Returns
"Leave everything to me now, sister."
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd.
"Your Majesty...!"
"Your Majesty!"
The name passed from lip to lip like wildfire.
As if summoned by the King's arrival, figures emerged from the shadows along the walls. Gleaming armor caught the light, each breastplate emblazoned with the symbol of the Agema—a horse at full gallop.
"Sweep them away. Leave none standing."
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
At the command, Peleus's royal guard surged up the walls in a single devastating wave. They fell upon the Regent's private soldiers like a tide of steel and fury.
The ramparts transformed into a battlefield.
Screams. The clash of metal. The wet sound of death.
Above the sword-wielding Agema, arrows darkened the sky before raining down upon the Regent's forces with lethal precision. Every shaft found its mark—and every mark bore the colors of House Claudio.
Those struck fell without even a cry, their bodies tumbling from the walls into the abyss below.
How is he here? How are there still so many Agema alive?
The Regent forced his one functioning eye open, straining to comprehend the carnage unfolding before him. The shock cut deeper than the pain throbbing through his ruined face.
Beside him, Samon seized his father's sleeve in desperate confusion.
"Father! You said the Agema had been dealt with on the plains!"
You assured me they were eliminated!
The Regent had received Pavel's message himself—the deputy captain confirming the ambush's success. The Agema were supposed to be rotting in unmarked graves.
"Stop them! Stop them from advancing!"
The Regent's voice cracked with rage and mounting terror as he screamed orders at his soldiers.
But the Agema were no ordinary soldiers. They were an elite corps that even the Empire's legions approached with caution—warriors forged in the crucible of a hundred campaigns. The castle's garrison knights, accustomed to ceremonial duties and peacetime patrols, stood no chance against men who had spent years crawling through blood and fire on the front lines.
A single sweep of an Agema's blade sent three or four men crashing to the ground.
"AAAAAGH! Mercy—please—!"
The Regent's forces—so confident mere moments ago—were swept aside like autumn leaves before a storm. Terror replaced arrogance as the truth became undeniable.
"Your Majesty, we were only following orders! The Regent threatened us—we had no choice—"
"Please! Spare my life!"
Swords clattered against stone as men dropped to their knees, heads bowed in submission.
They understood instinctively. With the King's return—with the Agema at his back—the outcome had never been in question.
This was no glorious revolution. This was not the moment when House Claudio's ambitions would be realized.
This was simply a reckoning.
Heavy footsteps rang against stone.
D'Angel approached in full battle armor, his face carved from granite. Without ceremony, he drove his boot into the back of the Regent's knee.
The Regent collapsed, his face striking the flagstones with a sickening crack. Blood from his ruined eye socket mixed with fresh crimson streaming from his torn forehead.
"Show proper respect to His Majesty, traitor."
D'Angel's voice was barely above a whisper—yet it carried the promise of violence so absolute that even the onlookers flinched. It was the growl of a hound straining at its leash.
"Unhand me! Release me! Father! Mother!"
Other Agema dragged Samon forward and hurled him to the ground beside his father. When he fumbled for his sword, a single kick shattered his arm.
"AAAGH! My arm! You savages! You mindless butchers! Is destruction all you know?"
He clutched his broken limb, face contorted with pain and impotent fury.
Medea watched the scene unfold with detached composure—until she heard footsteps behind her.
Familiar footsteps. A presence she knew in her bones.
Before she could turn, a shadow fell across her.
"Dea."
Medea's body went rigid.
Her fingertips—steady through every confrontation, every threat, every moment of the coup—began to tremble.
Slowly, she raised her head. Her jaw was clenched so tightly the tendons stood out along her neck.
"Peleus?"
Blue eyes. Silver hair bright as her own.
Her brother stood before her.
"What's done is done. As King of Valdina, I must fulfill my duty. But you, Dea—you must live freely. Forget your obligations. Forget your sorrows. Forget even this brother of yours."
Peleus had embraced her even after she fled with the stolen Philosopher's Stone.
"Dea, just live. That is enough. I do not blame you."
"But in your darkest moments, remember—you carry the blood of Valdina. Remember that you have a family who loves you."
He had worried about her safety until the very end—even as he marched out to face the demons.
The foolish, cruel Medea of that time...
Medea's eyes went wide, fighting against the tears that threatened to fall.
"Is it truly you?"
Her voice emerged broken, barely audible. She reached toward him with a shaking hand—
—and stopped.
Her fingers curled back, hovering in the air between them. As though she had no right to touch him. As though he were something sacred and she something profane.
