clear as glass, where every stone beneath the water glimmered like polished crystal, and children skipped them across the surface while their laughter echoed for miles.
Of a village whose rooftops glowed with lantern-light on moonlit nights, hundreds of golden spheres drifting skyward like captive stars, released one by one until the heavens themselves seemed to shine brighter.
Of strangers who laughed freely, their voices unburdened, and streets that smelled of rain and fresh bread, where a child could run barefoot and always find welcome home.
He spoke of a marketplace where a girl sold flowers wrapped in paper cones, her hands stained with pollen, the whole street fragrant as summer meadows.
Of an old man who built wind chimes from scraps of broken armor, and how their song, metallic yet sweet, rang clear through storms, as if to mock thunder with joy.
Of a hidden garden where fruits are always in abundance, picked ripe in their time, ready to eat and savor with your mouth.
Each tale was painted in light. Each was about others, never himself.
And so he went on, weaving a world of beauty for someone who could not see it.
But he knew... she was listening.
Unlike the shadowed chamber where even moonlight could not penetrate the heavy curtains, another realm blazed with radiance beyond mortal comprehension.
---
Far from any mortal sky, in a realm woven from light itself, the air shifted. A subtle tremor. Aurenya stirred. Luminescence rolled over her skin in slow, molten waves, gathering in the hollow of her throat, glinting along the curve of her cheek. Her wings, the vast sweeps of living lava, unfurled from around her like a blooming star. Gold simmered through the molten folds, then deepened toward a quiet ember-red, as though waking with her.
Aurenya's eyelids fluttered. The glow beneath them pulsed once, amber flaring to gold, before her gaze lifted toward the empty brilliance above. She drew in a breath, lips parting with a soft tremor that sent a ripple of heat through her wings. For a moment, the realm held its breath with her.
A voice was spilling endlessly into the silence. One after another, in beautiful wave.
Aurenya opened her eyes wide. She looked around hesitantly, then focused toward the golden lake.
Gold brightened into a sharp, molten flare. She leaned forward, every ember in her body straining toward the sound. The words from somewhere unknown flowed on, filling the realm's quiet spaces, chasing away the hollow stillness that had clung to her for years.
Her lips parted, silently shaping words. Questions about marketplaces, about mothers, about the ache of being small and cherished. But the voice did not pause for her. The heat in her wings pulsed, then settled into a steady, warm glow.
She let the questions die on her tongue.
She then simply closed her eyes and kept listening, not even aware of the soft curve of her lips.
---
[Bathing Chamber, Emerald Palace]
The water ran over him, a warm and gentle caress against skin that had long been accustomed to cold steel and the touch of chaos. Alden's eyes were half-closed. He didn't sleep at all last night, but it didn't matter. Steam curled around him, clinging to the hard-trained body. His every movement was heavy with purpose, a grace born of a million fights. He let the water cascade over him as if trying to wash away a lifetime of dust and blood. Now relaxing his body under the soothing yet unfamiliar flow of water, Alden closed his eyes.
The noise of the shower blurred, becoming the roar of a memory in his mind, the roar of a war he had just returned from. At first, there were survivors, villages and cities far from the capital of the Leonhelm Empire had endured. For a while he tried to find every clue to learn what actually transpired while he was at war.
Then he sought every magic, every book, every heretic, priest, and madman. He didn't care about the source or the cost. He learned archery of light from the High Elves and archery of shadow from captured Shadow Cloak.
Light magic to reach the soul, failed.
Blood rituals using his own blood, burned out.
Shadow magic to trace her location, silenced.
When he asked families of dead and survivors, they just laughed at his desperation. The memory shifted, growing more frantic. He walked through ash-covered fields where nothing grew. He passed through dead cities, through the wreckage of temples, ruined altars, and broken shrines, until he reached the edge of the world.
He kept walking.
Only he alone...
No food. No water. No sleep. No life. He didn't die. He couldn't.
Time slipped. Years, then decades, they were meaningless.
All he had was time and her name and under his footstep was a ruined earth, haunted by chaos beings.
Alden's eyes snapped open. The roar of chaos was gone; only the gentle patter of water remained, dripping from his forehead to the porcelain tub. He rose, the steam curling away from his skin. The room outside had stirred; servants, alerted by the sound of running water, were already lined up.
Clothing was prepared. Hands reached to dress him. He stopped them with a single, quiet wave. His gaze was distant, unreadable. The servants withdrew without a word, their eyes downcast, full of quiet pity.
The empress had died yesterday, it would be strange if the crown prince acted as though nothing had happened. When the last of them left, Alden dressed himself.
He chose plain attire: a simple reddish-brown tunic, leather breeches, and no jewels or gold thread other than his red pendant hanging low on his chest. Such things had long been meaningless to him. For the next stage of his plan, they would be even more useless.
