The moment Anthony stepped into the familiar throne room; the scent of mildew and soot filled his lungs. When he first stepped into this palace, it was during the final vestiges of the Boleus empire's campaign to unify the continent. This throne room was, back then, every bit as impressive and opulent as the empire's throne room.
Now, the air was damp, thick with the mustiness of a place long forgotten by sunlight. Flickering torches cast uneven shadows along the jagged walls of the ruined Valmorian throne hall, once a symbol of grandeur, now warped into a stage for vengeance.
Jason.
His eyes found his son immediately. Chained at the base of the old marble throne, his wrists bound with iron cuffs too heavy for his frame. Jason sat slumped but alert, his dirt-smudged face pale in the low light. His eyes widened the moment they met Anthony's, and though he said nothing, the child's trembling lips screamed everything.
Anthony surged forward—
"Stop right there," came a cold, amplified voice.
It echoed through the chamber unnaturally, tinged with magic.
Anthony halted. A second later, Darius emerged from behind the throne, robed in black, regal in posture but feral in gaze. His raven-black hair was tied back, exposing the high, cruel lines of his cheekbones. His was the face that normally walked along the corridors of the Boleus Empire's capital offices and palace halls. The former Minister of Foreign Trade and Defense.
"Ah...the Earl of Whitman himself. Right on time."
Anthony's grip on his sword hilt tightened, but he forced composure. "Where is my wife?"
Darius tilted his head. "She's...preparing."
Anthony's jaw clenched. The throne room was so gigantic and full of dark shadows that he could not make out where his wife is.
Jane flanked him to the left, poised like a striking blade. Mage Henry stood calm on the right, muttering softly right under his breath, preparing his own series of magical attacks, his hidden fingers twitching with contained power. The two covert operatives kept silent, sweeping the edges of the room with sharp eyes.
Anthony's voice was steady, but his hand hovered close to the hilt of his sword. "You've gone through an awful lot of trouble to make this theatrical, Darius. But we both know this isn't about her—or even my son. It's about you, and what's left of your kingdom."
Darius gave a short, humorless laugh, the kind of sound born more of exhaustion than amusement. "No, Whitman. You're wrong. This isn't just about thrones and borders. It's about debts. It's about fathers and sons. You carry the empire's banners, but you also carry the blood of my family on your hands."
He stepped closer to Jason, and Anthony's muscles tightened, a small shift of his stance betraying readiness.
Darius's eyes fixed on him, raw with an anger that had been simmering for years. "You'll understand my loss only when you taste it yourself. Through her. Through him. That is the balance I demand."
Anthony's jaw clenched, but his tone remained measured, a general holding his line. "I know who you are, Darius Caelen Valmor. The last prince of a ruined crown. But if you've convinced yourself I murdered your parents, then you've built your vengeance on sand."
Something flickered across Darius's face—an old grief surfacing like a crack in stone. "Truth," he said slowly, "is written one-sidedly by those who win. You call it suicide; I call it murder made convenient. Your empire wanted my bloodline gone. And you—you were the blade they sent to finish it."
Anthony stepped forward, eyes locked on the prince's. His voice dropped, calm but edged with steel. "I was there. I led the talks. I begged your generals to lay down arms and spare their soldiers. Your king and queen—they chose their fate. It was not my sword that ended them. It was their own hands. I carried their bodies out of this throne room myself."
"Lies!" Screamed Darius, hands clenched into fists on his sides. Every single being inside the dark, cavernous room seemed rooted on their spots as the main actor delivered his lines. "My father told me he would surrender. My mother kissed my brow and swore their lives would buy me time to flee. I believed them. I trusted them. Yet when I dared return, I learned they were dead. Cut down, they said. Executed. Tell me, Whitman—if they meant to yield, and you meant to take them peacefully, then why did they not live? Why was their surrender answered with death?"
Anthony's voice was low and steady as his mind went back to that very day. "I went to this very room, Darius. Alone, without my sword drawn, to beg them to spare their people. But when I arrived, they were already gone—your father with the dagger still in his hand, your mother beside him. They chose their end before I ever set foot past those doors."
"It seems that getting the truth out of you is futile when you're already deluded with your own lies," resignation could be heard in the fallen prince's voice.
"It seems that truth would never be able to pass through ears clogged over with grief."
"Then there's really only one thing left for us here, right?"
The silence that followed was thick, brittle as glass.
Every pair of eyes seemed to be waiting for a cue.
A scrape of stone broke it—the grinding hiss of a wall shifting. Anthony's head snapped toward the sound. Jason flinched, eyes wide.
A hidden chamber yawned open.
