Duke Gemsh stood as a trembling shield, while King Kahen sat behind him, his regal composure fraying like an old tapestry.
Neither man possessed the martial Skill to challenge a true warrior, yet in their eyes, the enemy before them—Vionette—was just as physically fragile. They could have overwhelmed her if they lunged together, two desperate men against one, but they remained rooted to the spot. The sight of their own knight, a silent sentinel now turned into Vionette's puppet, acted as a spiritual anchor that dragged their courage into the dirt.
"Stop spouting your nonsense!" Gemsh snarled, his voice cracking like dry parchment.
He drew a jagged dagger from his waist, its steel trembling as he pointed it toward the princess.
"You have already dropped the honorifics? How quickly the mask slips when the stage begins to burn."
Vionette stopped a few paces away, the controlled knight looming beside her like a gargoyle. She tilted her head, her crimson eyes tracing the lines of panic on Gemsh's face.
"You must have been nesting in Aurelyth's pockets for a very long time to be this comfortable in your treason."
"Tell me," Gemsh said, his eyes sharpening into needle-points of desperation. "Did you kill Carvan or not?"
Vionette's eyebrows curved upward, her features shifting into a cruel mockery. She let out a soft, melodic laugh that felt like ice sliding down a spine.
"I didn't."
"…"
"Do you get it now, Gemsh? You haven't fooled a single soul. You have simply been a fool walking in circles inside a trap you built for yourself."
Gemsh's eyes widened, the sclera mapped with thin red veins. He had convinced himself his stratagem was a masterpiece, a labyrinth from which no mind could escape. But if Vionette hadn't killed Carvan, it meant she had seen the strings of his puppet show before he had even begun to pull them.
"Hey, you bitch! Who is that man?" Kahen shouted from behind the Duke, his voice a raw wound of grief and fury.
He wanted the name of the shadow that had extinguished his son's life; he was a man holding back a flood of rage, desperate for a target to blame for the ruin of his bloodline.
Vionette began to pace a slow, languid circle around her controlled knight. As she moved, she reached out, her fingers tracing the etched steel of the knight's armor and the keen edge of the blade. She wasn't just walking; she was an appraiser, testing if the metallic wealth of the kingdom she was about to dismantle would be worth the effort of the harvest.
"He is my partner," she said, her voice dropping into a tone of quiet, reverent steel. "The person I trust the most. Nothing more, nothing less." She leaned in slightly as she inspected the guard of the knight's sword, her reflection flickering in the polished metal.
Noa's power felt like a mysterious cheat code written into the very fabric of the world. His origins were a ghost story and his past was a grave he had dug long ago, but none of that mattered. What mattered was the man who stood in the sun beside her—not a piece on her board to be sacrificed, not a marionette bound by her strings, but a partner who shared her horizon.
"Not telling us anything, then?" Gemsh clicked his tongue, his knuckles turning white around his dagger.
It wasn't that she was withholding secrets; she simply didn't know the specifics of his past life, nor did she care to ask. Neither had reached back into the shadows of their previous worlds; Noa Shinra had buried his family name, and Han Seoyeon had shed her name and her very body to become the Sovereign of Crimvane. They lived only in the brutal, beautiful present.
"Then what about the mage who caused that explosion? How did you secure healers?" Kahen pressed, his questions coming faster now, a barrage of confusion.
"No. More importantly... how did you find out about our plan?" Gemsh asked, his voice a low, trembling vibrato.
Vionette stopped her pacing, coming to a halt behind the knight. She crossed her left arm over her stomach, resting her right elbow in her palm as she tucked a finger beneath her chin in a pose of mock contemplation.
"You see, Gemsh… when people think they have become 'someone,' they stop thinking about who others are." She offered him a cheeky, needle-sharp smirk. "Didn't you do the same?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You thought you were such a genius that you decided to ignore the simple paths. You felt the need to construct a master plan complex enough to match your own vanity, didn't you?" She raised a mocking eyebrow.
"…"
Vionette walked toward the central war table and picked up four wooden markers. Kahen and Gemsh watched her with the wariness of cornered animals. With a casual flick of her wrist, she arranged the pieces into a cross over the map.
"You made distortions along the borders of Highfen, turning Highfen and Caldris into the prime suspects. But it was too obvious—so obvious that it forced us to think you wanted us to suspect them. Naturally, that shifted the suspicion toward Blackmoor and Therion." She placed four pieces upon the map, then pushed down the two that stood opposite each other.
A bead of sweat slid down Gemsh's temple as Vionette calmly unraveled the scheme he had woven so carefully.
"You could have ended it there," she continued. "But no—because you are a 'genius,' you had to push it further. You fed a hint about the coming war to Carvan, Duke of Therion. That made him the perfect suspect. Once he was executed, the trail would end, and no one would think to look any deeper. That was your intention… wasn't it?"
She turned to him.
She… knew? How?
"But look at you now. Because of that grand plan, you provided the very thread I needed to unravel you. It's unfortunate, really, but…" A thin, cruel smile stretched tight across her face, cold as a winter moon. "You were just too predictable~."
"H-how…?" Gemsh's voice trembled despite himself. "How did I get caught with that?"
Vionette rolled her shoulders lightly, as though the matter bored her.
"I didn't do much. I simply asked who delivered the message to Carvan, and that told me everything. A random messenger would mean nothing, and an unknown source would only raise suspicion—but your knight…" She tilted her head slightly. "That fit the pattern of your little 'make them think' game perfectly."
