The top room of the Tower of Time was utterly unsuitable for a king, a stark contrast to the opulent chambers Tigrinu was accustomed to.
Surrounded by grim, dark gray stone walls, the room felt desolate and dirty, a forgotten corner of the world.
Even the luxurious carpet, hastily placed on the cold, unforgiving stone floor, couldn’t mask the undeniable truth that this place was normally a prison, designed for confinement, not comfort.
Black rat droppings littered the spots where dead rats had been hastily cleared, a grim testament to the room’s usual inhabitants.
Dusty cobwebs, like ghostly lace, adorned every corner, catching the meager light filtering through the grimy window.
The musty-smelling walls were smeared with dried blood and all sorts of unidentifiable grime, with faint numbers and letters visible beneath the layers of filth.
They were likely dates and names, carved by a desperate prisoner confined there, trying to maintain their sanity, whether that prisoner was human or spirit.
A biting wind blew in through the large, barred window, carrying with it the scent of damp earth and distant life.
It was a cruel fragment of proof that a beautiful, vibrant world existed outside this oppressive tower, and that life, with all its bustling energy, still flowed on, oblivious to the misery within.
Martin closed his eyes against the light breeze that brushed his cheek, a fleeting caress of freedom, then opened them.
Atop a high stone platform in the center of the room, illuminated by a sliver of weak light, lay the unconscious form of King Tigrinu.
Martin saw Tigrinu’s dream, carried on the invisible currents of the wind, permeating his own mind.
A furious snowstorm raged across a vast, icy plain, stretching endlessly into the frigid distance. Prahecain.
At Equilium’s northernmost point, in a desolate place known as the Land of Nothingness, stood a giant ice cliff, its jagged peaks piercing the storm-laden sky.
It was the stark, beautiful, and unforgiving landscape of Tigrinu’s homeland, a place long departed yet deeply ingrained in his memory.
In front of the towering ice wall, a young girl, her figure small against the immensity of the storm, called out to the Spirit of Winter.
The spirit, responding to her desperate cry, appeared.
A gaunt, skeletal spirit, its body formed entirely of ice from head to toe, descended gracefully from the cliff, holding a crystal ice staff in one hand, and stood before the girl, its presence radiating an ancient cold.
“Give me an oracle,” the girl commanded, her voice surprisingly firm amidst the howling wind.
“If you do nothing, nothing will happen,” the Spirit of Winter warned, its red eyes flashing ominously, its voice like the grinding of glaciers.
Its misty breath turned instantly to ice in the air, glittering shards falling silently.
A sharp shard of ice fell on the girl’s forehead, cutting her skin, a chilling premonition.
Wiping away the blood trickling down her nose with a steady hand, the girl, her red cloak’s hood pulled deep over her face, said with a resolute expression, “To do nothing is death. I am alive.” Her defiance was palpable.
Then, she turned and walked through the fierce snowstorm, her small figure slowly swallowed by the swirling white.
The dream shifted, dissolving into a new scene.
Now Martin saw a boy and a girl arguing passionately in a small, rustic log cabin, its rough-hewn walls offering little comfort.
“So you’re going to play a game of chess with the King of Kiabek?”
The irritable boy, his face contorted in frustration, was Tigrinu in his youth, his features softer, yet already displaying a hint of his future intensity.
“Yes,” the girl, Lavinia, replied, her voice firm and unwavering.
“Will the King really give you gold?” the young Tigrinu pressed, his voice laced with skepticism and concern.
“They say no one has beaten the King yet. That’s why the prize money keeps going up,” Lavinia explained, her eyes alight with determination.
“If I beat the King, I’ll ask for gold and grain. On the way back, I’ll buy other necessities with the gold. We need it.”
Watching Lavinia answer so resolutely, her conviction unwavering, Tigrinu seethed with impotent anger.
He hated the dire situation where his precious person, his betrothed, had to suffer and take such risks because he, her future husband, was incompetent and powerless to provide.
