The sharp, chemical stench of the smelling salts was a universe away from the metallic reek of blood and smoke that choked the stairwell to the Royal Dais.
Here, there was no whispered apology, only the raw-throated screams of men giving their last full measure. The grand, spiraling staircase—meant for ceremonial processions—had become a slaughterhouse. Four Royal Guards, their crimson uniforms dark with sweat and gore, had turned the stairs into a killing ground.
They fought with the desperate, cornered fury of men who knew they were the final barrier. Below them, a relentless tide of black-masked mercenaries pressed upward, their boots slipping on the blood-slicked marble. The air vibrated with the clash of steel, the deafening bark of pistols fired at point-blank range, and the wet, sickening sounds of blades finding homes in flesh.
One guard, his helmet gone, took a spear thrust to the gut. He didn't scream; he grunted, grabbing the shaft and pulling his attacker forward onto the waiting sword of the man beside him before collapsing to the ground. Another guard, his shield arm broken and hanging limp, used his body as a ram, tackling two mercenaries and sending them all tumbling down the steps in a bone-shattering heap.
They were selling every inch of staircase at a cost of blood and life, buying precious seconds for the two figures huddled at the top, behind the relative safety of the overturned throne.
On the dais itself, the world was a terrifying, muted bubble. King Valerius lay on the cold floor, his breathing a shallow, wet rasp. Queen Anya was no longer catatonic; a primal, survivalist focus had sharpened her features. She crouched low, using the massive throne as cover, her hands pressed tightly over her ears as if she could block out the symphony of dying men just feet away.
The Royal Guard, Ronald, knelt beside the King, one hand maintaining pressure on the chest wound, the other white-knuckled around his sword. His eyes were locked on the staircase, watching his brothers fall one by one. Each death was a hammer blow against his hope. The line was thinning. It wouldn't hold for long.
He didn't need to see the sniper's position to feel the threat. The star-shaped crack in the bulletproof glass was a constant, silent reminder that death could come from the shadows at any moment. They were trapped, besieged in their own fortress
The line was buckling. A guardsman named leo, his mind flashing to his daughter's laugh, a sound he knew he would never hear again, braced for the final, overwhelming rush. This was it. They had given everything.
Suddenly—
SHHHKKK—
A sound like silk tearing, but infinitely sharper.
The lead mercenary's head toppled from his shoulders, hitting the blood-slicked steps with a soft, final thud. Before the body crumpled, two more heads followed in quick, silent succession. There was no battle cry, no war shout—only the wet, meaty sound of decapitation and the spray of arterial blood painting the walls.
The mercenary advance faltered. Men stared, shocked and confused, at their headless comrades.
what the hell ?
SHHHKK— SHHHKK—
Two more. Heads carved from bodies with impossible, surgical precision. In the flickering torchlight, the only thing any of them saw was a fleeting glimpse—a blur of darkness, the whisper-thin arc of a blade so black it seemed to drink the light, a reaper come to collect their souls.
The remaining Royal Guards, their own hearts hammering against their ribs, used the moment of stunned hesitation. They didn't understand what was happening, but they recognized a tide turning. With a collective, guttural roar, they pushed forward, their swords finding gaps in the disoriented enemy formation.
"Hold!" he shouted to the remaining guards, his voice cracking with a hope he hadn't felt in what felt like hours. "Just hold!"
Then the reaper became visible.
From the shadows behind the mercenary ranks, the Blade Master emerged.
He didn't run. He walked. A calm, deliberate advance through the chaos.
A mercenary, wild-eyed with terror, swung a heavy axe. The Blade Master didn't block. He flowed inside the swing, his left blade severing the man's wrist. As the axe clattered to the ground, his right blade punched straight through the mercenary's throat. He didn't watch him fall; he was already moving to the next.
It was a brutal, surgical dismantling of the remaining force. He moved with ghostly silence, a dancer in a symphony of death. He used their momentum against them, pulling one man into the path of his comrade's sword, then dispatching them both with two swift, precise strikes. He slammed a man face-first into the heavy door to the staircase with enough force to crack the wood, leaving a bloody smear as the body slid down.
He was efficiency incarnate. A machine of death. In less than twenty seconds, the last mercenary gurgled his final breath, a blade buried deep in his chest.
Silence.
The Blade Master stood amidst the carnage,
He looked past the three stunned Royal Guards, his wyvern-skull mask fixed on the door they had lost their comrade while trying to protect
He didn't speak. He simply pointed one obsidian blade toward the door.
The Three Royal Guards stared, their chests heaving, their swords held in white-knuckled grips. The sudden, silent slaughter of the mercenaries had been more terrifying than the battle itself. The figure in dark leather and the wyvern-skull mask stood amidst the carnage, not even winded, his obsidian blades now still at his sides.
The tension didn't break; it curdled into a different kind of fear. One of the younger guards, his voice trembling with adrenaline and awe, managed to stammer, "Who… who are you?"
The masked head turned slowly, the empty sockets of the wyvern skull fixing on the young man. The voice that emerged was a low, filtered rasp, calm and absolute.
"The Harmonic Inquisition." A gloved hand moved with deliberate slowness to a pouch on his belt, producing a badge of polished silver and obsidian.
I am here for the King and Queen
The guards exchanged uncertain glances. The Inquisition was a rumor, a shadowy specter used to frighten children and subversives. To see it made flesh, standing in a corridor of its own making, was deeply unnerving. But the badge was real, and the alternative was the certain death this figure had just prevented.
With a grunt of reluctant trust, Leo gestured to the others. "Open the door."
