In the heart of the Midgar Kingdom's capital, where cobblestones gleamed under the midday sun and the fountain sprayed a fine mist over the square, a jester had made the city his stage.
His clothes were split down the middle, one side black as a moonless night, the other crimson like fresh stage curtains. A mask hid his face, its mouth carved into a too-wide smile, and its eyes curved upward like twin boomerangs frozen in permanent mirth. Atop his head perched a floppy, three-horned jester's hat, each tip adorned with a bell that jingled with the slightest tilt. His shoes, curled into whimsical points, carried silver jingle balls that chimed with every step. In his hands, a violin sang a melody so achingly beautiful that the crowd around the fountain forgot how to breathe.
And when he opened his mouth to sing, every soul in earshot was simply…captured.
Standing among them, so utterly bland he nearly blended into the cobblestones themselves, was a lone boy. Brown hair, average build, face you'd forget the second you looked away. The kind of young man you'd swear was just part of the background.
Four months in and I've perfected the art of being a normal NPC, he mused, eyes half-lidded. 'Even found the most background-tier friends possible. Skel and Po, two guys who actually take pride in being random townsfolk. Just like me.'
A final flourish of the violin. The song ended. The crowd erupted into applause, coins clinking and clattering onto the fountain's stone edge.
'Not gonna lie, this guy's the best musician I've ever heard. I swing by here whenever I need to unwind, even if it gets crowded. Gotta save every coin for my Eminence in Shadow collection, so no theaters, no fancy entertainment. A few copper tossed his way is the best I can do.'
The crowd began to thin, drifting back to their ordinary lives. But two men, sharply dressed and bearing the insignia of Midgar's royal family, cut through the dispersing masses and approached the jester.
Cid's eyes narrowed.
'Don't tell me they're here to poach my musician. I just got used to this routine! Damn it, there goes my free entertainment. Well… I just hope when he moves up in the world, he doesn't forget about us little guys.'
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"Mister… jester? Might we have a moment of your time? We bear an important message from His Royal Majesty."
The jester straightened from his deep bow to the crowd. The hollow sockets of his mask fixed on the speaker with unnerving stillness.
"Oh, what a wonderful thing to hear! Oh my, I wonder what it could be! Jester is just fine—no need for titles for this humble jester! Please, may I see it? Please, please, please!!!" His body bounced with manic delight, jingle bells chattering, and the royal messenger involuntarily stepped backward.
"W-well, of course, sir. Here it is." The man extended an envelope sealed with the Midgar crest, his hand steady despite his unease.
The jester snatched it and tore it open on the spot, scanning the contents with tilts of his masked head.
The messenger leaned toward his companion, voice dropping to a whisper. "Are you sure this is the guy? He doesn't seem all there. And besides, why would the king want a nobody like this as an advisor?"
Silence.
"…Hello?"
His companion said nothing. Just stared directly into his eyes, smiling. The messenger blinked and looked around. Every single person nearby—the lingering crowd, the street vendors, a pair of elderly women—all faced him, smiling.
Fear clutched his chest like an iron vice. His limbs locked. He couldn't move, couldn't blink.
"No no no nononono NO NO! THIS IS NOT IT!!!! THIS IS NOT THE SCENE I WANTED!" The jester's voice shattered the air. He ripped the envelope to shreds, paper fluttering like wounded butterflies. "SO. MUCH. TIME. FOR. THIS. SCENE. And you have to ruin the play with your blabbing."
The jester squeezed his own hand until something burst. Blood oozed from between his fingers, but it was wrong, thick with maggots and stringy, worm-like flesh that writhed in the crimson flow.
The messenger couldn't scream. Couldn't beg. He only felt the jester's hands clamp on either side of his head, the pressure terrible, the wet squirming pushing into his ears.
"I-I'm so-" The cry died halfway, snuffed out as his skull compressed with a sound like cracking ice and wet parchment. His head flattened, thinner than paper, and his body dropped, blood gushing in an endless stream across the stones.
"What a waste of time."
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Inside the grand hall of the royal palace, a chamber of vaulted ceilings and banners bearing the crimson griffin of Midgar, King Klaus Midgar sat upon his throne. His red hair, streaked with the first whispers of grey, was swept back with regal precision, and his matching mustache was trimmed to perfection. Beside him, her posture rigid with the impatient energy of a swordswoman forced into stillness, was his younger daughter, Alexia Midgar.
The hall smelled of old stone, polished wood, and the faint, spicy incense that the palace servants burned every morning to ward off dampness. Tall windows let in columns of golden light that cut through the air like divine blades, illuminating motes of dust that drifted lazily through the silence.
Alexia shifted her weight from one foot to the other, fingers drumming once against her thigh before she caught herself and stilled them. The ceremonial sword at her hip felt heavier than usual, as though the blade itself could sense her restlessness.
"Father,I don't understand why I need to be here. Isn't Iris supposed to handle these kinds of things?"
