The throne room was silent when Ludwig was brought before the crown.

It was not the silence of ceremony. Not the polished quiet of nobles waiting to hear themselves breathe near power. The last time Ludwig had stood before the Emperor, the court had been full of jeweled snakes, smiling officials, armored guards, and people willing to praise victory so long as it did not cost them anything. This time, there were no nobles lined along the hall. No audience gathered to admire imperial mercy. No parasites in silk waiting to twist the scene into gossip.

Only the throne.

Only the Emperor.

Only the Queen seated beside him, her face composed but her eyes sharp with pity and anger. The pity was for Ludwig. The anger was not.

To the Emperor’s right stood the Second Prince, back straight, chin lifted, proud of what he had accomplished. He carried himself like a man who believed he had caught corruption by the throat and dragged it before justice. To the Emperor’s left stood the Third Prince Alexander, newly arrived with Tull, his expression dark and controlled in a way that made the rage beneath it obvious.

Ludwig stood in front of them all.

He looked worse than a prisoner.

Dried sweat had crusted in pale salt-like marks over his torn clothes. Blood had soaked into the fabric in too many places to count. His hair was sticky, dirty, and clung to parts of his face where dried blood had matted it down. Fresh wounds remained open across his arms, thighs, chest, and shoulders. Several fingers were bent wrong. Half his hands were mangled beyond what a normal human body could endure without shaking itself apart from pain.

And yet he stood.

Not straight, exactly. Not comfortably. But standing all the same, slightly tuned away from the pain, his attention fixed on the Emperor rather than the damage done to him. There was a faint drip of blood from one wrist onto the polished floor. It sounded far too loud in the throne room.

Beside him stood the Tower Masters.

That contrast made everything worse.

The Red Tower Master looked hale, healthy, and faintly annoyed. The White Tower Master’s robes were spotless. The Blue Tower Master wore her curiosity like a mask over something colder. The Gray Tower Master stood with his usual severe calm. Van Dijk’s expression was unreadable, but his presence alone made several guards look less comfortable. None of them bore a single visible blemish from custody.

Only Ludwig looked like someone had dragged him out of an imperial dungeon after deciding procedure was optional.

The Emperor’s gaze moved over him once.

Slowly.

Then it shifted to the Second Prince.

"Why have you brought him like this?" the Emperor asked. "And what is the reason for him to suffer such?"

The Second Prince did not seem to hear the danger in the question. "We received information saying he was the ringleader of the darkness that permeated Solania."

The Emperor looked at his son.

Nothing moved on his face at first, but those who knew him well enough saw the flicker. Not surprise. Not confusion. Disappointment. Thin, cold, and brief enough that a fool might miss it. The Emperor knew too much of what had happened in Solania to be misled by so simple a claim. Reports had already arrived. Witnesses had spoken. The Holy Order had sent panicked fragments of testimony before the imperial army even finished its triumphant stupidity. The Emperor knew the shape of the truth almost as though he had stood there himself.

And yet he had let his son speak.

That made the silence after the prince’s words much heavier.

"Bring the constables and juries in," the Emperor said.

The order was carried out immediately.

The throne room doors opened, and several groups entered under guard. Constables who had inspected the Solania field. Paladins with their armor dented and their faces lowered. Priests who looked pale enough to be mistaken for the dead Ludwig had left behind. A handful of imperial officers. And finally, Titania.

No one spoke when she entered.

She walked forward without waiting for permission, her glow subdued but undeniable, her presence carrying an age that made etiquette feel childish. For anyone else, approaching within a few meters of the Emperor without formal invitation would have been cause for execution. An attempt on imperial life, at least in the language of court law. But Titania had protected these lands before the Empire of Lufondal even had its name. She was older than the founder whose statues lined imperial plazas. No one in the room, not even the Second Prince, dared tell her where to stand.

She stopped near the throne.

The Emperor did not object.

"What do you have to say," he asked, "about the land that I have given turning into a cesspool of dark arts?"

Titania looked at him.

Her physical appearance was that of a woman in her twenties, radiant and composed, while the Emperor looked to be a man in his mid-forties carrying the weight of a continent on his shoulders. Yet when she spoke, it was with the gentle sternness of someone addressing a child who had inherited an old house and found rot in the beams.

