The evening air within the Water Ice Kingdom grew heavy and suffocating as twilight fell over the glacial avenues. Taking advantage of Kenji's absence the Hero having been summoned away to an urgent private audience with King Karui Hegemon ventured alone into the narrow, unlit alleys branching off the central plaza to investigate the unnatural behavior of the populace.
However, before he could even piece together a single clue, a phantom shadow lunged from the frost-laden rooftops. A thin, crystalline blade pierced cleanly through Hegemon's spine from behind, severing his life before he could even register the threat. The attack was executed with terrifying, clinical silence.
SNAP!
Hegemon's consciousness violently snapped back as his timeline reset ability forcibly pulled his soul back from the brink of death.
He lunged forward in his bed, gasping wildly for air, clutching his intact chest as cold sweat drenched his clothes. The memory of the freezing steel through his throat burned fresh in his mind. He was back in their assigned guest chambers inside the palace, alive and completely unharmed.
Sitting at a reading desk across the room, illuminated by a pale mana lamp, Lily looked up from a thick leather-bound ledger. Sensing the sudden violent spike in his soul's frequency, her sharp blue eyes locked onto him immediately.
"You died," Lily stated quietly, her voice calm yet devoid of any doubt.
Hegemon took a slow, deliberate breath, steadying his erratic pulse as he nodded. "It was instantaneous. A assassin concealed within the shadow of the alleys. I didn't even hear a footstep."
"Kenji is still detained in the upper hall by King Karui," Lily noted, sliding a sheet of parchment across the table toward him. While Hegemon was out, her infinite informational mana had been quietly scanning the palace's ambient records and structural mana flows. "I have already analyzed the anomaly of this kingdom while you were unconscious."
Hegemon swung his legs over the side of the bed, leaning forward to inspect her notes. "What did you find?"
"The people of this city are not being controlled by a standard mind-binding curse," Lily explained, pointing to a diagram of localized mana vectors. "They are dead. Or rather, their original souls have been completely extracted and replaced by a artificial mana-puppet network anchored directly beneath the royal citadel."
Hegemon's eyes narrowed. "That explains why they react like programmed constructs when approached. They are running on a proximity script."
"Correct," Lily continued coldly. "And as for the one who killed you tonight... it was not an outsider or a member of the Western Cult. The mana signature remaining on the memory trace of your death belongs to the Frost Sentinel Corps King Karui's personal secret guard. King Karui intentionally separated Kenji from us to isolate you. The moment you stepped into the lower alleys to investigate the truth of his hollow kingdom, his executioners were ordered to silence you."