King Klaus turned his head slightly, his expression warm but carrying the weary patience of a ruler who had answered this question many times before. "Your sister is occupied with the knights today. A border patrol report required her immediate attention.Taking that into account, and the fact that you have been training so diligently lately, I thought this would be a good moment for you to gain some exposure to the political world."
Alexia's jaw tightened, but she said nothing. She understood the logic, even if she resented it. Iris was the heir, the sword of the kingdom, the one who could stand before armies and inspire them with a single speech. Alexia was the spare, the second daughter, the one who trained not because a kingdom would one day rest on her shoulders, but because she refused to be seen as anything less than strong. Politics, however, was a battlefield she had little interest in conquering.
The massive oak doors at the far end of the hall groaned open, the sound echoing off the stone walls. Two guards in the royal colors stepped aside, and a figure entered.
A jester.
He moved with a fluid, almost liquid grace, his steps silent despite the curled, pointed shoes that should have clicked against the marble floor.
Alexia's eyes narrowed. Her instincts, honed by countless hours of combat training, prickled at the base of her skull. There was something off about the way he moved.
And the mask.
It was white, smooth, with a manic joy. The hollow darkness within those eye sockets seemed deeper than it should be, as though no light could reach whatever lurked behind them.
The jester stopped precisely ten paces from the throne and swept into a bow so elegant, so theatrically perfect, that it would have drawn applause in any royal court across the continent.
"It is a pleasure to see Your Majesty!!! It is the greatest honor to be here in your presence!" His voice rang out, bright and manic and filled with a joy.
King Klaus smiled warmly, his posture relaxing as though greeting an old friend. "No, the pleasure is mine, to receive the most talented jester of the Oriana Kingdom in my own court."
"Oh, you flatter me, my King! Such beautiful compliments shouldn't be wasted on this humble jester!" He threw his arms wide, bells finally jingling. "You should shove all of that compliment right up your ass!!!! Hahaha ha!"
His laugh echoed through the hall, bouncing off the stone walls, multiplying until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Silence crashed down in its wake.
Alexia's mouth fell open before she could stop it. Her mind scrambled to process what she had just heard. 'Did he just-? To the King? In the throne room?' Her hand instinctively moved toward her sword, fingers brushing the pommel, but she forced herself to freeze. She glanced at her father, expecting to see fury, shock, anything other than the gentle, distant smile that remained on his face.
'Well, I guess Father is too shocked to respond, she thought, trying to rationalize the wrongness creeping up her spine. Who the hell does this lunatic think he's talking to?!'
But something in her gut told her a different answer. The king wasn't shocked. He was still smiling that same smile, his eyes fixed on a spot a few feet in front of the jester, not on the jester himself.
"What a beautiful song you sang earlier," the king said, his voice dreamy and distant, like a man talking in his sleep. "Please, is it also true that you also possess a degree in both mathematics and physics?"
Alexia's blood ran cold. 'What is he talking about? '
"Pffft hahaha! Look at this guy's face! Hahaha!"
The jester's body flickered. One moment he was standing in the center of the hall, and the next, without any visible movement, without the transition of walking or running or even a blur of motion, he was right beside the throne, doubled over with laughter, slapping his knee like a performer who had just delivered the punchline of a lifetime.
Alexia's heart slammed against her ribs. She hadn't seen him move. She hadn't even sensed a shift in the air. He had simply been there, and now he was here.
But her father's eyes never followed him. The king continued to stare at the empty patch of floor where the jester had stood moments before, his expression serene, unbothered, utterly entranced.
"Oh my, please tell me more about this discovery of yours," Klaus said to the empty air, as though conversing with a ghost only he could see.
'Illusion magic? Mind control?' Alexia's thoughts raced, tactical and frantic. She had trained against magic users before. She knew the signs. But this, this was something completely different. This was subtle, with no words or incantation spoken.
The jester's laughter suddenly died. His shoulders slumped, his head tilted, and when he spoke again, the manic energy had drained from his voice, replaced by something cold. boredom.
"Hehehe. This is so… boring."
He reached out and touched the king's face, his gloved fingers tracing along Klaus's jawline with a tenderness that made Alexia's stomach churn. The king didn't react. He just kept staring at that empty space, smiling.
"The play needs you, my King." The jester's voice was soft now, almost intimate. "But that doesn't mean I should waste my time teaching you your part. Isn't that right, my King?"
Alexia's sword hand moved. She felt the worn leather of the grip against her palm, the familiar weight of the blade as it began to slide free of its sheath. Every muscle in her body screamed at her to strike, to put steel between this monster and her father, to do something instead of standing here paralyzed.
But she couldn't move.
Not because of magic, or at least, not entirely. Something deeper stayed her hand. A primal instinct, buried in the ancient primate part of her brain, howled a single, undeniable truth. 'If you draw your sword, you will die.'
A jester that could control others so completely, that could wrap itself around a king's mind like ivy around a dying tree, that same creature could snatch the will from her body or simply end her before she completed a single swing. It just needed to push her into the same delirious state as her father, and then a second was all it would take. One second of confusion, and she would be on the floor with her skull crushed like-
She forced the thought away. She couldn't afford to imagine what this thing could do. She needed to stay calm. She needed to survive.
