The command sliced through the tension. Guards froze mid-motion, their spears lowering as if pulled by invisible strings.
The man who entered was a study in precision - every stitch of his military uniform razor-sharp, medals arranged in perfect descending order like frozen constellations. His top hat cast knife-edge shadows across sharp cheekbones, while round glasses reflected the dim light with an unnatural gleam. That striking pale pink hair, swept back with military discipline, betrayed a single rebellious white streak - like a crack in porcelain.
He couldn't have been past thirty. Yet his presence filled the room like a gathering storm.
The guards' salutes were so synchronized they sounded like one motion.
"Leave us."
They vanished like extinguished candles.
Theodore's transformation was instantaneous - from lethal predator to overeager puppy. "My, my!" He snatched the top hat, spinning it on his finger. "Look at these medals! Captain now? They'll give titles to anyone these days." The glasses came next, Theodore peering through them mockingly. "And these! Trying to look intellectual?"
For a heartbeat, silence. Then-
The Captain sighed, rubbing his temples as he collapsed into a chair. His posture dissolved into exhausted slouch, the military perfection melting away."I should have you flogged," he muttered."Do you have any idea the paperwork you've caused me? The hearings? The- Theodore, are you even listening?"
Theodore grinned, perching on the desk. "Is this really how you greet your favorite teacher after five years?"
The Director ignored him, tilting his head back to study Ezra upside down. Those mismatched eyes - one blue as arctic ice, one green as poisoned absinthe - narrowed in assessment. "So this is the infamous Ezra Valentine." His voice had changed, the crisp authority replaced by something almost... curious. "The boy who burned a courtyard to ashes resulting to 10 deaths and 20 casualties "
Ezra stared back, chains clinking. The man's handsome features were unsettling in their perfection - like a portrait that blinked.
Theodore twirled the stolen glasses. "Admit it. You're impressed."
The man pressed his lips into a thin line sighing again .
"You're in the Ninth Circle of trouble, boy," the Director said, tapping a manicured nail against Ezra's gag with deliberate precision. "And when you stand before His Highness, you won't just be on trial. The whole Aristocratic Syndicate will be watching."
His voice dipped lower.
"The Castillon twins. Lord Eisenberg with his poison smiles. Even Malkai'th—yes, that Malkai'th—with his… unorthodox interests."
Theodore let out a low whistle. "Ah, the Castillons." He leaned in toward Ezra, voice dropping to a near-murmur. "Their resonance is tied to judgment. Not in the poetic sense. Actual judgment. Trial, sentence, consequence."
He paused, expression serious now.
"One of them lays the charge. The other decides the sentence. Doesn't matter if you lie or tell the truth. If they declare you guilty, your resonance gets locked. Your soul, too, if they're feeling thorough."
The Director's hand shot out and seized Theodore by the chin, not harshly, but with the quiet, surgical intent of someone who'd removed more than one tongue in his time.
"Enough."
The white streak in his hair brightened, threads of pale light flickering at the roots like heat lightning before a storm.
"The Valentine boy doesn't need your horror stories. He needs discipline."
With a flick, he unfastened the gag. Ezra gasped, jaw aching, throat raw.
"When the Crown's Inquisitors speak…" the Director continued, voice like velvet drawn across a blade,
"…you answer. Clearly. Obediently. And most of all—harmlessly."
He leaned closer, and behind his glasses, Ezra caught the telltale gleam: pupils narrowing to slits, a serpent reading the air before it struck.
"Because if the Castillons declare you guilty, Ezra…"
He smiled, and Ezra wished he hadn't.
His fingers tapped Ezra's jaw, soft as a lover's caress.
"…you'll wish Theodore had let the guards kill you on the spot."
They dragged him out moments later, the pink-haired man leading the procession like a funeral march. Ezra stumbled as sunlight speared his vision—blinding, merciless—the sudden shift from dungeon-dark to aristocratic glare leaving him disoriented.
The world resolved into grotesque opulence.
Palaces of glass and gold loomed on either side, their spires clawing at the sky like gilded talons. Every archway dripped with jewel-encrusted filigree; every flagstone was carved with the nine-pointed star of the Crown. The air itself smelled rich—perfumed oils and polished marble, undercut by the iron tang of the manacles cutting into Ezra's wrists.
A battalion of guards flanked them, their armor so polished it burned white in the sun. They saluted in perfect unison, gauntlets crashing against breastplates in a single thunderous clang. But it was the sound that truly overwhelmed—a cacophony of shutters snapping, drones buzzing like angry hornets, and the shrill barrage of reporters hurling questions like stones:
"How dare you face His Highness after the massacre?"
"Is it true you consumed victims' souls to fuel your power?"
"Will the Castillons make you vomit the truth or just your organs?"
And the reporters—vultures in silk, their camera lenses clicking like insect wings. They swarmed at a safe distance, fingers twitching over shutters but never daring to step too close. One overeager journalist edged forward—
A guard's halberd swung.
The camera shattered. The reporter fell back, clutching a hand now missing two fingers.
No one else moved.
Above it all, the drones. Dozens of them, their lens-lights blinking like hungry eyes, projecting Ezra's broken image onto every screen in Arkanis. He saw himself reflected in a nearby monitor—a grotesque caricature with blood-crusted lips and hollow eyes, captioned:
MONSTER OR MESSIAH? LIVE TRIAL OF THE VALENTINE ABOMINATION
Valentine Abomination? Ezra nearly scoffed.They could've at least tried for creativity.
The procession halted before a cathedral so vast its shadow swallowed the plaza whole. Obsidian doors shrieked open, revealing a cavernous interior where stained glass cast blood-colored patterns across the marble floor.
