Pain burned through Keiser’s body, every breath a raw reminder of the runes scrawled across his flesh. But none of it mattered. His focus was locked on the old mage’s face... ashen, sputtering, eyes wide with sudden recognition.
"Y–you!" the mage gasped, his voice breaking as spittle flew. "You’re that boy! Aurex Red... the Tenth Prince! How... how are you alive? You’ve been missing for years!"
His frantic shout cut through the night like a blade, echoing off the wreckage of the shattered gate.
The world seed to still. Every villager, every rcenary, every ’outsider’ caught in the glow of the ward turned toward Keiser and the mage, frozen at the threshold. The murmurs started low, then swelled, rippling through the crowd.
"...The Tenth Prince?"
"...The one who vanished?"
"...Now that you ntion it, he looks just like the King!"
"...Those eyes... red as blood..."
"...I knew that boy weren’t normal."
Lenko’s jaw tightened as a dozen stares pinned him, searching for confirmation.
He exhaled sharply, voice rough. "...he’s just Muzio."
Keiser didn’t flinch. He let the words crash around him like a storm, his grip on the mage iron, his expression unreadable beneath the blood and the blaze of runes.
A sudden clang split the air as sothing heavy slamd against the ward. The barrier pulsed, the ripple of force resonating through Muzio’s mana. Keiser’s eyes flicked sideways.
The princess.
Her body was wreathed in fire, the flas shifting, molding into the shape of a fox’s tail and ears. Twin short blades blazed in her grip as she struck. Each cleave crashed against the ward, yet the barrier swallowed the assault whole.
Keiser held the flow steady, feeding Muzio’s mana into the runes he had rewritten. He forced the ward to absorb her attack instead of lashing it back... he would not allow her to be burned by its recoil.
Through the glow, he caught movent.
Diego, the rcenary, slid his claymore onto his back. The man’s eyes t his across the fractured gate, his expression unreadable. Then, to Keiser’s surprise, Diego strode toward the ward... slow, deliberate... and bowed low. The look in his eyes was not submission, but recognition.
Keiser’s breath hitched.
Right.
Muzio may have been branded a bastard, but the blood of the monarch still ran through him. That blood demanded acknowledgent... even from soone like Diego.
The mage sputtered again in Keiser’s grasp, his body trembling. But this ti it wasn’t only fear. His face flushed red with outrage.
"A lowly tenth prince!" he spat.
His glare snapped toward the rcenary. "Diego, you mutt! Get those worthless peasants out of Hinnom, now! Or I’ll throw you and your family outside myself! Do you want your daughter fed to the beasts---"
The words cut off with a choke as Keiser wrenched him up and over his shoulder. His muscles scread under the strain, his body threatening to buckle from the man’s weight. The mage was larger, heavier than Muzio’s fra should have ever carried.
But Keiser has Muzio’s mana to compensate.
The sigils burned hotter across his flesh, flaring past his shoulder, crawling down his arms toward his elbows, searing light into his skin. Power poured into his limbs, an iron resolve anchoring every step. He gritted his teeth and heaved.
The mage’s body lifted.
Keiser stood tall, blood dripping down his side, the runes blazing like a crown of fire around him as he bore the man’s weight.
Keiser winced as he dropped the mage, the man hitting the ground with a guttural groan before rolling onto his side.
"You bastard!" the old man spat, clutching his ribs. His voice was shrill, dripping venom. "You’re no royalty! The monarch cares nothing for a lowly tenth prince!"
Keiser’s jaw tightened.
The mage lurched upright, his hand diving into the folds of his robe. Dozens of parchnts spilled out... pre-drawn spell scripts, each one inscribed with ticulous sigils. Keiser’s stomach knotted as he read them. One spark of mana, and every one of those papers could beco a weapon.
His eyes narrowed on the slip already between the man’s fingers.
Oh.
"You have no idea who you’re fighting, boy!" the mage snarled, his face twisted with spite. "I am Hinnom the sixth, the mage who graduated first of the Academy, the one who’s kept Hinnom safe for over a decade! The King himself entrusted with the kingdom’s last stand against Sheol---"
BOOM!
The parchnt exploded in his hand before the sentence could finish. As Keiser flicked his mana across the sigils, unraveling the spell at the source.
The mage scread, clutching his blistered palm as the remaining parchnts scattered in a burning spray. Fire leapt from one rune to the next... crackling, hissing... as Keiser sent another thread of mana into a page etched with the ’fire’ rune. The ignition spread instantly, parchnts curling and blackening into ash before the man could recover them.
"NO!" the mage cried, scrambling to smother the flas with his sleeve, his movents frantic. "My work... decades of work!"
But Keiser stood still, his gaze cold, watching him flail.
The man’s hand was already scorched, smoke rising off his skin, yet he tore another object free from beneath his robes... a long white chalk, sared and worn down at the edges. The sa tool he had used to carve the ward on the gate.
His breath ca in ragged hisses. His eyes were wide, fever-bright.
"You... " his voice cracked, twisted by pain and fury. "You’re not human. You reek of it... the taint! I can sll it on you!" He raised the chalk like a dagger, pointing it at Keiser with a trembling hand. "You’re no prince. You’re a beast... just like those who were corrupted by the sacred beasts!"
Keiser’s shoulders straightened, red eyes gleaming as the sigils on his skin pulsed faintly with light. His fingers curled at his side, mana thrumming, ready to move.
"Muzio!"
The shout cracked through the air, urgent enough to make Keiser flinch. His head whipped toward the gate.
The princess was there, straining against the ward with both hands. Others had joined her... the ’outsiders’, their palms pressed to the barrier, their bodies shaking from the force. Even Diego was shoulder-to-shoulder with them, his jaw clenched in determination.
But Lenko... Lenko’s wide eyes weren’t on the gate. They were fixed on sothing else.
"Behind!" he scread.
Keiser froze. Then he heard it.
The whoosh of wings cutting the air. The clatter of hooves striking stone. The guttural grindof teeth. Low, feral growls rising in the dark.
His blood went cold.
He turned... just in ti to see the old mage, lips peeled back in a grin, scrawling furiously across the ground.
"You wear the title, but you don’t deserve it," Keiser barked as he closed the gap. "You have no clue what being a mage really is!"
But his words caught in his throat as he read the fresh rune etched into the dirt.
’Offering’
The symbol pulsed.
Keiser’s gut clenched. He leapt back... just as the old man slapped a parchnt against his own chest.
The sigil flared, searing through the parchnt and burning it to ash. A web of glowing runes etched itself across the mage’s robes, pulsing with power.
And then the beasts ca pouring out.
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