"Go! Keep running!" a voice echoed from the darkness.
Lilia turned her head in surprise. It was Commander Vior. She wasn't running. Instead, she stood in the middle of the narrow passage, holding her sword.
Her body was covered in wounds, but her eyes gleamed with tenacious determination.
"Vior!!" Lilia cried out, trying to reach for her.
"Your Highness, listen to me!"
Vior shouted, her voice echoing off the stone.
"Hendrix needs a puppet to legitimize his rule! If we all die, he wins completely! I'll buy you time. As long as you're alive, his coup is incomplete!"
"I can't leave you!" Lilia screamed at Vior.
Lilia sobbed, her heart breaking into a million pieces. In one night, she'd lost her parents and her brother, and now her comrades were falling apart one by one.
"Go, Your Highness! Go and live!" Vior screamed as the first wave of ink-black masks emerged from the shadows.
Vior unleashed a devastating wave of slashes, striking several of the pursuing Black Shadows, yet the sound of more footsteps could still be heard in the distance.
"Forgive me, Vior," Maria whispered, a single tear escaping her eye.
She forced her rotting muscles to move, lifting Lilia in her arms and sprinting toward the exit of the tunnel.
They burst out into the stormy night through a hidden grate in the capital's outer walls. Thunder crashed overhead, and a torrential downpour instantly soaked them to the bone.
The cold rain washed away the mud on Lilia's face, but it couldn't wash away the sheer horror consuming her mind.
They ran into the dense forest bordering the capital, but their respite was short-lived. Maria gasped, her body jerking forward.
"Sister!" Lilia scrambled through the mud, rushing to Maria's side.
Maria knew this was the end. The poison from the banquet was shutting down her heart.
"Lilia..." Maria whispered, her hands shaking as she pushed Lilia away.
"Beyond this forest... lies the old western sector... There's a mansion. It's been abandoned for a while... Run there. And hide..." Maria, with her heavy breath, told Lilia.
"Maria, please, don't leave me alone! I'm scared!" Lilia wept, her hands covered in her sister's blood.
"Live, Lilia. You're... the last hope of Regalia. Go on... Live."
Maria smiled weakly and then whispered slowly while looking up at the stormy sky.
'Oh God, if I'll go to hell after this, please... at least let him be alive somewhere... there's only regret I have... That is... not apologizing to him until the end... Landra...I'm sorry...Truly... sorry.'
Then her eyes slowly closed, never to open again.
Lilia cried, but her sobs were drowned out by the heavy rain falling that night.
After a while, Lilia got up. Without looking back, she wiped her tears and ran blindly through the thorn bushes, her screams drowned out by the roar of thunder.
Her feet were bleeding, her dress was torn to tatters, and her lungs burned fiercely. She was no longer a haughty princess. She was just a hunted animal.
For hours, she fled through the wilderness until the forest thinned, revealing a massive silhouette in the distance.
It was the Aurelius Mansion. Once a proud estate belonging to the legendary General Veynord Aurelius, it now stood as a silent, decaying monument.
Its gates were rusted, the gardens overgrown, and the windows dark.
Following her sister's last words, Lilia pushed past the heavy wooden doors, collapsing into the dusty, shadow-drenched grand foyer.
She was shivering violently, her mind on the verge of collapsing from trauma and exhaustion.
'I'm safe,' she thought, clutching her knees. 'No one's here. It's completely abandoned.'
"Who's that?"
A sharp, cold voice sliced through the silence of the mansion.
Lilia gasped, her heart leaping into her throat. She looked up, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes.
Standing at the top of the grand, dust-covered staircase was a young man. He held a flickering candle in one hand and a rusted iron sword in the other.
He wore simple, worn-out clothes, but his posture was unnaturally straight, radiating the distinct discipline of a military commander. His sharp eyes locked onto her trembling form.
Lilia froze. She recognized that face from her childhood, recalling how she used to see Maria playing with a certain man.
That man was also one of the people who had witnessed the most embarrassing moment of her life.
It was Landra Aurelius. The exiled, disgraced son of the late General Veynord.
The man is rumored to be the biggest disappointment and the most incompetent commander in the history of the Western army.
But as Landra stared down at her, his eyes didn't show the confusion of a useless exile.
Instead, a flash of profound shock and realization crossed his face.
He looked at her tattered sapphire gown, her blood-stained hands, and the unmistakable royal crest on her ruined tiara.
'The sapphire dress... the blood... the timestamp, Landra thought, his grip tightening on his sword. This is the prologue event. The Imperial Capital has already fallen. Hendrix's coup has succeeded. Which means... my mother and sister have already been captured and sold into slavery by Hendrix's men.'
Landra exhaled a slow, cold breath, descending the stairs toward the terrified princess.
The game had begun, and he was stuck in the body of its worst character.
But looking at the weeping girl before him, he knew his path to vengeance had just walked right through his front door.