The wind swept over the silent courtyard of the Mides Palace, carrying the metallic stench of fresh royal blood across the high marble balconies.
Kazimir stood weirdly noticeable in the crowd. His hands unclasped from his face, his eyes glowing with an unhinged, triumphant light as he looked down at Aefia standing in her pristine white dress beside his father's headless corpse.
The dead King's ghost silhouette flickered violently in the air above his own severed head, his ghostly face contorted in horrific realization as he stared up at his son.
"Kazimir... You... You betrayed me...? You traded with the enemy?!"
Kazimir didn't even see his father's ghost. He didn't look at the trembling, terrified guards or the screaming nobles in the terraces.
His gaze was fixed entirely on Aefia. A hysterical chuckle bubbling up from his throat until it burst into full, resounding laughter that echoed across the entire square.
"Yes!" Kazimir shouted, his voice ringing out over the paralyzed crowd as he took a bold step forward, sweeping his velvet cloak behind him. "Yes, I did! I granted her request! I chose the day, I set the block, and I brought the King to his own damnation!"
He looked down at his father's severed head resting at his boots and sneered, stomping his heel lightly against the cold gold crown.
"Four decades of rot ends today, Father," Kazimir proclaimed, drawing his rapier and holding it high into the morning sky. "You held this kingdom back for centuries! You choked us in your shadows! But under my reign, Mides will rise from the ashes of your paranoia!"
The crowd remained frozen, caught between the sheer horror of regicide and the terrifying authority radiating from the new King.
On the wooden platform above, Aefia stood quietly, her white dress fluttering in the sharp mountain wind. She didn't look surprised.
She didn't look alarmed either.
She simply watched Kazimir's grand performance with a faint, pitying curve to her lips.
"A dog chasing its own tail..." she whispered softly to the empty air.
"You really thought," Aefia whispered to herself, "that I would give a crown to a dog who doesn't even know who holds his leash?"
Her eyes flicked down to the lifeless body against the stone. Then up to the ghost of the King who was currently trembling.
"You made fun of a Guardian... Now, aren't you ashamed of that?" She asked quietly. "How does it feel? To suffer the consequences of messing with the Guardian of Death?"
The ghost of the King simply gritted his teeth in silence.
"You really are quite a thing, your late Majesty." She turned her head away, watching as Kazmir continued to boast about his victory.
"From today onwards, the Kingdom shall thrive under my reign! I shall bring us back from the brink of the massacre the evil-doer King had led us to!"
The poor ghost winced. Then turned towards Aefia.
"My Sovereign... How?"
She turned her head slightly. "How what?"
"How did you..." He pointed to his own lifeless body.
She understood enough by that. "As the Guardian of Death... Once someone is a ghost, I can switch places of the body and the soul. The person you killed, was a devil named Daphne. She looks exactly like me."
The ghost gasped.
Immediately, a faint dark silhouette—the duplicate of Aefia—came to stand beside her. With an eerie smile plastered to her face.
"Don't worry old man... We all have secrets of out own." The devil said.
"But you don't use dark magic!" The King shouted.
"All because I am the Guardian of Death, your late Majesty." Aefia calmly replied. "And the right timing of course. Alongside a tinsy but of help from a fellow 'doll'. You will recognize her. She was once a lady-in-waiting."
The ghost dropped its head. "I apologize for my misjudgment, my Sovereign."
The King's translucent form bowed deeply before her, shivering as the absolute authority that he had missed, pressed against his lingering soul. Fourty years of absolute rule, dark magic, and paranoid schemes crumbled down to a kneeling spirit apologizing to the very girl he had tried to slaughter.
Though... There was also someone continuing the same path as his father. Her eyes narrowed down onto Kazimir's back.
Tsk... I know this is a long process... But the next step is going to be harder.
"Save your apologies, Your Late Majesty," Aefia said, her voice dry and devoid of warmth. She didn't bother to glance back down at him. "You don't owe them to me. You owe them to the kingdom you allowed your son to carve up."
Beside her, Daphne let out a raspy, musical giggle, adjusting the silver earrings dangling from Aefia's ears.
"He fought so hard, Aefia! He really thought his dark steel was going to chop your pretty little neck! I almost felt bad when the blade passed through me... almost!"