"Child," Titania said.

The Queen’s eyes lowered slightly, not in offense, but to hide the faint shift of her mouth.

The Second Prince stiffened.

Titania continued, "I have protected the law of this Empire for many centuries. I have watched cities rise beneath your banners. I have watched emperors born, crowned, buried, praised, slandered, and forgotten. I have also watched corruption grow where men believed faith alone could keep it out."

The hall did not breathe.

"Darkness always finds cracks," she said. "It seeps through pride, through fear, through convenience, through men who think holy titles make them clean. Solania was not ruined in one night. The rot was allowed to grow. It was hidden beneath hymns and robes and doctrine until even the holiest seats stank of it."

Several priests lowered their heads.

Titania did not spare them.

"The Pope disappeared. The Sacrosanctum concealed things that should never have existed beneath a holy foundation. Paladins who should have acted were useless when true calamity arrived. Priests who believed light would answer all things found their prayers turned thin in their throats. I will give full testimony of the violations within the church separately, but not here. Not before fools who might mistake horror for spectacle."

The Emperor’s fingers tightened once against the armrest of the throne.

"Then speak of the battle," he said.

Titania turned slightly, enough that the room could see her profile.

"Sloth came."

The word alone changed the air.

Not everyone present understood the full meaning, but the Tower Masters did. Van Dijk did. Ludwig did. Even the Emperor’s eyes sharpened as if the name had confirmed the worst of the reports.

"His army was absurd," Titania said. "Not merely large. Endless in pressure. Creatures resistant to ordinary magic, resistant to holy aura, resistant to the things Solania was trained to rely on. They came from the Peaks in such number that the city would have fallen before night fully turned if the front had not been held."

"And the Holy Order?" the Emperor asked.

"Broken," Titania said. "Exhausted. Confused. Worse, their power was not suited to the enemy. Holy force harmed the undead defenders far more reliably than it harmed Sloth’s servants."

The Second Prince scoffed before he could stop himself. "Undead defenders."

Titania’s gaze moved to him.

He shut his mouth.

"They defended the city," she said. "An advanced Necropolitis was summoned, not to slaughter Solania, but to stand between it and extinction. Its dead did what the living could not. They held."

The words struck the priests harder than insult.

Titania continued, "When Sloth himself moved, every warrior on the field felt futility seep into their bones. The body could still stand, in theory. The hand could still hold a weapon. But the will to act was smothered. My own blade failed to reach him. My holy flame died inches away. Mot’s power, tied to an eldritch god, was nearly forced toward an escalation that would have damaged far more than the enemy. The Hero could not stand beneath Sloth’s authority. Most paladins and priests could barely breathe."

Hiro, standing among the witnesses, lowered his head but not enough to hide the anger on his face.

The Emperor looked to the Tower Masters.

The Red Tower Master stepped forward first. "My destructive arts were bypassed. Power didn’t matter if the target refused consequence."

The Gray Tower Master spoke next. "My control could stabilize the battlefield for a time, but it did not control him. Status Quo slowed the collapse of the living ranks. It did not defeat the authority."

The White Tower Master’s voice was cooler. "My strategies failed because the usual assumptions failed. Range, formation, spell structure, mana investment, none of it mattered when attacks died near him."

The Blue Tower Master gave a small, humorless smile. "My abilities were useless in direct engagement. Fascinatingly useless, but useless."

Then Van Dijk spoke.

"If Ludwig had not broken imperial taboo and used tier one dark magic against the servants first, we would not have discovered the weakness of the horde. The creatures resisted much of what was thrown at them, but dark magic, death, and necromancy harmed them properly."

The Second Prince’s jaw tightened at the word taboo.

Van Dijk did not look at him. "I broke the taboo further. I used ancient dark magic I mastered before this empire banned it. Even then, I could only slow the advance."

The Emperor listened without interruption.

