I would like to go on record, once again, in declaring that I never asked for any of this. Truly. If so cosmic auditor flips through the pages of my life and tries to pin responsibility for the current state of affairs on , I will sue.
Yes, , the sa idiot now hauling a bleeding knight in my arms while a teor—yes, an actual burning piece of astronomical spite—hurtles down from the heavens like the gods had finally gotten tired of foreplay.
My defense is simple: I was in the wrong place at the wrong ti with the wrong companions and the wrong face.
I never signed up for this, unless you count the vaguely worded pact I made with my own ego about one day overthrowing an empire and establishing myself as monarch. Which is different. That was supposed to be poetic. This is... well, this is more teor-shaped.
I think you’ll agree those are not the sa.
The first sound to leave my lips, upon realizing the fiery death streak carving the sky was not a shooting star but a massive cosmic projectile aid at us, was not a scream, nor a prayer, nor even an eloquent curse.
No, it was a squeak. A high-pitched, strangled squeak that could have co from a mouse suddenly realizing it had wandered into a cheese factory with a resident population of very hungry cats.
I would love to tell you I followed this squeak with a brilliant rallying cry, a line destined to be etched in the annals of history. Instead, I stared slack-jawed, blinked at the heavens, and said the immortal words: "Oh. That seems bad."
Nara responded more dramatically.
His knees gave way beneath him as if they had been waiting for this exact excuse, and he crumpled onto the cobblestones with a muffled thump.
His ears drooped forward, his little dagger clattering uselessly to the ground, while his rabbits—those exhausted little soldiers—popped out one after another in sympathetic spasms, only to collapse dead on arrival.
He buried his face in his cloak and muttered what I can only assu was a litany of despair flavored with self-pity.
Behind him, my little retinue—the collection of unlucky n I’d beautified, corrupted, and shoved onto my personal payroll—began to collectively unravel.
There is no other way to describe it. They started pacing in tight little circles, hands tangling in their hair, eyes darting like startled pigeons. They muttered at each other in rising tones, voices cracking as panic surged through them.
One wailed about dying before he’d finished growing his hair out. Another insisted that if he had known teor-related incidents were a possibility, he would have asked for hazard pay. A third simply walked in a perfect square, over and over, like a broken wind-up toy.
And then there was Salem.
Oh, Salem. My glorious, infuriating, fearless lunatic. Where the rest of us reacted with reasonable terror, he simply looked up at the blazing streak cutting across the night and... laughed.
Not a belly deep laugh. Not his usual sharp-edged chuckle, either. Just a low, incredulous huff of air, as though he’d been handed the punchline to a joke he hadn’t realized he’d been telling his entire life.
"A teor," he said, shaking his head, blood still crusting his temple. "Of course. A King-Class spell, and it’s a bloody teor." His lips twisted into a grin far too wide for the circumstances. "Perfect."
I wanted to smack him.
Not because he was wrong—no, he was devastatingly correct. This was the truth of a King-Class mage, the power beneath all the petty flickers and taunts.
They didn’t simply bend the rules of battle. They broke the world open and rewrote the dictionary under which "battle" even made sense. But still, I wanted to smack him. Mostly because laughing at a teor feels like trying to flirt with a guillotine—it isn’t brave, it’s insane.
And yet, even as terror poured over like molten wax, so pathetic fragnt of my brain kept trying to strategize.
Which is, frankly, the most insulting thing my mind has ever done to . As if any "strategy" could possibly be relevant when one is up against the violent embrace of space rock.
Still, the instinct was there, and it forced to open my mouth and say sothing, because silence is worse than stupidity.
"We... should go back."
Everyone stared at . Which is fair. Usually when a teor is streaking through the heavens, the appropriate response is not to suggest running directly back toward the man who summoned it.
But my mouth had spoken without consulting the committee in charge of self-preservation, and the words hung there like bad fruit.
"Back?" Salem asked, tilting his head. "Back... to the plaza?"
"Yes," I said, dragging Rodrick higher against my chest as his dead weight threatened to slide. "The barrier is still there, and say what you want about King-Class showmanship, but if I were summoning a cosmic projectile, I would not be aiming it directly at my favorite murder-arena. No, I would aim... elsewhere."
Shockingly, it was Dunny who nodded.
Little Dunny, who usually spent these monts curled on the ground reciting hymns through tears, was now staring up at the sky with sothing frighteningly close to calculation.
His eyes reflected the blaze above, sharp with desperate thought. "He’s right," he whispered. "If the teor struck the plaza directly, it would level everything within a mile. No barrier could withstand that. Not even one forged by a King-Class mage. But..." He raised a trembling finger, pointing toward the mountainside behind our library. "If the goal is devastation—not annihilation—then he would aim there. The periter. Doing so would crush the outskirts and collapse the city inward without fully destroying its heart."
I blinked at him. Then blinked again. "Dunny. Did you just use... logic? At a ti like this?"