Gemsh's lips parted, yet no words followed. His mind clawed desperately through the layers of his design, retracing every move he had made, every misdirection he had planted, every step he had believed flawless. But each path circled back to the same cold truth—somewhere within that perfect web, a single thread had led straight back to him.
Who is this? Who is this woman? This isn't the Princess I knew. Never!
"Heheheh… Hahahah!"
Behind Gemsh, a hollow, jagged laugh erupted from Kahen. His eyes were wide and vacant, filled with the disbelief of a king who had realized his crown was made of straw.
"Good, Vionette Crimvane. You have mocked us to our very cores. But since you have been foolish enough to enter this tent alone," Kahen drew his sword, the steel singing a sharp, desperate note. He looked at Gemsh, nodding for him to prepare.
"You won't be leaving with your head intact!"
With that desperate decree, Gemsh tightened his grip on his dagger, pushing his existential dread into the back of his mind.
If they killed the Queen here, the nightmare would end. They lunged forward in unison, a final, frantic strike born of pure survival.
They kept their eyes on the controlled knight, expecting her to move to shield Vionette, but to their absolute shock, the knight remained as still as a statue.
Thump!
A sudden, gargantuan weight slammed into Kahen's chest, his heartbeat stumbling as if his ribs had turned to lead. The world dissolved into a silent, suffocating darkness.
"KYAAHH!"
In that sudden vacuum of sound, a chorus of screams echoed in Kahen's ears. It felt as though a thousand spectral hands were reaching up from the earth, dragging him deeper into a sunless abyss. Fear struck him swifter than his own breath; it was a sea of blood, an endless, churning tide of pure 'Malice'.
"Kwhah… Blueehh!"
Beside him, Gemsh doubled over, his hand clamped over his mouth to keep from vomiting. His eyes were wide, the whites entirely eclipsed by a web of ruptured red vessels. He was drenched in a cold, oily sweat.
"Seems the wings are doing fine as expected."
Noa entered the tent as casually as a man returning home from work, except for the fact that his body was a tapestry of drying gore.
This time, he had completely undone his [Presence Override], releasing his aura like a dam breaking. The air in the tent became heavy and poisonous, saturated with a depth of malice that felt like staring into the eye of a primordial storm.
"You're back. Nice timing—I just finished my work here as well." Vionette turned toward him, her tone shifting instantly from a cold monarch to a warm companion.
"So, you're the King of Aurelyth? And…" Noa turned his gaze from the shaking Kahen to Gemsh, his lips pulling back into a smile that didn't reach his dark, hollow eyes. "Nice to meet you again."
"…It's you." Gemsh forced his legs to stop shaking, gripping his dagger with both hands in a final, pathetic act of defiance.
Plshhh
Before Gemsh could draw breath to strike, his body was vertically severed in half. It wasn't Noa who had moved—it was Acheron. The blade, sensing the killing intent directed at its master, had acted on its own, a sentient extension of Noa's own dark will.
"Shuue~ nice cut." Noa looked at the blade, whistling softly as the two halves of the Duke collapsed into the dirt.
Kahen's eyes were wide, glazed with a terror that surpassed human understanding. He turned his head slowly toward the spot where Gemsh had stood, but only a cooling corpse remained. Then, he looked at Noa, who was busy complimenting his sword for such a clean kill.
Thud!
Kahen's legs gave out, and he collapsed onto his knees, his entire body trembling like a leaf in a gale.
A devil… he is a devil.
"I… I surrender. Please… don't kill me," the King whispered, his voice a broken, high-pitched plea.
Suddenly, a voice echoed directly into the minds of Noa and Vionette, crisp and clear despite the chaos outside.
It was Numael, her voice a welcome tether to the reality of their victory.
"Surrendered, huh?" Noa turned his gaze toward Kahen, his expression unreadable.
---
The long, agonizing tension of the battle finally broke, leaving only the tattered banners of Crimvane and a sea of white flags fluttering in the wind. The two armies had ground to a halt; the Aurelyth soldiers, abandoned by their leadership, had given up hope.
Tens of thousands of eyes turned toward the hills, looking for a sign, a response, a final word. One hill stood empty, while on the other, the command tent remained a silent, tan blister against the horizon.
"Hey… look. That's—"
A knight from the Aurelyth ranks muttered, pointing a trembling finger at the tent. A ripple of motion drew every eye as the canvas flap was thrown aside.
The Crimvane soldiers felt a surge of triumph, but the arrogant faces of the Aurelyth survivors turned ashen as Noa stepped out into the light. In his hand, he held the severed head of King Kahen by its hair, the monarch's face frozen in a permanent mask of disbelief.
Noa walked to the very edge of the hill where the entire battlefield could see him. He paused for a moment, looking out over the thousands of survivors, before casually tossing the King's head down the slope like a piece of discarded refuse.
Then, his eyebrows drew down into a sharp, demonic angle, and his mouth split into a wide, toothy grin that looked more like a wound than an expression.
"Surrender?"
His shout echoed across the plains, a thunderclap that silenced the wind.
"Fuck surrender! Kill them all!"
With that single, blood-soaked command, the brief pause in the massacre ended. The crimson tide rose again, and the blades of Crimvane fell without mercy upon the men who had dared to hold steel against them.