The testimony continued, one witness reinforcing the next. The Necropolitis had stood between Solania and destruction. The undead had not attacked the people. The lich had vanished before imperial custody. The dead city had withdrawn. Ludwig had fought Sloth directly. The others described, with discomfort and awe, how Sloth made action meaningless, how power became irrelevant, how everything they had achieved seemed like fog in a dream once his authority fully descended.

Only after all that did the Emperor speak again.

"Then..."

His eyes turned to Ludwig.

"How strong was he?"

Ludwig looked at the Emperor.

For a moment, the room seemed to tilt backward into memory. The last time the Emperor had asked a similar question, he had asked about Wrath. Ludwig had told him the Emperor would win. It had been a lie, useful because nobles had been listening, useful because imperial stability had needed it, useful because too much truth in a crowded court could become poison.

Ludwig’s tired eyes moved briefly around the room, then back to the throne.

"This time there are no nobles," he said.

He did not need to say more.

The Emperor understood.

So did the Queen.

So did Van Dijk.

Even the Second Prince, despite himself, seemed to understand that something had been spoken without being spoken. No matter how strong the Emperor was, no matter how absurd his aura, no matter how many legends placed him above the continent’s warriors, facing Sloth would not have been a matter of simple strength. He too would have felt it. The futility. The suffocation. The quiet invitation to let the world end because action had already lost its meaning.

The Emperor leaned back slightly.

His gaze shifted to his son.

"You have harmed a war hero."

The Second Prince did not flinch. "He is a dark user. He should be grateful that he is alive."

"You never consulted our seat before you acted."

"I believed it beneath you to care for such worthless matters, Emperor."

The Queen’s eyes sharpened.

Alexander’s fingers curled slowly at his side.

The Emperor’s face remained calm, which somehow made the room colder.

"Though what my son has done cannot be argued against as the Empire’s laws stand," the Emperor said, "you used dark magic. All of you."

"Technically..." Ludwig said.

The Second Prince snapped toward him. "Silence! How dare you interrupt the Emperor!"

Ludwig looked at him with the exhausted disgust of a man who had been tortured for three days and now had to endure a louder pain.

"Damn," he said. "Someone got their panties knit in a twist."

The Second Prince’s face darkened. "You dare..."

"Indeed," the Emperor said.

The prince froze.

The Emperor’s eyes were on him now, and there was no mistaking their meaning.

"Someone is foolish enough to threaten a man who chased away a living calamity."

The Second Prince shut his mouth.

Ludwig’s brow lifted faintly.

The Emperor returned his gaze to him. "Then explain what you mean."

"We were at Solania," Ludwig said.

"And?"

"Technically, Solania falls under Holy Order law and territory. The Empire can exert pressure, sure, but that region is effectively a holy empire in itself when it comes to doctrine and religious infringement. Their laws say all matters regarding violations of faith, heresy, and forbidden doctrine are to be handled by the Holy Order."

The Emperor stared at him.

"Isn’t it more merciful to be under the gallows of the Empire," he asked, "where at least you get to die by decapitation, than to be stuck beneath the Sacrosanctum for experimentation?"

"Technicalities," Ludwig said. "But I’m not wrong. We cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed outside imperial jurisdiction."

The silence that followed was extraordinary.

Tull, standing behind Alexander, looked like he was trying not to laugh and failing internally.

The Queen’s expression changed first. Something flickered across her face, gone almost instantly, but it was there.

The Emperor smiled.

It was small.

Dangerous.

Not amused exactly, but appreciative of a blade well placed.

"Then that means we have wronged you greatly," the Emperor said. "Tell us what you want, so that we can bury this grievance and clear this misunderstanding."

The words settled over the throne room with all the subtlety of a knife slipped beneath a table.

Everyone understood.

The Emperor was not simply apologizing. He was closing the matter. He was offering compensation large enough to cover insult, injury, unlawful custody, torture, and the political disaster his son had created. He was also asking, without saying it aloud, that Ludwig not pursue the Second Prince further than this room.

Ludwig, still dripping blood onto the polished floor, tilted his head.

In his mind, the question that came out sounded innocent.

"Where’s the Fourth Princess?"

The throne room stilled.

The Queen’s eyes widened.

Then a large, almost teasing smile spread across her face.