As the heavy, reinforced door to the staircase groaned inward, the Blade Master didn't wait. He became a blur of motion, flowing through the opening and up the spiraling stone steps before the door had fully swung on its hinges. He moved with such preternatural silence and speed that to the guards, he seemed to simply vanish into the gloom above.
"Wha— Where did he go?" the young guard breathed.
Leo stared up the dark stairwell, a shiver tracing his spine. "Upstairs," he said quietly. "He's already upstairs."
On the royal dais, the world was a bubble of frantic, hopeless energy. Ronald knelt, his uniform sleeve soaked through with the King's blood, his hand maintaining desperate pressure on the sucking chest wound. King Valerius's breaths were shallow, wet gasps, each one a little weaker than the last. Queen Anya was no longer catatonic; a raw, animal fear had sharpened her features. She crouched beside her husband, her hands fluttering uselessly, her eyes wide and fixed on his ashen face.
A shadow fell over them.
Ronald's head snapped up. His heart slammed against his ribs. A man—no, a thing—in form-fitting black leather and a horrific wyvern-skull mask stood not five feet away. He hadn't heard a footstep, a breath, a rustle of clothing. It was as if the darkness itself had congealed into this terrifying form.
Instinct took over. Ronald's free hand shot to the Revolver at his hip, yanking it from its holster. He didn't aim; he pointed and fired, the shot wild and deafening in the confined space.
The Blade Master didn't flinch. His head tilted a fraction of an inch, and the round passed harmlessly through the space where his head had been a microsecond before. He made no aggressive move. He simply raised an empty hand, palm out.
"Wait," the filtered voice rasped, cutting through the ringing in Ronald's ears. "I am not your enemy. I came here for rescue."
Ronald's finger tightened on the trigger again, his arm shaking. "Like hell you are! Drop your weapons!"
The Blade Master, with a slowness that was both insulting and terrifying, bent and placed his two obsidian blades on the floor with a soft, definitive clink. He straightened, his empty hands held away from his body. "Relax, soldier. The hallway is clear. I am here under the authority of the Harmonic Inquisition to extract the royal family. My mission is their survival."
Ronald stared, his mind racing. The calm authority in that distorted voice was undeniable. The lack of any further attack was the most compelling evidence. He began to lower his pistol, the barrel wavering.
It was then that the world outside their bubble remembered them.
CRACK-THUD.
The sound was horrifyingly familiar. First, the distinct, distant crack of the high-caliber sniper rifle from the clocktower. Then, the sickening thud of impact a mere foot from the previous star-shaped fracture in the famed bulletproof glass. The new impact point webbed violently, a hairline crack actually spiderwebbing out to touch the first. The glass was failing. The next shot would come through.
Ronald flinched, his gaze snapping toward the threat. The Queen let out a stifled shriek.
The Blade Master, however, was a study in cold calculation. His head didn't jerk. It turned with the smooth, unhurried precision of a radar dish. His masked gaze locked onto the clocktower at a 45-degree angle, pinpointing the sniper's nest not through sound alone, but through an instinctual understanding of trajectories and the faintest glint of a scope.
"Get down," he commanded, his voice still calm, but now edged with urgency.
While Ronald was still processing the command, the Blade Master's hands moved. From hidden sheaths on his forearms, he produced three throwing stars, each forged not from metal, but from polished, razor-sharp wyvern claws, their edges serrated and deadly.
He didn't throw them at the sniper. That was impossible. He threw them at the already critically weakened bulletproof glass.
Shink. Shink. SHINK.
The stars struck the three points of the existing fractures with unerring accuracy. The sound was not of shattering, but of a structure giving up its integrity. A network of cracks exploded across the entire pane. Then, with a groaning, crystalline sigh, the entire massive window gave way, collapsing inward in a torrent of glittering, diamond-like shards that rained down upon the dais.
In the same fluid motion, as the glass was still falling, the Blade Master moved. He was a blur. He closed the distance to Ronald, and before the guard could even register the movement, the rifle that laying beside him was gently but firmly taken from his aside.
The Blade Master didn't aim. He didn't use the sights. He simply raised the rifle, his body a perfect, stable platform, and fired a single shot into the darkness of the clocktower's bellfry.
A second later, a tiny, dark figure could be seen—by anyone with the nerve to look—plummeting from the tower, a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence returned, deeper and more profound than before, broken only by the tinkling of settling glass.
Ronald stood utterly paralyzed, He stared at the Blade Master, his mind unable to reconcile what he had just witnessed. The impossible shot, the preternatural awareness, the casual demolition of the impregnable glass…
"How…" Ronald stammered, his voice a dry croak. "How did you… break the…? And how did you locate him?"
The Blade Master ignored the questions. He turned and, with a strength that belied his lean frame, gently but firmly lifted the unconscious King into his arms as if he were weightless. He began to walk toward the staircase.
The movement broke Ronald's stupor. "Wait!" he cried out, the only question his reeling mind could form surfacing. "Are you… are you a Tuner?"
The Blade Master didn't pause. He didn't look back. His filtered voice floated over his shoulder, flat and final.
"Do not ask unnecessary questions, soldier. Bring the Queen. And stay close." He took another step before adding, the words hanging in the glass-strewn air, "The immediate threat is neutralized. It is safe to move."
It was not a reassurance. It was a statement of fact from a man who had just reshaped reality to his will. And as Ronald numbly helped a trembling Queen Anya to her feet,
check the other chapters see if everything okay and matches the situation if doesnt this is the final product