Red crests ignited. The throne room split open. The blood opera began.
The captains did not hesitate.
"Kill anything in the way." Vaerlin lunged, his umbrella twisted open—its inner ribs lit with glowing celestial etchings as winds howled like ancient chorales. He spun once, vanishing in a corkscrew of starlight and cutting gales, reappearing beside a horned witch mid-incantation. Her lips parted in surprise—too late.
His umbrella snapped open, the wind inside compressed like a divine storm trapped in a cage, and shattered her upper half into dust. With a pivot, he slid beneath a dark familiar—a bloated wolf made of fused torsos—and punched upward, his fist wrapped in swirling astral crescents.
BOOM.
The punch launched the beast upward into the chandelier, where it was speared by falling shards and torn apart by Vaerlin's rising blade, which he conjured from the umbrella's spine—a serrated meteor-forged rod that howled with orbiting particles of light. He then vaulted backward, letting four spears of red hellfire tear through where he stood—fired by a trio of witches in spiraling crimson robes, each with skeletal wings and stitched eyes.
They were laughing. Until Arinelle landed between them.
"Fucking bastards! Die!"
Arinelle moved like a shadow unchained from its owner.
She crashed down, her wings monstrous now—spined and razor-tipped, shaped like twin crescents of midnight, with horns curled up and black as voidsteel. Her eyes burned amber, and her smile was that of a predator.
"Run…."
'This is really happening…'
The witches flung red sigils toward her—Veilbrand Sigils, ancient runes carved from the mouths of sinners, meant to erase flesh from bone. But Arinelle surged forward—vanishing in a burst of primal smoke, only to reform inside one of the witches' bodies, claws ripping out her throat from the inside.
"RAGGHHHHHH!"
The others turned—but too late. A feral chain of shadow-beasts burst from her spine, their heads resembling deer skulls made of collapsing void. They clamped on the remaining witches, dragging them into the air as Arinelle's body contorted and snapped midair like a scythe, tail cutting one in half at the waist as her wings crushed the third to paste.
Each kill was animal. Precision layered with madness.
Then came Alistair.
"Push these through idiots! We didn't come this far to lose against a traitor and broomstick riders."
The sword of destruction glowed with a pulsing black-orange fissure, and he cleaved through three familiars in one seamless blur—each slice carved the air itself apart, sucking in sound and leaving behind total silence. One beast lunged—a serpentine entity wrapped in a bleeding priest's garb, breathing embers from its torn mouth.
Alistair didn't flinch.
'I've always been reckless in battle….Jethro was the one who always told me to calm down. But I always told him if I stopped, then I have nothing else to live for. I'm reckless for the kingdom, and myself. If I slow, I'll eventually be stopped. I can't stop. My life would lose meaning…'
He raised his blade high, muttering an ancient phrase—"Tear. Undo. Scatter."—and his sword expanded, not physically, but through destruction itself, its edge becoming a fissure of annihilation. He dragged it down, and the serpent familiar was shattered into pieces, each piece imploding into black sand.
A red-crested summoner behind him conjured a coffin-shaped portal spewing with chains made of screaming mouths.
Alistair twisted his body in a low sweep, then kicked off a wall, flipping behind the summoner. One stab to the spine. One explosion. The summoner's head twisted, face melting as the destruction magic unwove his skull like a tapestry.
Vaerlin and Arinelle briefly clashed back to back—Arinelle hurling herself up on Vaerlin's umbrella mid-spin, launching herself over a charging chimera to slice its head with her feet, while Vaerlin used the recoil to punch a starburst blast downward, cleaving through six crawling familiars.
"Keep going, Arinelle!"
"Never gonna stop…Jethro's head is mine."
"Not if I get to him first. He'll pay for this."
Blood rained. Screams tangled with chanting.
Vaerlin saw Jethro vanishing into the far hall.
He gave chase even more.
Behind them, Thrain was a walking mountain of gore. He didn't run. He bulldozed.
'I'm doing good…aren't I? My loyalty…my body being used as a shield for the queen and an unknown boy from who knows where. I'm a man now..aren't I father? Showing my loyalty while risking my life for the royal bloodline…what else can I do?'
Still carrying Silas and Kaelis, he crushed a leaping beast with his forehead, its black fangs snapping uselessly against his rocky brow. A witch lunged with a blade of living worms, and he bit it in half, roaring, then slammed her body into the ground, cracking the marble like paper.
