The heavy iron door of the lowest dungeon did not creak. It swung open with a dreadful, absolute silence that somehow felt louder than a scream.
The royal guard, his arm still raised to deliver another lash, froze.
He slowly turned his head toward the corridor, his breath hitching beneath his dark iron visor. Standing just beyond the threshold of the cell was a towering figure cloaked in a pitch-black mantle. The dying light of the tallow torches seemed to bend and warp around him, swallowed by the dark metal of his armor.
"Crown... Prince... Aure... Aurelius..."
The guard's voice was a pathetic, trembling rasp. The whip slipped from his slack grip, the spiked leather slapping wetly against the blood-stained stone. He immediately dropped to one knee, bowing so deeply his helmet nearly scraped the floor.
"I... I am honored to meet you, Your Highness," the guard stammered, his voice dripping with a sickly mixture of fear and forced flattery.
He noticed the Prince wasn't looking at him. The Prince's unseen gaze, hidden beneath a heavy, horned helmet, was fixed entirely on the broken girl chained to the wall.
"Crown Prince," the guard hurried to explain, trying to sound authoritative to mask his terror. "This filthy knife-ear is the last royal member of the Athervale Kingdom. The same kingdom your father, the Great Emperor Nihil, brought to glorious ashes."
Aurelius did not speak. He did not move. He simply stared.
"I was just finishing my job," the guard sneered, gesturing loosely toward Astraea. "Sending this filthy elf to join the rest of her family."
At the mention of her family, Astraea let out a choked, broken sob.
She had been the last to be captured. She hadn't yet faced the systematic butchery her siblings endured, but she had been forced to watch it.
The memories were fresh, burned into her retinas. The horrific sound of her brothers' bones snapping under heavy maces. The endless, echoing screams of her older sisters as they suffered fates far worse than a simple death, begging for a mercy that took hours to arrive.
The trauma was a physical weight on her chest, heavier than the chains.
Aurelius remained perfectly still. Beneath the cold, black metal of his helmet, a strange, disjointed thought pierced through the heavy atmosphere of the dungeon.
A flash of green. A splash of bright red. A sweet, summery scent cutting through the stench of copper and rot.
...Strawberries?
The fragmented memory vanished as quickly as it came, buried beneath the immediate, grim reality of the cell. His expression remained utterly unreadable in the dark.
The guard, mistaking the Prince's silence for approval, straightened up slightly. His cruelty flared back to life.
"She's a stubborn one, My Prince," the guard spat, taking a step toward Astraea. "But this little royal whore won't even—"
The guard stopped dead in his tracks.
Aurelius had slowly turned his head. He didn't mutter a single word. He didn't draw a weapon. He merely stared at the guard through the narrow slit of his visor.
The air in the room suddenly felt dense, suffocating. The sheer, overwhelming pressure of the Prince's aura pressed down on the guard's lungs.
Without breaking eye contact with the trembling enforcer, Aurelius slowly raised his right hand. He extended two fingers and gave a sharp, dismissive flick toward the corridor.
Leave. The guard didn't hesitate. He bowed frantically, stumbling over his own boots as he scurried backward out of the cell, leaving the Prince and the Princess entirely alone.
Silence reclaimed the dungeon. It was a heavy, expectant quiet, broken only by Astraea's ragged breathing.
Aurelius turned his gaze back to her. He was actually looking at her now. And through the matted curtain of her blood-stained silver hair, she was staring back.
Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely consumed by exhaustion and primal fear.
"Ple... Please..." she whispered. Her voice was as fragile as dry paper. "Don't hurt me anymore... I can't take it..."
She shifted slightly against the wall. The heavy Void-Iron shackles hummed with a sickly, purple light as they fed on her movements.
"Have mercy," she pleaded, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face. "I am dying... the runestones are draining the mana right out of my veins..."
Her beautiful, porcelain skin was a ruin of purple bruises and open, bleeding welts. She trembled violently, her body failing her. "Please..."
Aurelius stood there, an immovable shadow.
Then, slowly, he stepped forward.
Clink. Clink.
The heavy, ominous sound of his armored boots striking the stone sent a jolt of pure terror through Astraea's spine. Her breath caught in her throat.
Instinct took over. She scrambled backward, kicking her bare feet against the damp floor, trying to press herself into the solid obsidian wall.
Her sudden movement violently jerked the heavy chains. The iron collars around her neck, wrists, and ankles bit deep into her skin, rattling loudly in the quiet room.
"Please don't hurt me!" she cried out, squeezing her eyes shut and bracing for the strike. She waited for the pain. She waited for the impact.
It never came.
Instead, she heard the quiet rustle of a heavy cloak settling against the floor.
She opened one terrified eye. The Crown Prince of Tamaskrit had dropped to one knee, bringing himself down to her eye level.