And there—
Bettina.
Anthony's blood froze.
At Darius's signal, a torch flared to life. The chamber lit up like a cruel stage. She hung from chains, her shift in tatters, her back a canvas of blood and broken skin. Her head lolled forward, then lifted weakly at the sudden light.
Time collapsed.
Anthony's chest constricted. For a heartbeat, sound fled the world— and all he could hear was the high, keening whistle of his own heartbeat.
Then the whip cracked.
It struck her with a sound that would haunt him for the rest of his life—a wet, slicing thwap as leather met flesh, followed by the sickening tear of skin opening and days-old wounds reopening.
Bettina screamed. Bettina's scream tore through the chamber, raw, almost inhuman in its pain, and unbearable to hear.
It wasn't just pain. It was raw, animal agony—a sound that tore through the air and knifed into Anthony's chest. Her screams sliced through his years of military discipline, the walls he'd built to function as a soldier, a noble, a leader.
He staggered forward before Jane caught his arm.
"My lord—no," she whispered. "It's what he wants."
Jane's hand on his arm stayed him even as he longed to lunge toward that monster wielding that whip. He wanted to plunge his sword at that man again and again until he could plunge it no more.
But Anthony couldn't stop looking. Could not not see the fresh line blooming across Bettina's back like a red serpent, couldn't un-hear the wet rasp of her choking breath, her desperate whimpers as her body trembled and sagged again.
She was in fever. Her limbs were too thin. Her skin too pale. And yet she still didn't break. She hadn't begged.
Jason let out a cry that should have never come out of a child's lips. "No! Stop!"
Anthony's tormented eyes flicked to Jason—who sat frozen, his face pale and slick with tears, his hands shaking so hard they rattled the chain around his ankle. The boy's eyes were wide, locked on his stepmother, his lips silently forming words he couldn't say aloud.
His son was watching his mother be destroyed.
And Anthony could do nothing—nothing—until the right moment came.
His hands curled into fists so tight his gloves creaked.
How dare Darius touch her. How dare he!
He couldn't scream. Couldn't show what raged inside him. But his fury simmered, quiet and murderous, as if his very bones had begun to boil.
He forced himself to stand still, to breathe evenly. To stay present for the next scream, and the next lash. Because she would look for him. She would draw strength from him. And she would live.
But gods—he wanted to kill. He wanted to slice Darius open with his own blade and peel back every layer of cruelty the man wore like a second skin.
"I see now that your military achievements were rightfully earned," Darius said from the dais.
Anthony turned his head slowly. His voice, when it came, was ice.
"Each welt. Each drop of blood, Darius. I will make sure I return each and every favor to each of you."
"You think this is punishment? This is justice. Justice, for what your Empire did to mine." Darius smiled. "You see now, Whitman? You see how helpless a man truly is when all he loves is broken in front of him?
Jane whispered beside him, "Say the word."
But Anthony's eyes never left Bettina. Fury, cold and precise, coiled in his chest.
"Mage Henry," he said softly.
Henry's magic shimmered quietly at his fingertips.
Anthony drew his sword.
"Do it."
And with those words Mage Henry's quiet muttering grew in volume as he shouted that last verse of his spell.
"…inimicos meos caeca!"
A blinding flash of light swiftly grew outwards from Mage Henry's feet, until the entire room became brighter than the sun, searing and white-hot, streaking into the vision of every enemy in the throne room. Screams erupted from around them and from the rafters—blinded archers up above lost their footing and falling to the ground with a sickening crunch of breaking bones while others fired wildly, arrows careening in every direction. Some impaled their own men. The sharp whistle of steel on steel echoed amongst shouts of every man as Anthony and his team surged forward.
Bodies collided. Blades clashed. Blood splashed across the stone floor, dark and slick beneath fast-moving boots.
Anthony's heart pounded as he locked swords with one of Darius's elite men, parrying a heavy strike meant to cleave him in two. A second attacker lunged from his right—Anthony ducked, twisted, and rammed his shoulder into the man's chest before driving his sword through the enemy's side.
He didn't stop. He couldn't. Every inch closer meant getting to Jason and Bettina.
Behind him, Mage Henry let out another guttural phrase in the ancient tongue—lightning danced through the air, arcing from his fingertips and slamming into two enemy mages who were still trying to regain their vision. "Th-the Grandmast—!" was all one of them was able to say before mages convulsed and fell, one by one, dead, their robes smoldering.
At the throne, Darius squinted through the haze of light and motion. Clutching the throne for support, he turned to Jason, who cowered behind the ornate throne, knees tucked beneath him, arms over his head. Darius gave a sharp gesture to one of his soldiers.