Kaelis watched, wide-eyed, splattered with blood. This was war. Real. Not fantasy.
'This guy…he's risking his life for us…why me?! I've never met him…'
Silas shook, unable to speak.
Thrain kept going. "I will not let you die, my queen!" he roared.
A cursed creature—eight limbs, glass eyes, ribs curled outward—descended in front of him. He didn't slow. He morphed his arms into jagged pillars, and smashed the beast so hard its ribcage fired outward like shrapnel.
Blood sprayed over Kaelis's chest and face.
He gagged. "What the fuck is happening?!"
Meanwhile—
Vaerlin caught up to Jethro, sprinting across a sky-bridge lined with stained glass. Ahead, Ys'Viruna turned to Jethro, her expression grim.
"This could prove… problematic," she murmured. "Years I spent reconnecting to Hell… all for this moment. But the wolf hasn't come. This is why you waited so long to really make a move on the kingdom, Jethro. Until I fully connected with Hell to conjure the beast. That is my apologies."
Jethro snarled. "We needed the beast. With it, Silas would have died quickly. Painfully, yes—but it would've been real. Not by my hand. Not yours. But by its nature. Spending time with her parents, I found out Silas is very hard to kill. As an ancestor of divine blood, it is natural. But the celestial beast from hell would've done the job for us. If she falls, then the kingdom loses power. The soul of a king and queen fuels the kingdom's life force. If a king or queen dies without a new one being ordained, the kingdom falls apart. Crops fail, drought arrives. They are the heartbeat of a kingdom, which would make it easier for us to conquer the kingdom if it's weak. We would have less and weaker resistance."
She glanced toward the crown's hidden chamber, still sealed with celestial wards. "Without it, it will take a while to tear through that seal. Even with my cursed power."
"Then I'll buy us time." Jethro's voice lowered. "They're furious. Let them be. We will place the crown in Viremons head, he will awaken, and he will use the Sphere in the sky to create the New World."
He drew a blade of inked bones, muttering a spell in a voice like broken bells.
"They'll have to earn their deaths."
Back in the hallways of the throne room, Thrain slammed open a sealed door, carved with guardian runes. He stumbled in, gushing blood, his stone armor cracked and blackened. He placed Kaelis and Silas down gently.
Kaelis stared at him. "You're hurt. You're fucking dying…"
Thrain fell to one knee. "Let me die then."
He rose again, standing between them and the chaos.
"I was sworn… to the last of the royal bloodline. I will not fail. That's what it means to be a man."
His breath came ragged, thick with iron and pain. His body steamed from the wounds.
He looked back at Kaelis.
"Become what you were summoned to be. Whatever that is."
The door sealed behind them with a sound like a tomb closing.
The safe room wasn't golden or godly or warm. It was cold stone and flickering runes, just wide enough to pace in, just high enough to feel like a tomb. The walls pulsed with weak celestial enchantments—barely holding. Dust filtered through cracks above, and every few seconds, the muffled slam of combat outside rattled the air like distant thunder.
Kaelis stood in the center, soaked in blood that wasn't his. Someone else's life smeared across his arms, his chest, his neck. His hands trembled. He looked down.
It was everywhere.
The red dripped from his fingers in slow, thick lines. It crusted around his knuckles, sticky and foreign. His heart pounded like a war drum—fast, hard, constant. A beat he couldn't control.
And the images—
Thrain crushing skulls. Arinelle tearing a throat from inside a body. Alistair cleaving reality in half. Blood spraying across his face like rain. Screams. Screams. Screams—
Kaelis dropped to his knees and began scrubbing his hands against the stone floor, smearing the blood, wiping it off, but it wouldn't go away. It had soaked into his skin. Into him.
"This is a dream," he whispered. "This is a dream. This is a dream. Wake the fuck up. Wake up."
He grabbed a sharp piece of broken stone and dragged it across his arm, hard, jagged, flesh splitting open. He hissed through his teeth. It bled. It hurt.
'…Still here. Still real…'
He did it again. Harder. Deeper.
"Stop it," Silas said, voice sharp but shaken. "…Fool. Whoever you are.."
Kaelis looked up at her, wild-eyed.
She stood near the far wall, hands clenched, posture tight, expression unreadable.
