When Sethiel led us away from the abandoned borderlands, I truly believed the world would grant us at least one quiet night.
But silence is a luxury.
It only exists when you still have somewhere left to retreat.
We entered a half-collapsed old city—not of the present world, nor of the Rose Court. It felt like a seam forcibly stitched between two realities: modern advertising glass still clung to the walls, while the ground was carved with patterns long lost to time. The air smelled of rust and rotting flowers, like a war that had just ended—or one that had never truly begun.
Silent Man did not speak the entire way.
He walked slightly ahead and to my left, deliberately placing himself in the most dangerous position. It wasn’t tenderness. It was instinct—a promise he refused to name:
If the world must take something, it will take me first.
Sethiel walked on my right, his pace unhurried, like someone who had always known where the road would end.
“Why bring us here?” I asked.
Sethiel didn’t answer immediately. He looked up at the sky—no clouds, no stars, only a heavy darkness, as if someone had draped a cloth over it.
“To wait,” he said.
My chest tightened. “For whom?”
Sethiel let out a faint laugh. Not mocking—just tired.
“For the one who finally decided to act in person.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Silent Man’s back stiffened.
Not fear—recognition. The kind that comes when prey suddenly catches the hunter’s scent.
I felt it too.
Not blood. Not mist. Something cleaner. Higher.
Like standing beneath a colossal machine, knowing it is about to activate—and that all you can do is wait for it to crush you.
The ground began to tremble.
Not an earthquake—alignment.
Space was forcibly pulled into a single frequency. Cracks in the walls were gently pried open, white light seeping through them like fingers.
That light was not a doorway.
It was a declaration.
Only then did the sound arrive.
“Rose Alliance — reclamation authority confirmed.”
It was not a human voice.
Too even. Too merciless. A tone trained for execution.
The light widened. The裂 seams were torn into a vast suture, and from beyond it stepped a group of people.
They were human—but not the “engineer-type” executors we had seen before.
Their equipment was older. They wore long robes reminiscent of royalty, yet scarred by battle: reinforced armored cuffs, runes carved into their chests, eyes like cold metal.
The one at the front carried no weapon.
He merely stood there—and the space itself began to kneel.
I didn’t need anyone to explain.
This was the Human King.
Sethiel stepped forward and performed an ancient bow—polite, practiced—but this time stripped of obedience, carrying instead the weight of farewell.
“You’ve finally come,” Sethiel said.
The Human King looked at him without nostalgia. Only assessment.
“Sethiel,” he said, as if reading from a file.
“Rose Alliance member. Nightborne Elf. One of the authorized holders.”
Then his gaze shifted to Silent Man and me.
“Core Risk.”
“Variable.”
The words cut us into categories.
Silent Man’s fingers curled. His nails scraped against the wall. He did not lash out—he crushed the beast within himself, knowing that a single loss of control would only hasten my death.
I, however, looked straight at the Human King and asked a foolish question I couldn’t stop myself from asking:
“What exactly are you afraid of?”
He looked at me—as one might look at a corrupted input.
“Fear causes errors,” he said.
“We do not fear. We correct.”
He raised his hand.
No spell. No energy surge.
The surrounding light responded, condensing into thin, translucent chains that circled the space, turning it into a crude execution ground.
“Royal rebellion of the Nightborne.”
“Termination of Rose Alliance free authorization.”
I froze.
Rebellion?
Sethiel, however, looked like he had been waiting for this.
“So you finally admit it,” he said.
“The Rose War was never divine will. It was your royal process.”
“The process maintains the world,” the Human King replied.
“You standing here today is rebellion.”
Sethiel laughed softly. Clear-eyed. Awake.
“If a process survives by sacrificing the wrong people, it is not order,” he said.
“It is merely a more advanced form of slaughter.”
The mark on my chest twitched.
The Rose recorded—but did not respond.
The Human King’s fingers closed slightly. The light-chains hummed, as if ready to erase Sethiel entirely.
Silent Man stepped forward half a pace.
“Don’t interfere,” Sethiel said without turning.
“If you do, the world will count her in as well.”
Silent Man froze.
That hesitation hurt more than any scream.
I wanted to speak—but my throat locked. Not by force, but by understanding.
This was not a debate.