"Return to the shade, Daphne," Aefia commanded softly.
With a low, sweeping curtsy, the devil duplicate dissolved into a cloud of crimson-tinted smoke, slipping back into Aefia's shadow without leaving a trace.
"Ministers! Lords of Mides!" Kazimir's voice boomed across the silent square. "Bring forth the royal seal! By nightfall, we forge a new era—"
"You talk too much, Kazimir."
The whisper wasn't loud. It wasn't shouted. Yet, Aefia's voice sliced through his grand speech, echoing with crystal clarity directly into the ears of every single soul in the courtyard.
Kazimir's laughter died instantly. His head snapped up toward the wooden scaffold, his eyes narrowing as he met her calm, unbothered crimson gaze.
"What did you say, girl?" he hissed. A cruel smile surfacing. "You are standing on my execution block, surrounded by my guards! Your little illusion trick bought you a few extra minutes, but don't forget who sits on the throne now!"
"Throne?" Aefia tilted her head, a cold smile slowly spreading across her lips as she looked down at him. "What a funny word... I did everything, and I don't get my credit."
"You really think you deserve it?" He laughed.
"My Sovereign... Use my blade to chop off my son's head." The ghost of the King whispered.
She didn't accept it, neither did she decline it. With the snap of her fingers, the ghost dissolved into the air.
"Don't I though? I did most of the work, and I even paid for it with punishments..."
"What kind?"
"Beating..."
His eyes flicked to her wrists, then back at her face. "But you don't have proves."
She narrowed her eyes down at him in disgust and irritation. But still played along.
"Proof?" Aefia asked, her tone dangerously light as her gaze swept over the pristine white fabric covering her shoulders. "You mean aside from the three broken ribs that healed crookedly in your dark iron cells? Or the bloodstains your court cleaners had to scrub off the stone tiles every three days? You knew precisely how much your guards were doing, Kazimir. You sat in your soft velvet chairs while they tried to break my spirit."
Kazimir let out a dry scoff, resting his hand casually over the gilded hilt of his rapier. He leaned against the stone balustrade, up at her with a lazy, venomous smirk that made no effort to hide his satisfaction.
"Don't sound so bitter, Princess. That was simply part of the theater," Kazimir replied, his voice smooth, echoing with enough restraint that only the surrounding inner guard could hear the sharp edge of it.
"A true prisoner of high treason must look the part. If you had walked onto this scaffold looking like a rested guest of honor, my father would have smelled the plot before he even drew his steel. Pain breeds authenticity."
"Authenticity?" Aefia tilted her head, a cold, empty smile brushing her lips. "Is that what you call the bargain we made twenty-two days ago? When you crept down to the lower ward like a rat, begging for a way to slice the old man's tether without triggering the royal lineage oath array?"
Kazimir's smirk twitched for a fraction of a second before settling back into an unbothered sneer. "Begging? Let us not rewrite history. I offered you a trade. You wanted the King's neck on the floor for what kind of a humiliation he gave you, and I wanted his crown. I gave you the exact execution date you asked for. I even ensured your precious 'special request' was granted down to the finest detail."
"You gave me a date because you were terrified," Aefia corrected softly, taking one slow, light step toward the wooden edge of the scaffold. Her white dress fluttered against the rough posts. "You knew that if the King lived another month, he was going to sacrifice you to extend his life by another decade. You didn't come to my cell out of brilliance, Prince. You came out of pure, suffocating desperation."
"And yet, here I stand," Kazimir said smoothly, spreading his arms wide to encompass the entire silent square, the terrified nobles, and the headless corpse resting near his boots. "Gaze upon the court, Aefia. Who holds the sword? Who commands the guards? Who wears the seal? You played your part in the shadows, yes, but I am the one who reaps the harvest."
"A harvest of poisoned soil," she murmured, her crimson eyes gleaming with a detached, chilling clarity. "Did you forget the secondary terms of our quiet arrangement? When you swore that once the old man fell, the lock on the eastern gates would be dismantled?"
Kazimir chuckled, a low sound in his throat.