"Unchain the boy," he barked. "He'll make a fine shield."
The soldier moved toward Jason, crouching to work the lock.
And Jason—shaking, cheeks wet with tears, dirt and ash smeared across his face—lifted his head.
Bettina's voice rang in his memory: Be brave, my little knight…
As the soldier reached for the chain, Jason lunged. With a sharp twist, he looped the slack length of chain around the man's neck, gritted his teeth, and yanked back with all his strength.
"Rghh—!" the man choked, caught off guard.
The chain held just long enough.
From high above in the rafters, Jane's eyes tracked the moment with precision. Her gloved hand twitched, and with a flick of her wrist, a silver knife sang through the air.
Thunk.
It embedded itself in the center of the soldier's forehead. He dropped like a stone.
Jason flinched as the body collapsed beside him, but didn't scream. His hands trembled, and he backed away toward the edge of the throne, gasping—eyes fixed on the man he just tried to kill. The small prince had tried to be a knight. And for a moment, he was.
"Good lad," Jane whispered from above, already leaping to take down another archer.
Darius turned, lips curling in a furious snarl. "Enough!" he shouted, voice now dripping with fury and madness. "End them all—kill the boy and that woman if you must!"
The remaining loyalists surged. But Anthony had finally cleared the blockade of swords.
His eyes burned, not just from smoke and light—but from the sight of Bettina slumped on the wall, her arms stretched above her, fresh blood oozing down her sides. The whip lay discarded on the ground.
And Darius was now only ten paces away.
Anthony roared, sword raised.
Meanwhile, outside the castle walls, in the pine forest's perimeter…
Snow swirled in thick curtains as the wind howled between the dark trunks of pine, gusting against the rows of soldiers lying in wait.
The Grand Duke stood tall on the ridge, his steel cloak-clasps gleaming faintly under the moonlight. Snow clung to his shoulders, though he didn't seem to feel the cold. Beside him, platoon commanders adjusted goggles and rechecked orders, each man tense, each hand on a sword or bow or mage staffs and crystals.
Then, from within the heart of the ruined palace, a sudden blast of light erupted through the high windows and broken ramparts.
A flare—brilliant and unnatural—illuminated the sky as if the sun had risen behind shattered stone. Through the snow-stormy night, it was visible. The Grand Duke shielded his eyes and clenched his jaw.
"That's the signal," he said, voice calm but iron-hard. "Let's go."
Behind him, as he raised his hand, flags were raised and horns gave short, sharp blasts of sound.
The forest came alive.
Three platoons surged from the cover of the trees like ghosts in silver and white. Camouflaged knights and mages stormed the southern and eastern walls, ropes and grappling gear ready, while magic-imbued bolts of lightning took the west gate. Muffled thuds of boots on snow gave way to the clatter of steel on stone.
"Clear a path. Secure the inner halls. Darius doesn't leave this place alive," the Grand Duke said, mounting his horse as a backup command group readied behind him.
Then he spurred the horse forward, charging through the snow in a wave of soldiers.
In that same moment, inside the north wing of the castle, near the lower barracks…
The last echo of a dying scream faded as Corporal Lira plunged her blade into the final enemy soldier's chest. Blood splattered against the frostbitten wall. She pulled the sword free, panting.
"All clear," muttered Hance, one of the operatives from Anthony's third team. The group who separated from the rest as they initially infiltrated this place. His arm was bleeding, but he waved it off.
Lira wiped sweat and grime from her brow with a sleeve. Her unit had just linked up with the remnants of the second team—seven survivors from what had originally been twelve.
"Damn it," she whispered, glancing down the hallway strewn with bodies.
"We moved our injured and fallen comrades," said Darric, an older scout with a limp and steady hands. "Secured them in one of the old storerooms. Barricaded it from the inside before we locked it. We'll retrieve them when this is done."
"Any signal from the Commander?" asked Hance.
"Just saw it," another man said, pointing upward through a broken skylight. The faint residue of Mage Henry's light-flare was still visible, glimmering in the snowy air like falling stardust. "That's the signal. Rhys' team found them."
Silence fell briefly.
They all knew what it meant: contact had been made. Either it was going well—or everything had gone to hell.
"Then we move," Lira said, tightening the grip on her weapon. "Rejoin them. We head to the central stairwell. That'll get us close to the old throne wing."
"What about the northeast wing?" Darric asked.
"Didn't you hear the bugle? Let the Grand Duke's troops clear the castle. Our priority is the Commander. Let's go."
Boots pounded against frozen stone. Blades were readied. Spells quietly murmured under breath.