When the guards tore off his bindings, Ezra stumbled forward, muscles screaming after hours of confinement. His bare feet slipped on polished stone as he caught himself—
—and looked up.
The figure on the throne wasn't human.
Couldn't be.
Moon-pale hair spilled over robes of liquid metal that rippled between gold and silver like a living mirror. The porcelain mask covering his upper face resembled frozen wings—edges so sharp they seemed capable of drawing blood from the very air. It absorbed all light, offering only the faintest impression of something moving in the depths where eyes should be. Above him, the crown floated unsupported, its seven jagged points orbiting like celestial bodies trapped in perpetual motion.
"Ezra Valentine."
The voice was both hymn and scalpel, each syllable so precise it seemed to carve the air between them.
"You stand accused of blasphemy against the Divine Order."A hand emerged from the molten sleeves—fingers too long, too pale, the joints too pronounced. "How do you plead?"
The twin figures flanking the throne stepped forward in perfect sync.
Mirror images of gaunt elegance, their bone-white irises glowed against papery skin stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones. When they spoke, their voices intertwined like braided smoke:The twin figures flanking the throne stepped forward in perfect sync.
Mirror images of gaunt elegance, their bone-white irises glowed faintly, like cold stars behind frosted glass. Papery skin clung tight to hollow cheeks, and every step they took echoed with the sound of inevitability.
When they spoke, their voices overlapped—perfectly braided, indistinguishable from one another.
"We call the Resonance of Judgment."
The air snapped.
Marble fractured beneath Ezra's feet—not shattered, but rewritten. The cathedral bled away at the edges, melting like wax under divine scrutiny. Light twisted, refracted, reassembled.
And suddenly—
He was standing in a courtroom.
But not one built by mortal hands.
It was massive, domed in black glass, its ceiling etched with constellations that shifted like watchful eyes. The floor beneath him had become a polished obsidian circle, smooth as a blade's edge. Around its perimeter sat them—the Aristocratic Syndicate. Their silhouettes cloaked in house sigils, heads bowed in silence. The Castillon twins stood at the center, robes trailing behind them like shadows dipped in ink.
The King still sat upon his throne—but now elevated, high above, suspended on nothing, the seven-pointed crown orbiting his head like a cosmic judge.
Ezra's chains reformed, not of metal, but of memory—raw scenes flashing in the links: fire, screams, collapsing stone. The school in ruins. The scent of scorched flesh. Faces burned into the dark.
"You stand accused." The twins' voices slithered through the chamber, their white irises reflecting the floating gavel's bone-pale glow.
"Of high blasphemy against the Divine Order."
"Of twenty-seven souls sent screaming into the aether."
"Of fracturing the Crown's sacred aetheric leylines."
Each charge struck like a mallet to Ezra's sternum. He opened his mouth—
The courtroom inhaled.
Not the spectators. The very walls leaned closer, the stained-glass saints in the dome above tilting their faces to listen. This wasn't just truth they wanted.
It was confession.
The Castillons raised their hands in unison. The circle beneath Ezra erupted in white fire, searing translucent pages into existence—each one a damning fragment of his past:
His forged academy application—signature still smoking where royal wax had melted The orphanage's charred ledger, his name circled in phosphorescent ink. Security crystals projecting his fire-wreathed silhouette stumbling through dormitory smoke
The floating gavel pulsed like a heartbeat.
"State your defense."
A thousand eyes bored into him—aristocrats, the king's hollow mask, even the flames in the sconces seemed to watch.
"...It was an accident."
The words withered in the air. Someone in the Eisenberg contingent snorted.
Then the left twin flicked her fingers.
A scroll unfurled with the sound of tearing flesh, its text burning:
"Ezra Valentine. Age: 15. Parental Status: Terminated."
"Origin: Caedhollow Orphanage. Survivor of Incident #2271."
"Enrollment: Forged via Royal Decree #09-667—"
Royal? Ezra's pulse stuttered. Since when did kings care about gutter rats?
The scroll kept burning:
"Forensic Resonance Match: 99.7% to Caedhollow Fire (32 casualties) and Blackspire Blaze (21 deceased)."
Ghostly screams erupted as security crystals replayed the orphanage inferno—children's hands melting against barred windows. Ezra's own child-self stood untouched at the center, eyes wide and glowing.
Ezra flinched as the flames danced closer, their heat not physical but psychic, blistering through thought. His child-self—filthy, barefoot, wreathed in fire—stared back at him through the crystal projection, utterly still. Not crying. Not screaming.
Just… watching.
Why didn't I remember that?
A fresh link of memory-forged chain clamped around his wrist, dragging it down. The courtroom pulsed with ancient, ambient wrath.
"Why do you burn, Ezra Valentine?" the Castillons intoned. Their voices no longer merely words, but verdicts waiting to be spoken.
He wanted to say I didn't mean to.
He wanted to say I was scared.
He wanted to say I don't know how to stop it.
But he couldn't. The truth didn't matter here.
Only intent.
Only confession.
And something in him—something old, buried under years of soot and silence—moved.
A flicker in the back of his mind.
A whisper behind his ribs.
They wanted to hurt us, it said. So we burned it all down.
His hands trembled.
The gavel floated lower, its thudding pulse syncing with his heartbeat. The stained-glass saints above began to weep fire, crimson tears leaking from their hollow eyes.
The Castillons stepped closer, their shadows webbing out like roots across the floor.
"Speak, Ezra Valentine."
"This court listens. The Crown listens. The Divine listens."
He raised his head.
The chains clinked softly as they shifted, no longer tightening—but waiting.
And in that breathless space between judgment and ash—
Ezra opened his mouth.