"Ah. That." He took a slow step back, adjusting the heavy velvet cloak draping over his shoulder. "Consider that a minor adjustment in policy. A King is allowed to reconsider the promises he made as a desperate prince in a dark hallway. You served your purpose on this block today, Guardian. But if you think I am simply going to hand you the keys to my kingdom's gates, you truly are as naive as you are arrogant."
"Naive?" Aefia softly asked, resting her hands against her lap once more, entirely unbothered by his sudden breach of faith. "No, Kazimir. I knew the exact second you made that promise that you had no intention of keeping it."
Kazimir's eyes narrowed slightly, the arrogant composure on his face tightening as he watched her unyielding stillness.
"Then why play along? Why lay your neck on the wood?"
"Because," Aefia whispered, "a liar only reveals his true neck when he thinks he has outsmarted the monster in his cellar."
Kazimir stared up at her for a long, heavy moment. The faint breeze rustled the hem of his bloodied cloak, but his expression had completely settled into a smooth, unyielding mask of stone. The playful sneer vanished, replaced by the sheer, coldness of a man who had spent his two decades learning how to hide his bloodlust behind a polite facade.
"You really are an insufferable creature, Aefia," Kazimir said, his voice flat and perfectly even, stripped of all theatrics. "Every word that comes out of your mouth is dripping with the delusional belief that you are the sole architect of the universe. You stand on a block stained with blood, have worn chains of dark iron... and yet, you look down on everyone as if we are mere insects crawling across your chessboard."
He took a slow, deliberate step toward the edge of the platform, resting his hand firmly over his rapier hilt.
"You call me a dog. You call me desperate. You talk about monsters and cellar doors as if you are some tragic high-authority figure granting mercy to lesser mortals," Kazimir continued, his gaze unwavering as he locked eyes with her.
"That is not intellect, Princess. That is pure, blinding arrogance. You were so consumed by your own grand design that you actually believed a prince of Mides would hand over his kingdom's eastern border just because you asked nicely in a dark cell."
On the wooden platform above, Aefia didn't scoff. She didn't offer a witty retort or attempt to assert her superiority.
She simply tilted her head, her crimson eyes vast, calm, and utterly hollow.
"I am aware," Aefia replied softly, her tone as dry as dust. "Arrogance is a habit that is hard to break when one has lived as long as I have to see parts of reality which may seem easy at first... Though facing it cost everything. But awareness of a flaw does not make it any less true."
Kazimir let out a single, silent exhale through his nose, refusing to let her mild acceptance throw him off balance.
"Your awareness changes nothing. You played your hand, and now the game moves on without you. You thought you could use my ambition to carve a path out of Mides, but all you have done is secure your permanent place in its foundations."
He turned his back on her, sweeping his arm toward the surrounding ranks of heavy-armored royal knights who stood frozen near the scaffold stairs.
"Guards!" Kazimir's command echoed sharply across the quiet, paralyzed courtyard—cutting through the heavy tension like a snapping whip. "Seize the prisoner!"
The elite soldiers snapped to attention, their heavy steel boots clattering against the stone as they converged onto the wooden platform with drawn blades and dark-iron bindings.
"By royal decree," Kazimir proclaimed, his tone devoid of mercy, clinical and absolute, "the third Aethalgard—and the Imperial Crown Princess Aefia—is hereby charged with high treason against the realm of Mides and the direct orchestration of the late King's regicide. Strip her of all privileges. Bind her magic with triple-locked suppression seals."
The heavy dark-iron cuffs slammed over Aefia's wrists once more with a dull, resonant clank, the cold metal biting into her pale skin. The guards moved with extreme caution, keeping their swords leveled at her throat—terrified that she might snap her fingers and turn them to dust.
Aefia offered no resistance whatsoever. She didn't pull against the heavy chains, nor did she glance down at the bindings wrapping around her forearms.
Before being dragged away though, she offered a smile directly at Kazimir.
"You don't know yet... But you have made the same mistake as your father... Again." She whispered.
Kazimir looked back over his shoulder one last time, watching as the knights surrounded her on all sides, blocking her form from the view of the courtyard.
"Take her back to the deep wards," Kazimir ordered coldly, stepping toward the palace doors to claim his father's throne. "Let her rot in the dark until the official trial."