The Empire did not end with a war. It ended with a scream that tore the fabric of reality.
Killian was gone. He had vanished into the northern slums, a man possessed, tearing through every cellar and dungeon in a desperate search for the Duchess.
He had abandoned his post, his rank, and his sanity, chasing a ghost that had been hidden too well.
That makes the tragedy even more sharp—the fact that she was broken so quickly and so completely in just a matter of weeks, rather than years, emphasizes the Duke's sheer brutality and the urgency of Killian's failed rescue.
The Duchess Seraphine Von Astra had been missing for only twenty days.
When Killian finally tracked the carriage tracks to the abandoned coastal fortress, he expected to find a prisoner. He did not expect to find a corpse in waiting. The dungeon was a shallow, airless hole beneath the salt-cracked stone of the castle.
When the iron door gave way, the sight nearly broke his mind. Seraphina was chained upright, her weight supported only by the rusted shackles on her wrists. In just a few short weeks, the vibrant woman he loved had been reduced to something unrecognizable. She was deathly pale, her skin a map of fresh wounds and layers of dried, dark blood.
Killian approached her with a staggering, uneven gait, his heart hammering against his ribs in a rhythm of pure terror.
"Seraphina... I'm here," he whispered, his voice cracking.
Slowly, agonizingly, she raised her head. Her emerald eyes searched the darkness, clouded with pain and the fog of fever. For a heartbeat, she looked at him—really looked at him—and a spark of recognition flickered in the depths of her pupils.
Killian dropped to his knees in front of her, ignoring the filth on the floor. He reached up, his hand trembling as he gently brushed a blood-matted strand of hair from her forehead. "I've got you," he sobbed. "I'm going to save you. We're leaving right now."
But the spark in her eyes didn't grow. It dimmed. As his fingers touched her skin, she leaned her head into his palm one last time, let out a soft, rattling breath, and went still. Her heart gave its final, exhausted thud against the silence of the room.
She was dead. He was seconds too late.
Killian let out a painful, guttural cry that shook the very foundations of the castle. He pulled her limp body into his arms, screaming at the ceiling, and at the God who had let this happen.
As his scream reached its peak, the dark dungeon was suddenly engulfed in a strange, blinding golden light. It poured through the cracks in the ceiling—the explosive, grief-stricken mana of Alaric reaching out from across the Empire. The light swallowed the room, the blood, and the dead Duchess, dragging Killian back into a past he was now determined to rewrite with blood.
___________
While the Shadow searched for the Duchess, the Hero was sent to hunt the Saintess.
Alaric had been given the orders himself. "Investigate the Saintess Evelina. She is suspected of colluding with the Duchess. Bring her to justice.
When Evelina vanished from the Temple, Alaric felt a surge of cold fury. He believed she was escaping. He believed she was guilty. He spent a month tracking her, his "Golden" heart hardening with every mile.
He found her on a grey, rain-slicked morning in the Whispering Woods.
She hadn't escaped.
Evelina was hanging from the gnarled branch of an ancient oak tree. She was so thin she looked like a broken bird, her white robes tattered and stained with the filth of her long imprisonment. She hadn't been running; she had been discarded. The "Saintess" had been broken by the same hands that had snatched Seraphina.
Alaric stood beneath her, his sword falling from his nerveless fingers. The silence of the woods was absolute, save for the creak of the rope.
"No," Alaric whispered. The "Gloom" that had been simmering in his chest for months finally boiled over. "No! I was supposed to save you! I was supposed to be the Knight of Justice!"
He looked at her pale, lifeless face—the woman he had judged, the woman he had hunted—and the realization hit him like a physical blow. He had been a puppet. His "justice" was nothing but a shroud.
The grief was too much for a human heart to contain. Alaric's mana—the pure, holy light granted to the Empire's greatest protector—began to vibrate. It wasn't the gentle glow of a blessing. It was a jagged, violent gold.
"BRING HER BACK!" Alaric roared at the sky, his voice cracking.
His mana exploded. It wasn't a spell; it was an act of pure, desperate cosmic defiance. The golden light expanded in a shockwave that leveled the trees, turning the woods into a white void. It reached across the Empire, catching Killian in the slums and Seraphina in her cold, dark hole.
The force of the regression was like being dragged through broken glass.
The Rebirth
Seraphina bolted upright in her bed, her lungs burning as if she had just been submerged in ice water. Her mind was a fractured mirror, reflecting images of a dungeon, a rope, and a man with crimson eyes.
Across the city, in the Holy Cathedral, Evelina woke up with her hands clawing at her throat, the phantom sensation of the noose still tightening. Her hair, once golden, had streaks of bone-white—the "Mana-Burn" of Alaric's explosion.
In the barracks, Alaric didn't wake up with a smile. He woke up and immediately vomited, his body shaking with the memory of the white void. He looked at his hands and saw the "Golden Knight," but he felt like a murderer.
And in the shadows of the palace, Killian stood perfectly still. His crimson eyes were bloodshot, his heart racing. He remembered the search. He remembered the failure.
The four of them were back. But they were not "young" anymore. They were four ghosts trapped in living bodies, their souls scarred by the violent magic of Alaric's sorrow.
The game had begun again but they are already too damaged.