"Sit down," she said, calmer this time. "You're losing it. Like I am. Fuck this. Everything's happening so fast, it's so annoying. I'm trapped in here with a random man who's cutting himself because he thinks he's dreaming. Is this what I get? I've gotten betrayed by an old councilor who I thought was close to my parents. They wanna use a jagged ancient crown to put on top of a statue to awaken some ugly ass king to create a world with nothing but gods. Craaaap. I hate this."
'Trying not to cry in front of people, I always hated it. I have to distract myself from crying. But it's hard..Especially in front of a random boy. He looks about my age..not ugly…will I have to rule with him…? Why am I thinking about that now? Distracting myself from getting all emotional..I hate being pitied.'
Kaelis stared at her for a moment—then sat. He pressed his bleeding hand to the floor, trying to breathe, trying to slow down.
"What am I doing here?" he asked.
Silas didn't answer immediately. Her gaze drifted—then dropped. Her arms wrapped around herself.
"I don't know," she finally said. "You weren't supposed to show up. But here the fuck you are."
She turned her back to him. Her hands trembled—she held them tight to stop it.
Her eyes flickered. Mother, Father. Jethro smiling like an older brother. Laughing. Holding her hands when she was scared. Running with her through the halls, chasing her when she broke into the kitchen, pretending he couldn't catch her.
The past came like a dagger through the ribs.
She shut her eyes, clenched her jaw. "I'll kill him," she muttered. "I swear to the gods, I'll kill Jethro."
'There I go again…'
Silas's voice cracked. She hated how it cracked.
"But I can't." Her hands dropped to her sides. "I look like a damsel. I hate this."
Kaelis watched her. Then lowered his head.
He thought of Earth.
Of her.
It was when the door creaked open. It was too early. He'd come home early. The apartment smelled like perfume—not hers. And there were sounds. He stepped inside.
She was there. With someone else.
The image never left him. It had rotted inside him. What's wrong with me? Why wasn't I enough?
"I got married young," he muttered, more to himself than her. "She cheated. I came home and—yeah." He laughed, bitter. "Tried to be a man. Be patient. Didn't matter."
He stared at the floor. At the blood.
"I didn't fight back. I just let the world roll over me."
He looked at Silas.
"And now I'm here. In this insane world. Full of monsters and gods and people dying. And for a second… for a second I thought maybe I could stay here. Escape all that."
"But I don't want to die. I didn't come here to die. I didn't come here to lose myself again."
His fists clenched. His breathing got faster. The walls swam.
Silas stared.
Kaelis's pupils narrowed, then widened again, over and over. Something was wrong. His body began to twitch, then shudder.
"What… the hell is wrong with you?" she asked, stepping back.
Kaelis dropped to his hands and knees, veins bulging, a low growl rumbling in his throat. His eyes burned red for a flash. Flashes of something ancient filled his mind—a god, colossal, devouring entire battlefields with blazing chaos, hurling champions into the sky and ripping their souls apart.
'Who…who is that?! My head…it hurts!'
"I—I don't know," Kaelis gasped, blood pouring from his mouth, splattering onto the floor. His arms trembled.
"Whatever it is," Silas said, stepping back, raising her hands, "I don't know what you've got going on in your body, or your mind, or whatever gods are whispering to you—but I will kill you the second you try anything."
Kaelis looked up, face pale, eyes wild, mouth bloody.
"Then get out. Run. Just run. I can feel it. Chaos. Rage. Something inside me. It's trying to crawl out."
Silas stared at the sealed door behind her.
"It's locked," she said. "Can't open it from the inside. We're stuck."
Kaelis roared and punched the wall.
Red flames exploded around his arm, the heat cracking stone—but the fire vanished just as fast, leaving nothing but scorch marks and smoke. His breath came in gasps.
'End it….please…what do you want from me?!'
Silas stood frozen.
He was dangerous. Unstable. And they were trapped together.
'He's a monster…will I have to stop him before he goes crazy…?' Silas thought, her leg shaking.
Her voice dropped, almost defeated.
"But I guess this is what I get. For being too picky."
Kaelis slumped forward, his hands gripping his head, chaotic power simmering under his skin, flaring through veins like molten nerve endings.
His thoughts spun.
Cheating wife. Worthlessness. Blood. Screams. Death. Rage. Rage. Rage—The chaos fed on it all.
Then, through clenched teeth, he looked up at her.
"Kill me," he rasped. "While I'm still holding it back. Before something else wakes up."
Silas's breath caught.
Neither of them moved.