It was a verdict.
Sethiel looked at the Human King, his voice lowering, as if bidding farewell to an old world.
“I once believed what I guarded was death,” he said.
“So I allowed the world to use death to preserve order.”
For the first time, his gaze lost its flippancy.
“But now I understand.”
He looked up—and something long frozen inside him cracked.
“To guard death is not to make people die.”
“It is to prevent death from being abused—
and to allow rebirth.”
The words struck my chest like a bell.
The Human King’s gaze shifted—just slightly.
Not surprise.
Confirmation.
“Conclusion reached,” the Human King said.
“Sethiel—Alliance status revoked.”
The chains tightened.
Something was torn from Sethiel—not flesh, but authority. His right to stand beside the Rose.
He did not fall.
He only looked at me.
Not as a lover. Not as an enemy.
But as someone finally standing where he should have been, returning something to its rightful owner.
“Hannah,” he said—without irony, for the first time.
“Don’t let them send you to die again.”
I opened my mouth—no sound came.
The Human King raised his other hand.
A spear of pure light formed—featureless, rule-made solid.
He stepped forward.
And thrust.
No flourish. No drama.
Sethiel didn’t dodge.
The spear pierced his chest. No blood sprayed—only a slow flow down the shaft, like a seal being stamped on the world.
Sethiel staggered.
He looked down at the spear, the corner of his mouth lifting faintly.
“So…,” he murmured.
“I can die like a brother, after all.”
Something inside me collapsed.
Silent Man made a sound—not human. Like an animal being flayed alive.
He lunged—
—but Sethiel raised a hand, stopping him mid-motion. Not strength. Will. A fading consciousness locking Silent Man in place.
“Don’t,” Sethiel said.
Silent Man’s eyes burned crimson, fangs nearly breaking through.
“You tell me don’t?” he rasped.
Sethiel coughed. Blood spilled from his lips.
“I understood too late,” he said.
“So you’ll have to understand… longer than I did.”
He traced the air with his finger.
A dark light dropped into Silent Man’s palm.
Not a weapon—a relic.
A heavy lock-shaped object, carved with ancient runes and impossible geometry.
“Give it to the Undead,” Sethiel said.
“They will stop.”
“Why?” I whispered.
Sethiel’s gaze brushed past me—you don’t need to know yet.
He looked back at the Human King, calm to the end.
“You can kill me,” he said.
“But you cannot kill rebirth.”
The Human King did not reply.
He withdrew the spear.
Sethiel leaned forward—held himself upright for one final second. His shadow stretched across the ground like a dark rose withering.
Then he fell.
No heroics.
Just an ending.
The air turned colder.
Not the Human King’s cold—something older.
Black mist seeped from the walls, like ink in water. It wrapped around outlines that should have remained data.
Then—forms.
The Undead.
Silent Man pulled me behind him.
One stepped forward.
“Relic confirmed.”
Silent Man opened his hand.
The Undead’s gaze wavered—just slightly.
“War termination condition satisfied.”
“You’re not hunting me anymore?” I asked.
“Purpose of hunt was stability,” it replied.
“Relic provides alternative solution.”
“Therefore—pursuit of Core Risk: suspended.”
Suspended. Not forgiven.
The Undead added, as if explaining to Silent Man:
“We were not individuals.”
“We were data.”
“Black mist was containment.”
“Understanding caused deviation.”
“Deviation created individuality.”
“Individuality created… pain.”
The mist trembled.
The Human King finally looked unsettled.
“You have crossed a line,” he said.
The Undead replied evenly:
“Royal rebellion.”
“Alliance authority has long been misplaced.”
The Human King calculated—and withdrew.
“Process will be corrected.”
Then he vanished.
Silence returned—heavy, hollow.
Sethiel’s body lay still.
Silent Man knelt beside him, hand over his chest.
“You finally understood,” he murmured.
The Undead waited.
“The relic requires a key.”
“The key is with you.”
Silent Man’s eyes widened.
The relic pulsed.
Memory struck.
“…It’s starting,” he whispered.
And I knew—
Sethiel’s death was not the end.
It was the moment death itself was redefined.
And the Rose Memory had begun opening its most brutal files.
ns216.73.216.33da2
and then Add to home screen.