When Lavinia stubbornly refused to back down despite his fervent pleas, Tigrinu slammed his fist on the old, splintered wooden table, the sound echoing in the small cabin.
“Hmph, chess!” he scoffed, his voice filled with scorn.
“What’s so special about that war game that you cross the border for it! Do you know how many days it takes to get to Kiabek’s Klavil?”
“However many days it takes, it’s better than licking dust off a table here,” Lavinia retorted, her voice sharp with desperation.
“You men fight wars with swords. I’ll fight a war game to feed my family.”
Her words were a stinging rebuke, highlighting his perceived inadequacy.
The wind beyond the bars of the Tower of Time window swirled, intensifying, scattering the vivid vision of Tigrinu’s past.
Martin closed his eyes again, trying to regain his focus.
As the wind intensified, Tigrinu’s fragmented mind permeated him faster, deeper, flooding his consciousness with a torrent of thoughts and memories.
“I should have stopped Lavinia then,” Tigrinu’s consciousness whispered, his voice tinged with deep regret.
“If I had, all these wars could have been prevented. My choices, my failures…”
“You are the one who started the war, Your Majesty,” Martin countered, his own thoughts flowing freely into the king’s consciousness, a defiance rooted in truth.
“Don’t shift the blame to Lady Lavinia.”
“Your bluntness is still bitter,” Tigrinu’s consciousness replied, a faint amusement in his tone, a recognition of Martin’s unwavering honesty.
Since entering the Tower of Time, Tigrinu’s consciousness had been constantly speaking, a continuous stream of thought.
It was as if he was desperately trying to shed thoughts that had accumulated in his mind but could not be uttered in his waking life, or as if he had crucial last wishes to impart while still alive, a final confession.
“Sir Scarson, I know who your true liege is,” Tigrinu’s mind revealed, a surprising admission.
Martin’s thoughts immediately recalled Leni’s face, her bright, innocent eyes.
She was a being he had adopted immediately after birth and raised as his daughter for nearly 20 years.
He had lied so often about her being a newborn found in the forest, a convenient fiction, that it almost felt true now, blurring the lines between truth and fabrication.
“Solenia means ‘Child of the Sun’,” Tigrinu’s consciousness continued, echoing a forgotten prophecy.
“Raise this child with love. The love this child receives will someday save the continent of Ratznia.”
The prophecy, handed over with the newborn life, was a heavy burden, a crushing responsibility. But raising Leni had been a pure, unadulterated joy.
For a child so bright, vibrant, and intelligent to love him, a simple Story Master, as her father was a blessing he, who had lived his entire life as a warrior and scholar, had never dared to dream of.
No matter what happened in the future, the 20 years he spent with Leni would remain a cherished memory, a beacon in his life.
The wind outside surged, a powerful gust rattling the barred window.
Tigrinu’s consciousness was fluctuating violently, his thoughts becoming disjointed, fragmented.
“Your Majesty, are you afraid?” Martin asked, sensing the king’s inner turmoil.
“I’m not afraid of death,” Tigrinu’s mind responded, a deep-seated fear underlying the words.
“But doubt plagues me. Was letting Blayden live the right choice? Or was it the gravest mistake of my reign?”
“What’s past cannot be undone,” Martin replied, stating a simple, immutable truth.
“I wanted to kill that child the moment I saw him,” Tigrinu’s consciousness confessed, a visceral hatred evident in the thought.
“Yes, I know,” Martin acknowledged, the memory painfully clear in his own mind. He had witnessed it firsthand.
Martin’s memory rewound 21 years, back to the brutal aftermath of Klavil Castle’s fall. Tigrinu, the fierce conqueror, had drawn his sword in front of Blayden, who had been dragged in by soldiers and forced to kneel.
But instead of fear, the mere seven-year-old child held his head high, his small body rigid, and glared at the conqueror with an intensity that belied his age.