"Dea. I'm here. Your brother is here."
Peleus's heart ached at the sight of his trembling sister. Gently, he reached out and took her hand in his.
"Peleus—is it really—you're truly alive?"
Medea's green eyes raked over him with desperate urgency.
The leg that had been mangled by injury—whole and strong.
The chest that demons had torn open—unmarked beneath his armor.
The hand holding hers was not the grey flesh of a corpse.
It was warm. Living. She could feel his pulse beating against her palm.
"Oh, God—"
Medea's legs gave way.
She crumpled to the ground, tears streaming down her face in rivers she could not stop.
"He's alive... Peleus is alive... isn't he?"
Behind them, Neril watched in stunned silence. In all her time serving the princess, she had never seen her mistress—always so composed, so unshakeable—fall apart like this.
"I'm sorry, Peleus. I was wrong... Please forgive me."
Medea pressed her forehead against the back of his hand, clutching it as though it were the only anchor in a drowning world. Bitter sobs wracked her frame.
Every tear that fell carried an apology for sins committed in another life.
"I will set everything right, Peleus. I swear it. I will restore everything to its proper place—and this time, I will protect you..."
Her voice fractured.
"I know I don't deserve your forgiveness. I know it's far too late. But Peleus, I—"
She bit down on her lip until it bled, her entire body trembling with the weight of grief she could no longer contain.
"Forgiveness? What nonsense is this?"
Peleus's brow furrowed in confusion. He had no idea what his sister was speaking of—what sins she imagined she needed absolution for.
But he could see it clearly: his little sister was carrying a burden far too heavy for her slender shoulders. A weight that was slowly crushing her.
"Dea."
He placed his hands carefully on her shoulders. She was smaller than he remembered—shorter by nearly a hand's breadth. He had seen the same stunted growth in soldiers who had survived impossible conditions, their bodies sacrificing development for mere survival.
What hell has she endured in this palace?
"I am the one who should apologize. My failures left you to face this alone."
His voice was thick with self-recrimination.
My little sister—standing alone against the Regent's threats. Risking her life while I was absent.
How frightened she must have been. How alone.
"You need not carry this burden any longer, Dea. I am here now. No one will harm you again."
With awkward, unpracticed tenderness, he drew her close and patted her back—the gesture of a brother who had spent too many years on battlefields and not enough learning how to comfort.
"Leave everything to me now, sister."
"Your Majesty, the suppression is complete. The Queen Dowager's wounds are grievous, but her life is no longer in immediate danger."
D'Angel approached and delivered his report with military precision.
The disguised mercenaries the Regent had positioned outside the walls had been eliminated as well. Every last one.
Peleus raised his head.
"All traitors have been secured and await Your Majesty's judgment."
Below the walls, the Regent and his co-conspirators knelt in the dirt, bound with rough rope. Peleus's eyes turned to winter ice as he descended toward them.
"Peleus... How did you—"
"You have labored long and hard to conceal such grand ambitions, Uncle Claudio."
The Regent stared up at his nephew through his one remaining eye.
That voice—commanding yet cold as a northern wind—tolled like a funeral bell.
Ten years on the battlefield had transformed the boy he remembered. The child was gone entirely. In his place stood a predator, radiating an aura of lethal authority that pressed down upon the Regent's shoulders like a physical weight.
The Regent recalled the spear that had shattered his sword—the impossible force behind it.
He could have taken my head just as easily. The fragments in my eye were mercy.
A chill crawled down his spine as the realization crystallized.
For the first time in his life, the fear of death became something tangible. Real. Inescapable.
"N-no—there has been a misunderstanding, Your Majesty! I was merely trying to protect Valdina in your absence—"
Thus did his grand ambitions meet their ignominious end—not in glory, but in stammered excuses and trembling limbs.
"Is this the abdication letter you extracted by threatening my grandmother and my sister?"
Peleus held up the crumpled document.
"How fascinating, Uncle. Do continue."
His tone was perfectly level—devoid of emotion. And somehow, that made it infinitely more terrifying than rage.
The mockery threading through his words bore an unmistakable resemblance to Medea's.
The King stood with his back to the sun, his face cast in shadow. Only his eyes were visible—deep and fathomless, concealing depths the Regent could not begin to measure.
In those eyes, the Regent glimpsed a fury beyond anything he could withstand.
His body began to shake uncontrollably.
The great gates groaned open.
Gilliforth's voice rang across the courtyard, cutting through the tense silence.
"Your Majesty! We have captured a foreign spy who attempted to infiltrate the Royal Palace of Valdina!"
---