Luan wakes up with a gasp. The pain in his chest the searing memory of molten rods piercing through him lingers now only as a deep, throbbing bruise, a shadow of the agony that had consumed him.
He sits up slowly, his body protesting with every inch of movement. One hand clamps over his forehead, as if to hold together the fragments of his shattered mind, while echoes of that golden void scatter like ash in the wind, dissolving into nothingness.
"What… was that?" His voice emerges rough.
Elsbeth is beside him in an instant, her hands hovering just above his shoulders, her eyes wide with a mixture of relief and lingering terror. "Luan? Are you okay? Are you feeling any more pain?" Her words tumble out in a rush.
He reaches for her face without thinking, drawn by an instinct deeper than memory. She flinches instinctively both of them frozen in the echo of a time when even a careless touch would ignite unbearable flames, scorching skin and soul alike.
Their hands freeze in the air between them, trembling a chasm bridged only by unspoken longing, a prayer suspended in the dim light of the room.
"I… don't remember," he mutters, his eyes squeezing shut against the onslaught of fragmented visions. "It was dark. So cold. I was looking for you calling out into the void and then… a voice."
He presses his palms into his temples, fingers digging in as if trying to rip the elusive memory from the very bone of his skull. The effort sends a fresh wave of dizziness through him, but he pushes on, desperate to piece it together.
"He said he granted your wish. That he's been watching over me… but he's unable to help for a while." Luan looks up, his grey eyes haunted, shadowed by an ancient weariness that no mortal should bear. "He told me to protect you. To fight. He was trying to say something else, something important, but… the darkness swallowed it whole."
Elsbeth leans closer, her presence a fragile anchor in the storm. Her voice is steady, though it trembles at the edges, betraying the fear she fights to contain. "It's alright. Don't force it. Just breathe. I'm here."
From the corner of the room, Leonard watches, his expression cracked like fractured glass caught in a whirlwind of awe, confusion, and a deep, unspoken heartbreak.
He clears his throat, forcing a brittle humor into his voice, though it falters, unable to carry the weight. "So… I guess this is the part where I pretend I understand half of what's happening?" His attempt at levity falls flat, hanging in the air like a discordant note.
CLICK.
The iron lock turns with a sharp, ominous grind, shattering the fragile moment.
Leonard moves like lightning his dagger drawn in a heartbeat, gleaming faintly in the low light.
Elsbeth rises too, stepping protectively in front of Luan, her hands shaking but her stance unyielding, a shield forged from sheer will.
Sir Rowan fills the doorway, his armored frame dulled by layers of mud and the bone-deep exhaustion etched into every line of his face.
His gaze sweeps the room with the precision of a seasoned warrior: his son's blade poised for strike, the princess standing firm like a guardian, and the jester awake, alive.
Leonard exhales sharply half relief, half fury bubbling up like venom. "Oh. It's you." He lowers the dagger "Nice of you to finally show up, Father. This place looks like a tomb. Do you live here, or did the cobwebs adopt you as their king?"
Rowan ignores him entirely, his boots thudding heavily as he walks past without so much as a glance straight to Elsbeth, as if the rest of the world has ceased to exist.
Leonard scoffs, his voice rising with indignation. "Hey! Don't ignore me! Look I'm sorry and i know you're angry at me for becoming an adventurer and leaving the kingdom let's put that aside and aren't you sworn to protect her?" He gestures wildly, his free hand slicing through the air. "If I hadn't heard his laughter or her voice in that cursed alley, who knows what would've happened?
I found Lady Elsbeth before the knights did! Me a nobody while you were off playing loyal lapdog!"
Rowan ignores him again, dragging a weathered chair close. He sits heavily,
"Princess Elsbeth," he says, his voice gravel and gravity, worn down by years of silent burdens. "What do you intend to do now? I trust you completely… and I do not wish to know what happened at the Execution Grounds."
His gaze flicks briefly to Luan, a silent acknowledgment of the impossible resurrection before them.
"The King is unraveling," Rowan continues, each word heavy with warning. "He will kill him again and again, without mercy or end. Accusations of sorcery spread by the hour, like wildfire through dry tinder."
He pauses, his jaw tightening, the lines around his eyes deepening. "And the people…" His voice drops lower, laced with a bitter edge. "They call you a witch."
The word hangs in the air, toxic and sharp, poisoning the room's fragile peace.
"If you want him to escape this fate—he leaves Liveria tonight," Rowan declares, his tone leaving no room for debate.
Elsbeth squares her shoulders, her chin lifting in defiance, though her eyes betray the storm raging within. "Then we both leave."
"The Church will hunt you," Rowan warns, his voice a low rumble of concern, edged with the grim reality of what that entails endless pursuit,
shadows in every corner, no sanctuary safe.
She meets his gaze without flinching, her resolve a blazing fire amid the encroaching darkness. "Let them."
Leonard sputters, his frustration exploding like a dam breaking. "Father—explain before I start stabbing nobles out of sheer confusion!
Why is the king after motley so badly? And calling her a witch what the hell is happening?
