The journey toward the heart of the Mario Kingdom felt heavier with every step. The dirt beneath our boots seemed to hold the echoes of a fallen dynasty, and the air grew colder as Moya continued his grim narration. We were no longer just traveling through a country; we were walking through a graveyard of forgotten justice.
The Year 3206: The Siege and the Bond
To understand the tragedy, one must look back to the year 3206. In the southern reaches of the kingdom, the small town of Koyola faced a nightmare. A sudden, violent surge of high-rank monsters had broken through the natural defenses of the valley. The local Slayers were dying, their blades shattered against the hide of beasts they were never meant to face.
It was during this dark hour that King Selena M. Alaric did the unthinkable for a monarch of his time. He did not send a general; he took up his own sword, the Sun-Steel Blade, and led his personal guard into the fray. Among the survivors in Koyola was a young, sharp-eyed man—Hoya, Moya's father, who had just been appointed as the Guild Master of that branch.
"I remember my father telling me about that day," Moya said, his voice trembling slightly. "He saw the King drenched in the black blood of monsters, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with common soldiers. Alaric didn't stay in a tent; he slept on the ground with the men. He spent weeks in Koyola, helping the widows and rebuilding the granaries with his own hands."
The people of Koyola didn't just respect Alaric; they loved him with a fervor that bordered on religious. They compared him openly to his late older brother, the former King Selena M. Zylet. Zylet had been a man of iron and shadow, an expansionist who saw his people only as tools for war. Alaric was the dawn that followed Zylet's long, dark night.
When the King finally prepared to return to the capital city of Moka, the entire town gathered at the gates to cheer. He returned to find his wife, Queen Elowen, glowing with the news of her second pregnancy. Life in the palace was a haven of laughter. Alaric would spend hours in the royal gardens, teaching young Prince Auther how to recognize the different medicinal herbs, promising him that soon, a little sister would join their walks.
The Shadow of the Black Tiger
However, beneath the surface of this golden age, a serpent was coiling. A faction of the old nobility, men who had prospered under Zylet's tyranny, felt their influence slipping under Alaric's egalitarian rule. They missed the days of conquest and the wealth that came from the suffering of others. They began to meet in secret, in the damp cellars of Moka's elite district.
"They were too cowardly to act alone," Moya spat, his eyes burning with hatred. "So they invited the Devil to their table."
That 'Devil' was Doka, an elite officer of the Black Tiger King (BTK), known by the terrifying moniker Code 80. Doka was a man who saw nations as mere pieces on a chessboard. He approached the traitorous ministers with a simple, bloody proposal.
"You want a King who listens to you?" Doka had sneered, leaning over a map of the Mario Kingdom. "The BTK will provide the assassins and the funding to replace Alaric. In return, the Mario Kingdom becomes our private port, a place where the law of the world does not apply, and the law of the Tiger reigns supreme."
The ministers, blinded by greed, signed the contract. They decided to strike when the King would be most distracted, at the height of his joy—the day of the Princess's birth.
The Year 3207: The Night of the Red Snow
The winter of 3207 was unusually harsh. Inside the palace, the warmth of the hearths couldn't mask the tension in the air. As the first cries of the newborn Princess Selena M. Mason echoed through the halls, the gates of the palace were opened from within.
Assassins clad in midnight-black leather moved like smoke through the corridors. They didn't just kill; they executed. The loyal royal guards, caught between their duties and the shock of betrayal, fell in heaps. Doka led the charge, his curved blade dripping with the blood of men he considered beneath him.
"Where is the 'Kind King'?" Doka laughed, the sound chilling the marrow of those who heard it.
Alaric, alerted by the sounds of slaughter, realized the palace had fallen. He didn't waste time on a doomed defense. He gathered Elowen, the infant Mason, and the five-year-old Auther, leading them through the labyrinthine secret passages designed for the kingdom's darkest hour.