"Shut up," he hissed, his voice breaking.
With that realization in mind, I figured there was no longer any need to converse. Salem and I locked eyes. We didn’t speak.
Instead we ran.
The sprint that followed was not so much a sprint as it was a series of small betrayals committed by our own bodies.
My arms burned from Rodrick’s weight. My legs wobbled like badly cooked noodles. My lungs kept trying to resign mid-run.
And still we pushed forward, because what choice did we have?
Just then, Rodrick stirred in my arms as we thundered down the street. His one functional eye cracked open, swollen face twitching as he rasped, "Cecil...?"
"Yes, yes, I’m here," I gasped, sweat dripping into my eyes. "Everything is fine. Nothing to worry about."
He squinted, clearly attempting to parse whether I was lying, which was unfair. Obviously I was lying, but surely he could have given the courtesy of pretending otherwise. His lips twitched. "Fine...? There’s fire... in the sky."
I laughed. Hysterically. Loud enough that I nearly dropped him. "Yes! Exactly! Fire in the sky, rocks from the heavens, Armageddon itself descending upon our tiny, miserable heads. But you’re fine. You’re with . What could possibly go wrong?"
He groaned and slipped back into unconsciousness, which honestly poised to be the most reasonable response to my reassurance.
We ran until we felt like collapsing until, up ahead, I glimpsed it—the faint shimr of the barrier. Just a thread of light at the far end of the street.
Hope flared, foolish and desperate, and for a single heartbeat I believed we might actually make it. That maybe, just maybe, we’d find so way to slide through, find cover, and laugh about this later over stale bread and bad wine.
Then the heavens bood.
A sound like creation itself being split in half rolled across the city as the teor broke the atmosphere.
A deafening, guttural sound that cracked glass, rattled shutters, sent dust pluming from every rooftop. The cot’s blazing trail thickened, brighter now, impossible to ignore. The fire burned orange and violet, a scar across the sky. And with that sound, hope died in my chest.
It was too late.
I think the others felt it too, because their frantic sprint began to falter, their bodies betraying the certainty flooding their minds. Breath tore from them in ragged sobs. Feet dragged. The panic in their eyes shifted from desperation to resignation.
And then—
The Man in White stopped.
Just stopped. Mid-sprint. Boots clicking to silence as he ca to a dead halt in the street, his cloak fluttering around him in the breeze.
We nearly collided into him. Salem cursed, skidding to a halt, his blades flashing out of instinct. I staggered sideways, nearly dropping Rodrick. Dunny scread sothing incoherent. Nara’s ears shot straight upright, trembling with fury. Fitch, who has been silent this whole ti, simply grimaced.
"What are you doing?" I roared, eyes wide with rage. "Keep moving!"
The Man in White sighed. Actually sighed. As if we’d just asked him to reschedule a eting rather than survive the imminent apocalypse.
"I suppose there’s no choice," he said softly.
Before I could protest, he reached into his cloak and drew out a glimring object. Not a sword. Not a relic. A coin. A single golden crown, gleaming faintly in the firelight of the descending teor.
I blinked. "Oh wonderful. Truly. While we’re seconds away from being vaporized, you’ve decided now is the ti for financial transactions. Do you plan on bribing the teor to crash sowhere else?"
He ignored . He always ignores . Instead, he began to speak with that sa maddening calm, his eyes flicking over us one by one. "I took you into shelter. You pledged loyalty to . You fought under my banner, however unwillingly. Tell ..."
My stomach dropped. "What?"
He turned his gaze fully onto . Sharp. Cold. "Do you consider yourself to mine?"
I panicked. Saints above, my brain flatlined. Of all the questions to be asked when a teor is currently rewriting the definition of speed above our heads, this one ranked near the top of "utterly inconvenient." My mouth flapped open, empty sounds tumbling out. "I—I don’t—this is hardly the—"
"Answer the question," he snapped, quiet but sharp enough to slice marrow.
I squeaked again. Saints help , I squeaked. "Yes! Fine! Yes! I’m yours, whatever you want, I don’t care!"
He nodded once. "And those beneath you—your... converts, as you call them—they are yours, are they not?"
"Yes, yes, fine, all mine, paperwork included, would you like to draft a contract while we die?"
"Then they are mine as well."
I choked. "Excuse ?!"
But he was no longer listening. He turned, calmly counting them off. One. Two. Three. Until he reached seven. His lips curled slightly. "Perfect."
He began to mutter. Low. Incoherent. Words older than language, sounds that didn’t belong in mortal throats. The air around him bent, heavy, thick with sothing I couldn’t na.
The teor roared overhead.
I followed its blazing trail, my eyes wide, my heart clawing at my ribs. And just as it struck—just as the mountainside scread, just as fire and stone erupted into the world—the Man in White, in one fluid motion, flipped the coin into the air.
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