Night over the duchy was clear and biting cold. The wind moved through the fields in silence, as if the entire land held its breath. Lusian stood alone on the castle's overlook, gazing at a sky that felt far too vast for someone so tightly bound.
He wasn't thinking about strategies.He wasn't thinking about prophecies.
He just wanted to understand why.
A dark flicker interrupted him. Kheris appeared without a sound, like a fracture in the night—more shadow than form.
"You're restless," the god said, with a calm that almost seemed offended by the silence of the world.
Lusian didn't look away from the sky.
"Nothing changed." His voice was hollow, almost normal, as if tragedy were just another conversation. "No matter what I do… I'm still condemned to die here."
Kheris didn't deny it. He stepped closer, resting a gloved hand on the cold railing.
"You can't go back," he replied. "I could never take you with me. I did it once, with a lost artifact of the gods. It cannot be repeated."
A simple statement. A logical fact.But to Lusian, it was a sentence that emptied his lungs. His throat burned, and still he spoke:
"Then… you didn't even bring me out of there. You just… tore me away."
Silence.
That silence was worse than any answer.
Lusian clenched his jaw. He didn't shout. He didn't cry. He simply let resentment carve a hard line across his face.
"You brought me here to die," he murmured.
Kheris watched him without apology, without guilt—like winter itself.
"You will die only if you allow it," the demon said. "You are no longer weak."
Lusian laughed—without humor, without strength. A laugh that sounded like someone drowning.
"There are hundreds. Thousands. Blessed heroes, temples, kings. If I fight, my people die with me. If I run… they die because of me. I can't save them… and I can't die without killing them."
Kheris listened patiently, like someone watching a child learn that fire burns.
"Numbers don't matter," he whispered. "True power consumes them."
Then he said it. A sentence that did not sound like help—but like another sentence disguised as salvation:
"I can cast a spell over the entire duchy. Years of night. Your enemies will lose their faith, their path, their power. And you—with your darkness… you will be able to hunt them."
Lusian finally turned. Not with anger—but with something worse: fear.
Not fear of temples.Not fear of fate.
Fear of having to choose.
"That…" he whispered, "that would condemn everyone. The crops, the land, my… people."
Kheris tilted his head, as if he didn't understand.
"Aren't the gods condemning them already?"
Lusian said nothing. He couldn't.
Because it was true.And unbearably unjust.
He looked at his hands—dried blood from wars he never chose.He looked at the sky—a world that wanted him dead without knowing his name.
For the first time since his arrival, he felt no anger.
He felt tired.Empty.
An irrational desire to disappear—not out of cowardice, but because he had never been allowed to choose anything.
Kheris spoke again, soft as a blade wrapped in silk.
"You will have to choose, Lusian. That is the one thing you will never be able to avoid."
Lusian closed his eyes, as if he could escape the world that way.
And he felt something terrible:
He didn't want to be a hero.He didn't want to be a demon.He didn't want to be anything the world had forced upon him.
He just wanted, at least once… for his life to be his own.
At dawn, the central square of the Duchy of Douglas was as crowded as the day of his ascension—but this time there was no celebration. No sacred banners. No priests. Only the people, gathered by urgency.
From the makeshift platform, Lusian looked over them all: hands hardened by labor, eyes that had learned not to beg for help, warriors marked by old oaths. Tired, yes… but unbroken.
He took a breath. He would not dress the truth in pretty words.
"The entire world," he began, "has received a divine command. The gods have declared me their enemy. They are coming to kill me."
The words fell like stone. No murmurs. No cries. Only silence—dense, heavy, like steel before the forge.
"Listen to me," he continued. "I will not force you to fight. I will not drag you with me. I will not use you as shields. From this moment on, anyone who wishes to leave is free to do so. I will not burden those who choose to live."
The cold wind swept between vine-covered balconies. Green tendrils swayed, as if they too were listening.
"I release you from any obligation," he finished.
And then… the silence broke.
Not with protest.Not with tears.
But with a single voice—deep, broken, and old.
"Lies!"
Lusian felt his heart lurch.
An elderly soldier stepped forward through the crowd, leaning on his spear. His uniform was worn, but the Douglas wolf was still stitched proudly across his chest. He stopped before Lusian, facing him as if he stood taller than any mountain.
"A Douglas does not release his people…" His eyes burned. "A Douglas fights with them!"
The roar came instantly.
Thousands of fists rose.Thousands of voices shouted.
"We live with our lord!""We die with our lord!"
It was not religious fanaticism.
It was identity.A creed the Mana Storm had not erased:
The duchy does not exist without its duke.The duke does not exist without his people.
Refugees joined in.Children stamped their feet against the ground.Nobles recited the oath without ceremony.
And Lusian felt the tragic irony:
He was trying to save them…and they had already chosen to sacrifice themselves for him.
Adela appeared among the crowd, her tiger at her side. She wore a simple dress—but her voice carried across the entire valley:
"Listen to your duke! He did not choose this fate! He wants you to live!"
The people answered as one single creature of will:
"If he dies, we die with him!"
Adela closed her eyes, defeated by the very love that sustained her.
Lusian lowered his gaze. He felt the ground beneath his boots tremble with every heartbeat.
I can't save them… but I can't abandon them either.
He didn't cry.He didn't shout.
He accepted it.
When he raised his voice again, it was no longer as a man trying to escape his fate—but as a leader.
"Then prepare yourselves! If the gods come to take what we are… we will show them what we have chosen to be!"
The vines along the walls tightened like living sinew.Soldiers struck their weapons against the ground.
And thousands of souls answered:
"Douglas does not kneel!"
For the first time, Lusian felt that fate was not a chain…
—but a weapon.
And he made himself a single promise:
If the gods wanted war, they would have war.But not against a demon.
Against an entire duchy.