She was terrified.
"What's this? The king's daughter? Oh, so cute."
The words caressed the air like frost spreading across a windowpane. And then the hands were on her shoulders.
Cold. Impossibly cold. The chill seeped into her skin, into her bones, into the marrow where warmth should have lived. She could feel each individual finger, the pressure was light but inescapable, like the first touch of a something that hadn't yet decided whether to play or to kill.
'Don't react. The command cut through the static of her panic, sharp and clear. Don't look at him. 'Don't give him the satisfaction. Stay calm. Stay-'
She fixed her gaze on the exact spot where the jester had first bowed, the tiles on the floor, the pattern of the marble, anything but the presence looming beside her. She counted the veins in the stone. She focused on her breathing. She did not turn her head.
'Calm down. Calm down. Don't show any reaction!'
It moved.
It's body simply shifted. She heard a sound, a soft, organic crackling, like joints popping in sequence, like vertebrae unrolling, and then his face was in front of hers.
His neck had elongated. Stretched. Twisted. It arced through the air in a serpentine curve, rotating a full three hundred and sixty degrees, until the porcelain mask hovered directly before her eyes, barely a centimeter away.
The smile didn't change. It couldn't. It was just part of the mask, just a mask. But the darkness behind the eye holes seemed to deepen, to lean forward, as though something within was pressing against the back of the mask.
"Do you see me, little girl?"
Alexia's heart pounded so violently she could feel it in her teeth, in her temples, in the tips of her fingers. Her vision swam. The edges of the mask blurred, twisted, seemed to stretch into shapes her mind refused to recognize. Her body shook uncontrollably, fine tremors she couldn't suppress no matter how hard she clenched her muscles.
'Don't look at the mask. Please, please don't look at the mask. Don't look into the eyes. If you look into the eyes, you'll see something. Something that will-'
"So, what do you think, Alexia?"
Her father's voice... Warm.
The painted smile on the mask widened.
She could have sworn it widened. The mask cracked at the corners, or did it? Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe her mind was finally breaking under the pressure. But she saw it stretch, saw the curved lines deepen, saw the empty space behind the smile grow hungrier.
"I-I…"
Her voice was a stranger's. Thin and Fragile. Like a child lost in darkness.
"Go on," his voice gentle now, almost kind. "Answer them. Play your part, little girl."
The tears came before she could stop them. Hot. Traitorous. They carved burning trails down her cheeks, dripping off her chin, splashing against the marble floor. The sound of each drop was deafening in the silence.
"I don't want to die."
The words escaped her like a final breath. She hadn't meant to say them. She hadn't meant to say anything. But the truth had clawed its way out of her throat, raw and exposed and... pathetic.
The grin stretched ear to ear. The mask was all smile now. Nothing but smile and darkness and those hollow, boomerang eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing.
"Of course,So I will deliver it."
The mask opened its mouth.
Not like a human mouth. Not a hinge of jaw and flesh and bone. The line simply split, the mask peeling apart like lips parting, and behind it was darkness. absolute, infinite, hungry darkness that poured out of the mask like ink spilling into water.
It swallowed her.
It swallowed the throne room, the sunlight, her father's empty smile, the whole world, until there was nothing left but the sound of bells jingling somewhere very, very far away, and a voice that might have been her own, whispering the last thought she would ever have.
'This is just a play. And you forgot your lines.'
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Alexia bolted upright in her bed, soaked in cold sweat, gasping as if she'd broken through the surface of a nightmare sea.
"Alexia?! Thank the gods you're all right!" Her father's arms wrapped around her, crushing her in a desperate embrace.
"W-what's going on?"
"Her Royal Highness passed out on the training ground," answered an unfamiliar voice.
She turned. Beside her bed stood a man in his mid-twenties, dressed in familiar jester's garb, but his face was bare. No mask. Kind eyes, gentle smile, a mess of dark curls.
"W-who are you?" The dread from the dream surged again, but she wrestled it down, kept her expression steady.
Her father pulled back, confusion etched across his face. "D-don't tell me you've forgotten Algar? Our court jester, the most trusted advisor in the kingdom! Alexia, do you remember me? Please, tell me you remember!"
"It's quite all right, Your Majesty. Her Highness is simply in shock. Her memories are just fine." Algar Shepher smiled down at her. "Isn't that right, Your Highness?"
Her mind scrambled, pieces slotting into place. Of course. How could she possibly forget Algar Shepher? The man who had guided her with endless patience, answered every question she'd ever asked, offered wisdom whenever she sought it. The idea that a stupid nightmare could make her afraid of him now, it was absurd.
"Y-yes. I'm sorry, Mister Algar. I just feel… so strange. I don't know what's wrong with me." Her body still trembled under the weight of his serene gaze. That dream had felt so terrifyingly real.
"It's quite all right, Your Highness." Algar's voice was soft as falling snow. "Everyone forgets something now and then... Even their roles in a play."