The Fourth Prince decided to have Luca assist the defenders in preparing the palace's various defensive instalments instead of having him be his strategic counsel. The city's outer walls were expansive, thus making a strategic advisor critical. The far smaller scale of the palace's walls made it much easier to grasp the situation, so Luca was put to better use preparing the interior battlements. The Fourth Prince had a natural grasp of strategy that rivalled great commanders, using his intellect and his instincts to guide his people in defending the palace. While he was nowhere near as strong or valiant as his elder brother, he possessed a gift for marksmanship, using a strong elf-made bow to turn weapons, deflect arrows and wound invaders. His skills were focused more on the accuracy of his shots, thus making his killing abilities weaker by comparison during such a hectic battle.
Eventually, the palace's exterior defences fell just like the city itself had before. The Royal Court Mage Crescius Vinipter was the last to fall in defence of the palace, burning his lifespan when his mana ran dry, constantly unleashing a hail of Ice Arrows like a storm. As he died, he converted his flesh into mana, a highly unstable and therefore forbidden magic. Once his skin was all that remained unchanged, it could no longer contain the immense power, rupturing in a grand explosion that levelled a quarter of the city and a good portion of the palace itself. The sound of the blast was the final signal for the crew inside the palace to leg it to the escape array.
The Second Princess had taken the signet ring of the Valar family and used her magic to awaken the array in the Atlas Pillar, connecting it to the long-forgotten ancient stronghold in the north, Skyhaven. After five and a half days, two of which were needed for some of the remaining players to clear out any enemies within the stronghold, almost all of the citizens had escaped. Aside from the princess herself, only a handful of people remained, all of them from the defending team inside the palace. The further along the team went, the fewer they had, as men stopped one after the other to activate the enormous portcullises in order to delay as long as possible in exchange for their sacrifice.
Eventually, only five people, including Luca, who had to be carried along by his Wind Wolf familiar. Initially, he had wanted to stay behind to activate a portcullis, but one of the seniormost soldiers told him that Skyhaven would need a strategic commander, especially after the stronghold had been abandoned since before the Sage Era. Despite his desire to be a martyr, a desire he did not understand until after the event as his subconscious wish to be recognized as having been at least somewhat helpful, Luca listened to the soldier's advice and continued onward, watching his companions fall behind one by one.
Upon reaching cavernous passage that leads to the Atlas Pillar's volcanic location, yet another soldier stayed to activate the final portcullis while the remaining three ran to particularly spaced out tunnels on the sides. When Luca reached the pillar and the Second Princess who stood outside its grand doors, he witnessed the tunnels glowing before slow rivers of lava flowed forth to provide yet more obstacles. Luca realized that he was literally the last person, alive at least, to have experienced the entirety of the siege. He didn't have any time to think about it, as the invading army, which was composed almost entirely of the Tainted, started slamming the portcullis.
Under the Second Princess's command, Luca went about preparing the well-made contraption that caused the rock promontory pathway that connected to the pillar to raise and lower, all while the final Valar family member stood at the end of the passage. Eventually, as the portcullis was broken through and the Tainted began their charge through the tunnel, using the bodies of the fallen as platforms to cross the slow lava flow, the Second Princess gave Luca the signet ring and told him to lower the bridge into the lava, sealing off the tower. She emphasized that her role, her family's role, was to protect the people, and she would accomplish that by sealing off the Atlas Pillar from invaders, thereby making access to the escape array impossible. As such, her sacrifice would effectively close off the only direction that Skyhaven could be discovered and attacked within a short period of time.
Though unwilling, Luca knew of the Second Princess's conviction and gave up attempting to convince her to retreat with him. His last view of the final Valar family member was as the Pillar's doors closed after the promontory bridge had sunk beneath the lava. He recognized the spell she was in the process of chanting, a spell far beyond her level. She burned her life-force while using the powerful flame and earth mana to supplement her attempt to use a Lv. 15 spell, seven levels above hers. Though he did not get to witness it, he knew it to be another forbidden spell, the Dual-Element Fire-Earth spell Vulcan's Rage, named after the greater fire deity himself. It was forbidden because it would cause a volcano, where the incantation was required to be performed, to erupt. The volcano that the Atlas Pillar was built within, Mount Ashbringer, happened to be an active stratovolcano that, due to the Pillar's existence, had not erupted in millennia. When it erupted after the Second Princess's spell, it was reported, at least via the spectators, to have rivalled the legendary explosion of Krakatoa, levelling most of the mountain itself and utterly burying the entire city. Only the palace remained standing, sheltered beneath the mountain from its lava and rock discharge, though it did take major structural damage when part of its overhanging shelf collapsed atop it.
At this solemn moment, Luca spoke for the first time in several hours, as he'd speed through most of the five-some days of memories in order to be concise, "Should we take a break or continue? I have more to reveal, though I can skip minor details if you wish."