He reached out with a gauntleted hand, moving with slow, deliberate care. He picked up an iron jug from a nearby wooden stool, then lifted a small, relatively clean cup.
The sound of fresh water splashing into the cup echoed loudly in the cell.
Astraea watched with breathless apprehension as he silently extended his arm, offering the water to her.
She didn't move. Her throat was a desert, her lips cracked and bleeding, but her fear was stronger. Poison. It had to be poison. A final, cruel trick before the end.
Aurelius held the cup there for a long moment. When she didn't take it, he noticed her eyes darting suspiciously toward the water.
Slowly, he lowered the cup to his lap. He reached up with his free hand and unlatched the lower half of his visor, lifting it just enough to expose his mouth and jaw. He brought the cup to his own lips and took a deliberate sip.
He didn't reveal his full face, but the message was clear. It is safe.
He offered the cup a second time.
The sight of the water was too much. Her thirst finally overrode her terror. Astraea lunged forward hesitantly, her trembling hands wrapping around the cup. She drank greedily, the water spilling down her chin as she swallowed it like precious nectar. It was the best thing she had ever tasted.
She drained the cup in seconds.
"Can I..." she whispered fearfully, looking at the iron jug in his other hand. "Have more?"
Aurelius nodded once. He didn't bother with the cup this time. He simply handed her the entire jug.
She took it with shaking fingers, lifting it to her lips and drinking her fill. As the cool water soothed her burning throat, the dam inside her finally broke.
Tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks. It was a chaotic storm of emotions—the agonizing pain of her wounds, the crushing trauma of her slaughtered family, and, bizarrely, a deep, overwhelming sense of gratitude toward the monster kneeling in front of her.
She lowered the jug, gasping for air.
"Thank you," she whispered softly, wiping her mouth with the back of a bloody wrist. She looked at the dark armor, trying to see the man inside. "Who are you?"
Aurelius reached up with both hands. With a heavy metallic click, he unlocked the helmet and pulled it completely off his head.
"I am Aurelius," he answered.
His voice was deep, calm, and surprisingly gentle. But it was his eyes that caught her. They were a brilliant, piercing gold, shining with a strange intensity that stood in stark contrast to the abyssal black of his armor.
For a single, fleeting second, Astraea's mind wandered. Looking into those golden eyes, she felt another fragment of a childhood memory surface.
It felt like... warmth?
But the moment she took a proper look at the rest of his face—the sharp jawline, the cold, aristocratic features—the illusion shattered. A violent shiver ran down her spine.
She knew that face.
Her fingers went numb. The heavy iron jug slipped from her grasp.
CLANG.
The jug hit the dungeon floor, the loud noise shattering the quiet intimacy of the cell. The remaining water spilled across the stones, pooling around Aurelius's boots.
Astraea's blood ran cold.
"You..." she stammered, pointing a trembling finger at him. "You were the one..."
The horrific memories of Athervale's final hours slammed back into her mind, no longer blurry, but razor-sharp.
She saw the ancient trees burning to embers. She saw the ash falling like grey snow. And she saw her father, the proud Elven King, kneeling limp against a suit of dark, horned armor.
She remembered the sickening squelch as a gauntleted hand drilled straight through her father's chest. She remembered that hand emerging from his back, grasping his still-beating heart, and crushing it into a bloody pulp without a moment's hesitation.
Her stomach churned violently. A wave of nausea hit her so hard she gagged. She had just accepted water from the very hand that had ripped the heart from her father's chest.
She scrambled backward again, the chains ripping at her skin, but she didn't care about the pain anymore.
"You bastard!" she cursed, her voice cracking with pure, unadulterated hatred. "You killed my father!"
Aurelius did not blink. He did not deny it.
"Why?" she screamed, tears of absolute fury streaming down her face. "Why did you offer me water? To humiliate me further?! To watch me beg?!"
She hurled every insult she could think of at him. Her attempts at cursing were clumsy, almost comical for a royal princess who had never spoken a foul word in her life, but the raw desperation in her voice made it heartbreaking.
Finally, the fight drained out of her. She hit the limit of her sanity.
She slumped against the wall, utterly broken.
"Kill me," she sobbed, looking up at the murderer of her family. "Just finish it. Please. I want to be free."
For a long moment, Aurelius just looked at her.
Then, he stood up.
His hand moved to his waist, wrapping around the leather-wrapped hilt of his massive broadsword. With a long, ringing SHING, the dark steel blade was unsheathed.
He stepped forward, his massive frame hovering directly over her. He raised the heavy blade.
Astraea's breath caught in her throat. The reality of death finally hit her. Her body paralyzed with an instinctual, primal fear. Her mind screamed at her, instantly regretting her words. No, no, I don't want to die!
Aurelius looked down at her terrified eyes.
"As you wish," he said quietly.
The blade came swinging down.
"Ahhh—"