"Why are we acting like this is normal?" His words tumble out in a heated rush, his face flushed with a mix of bewilderment and rage.
Rowan finally looks at him a stare heavy enough to silence the room, weighted with years of unspoken regrets and hardened choices. It pins Leonard in place, the air thickening with tension.
"Calm down. I'll explain." Elsbeth mutters
She does unraveling the tangled threads of the tower's isolation, the poison that had twisted her father's heart, the execution that should have ended everything, and the centuries of silence that had bound them all.
Not everything some secrets she guards like fragile glassbut enough to paint the horror in stark, unrelenting strokes.
The room freezes, the weight of her words settling like frost, chilling the blood in their veins.
Luan listens in silence, his face a mask of quiet endurance, until she reaches the part about bells sewn to a newborn soul a curse woven into innocence.
Then he speaks quiet, steady, horribly human, his voice stripped of the jester's forced mirth. "I was a newborn when they stitched the bells." Every head turns, the room tilting on the axis of his revelation.
"I could walk as an infant dragging silence behind me like chains," he continues,"I learned to speak by having every word turned into a joke, so no one would ever have to truly listen. My pleas became punchlines, my suffering a spectacle."
Leonard's mouth falls open, shock rendering him speechless for a rare moment.
Rowan's eyes widen not hidden behind his usual stoic facade. He has never heard the jester speak without riddles or mockery, never glimpsed the man beneath the bells.
Luan presses on, his voice low but unbreakable, each syllable a testament to endurance forged in fire. "No matter the kingdom every king laughed when I begged for mercy. They called it entertainment, a diversion from their own emptiness."
A heavy pause fills the room, the air thick with the ghosts of untold atrocities.
"I have died for their amusement more times than there are days in your lifetime,"
Luan finishes, his grey eyes distant, reflecting the abyss he has stared into too many times.
Leonard goes white then red, his face contorting with a fury that boils over like molten lava.
"All of it makes me sick. They are devils in human skin. And the gods are punishing an innocent soul for what? Sins of his parents?"
His voice rises, cracking with the intensity of his outrage, fists clenched at his sides.
Luan watches him, his chest tightening at the sight the raw, unfiltered anger directed not at him, but for him. It's a foreign sensation, this being defended, this flicker of worth in another's eyes.
"That bastard," Leonard growls, his words venomous, aimed at the absent king. "What kind of father tortures his own daughter like this? Locks her away, poisons her world, and now hunts her like prey?"
He jabs a finger at Rowan, his eyes blazing. "And you—you didn't do anything? All these years, sworn to protect, and you just… stood by?"
Rowan rubs his forehead, his broad shoulders slumping under the weight of exhaustion "I could not alone. You know that," he murmurs, his voice laced with regret, a quiet admission of powerlessness that stings like salt in an open wound.
Leonard looks at Luan taking in the painted face that hides centuries of scars, the exhaustion that clings to him like a shroud, the unseen wounds that bleed eternally.
"This guy has suffered for centuries and they still treat him like filth. Killing someone who can't die? Over and over? It's monstrous. It's… inhuman."
Luan's thoughts turn inward, a whirlpool of self-doubt pulling him under. If I had not been here, she would not be called witch.
Sir rowan wouldn't have to betray his king. The curse did not touch them I did. I am the disaster.
The words echo in his mind, a relentless tide of guilt. He had vowed to be her Icarus to soar too close to the sun and burn for her light but now he sees only how he drags them all into the flames, their wings melting alongside his.
He glances at Leonard's wasted anger, raw and unbridled, then at Elsbeth's pale face, etched with fear she tries to hide.
I am not worth this, he thinks, the realization twisting like a knife in his gut. Not their ruin, not their sacrifice.
Leonard kicks at a pile of scattered books, pages fluttering like dying birds, his frustration manifesting in chaotic motion.
"That so-called king only cares for his throne.
He refused to acknowledge Lady Elsbeth so she could never take her mother's place never threaten his grip on power.
He's a fat, power-hungry pig, bloated on the suffering of his own people!"
He whirls around, pointing at Elsbeth with a finger trembling from barely contained rage.
"This kingdom is falling apart. Nobles torment the poor like it's a sport. Power is abused in every shadowed corner, every gilded hall.
And the only person who can fix it they mock her, brand her a witch, drive her into the night."
His voice cracks not with grief, but with a fury so pure it borders on holy wrath, his chest heaving as he struggles to rein it in.
The room falls into a charged silence, the air humming with unspoken decisions, the weight of impending action pressing down like storm clouds.
Leonard recovers first, his jaw set in determination. "Right," he says tightly, his eyes alight with a fierce resolve. "You're not running. We're ending this."
Rowan speaks softly dangerously, his voice a low growl that carries the promise of steel. "We are not assassinating the king."
"Not saying assassinate," Leonard snaps back, his words sharp as his dagger. "I'm saying we wake the kingdom up.
Because apparently, the only people who see what's happening who truly see the rot at the core are in this room right now." His gaze sweeps over them all, challenging, imploring, a call to arms wrapped in the fire of his conviction.