Aden finally turned to face her.
The moment Lora Zinren saw his full appearance, her breath caught in her throat.
Blood-soaked clothes. A battered blade dripping red. And a face that mirrored someone she had once followed into battle.
For one split second, she wasn't in the forest anymore. She was twenty years younger, standing beside Duke Ed Vasco on a burning warfront.
Ed was a force of nature. A swordsman who cut through enemies like he hated the very concept of stopping.
And now, standing in front of her, covered in blood and refusing to back down, was his son.
Her heart dropped.
If Aden Vasco is even half the swordsman his father is, he could slaughter her entire squad before she could blink.
She swallowed, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Aden. You are outnumbered. You are exhausted. Put the weapon down. I do not want any more bloodshed."
The guards behind her trembled, hearing the uncertainty in her tone.
Aden stared back at her silently. His eyes cold and calculating.
Lora steadied herself. Even though his current rank was only Elite Knight, she knew the truth. She knew what a Vasco was. She had seen it. Lived beside it. Watched it devour battlefields.
Never underestimate a Vasco.
Aden's breathing sharpened.Pain squeezed across his ribs.His mind raced.
If they catch me now, it's over. Everything the book wrote will happen. Framed. Shackles. The end.Run? No. She will catch me. She is an Archmage. She will drag me out of the sky.Trapped. They have me cornered. Dammit.
He tightened his grip on his sword.
Lora saw it instantly. "Aden, do not."
But he did.
Aden shifted into the stance every swordsman in the empire knew by sight.
Feet planted wide.Left shoulder angled forward.Blade raised in a diagonal line across his body.
The Way of Fire.
Lora's stomach twisted.
She had only ever seen two people hold that stance. Ed Vasco. And now the boy in front of her. Even tired, even bleeding, his posture radiated lethal precision.
The guards panicked.
"He is taking a stance!"
"Brace!"
"He is going to cut through us!"
Lora raised her hand sharply. "Hold! Nobody moves!"
Her mind raced.She had one chance.One way to force him still.
She reached into her coat.
Aden's eyes snapped toward the motion. His entire body tensed, ready to spring.
The guards raised their shields in fear.
"Archmage, get back!""He is going to charge!"
Lora ignored them and pulled out a sealed scroll.
The red wax glinted under the lantern light.
Aden froze.
He knew that seal. His family's crest.
Lora unrolled it.
"Aden Vasco," she said quietly, "by direct order of the Vasco Senate… you are to be taken into immediate custody for treason and numerous grave charges."
The words sank into the clearing like poison dropped into water.
Aden didn't breathe for a moment.
Treason.
Immediate arrest.
His pulse thudded in his ears, sharp and violent. He wasn't just caught.
He was condemned.
She met his gaze, her own unwavering.
"Your own family has ordered your arrest, Aden. It's over. Don't make this any more messier than it already is."
The Vasco family.
The words hung in the air, and Aden's carefully constructed control shattered.
A flash of pure, unadulterated rage contorted his features. It was more than anger; it was a visceral betrayal that cracked the dam inside him.
The damaged, dormant mana core in his chest, which he had guarded so fiercely throughout the fight, suddenly spasmed.
A wave of raw, uncontrolled mana leaked out, a flickering, unstable aura of silver and red that hissed into the air around him.
It wasn't the controlled surge of a prodigy, but the dangerous, volatile leak of a broken vessel.
The guards flinched as one, their shields snapping up into a solid defensive wall.
Lora's own hands came up, mana already coalescing at her fingertips, her heart hammering against her ribs.
This is it.
He's going to do it
Aden's knuckles were bone-white. His entire body trembled with the effort to contain the storm within.
His eyes, burning with fury and a pain deeper than any wound, swept over them all, the terrified guards, the resolute Archmage, the corpses of the men who had set him up.
With a sudden, violent roar that was more pain than fury, Aden moved.
It wasn't an attack on the guards or Lora. He spun and drove his sword down with all his remaining strength.
The blade punched through the hound's throat with a sickening crunch, silencing the ragged breath and the smirk forever.
It was an execution.
A final, bloody act of defiance against the fate they had woven for him.
The unstable mana around him vanished, snuffed out as quickly as it had appeared.
Silence returned, deeper and more profound than before.
Aden let go of the sword. It remained, standing upright from the corpse.
He slowly raised his hands, slick with blood and sweat, and placed them behind his head.
He then sank to his knees in the churned, bloody earth, his head bowed.
The universal sign of surrender.
The clearing exhaled all at once.
"Holy…"
"He surrendered?"
"He actually…"
The guards looked at each other in disbelief.
Lora lowered her spell, though her fingers still trembled faintly.
She took a long breath.
"Take him," she said quietly.
The guards hesitated another second, as if still afraid he might rise and carve them apart.
Then they finally moved in.
Slow.
Cautious.
And the heir of the greatest household in the empire knelt in the dirt, blood on his hands, surrendered at last.
The guards surged forward, their fear replaced by grim efficiency.
They pulled Aden's arms down, binding his wrists with thick, mana-dampening manacles. He offered no resistance.
As they hauled him to his feet, his eyes met Lora's one last time.
There was no plea in them, no remorse.
Only a cold, clear certainty that chilled her to the bone.
The prologue was over. The trial was about to begin.