Droplets still clung to his obsidian hair, trailing down his neck as he paused. With one hand he covered half his face, as though dragging the Abyss back into his eyes, restraining the monster that pressed to emerge, then calmly walked out. His boots struck against the floor in a measured rhythm, deliberate, unhurried, the pace of someone long accustomed to waiting. He neither glanced at the mirror nor adjusted his collar.
His gaze fixed ahead, his lips a thin, silent line.
---
Imperial Court
The great doors opened, and Alden stepped inside. Sunlight filtered through the stained glass high above, fractured colors spilling across the marble floor. At the far end, Emperor Caelus IV sat upon the throne, his expression carved into calm authority.
Alden's gaze flickered once, and turned away again.
As he crossed the threshold he claimed the space as his own; every noble in the hall bowed their heads in a unified gesture of mourning for the late empress. Alden's reply was exact: a polite bow first toward Emperor Caelus IV, then an acknowledging nod toward the assembled lords. His fingers brushed once against his tunic as he straightened, his steps measured to the rhythm of stone beneath boot heels. Each gesture was perfect.
The nobles, expecting a broken boy, whispered among themselves. They searched his expression for cracks, a falter, a tremor, anything to confirm their assumptions. None came.
Inwardly, he thought, 'How vain.' Their grief was theatre, one he had watched too many times to mistake for sincerity.
And then he sat in his designated seat, beside the throne of Emperor Caelus IV.
The court began with Duke Ashvale, whose words flowed like polished marble, layered with courtesy and regret over the empress's passing. But before the weight of his condolences could settle, he shifted to the true point: a proposal for a new empress to be chosen without delay.
Alden's lips did not move, but in his heart he smirked.
He who had once stood on the threshold of the Abyssal ruler was not stirred in the slightest by such petty maneuvering. The words of these men were nothing more than the moves of chess pieces, predictable, bound by their own limits. A rook could never move diagonally.
Even now, he knew the path of play before it began. Duke Ashvale would nominate his cousin, Consort Miriam from the emperor's harem. Duke Helbart, Alden's uncle, would reject her for being 'too young', perhaps adding something about her 'lack of experience'. Another would feign support only to negotiate favor elsewhere.
It was all so inevitable that the lines of their speeches echoed in his mind before their mouths had even shaped them.
He did not wait for them to finish. His voice cut through the chamber, firm, and touched with the perfect shade of controlled indignation.
"The empress has only just departed for the heavens. Such talk will only pain her spirit. Duke Ashvale, I suggest we wait a while longer, let her soul find peace before we speak of her successor. We can revisit this at a later time."
The same words he had once spoken in the past, back then out of raw fury, were now delivered as part of a deliberate play. After all, the idea of a new empress was a perfect carrot to dangle before their eyes, a distraction from what he intended to do next.
When the court adjourned, Alden rose and left the chamber without haste. In the corridor, he summoned Limon as he always did.
But this time...
The doors of the throne hall closed behind Alden with a muted thud, the echoes of bickering nobles fading into silence. Marble pillars rose like pale sentinels on either side, and the corridor's long stretch of crimson carpet seemed to swallow his footsteps whole.
Alden paused beneath the shadow of an archway.
"Limon," he said quietly.
His attendant emerged at once from a respectful distance, bowing low, red hair falling neatly over his forehead.
"You summoned me, Your Highness."
Alden did not turn his head; only his hand shifted behind his back.
"First," Alden murmured, "prepare a sealed correspondence. It is to be sent to Aethelgard."
Limon's breath hitched before he caught himself. "Aethelgard, Your Highness? The secluded..."
"Yes," Alden said, tone razor-soft. "The message must state that the crown prince of Leonhelm seeks a private audience."
He resumed walking, his expression serene.
"Visit the magic towers... all of them," he continued. "Arcanum, Silver Star, Green Spire, The Red Atelier, even the Alchemists' Conclave."
Limon's steps faltered. Alden did not slow down.
"You will inquire into every poison and alchemical craft capable of inducing long-term paralysis, causes, symptoms, treatments, false leads, obscure variants. Anything relevant."
Limon swallowed. "...Your Highness suspects..."
"Suspect nothing," Alden said, voice calm as he spoke each word. "I intend to acquire. And after your inquiries..." He turned slightly, the faintest shift of his posture. "Send letters to each tower lord. They are to meet me in person."
Limon straightened, bowing with renewed seriousness. "I will make the arrangements immediately, Your Highness."
Their conversation halted abruptly as the sound of soft footsteps drifted toward them, light, deliberate, yet impossible to conceal. Both men turned toward the source.
Lady Emmelyne, daughter of Duke Viremont of the West, approached with flawless poise.