There was no sign of fearing death in his defiant eyes.
Tigrinu’s sword, a weapon that had taken countless lives, fell from his hand, clattering on the stone floor as he looked at Blayden, who possessed an unchildlike dignity, a chilling resemblance to his mother.
“Lavinia,” Tigrinu sobbed, his voice raw with grief.
The conqueror, who had made countless men tremble and nations fall, now embraced the small child, his body racked with uncontrollable sobs.
“You are so much like your mother,” Tigrinu wailed, stroking Blayden’s head, his tears mingling with the child’s golden hair.
“Lavinia, my love is in your face.”
Calling out desperately for his lost lover, Tigrinu’s grief turned to a horrifying madness.
His hands, which moments before had embraced Blayden, now began to choke him.
“Lavinia died because of you,” Tigrinu railed, his voice venomous.
“Giving birth to you! That bastard Odin neglected Lavinia as she was dying. He held a feast because he got a son, but he didn’t even hold a funeral. He scorned her as a lowly person from the provinces and fed her to beasts! If it weren’t for you, Lavinia would have endured. She would have endured until I arrived! She wouldn’t have suffered such a wretched fate!”
Blayden gasped and choked, his small body caught in the iron grip of Tigrinu, who was wailing like a madman, consumed by his grief and rage.
Tigrinu held onto Blayden, whose face was pale and seemed about to collapse backward, on the verge of unconsciousness.
Losing the momentum of his attack, the king clung to the child as if he had found a glimmer of salvation in the swamp of his despair, a living link to his lost love.
“Lavinia!” he cried out again, stroking Blayden’s face as if his beloved woman had miraculously returned to life, tears streaming down his face, blurring his vision.
“Lavinia, my love.”
In front of his enemy, consumed by rage and madness, Blayden’s young gaze grew steadily firmer.
As if realizing he was the vanquished but would never be the weak, the child sat like a solid fortress, glaring defiantly at the raving conqueror.
“The life my love left behind,” Tigrinu roared, his voice fluctuating between tenderness and fury.
“I will not lose you. No, you are the son of my enemy. I will kill your father like a beast and let you live like a beast. Even then, I will appease Lavinia’s soul!”
Tigrinu embraced Blayden, then violently pushed him away, picked up his sword, then dropped it, raging in a horrifying repetition of grief and vengeance.
When everyone else in the fallen castle was terrified, paralyzed by the conqueror’s madness,
Martin, unable to bear the sight, stepped forward and embraced the trembling Blayden.
Despite his composed expression, the child was shaking uncontrollably, his small body racked with silent fear. His slender sincerity, his innocence, pierced Martin’s heart, and he pleaded, “Your Majesty, please spare this child.”
He implored the king, emphasizing that the child was only seven, innocent of any wrongdoing, and above all, Lavinia’s son.
Tigrinu raised his eyes, red with pain and despair, staring at Martin.
His gaze alternated between his loyal friend and the helpless son of his enemy, before he slowly picked up his sword and, with a heavy sigh, sheathed it.
And then, in a chilling act of twisted mercy, he bestowed Blayden upon his own son, Kalian, as a mere toy, a living plaything.
As years passed, Tigrinu treated Blayden sometimes like a son, offering him education and luxury, and sometimes like a dog, tormenting him with cruelty.
Blayden was a prisoner who received the same education as the royal heir, a slave who lived in opulence, a vanquished prince, a decorated beast, and the King’s hunting dog.
But no matter what role Tigrinu forced him into, one thing remained impossible.
Blayden could not be his son, not truly.
Each time Tigrinu despaired of that fact, each time the impossibility of it gnawed at him, he tormented Blayden further, unleashing his frustration and sorrow upon the boy.
“If I had been kind to that child,” Tigrinu’s conscious soul whispered, a faint echo of regret.
“I might have been able to close my eyes in peace.”
