King Felix II (Grey) and Knight-Captain Rhea stood frozen in the austere silence of the Lunio Archives. The horrifying truth was undeniable: Chief Strategist Evelyn (RC), the woman running the war and holding the Imperium together, was the traumatized victim of the Original King Felix I. She was the one true Shadow.
Felix located the second critical document: a heavily sealed scroll marked "Final Focus Audit - F.I."
Rhea broke the seal, and they read the Original King Felix's final, chilling confession, written shortly before his mysterious death.
> "...The Flow is absolute, but I confess my application of it was flawed. My pursuit of true Focus demanded the sacrifice of weakness, and I chose to purge the emotional bond of my greatest asset. My Strategist. She was too valuable, too disciplined, to be allowed the weakness of love. I broke her love. I broke her spirit. I broke her capacity for everything but cold logic.
> I know this much of the Flow: the emotional cost must always be paid. My final truth is this: I created the perfect weapon of revenge. She will not seek wealth, nor a throne. She will seek purity of Focus through total annihilation of my Aesthetic Imperium. I have ensured that the only way to satisfy her purpose is to destroy the very thing I created. I am cursed to be destroyed by my own genius. The second Felix must pay my debt."
>
The confession revealed two things: The Original King was fully aware of his monstrous actions, and Evelyn's goal was not to rule, but to destroy the entire ideological system built by Felix I.
"She is destroying the Imperium to pay the Original King's debt," Felix whispered, clutching the scroll. "The war with Lunio is a calculated move to consume both sides in chaos. She wants the whole board cleared."
"We must use this, Your Majesty," Rhea urged, carefully taking the ancient confession scroll. "This confession proves her motive, but more importantly, it proves the war is a mistake! We need to get back and expose her!"
Just as Rhea finished the sentence, the silent Archive was shattered by a wailing, aggressive sound—a siren that pulsed with a deep, unsettling rhythm.
[SYSTEM ALERT: AESTHETIC SIGNATURE DETECTED. HIGH-DF ALARM ACTIVATED. LOCATION: INTRUSION.]
The Lunio guards, alerted to the rupture of the Chamber of Absolute Stillness (Chapter 28), were now using a low-frequency Siren of Focus—a non-lethal, aesthetic pulse designed to make any Flow user within range instantly dizzy and nauseated.
"They are flooding the area with sound! Use your internal Focus, don't listen to the rhythm!" Felix yelled. He and Rhea had to fight through the waves of nauseating sonic energy.
They burst out of the Archive and back onto the desolate plains. The Lunio prison guards, aided by the anti-Flow siren, were closing in.
"We can't fight the entire Lunio guard here, Sire!" Rhea shouted over the pulsating noise. "We need cover!"
Felix spotted their only chance: a deep fissure in the ground, an ancient, non-aesthetic geological scar that ran across the plains, leading toward the mountains and the borderlands—the opposite direction from the main Lunio capital.
"The fissure! Into the ground, now!"
They dove into the crack, the heavy, pure marble dust swirling around them. The sound of the Siren faded as they descended into the cool, silent earth.
Safe in the fissure, Felix pulled out his comms unit and risked a final, urgent, one-way burst of Flow energy toward the Command Center—a message meant only for the ears of the remaining loyalists he still trusted.
"This is Felix II. Do not attack Lunio. The war is a lie. The Shadow is inside the palace. Repeat: the Shadow is inside the palace."
He deliberately excluded the name Evelyn in case the message was intercepted, but the warning was clear.
"Now what, Your Majesty?" Rhea asked, her breathing ragged.
Felix looked at the confession scroll Rhea carried—proof that the debt had to be paid. He looked at the chaos of the war erupting behind them, orchestrated by his own Chief Strategist. He looked at the vast, unknown world ahead.
"The Command Center is compromised. Lunio is just a pawn. We can't fight her war," Felix declared. "We must find the only thing she cannot anticipate: the unexpected. We need allies, resources, and knowledge from places the Aesthetic Imperium never dared to touch."