The sword slipped from Simon's hand before it hit the floor.
A sharp clang echoed through the throne room, but Allen's body had already fallen silent in his arms. The warmth of his brother's blood soaked into Simon's tunic, and yet the chill creeping into Allen's skin felt colder than anything the rain could deliver.
Simon didn't move. Couldn't.
He stared at Allen's face—still, serene, no longer twisted by pain or rage. It was the face of a man who had once carried a kingdom on his shoulders and had finally been allowed to rest. But to Simon, it looked like the face of someone he had just murdered.
The echoes of the moment seemed to stretch endlessly in his ears: the fall of the sword, the last words, the last breath. Nothing else existed.
No cheering soldiers.
No bells.
No salvation.
Just the storm outside and the storm within him.
He knelt there, trembling, clutching Allen's lifeless form as if by holding on tightly enough, he could rewind time. Undo everything.
"You should have let me try to save you," Simon whispered. "You didn't have to die like this…"
But even as the words left his lips, he wasn't sure if he was speaking to Allen—or to himself.
He looked up. Around him, the throne room stood in eerie silence. The shattered emblems, the ruined banners, the throne now vacant—it all looked like a mausoleum. Not a place of rule, but a tomb for a legacy too heavy to bear.
Footsteps approached behind him, hesitant and quiet. One of the captains entered, his sword lowered, eyes wide at the sight.
"Your Majesty," he said softly.
Simon flinched.
He turned his head slowly, eyes bloodshot. "Don't call me that."
The captain nodded and stepped back without a word.
Because how do you address a man who just killed his king—and his brother?
Flashback: A Memory in the Snow
Years ago, long before steel and betrayal, there was only snow.
Simon had been a frail child when Allen found him—shivering outside the palace gates after his home had burned, his real family buried beneath ash. Allen, not much older then, had taken him in with no hesitation. A prince already bearing burdens, but still with warmth left to give.
"Why would you help me?" Simon had asked one night, curled beside the prince near the hearth.
Allen had smiled, pulling the thick fur cloak tighter around them both. "Because I know what it means to have no one," he said. "And because if I don't… who will?"
Simon had fallen asleep to those words, thinking that perhaps, in a world so cruel, Allen was the one person who'd never break.
Return to the Present
Simon stood now, a man made hollow.
He lifted Allen's body gently and carried it to the throne—not to place him on it, but to lay him beside it. It was symbolic, he knew. Allen had died protecting the crown, not coveting it.
Outside, the skies began to break. Sunlight pierced through the storm clouds in fractured beams, falling across the rubble like divine judgment. Or perhaps mercy.
Simon stared into the light, his hands stained red. A king-killer. A betrayer. A savior.
He didn't know what he was anymore.
But he knew this: the war wasn't over. The kingdom was leaderless. Fractured. And somewhere beyond the realm of death, Allen's soul had already been claimed by something greater.
Simon knelt beside his brother's body one last time.
"I don't deserve your forgiveness," he whispered, tears mixing with rain. "But I'll carry your burden. I'll make sure your name is remembered—not for how you died… but for everything you gave us."
He stood, slowly, as the soldiers finally entered the ruined hall. Some looked at him with fear. Others with hope. But none could look at Allen's body without bowing their heads.
The king was dead.
And the future was stained in his blood.