Tigrinu’s soul, trapped in his unconscious body, vividly recalled the abuse he had inflicted upon the young Blayden: the cruel whip, the constricting shackles, the humiliating leash.
The gnawing hunger, the parching thirst, the destitution.
The cramped rooms teeming with insects and the terrifying forests swarming with wild beasts. The desolate ice fields and the dizzying precipices.
Though crushed day after day, year after year, the child stubbornly survived, his spirit unbroken, and became a formidable warrior.
“Do not regret it, Your Majesty,” Martin countered, his voice resonating with wisdom.
“You would seek revenge even if you were reborn. It is in your nature.”
“You’re right,” Tigrinu’s consciousness conceded, a touch of weariness in his thoughts
“People don’t change. And it’s natural for a child who grew up witnessing my revenge to dream of revenge himself. It is the cycle of conflict.”
“Yes,” Martin agreed, a deep sadness in his voice.
“The escalating wars have nurtured darkness, a growing shadow over this land, so the time to pay the price draws near. But in the darkness, light will reveal its true worth. I believe that.”
“Can Leni truly save everyone?”
Tigrinu’s consciousness questioned, a flicker of hope mixed with despair.
“It’s a cruel fate for her, a heavy burden for such a young life.”
“That is the meaning of Leni’s presence in this world,” Martin stated, his voice firm with conviction.
“It is her destiny, her purpose.”
“Seeing her in person, it was sad,” Tigrinu’s thoughts drifted.
“That such a bright and intelligent child must be sacrificed for the greater good.”
“It can be delayed, but not avoided,” Martin explained, a quiet resignation in his tone.
“If not Leni, countless sons of this land will pay the price, their lives forfeit.”
“And daughters,” Tigrinu added, a somber acknowledgment.
“Yes, daughters too,” Martin murmured heavily, a complex feeling tearing at his heart.
The word “daughter” brought Leni’s vibrant face sharply to mind, twisting his chest with a profound ache.
He could take Leni and leave.
Escape this prophecy, this cruel fate.
Would nothing happen then?
Would the continent simply descend into chaos without her?
As his mind wavered, a sudden, alarming stir came from Tigrinu’s body on the stone platform. Martin was startled, his thoughts abruptly pulled back to the present.
Tigrinu thrashed his arms as if in a seizure, clawing desperately at his chest, his movements violent and uncontrolled.
The King’s pale face regained a flicker of color, and his dry, cracked lips opened, emitting a mournful, guttural voice that was unmistakably his own, yet tinged with something else, something chillingly unfamiliar.
“I remember your kindness.”
Martin sprang to his feet, his heart pounding.
“That child will come to me. I will take her in and use her to my advantage.”
That voice! It was Tigrinu’s, yet it carried an insidious, mocking undertone.
As Martin tried to approach Tigrinu, a black mist suddenly bloomed from the king’s body, engulfing the stone platform.
The King’s form became utterly invisible, swallowed by the swirling darkness.
Martin stretched out both hands, waving frantically through the thick mist, desperately trying to reach Tigrinu.
But his body recoiled sharply as if hitting a solid, invisible wall, a barrier of unseen force.
A furious whirlwind swirled violently around the mist, then a mysterious, pungent fragrance stung his nose, sharp and acrid.
It was a warning, unmistakable and potent, from the Tree of Lies standing far below the tower, its spiritual essence reaching out.
Martin shuddered, a deep, bone-chilling tremor running through him, and collapsed onto the cold stone floor, his knees giving out.
A resentful, echoing laugh, cold and ancient, resonated from beyond the impenetrable mist, filled with a malevolent triumph.
It’s the Shadow Tribe’s dark magic.
The chilling realization struck him with the force of a physical blow.
The King is not the King.
Oh, Leni.
A desperate plea formed in his mind.
Now, what should I do with Leni?
The chessboard had changed, and his precious queen was in dire peril.
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