The walls pulsed.
The world held its breath.
Silas's hand trembled as it slipped beneath the folds of her blood-slick dress. Her fingers found it.
The dagger.
She pulled it free with a soft, metallic hiss.
It was a royal blade, forged not for battle, but for ceremony—yet it held death all the same. Its hilt was slender and curved like an old vine, inlaid with tiny midnight sapphires and glowing runes etched down the flat of its pristine edge. The blade was thin, yet deadly, ending in a vicious point that gleamed in the dull light of the room. The steel looked untouched by age—an heirloom passed from queen to queen, never used.
Until now.
Her hand was slick with sweat as she gripped it tighter, lifting it slowly.
Kaelis was kneeling across from her, his head low, his entire body quaking as crimson cracks of chaotic light pulsed along his skin—fractures of some unseen curse, barely held back. His breath came ragged, shallow, foaming. His pupils shrank again. He was holding it back—whatever it was.
"Do it," he growled, his voice ragged and low. "Hurry up."
'I've made up my mind…I can't keep living like this. Bound to control..constantly losing it. Am I really living…?'
Silas didn't move.
Sweat rolled down her temple, past her jaw, soaking into the collar of her torn dress.
"I will!" she screamed. "J-Just give me a second!" Silas's lips curled back, a mix of grief and fury in her eyes.
Kaelis looked away. His fists clenched as his body twitched, fire flickering beneath his skin. The chaos surged again, fed by his pain.
'No matter where I go', he thought, I lose myself. Something always feeds on it. My pain. My regret. My guilt. It eats me alive and turns me into something I hate. Again and again.'
"Do it."
Silas let out a scream, her body snapping forward like a slingshot of rage and fear—and she plunged the dagger into his chest.
A sickening, wet sound cracked the silence.
Kaelis gasped, his body jerking as the blade slid in. His knees gave out. His head hit the stone.
Silas collapsed with him, falling over his chest, her knees straddling his sides, both hands gripping the dagger still buried in him. Blood seeped between her fingers, slick and steaming. It soaked her hands, her arms, her chest.
They lay there, tangled, breathless.
The room shook as chaos exploded beyond the walls, muffled screams and steel still ringing out.
Silas's hands were frozen on the dagger. Her eyes wide. Terrified.
Kaelis's breath came shallow. But he wasn't gone yet.
Their eyes met.
Locked.
Everything around them was madness. But in that moment, it was only them.
Kaelis blinked.
'Do I really want to die?'
The thought echoed in his head like a whisper in a void.
His vision swam.
But he hadn't answered it yet.
—
Elsewhere, beyond the sealed chamber—chaos consumed the halls.
Jethro and Ys'Viruna sprinted through a crumbling corridor lit by warfire. Cracks split the floor, black vines of hell-curse creeping behind their feet. They ran side by side—Jethro's coat whipping like smoke, Ys'Viruna's dress trailing curses like veins in the air.
Behind them, a roar—
Thrain.
Barreling forward like a cannon through debris, his body soaked in gore and broken steel, eyes burning like volcanic stone. Alistair, a streak of silver and black, slashing down a cursed familiar that lunged from the shadows. Arinelle, her wings massive now, her primal shadow pulsing as claws raked across her skin, using her own blood as a focus. And Vaerlin, flipping through the air with his umbrella bursting with stellar spirals and razor winds, gaining on them fast.
Jethro halted mid-step.
He spun.
And drew from his waist a golden scale, not large—but impossibly ancient. It floated in his hand, a divine artifact, two perfect plates of balance shifting unnaturally.
His eyes glowed like divine suns.
"Be judged."
Reality cracked.
The entire corridor twisted violently upside down—floor becoming ceiling, ceiling now a chasm of air. The world inverted in a nauseating, sudden slam of inverted gravity. Only Jethro and Ys'Viruna stood unaffected—balanced by the scale's unholy judgment.
Thrain, Arinelle, Alistair, and Vaerlin slammed into the ceiling—now the new floor. Dazed, bruised—but standing.
Then the ceiling above them opened.
Descending from the void were royal knights of Alistair's squad, the silent assassins or Arinelle's squad, and tank Knights, lumbering towers of iron with crushing weapons and black helms.
They landed hard, weapons drawn, expressions dead. No mercy.
A war on both sides.
Heaven flipped. Hell rose.
The hunt wasn't over.
The storm was just beginning.