And from deep within the bowels of the ruined palace, the sounds of war grew louder.
Back in the throne room…
The smell of burnt dust and metallic blood choked the air so much that they could taste them.
The throne room was no longer silent and cold—it had become a battlefield.
Shouts. Steel. Screams. Arrows. The flashing spell's light still burned in the vision of many, but it was fading now, and so were the screams of disoriented men atop the rafters.
Anthony's eyes, adjusted and narrowed through the chaos, locked onto Jason, who was scrambling back behind the throne, blood on his small hands from the chain he'd just used to strangle a man. Beside him, the enemy that Jane had struck lay still—her dagger buried to the hilt in his forehead.
He could vaguely hear the shouts of a few more of his comrades who just newly joined the fray.
Darius, already on his feet, snarled and flung aside the witch's corpse he'd used as a human shield. The fallen prince's red-lined cloak snapped behind him as he drew a curved sabre, gleaming wickedly in the firelight.
Anthony surged forward, sword drawn, just as three more of Darius' men stepped between them. Their armor was mismatched—old Valmoran military plate with newer, stolen Empire insignias plastered on their shoulders—but their movements were precise, disciplined.
They were trained. Loyal. Ready to die.
The first soldier lunged with a spear—Anthony parried with brutal efficiency, twisting the blade aside and slamming the pommel of his sword into the man's face, crushing his nose. The man staggered. Anthony sidestepped the next strike from the second guard, ducking under a scything blade, then drove his shoulder into the man's chest. Armor crunched. The man collapsed.
The third soldier came in high, sword raised. Anthony didn't even hesitate. He let his own sword fall, caught the man's wrist mid-swing, twisted hard, and stabbed upward with a hidden dagger he'd drawn from his belt—straight through the man's ribs. The man collapsed, gurgling.
Anthony didn't stop to breathe.
The sound of lightning cracking behind told him Mage Henry was still alive and casting—fireballs roared past in the corner of his vision. Screams followed as enemy mages were lit ablaze, and Henry's other incantation—a draining spell—began to silence the opposing casters one by one. Anyone with mana felt the sting as their power was forcefully severed.
"Protect the commander!" shouted one of Anthony's operatives behind him, swinging twin short swords as another wave of soldiers closed in.
Above, Jane was a nimble ghost in motion—silent, lethal. She had already dispatched three more archers in the rafters, sending one tumbling down to crack against the flagstones. Her black, lightweight armor not visibly showing how blood-drenched it was as she vanished into the shadows once more.
But Anthony only saw one man now.
Darius.
He was circling toward Jason, sword lowered, wearing a grin that chilled Anthony's blood more than the icy air ever could.
"Darius!" Anthony shouted, pushing forward.
Another pair of guards rushed to stop him.
He didn't hesitate.
Anthony's blade was a blur. One soldier blocked high—but Anthony faked and struck low, severing the man's leg at the knee. The second soldier screamed and lunged, but Anthony stepped into the strike, catching the edge of the blade on his shoulder armor with a grunt of pain, then buried his sword into the man's gut and yanked it free with a twist. Blood sprayed.
He was through.
Jason screamed, "Papa!"
Darius turned—too late.
Anthony lunged forward, just as the fallen prince raised his blade toward the boy.
Steel clashed with steel.
Sparks exploded between them as their swords met in a furious clash. Darius grinned, teeth bloodstained, face twisted with hatred.
"You should have let the past die, Whitman."
"I did. But you wouldn't stay dead," Anthony snarled, shoving forward with brute strength.
Darius staggered back a step but recovered quickly. His sabre danced in wide arcs, forcing Anthony onto the defensive. For a moment, the prince's strikes came fast, relentless. Anthony parried, pivoted, barely avoiding a downward slash that would've split his skull.
Then, a scream—Bettina's—from behind the side room door.
Anthony's eyes flicked toward it. Just for a second.
It was enough.
Darius's blade cut across Anthony's upper arm—not deep, but sharp. Blood welled.
But Anthony didn't falter.
He grit his teeth, twisted to the side, and slashed upward, catching Darius across the chest. The prince staggered, cloak torn, armor dented.
"I will end you," Anthony growled, and in his mind burned not just rage—but a vision: Bettina chained to a wall, her screams, her broken body. Jason's terrified face. His boy trying to fight with chains. Everything this man had done.
And now, finally, it was time to finish it.
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A/N: Ah, this was the hardest chapter I had to write. I feel like I wasn't very good at depicting fight scenes. For me, it was very hard to translate my imagination to paper. But I did my best in this chapter, so I hope you all liked this. =)