But Doka was a master of the hunt. He tracked the royal family to the secret exit in the palace woods. The moment they stepped into the cold night air, they were surrounded.
"Elowen, run!" Alaric screamed, drawing his Sun-Steel blade.
Doka moved with an unnatural speed, a blur of shadow and steel. Before anyone could react, he closed the distance. With one clean, horrific stroke, Queen Elowen's life was ended. Her golden hair was stained red as her body slumped into the snow.
"MOTHER!" Auther's scream pierced the night, a sound of such pure agony that it momentarily halted the assassins.
Alaric erupted in a fury fueled by grief. He channeled every ounce of his Atara into his blade, turning it into a pillar of golden light. He fought like a god of war, but Doka was prepared. The BTK officer used the dark ability to kill him.Alaric's strikes. The battle was short and brutal. Doka plunged his sword deep into Alaric's chest, twisting the metal with a sadistic grin.
In the chaos, Alaric had managed to shove the bundle containing the infant Mason into a dense thicket of thorns. As he fell, he watched as Doka's men seized Prince Auther.
"The boy is useful," Doka commanded, wiping Elowen's blood from his blade. "We need a 'King' to sign our papers. As for the baby... leave it. The wolves or the cold will finish what I started. We have a kingdom to run."
The Final Ride of a King
Doka and his men marched back toward the burning palace, dragging a screaming Auther with them. They believed Alaric was dead. They were wrong.
A father's love is a force that even the BTK could not calculate. Driven by a primal, supernatural will to survive, Alaric crawled through the frozen dirt. His internal organs were failing, and his life was leaking into the snow, but he reached the thorns. He pulled the silent, shivering Mason into his arms.
He found a horse in the royal stables that had escaped the fire. With the last of his strength, he tied himself to the saddle and rode. He didn't head for the cities; he headed for the border of the Valliette Kingdom, the only place the BTK's reach was still limited.
He rode through the night, through the pain that threatened to drown his consciousness. He saw the lights of Boro City as the sun began to rise on a world that no longer had a Queen. He reached the gates of the orphanage, his vision almost entirely gone.
He unfastened the Royal Crest of Selena M. from his neck—the red pendant that had been passed down through generations of kings. He tucked it into Mason's blankets, his fingers numb and bloodied.
"Forgive me, my daughter," he whispered, his voice a mere rattle in his chest. "I cannot give you a throne. I can only give you a life. Grow strong. Be kinder than the world was to us."
He placed the child on the doorstep, rang the bell with a final, desperate tug, and retreated into the shadows. He didn't want the killers to find her by finding him. He stumbled a mile past the city walls, collapsing under an ancient oak tree. There, as the morning sun hit his face, King Selena M. Alaric finally found peace. His heart stopped, his hand still reaching toward the city where his daughter lay safe.
The Present: The Border of Mario
Moya finished his story, and a heavy silence settled over our party. Mason stood as still as a statue, her hand white-knuckled as she gripped the red pendant. The 'lucky charm' she had cherished for years was actually a relic of a massacre, a weight of blood and sacrifice she had never asked for.
"They think we are dead," Mason said, her voice dropping to an octave that sent shivers down my spine. "They think they won."
Luke stepped forward, his green hair shadowed by his hood, his blue flames licking the edges of his sleeves. "They forgot one thing, Mason. They left a Survivor. And that Survivor grew up to be a Slayer."
I looked toward the horizon. The dark spires of Moka were visible now, like black teeth biting into the sky. "The Black Tiger King doesn't know it yet, but their twenty-year reign just ended. We aren't here for a mission. We're here for an execution."
Mason looked at the pendant one last time before tucking it firmly under her armor. "Moya, lead the way. I want to see what they've done to my home. And then, I'm going to show Doka exactly what happens when you leave a Selena M. alive."
The Blue Sky moved forward, four shadows against the setting sun, marching toward a palace of ghosts and the reckoning that was twenty years in the making.