The silence that followed the closure of the portal was worse than the screams.
In the east wing of the royal palace, the bodies lay where they had fallen.
Some still intact, others completely destroyed with the brutality of a wild beast.
The white marble, which that very morning had shone under the light coming through the windows, was now covered with dark puddles that spread like roots.
The reinforcements arrived too late.
♦♦♦♦
Milin woke up with a stifled gasp.
The ceiling of the combat infirmary floated blurry above her.
He tried to sit up and a phantom pain, intense and paralyzing, ran down the left side of his body.
She lowered her gaze slowly, trembling.
Where his left arm should have been, there were only clean bandages and the end of a carefully sealed stump.
For a few seconds he didn't understand.
Then the memory returned suddenly.
The aquamarine stone shining.
The portal opening like a wound.
The devil.
The soldiers falling one after another.
The voice of the princess.
The order that she herself had given.
The career of that small white figure.
And then… the impact, the tearing, the scream that was not only of pain but of failure.
"Ojou-sama…" he whispered.
A priestess from the Nyvalis order approached immediately. Her face was tired and her hands were stained with blood.
"Is she awake now? Good. Don't move yet, Milin-san. We only managed to stabilize her recently. The missing arm... it will return. It will take time and several more healing sessions, but it will return."
Milin didn't look at the priestess. Her eyes were now fixed on the ceiling.
—How long has it been…?
—Several hours. The attack happened at nightfall. Now it's almost dawn the next day.
Milin closed her eyes tightly. Hot tears slid down to her temples.
He had failed.
The little girl who had been entrusted to him, the same one who would snuggle up to his chest when she was scared, the one who would smile at him with a mixture of shyness and absurd confidence... was no longer there.
And she was still breathing.
When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse, but firm.
"I need to speak with whoever is in charge of the east wing right now. And I want an immediate search launched. The man who gave that aquamarine stone to the Ojou-sama this afternoon… at the market. A civilian who claimed to be an admirer. I want his description distributed throughout the capital before the sun fully rises."
The priestess hesitated.
—Milin-san, you just…
"Do as I say." The interruption was gentle, but brooked no argument. "Although he's probably gone by now. Even so... I want you to look for him."
The priestess looked at her silently for two or three seconds of doubt, before nodding and leaving to deliver the order.
Milin was left alone with the sound of her own breathing and the crushing weight of absence.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the small hand extended towards her from the other side of the portal.
Every time he opened them, the white ceiling reminded him that he was still here while the princess was not.
Later, when the healers returned for the next regeneration session, Milin did not complain of pain.
He barely registered it.
His mind was already elsewhere: on the corridors he should have guarded better, on the trust he had placed in a simple gift from a stranger, on the way the little girl had smiled at him that very afternoon before falling asleep.
He had sworn to protect her.
And the oath was now broken by the wickedness of a man.
♦♦♦♦
Sergeant Harren had ordered the entire east wing to be cordoned off before panic spread to the rest of the castle.
His men, many of them pale and with traces of vomit still on their boots, worked in silence.
Nobody spoke more than necessary.
One of the youngest recruits, a boy named Tomas who had only been in the service for six months, stopped in front of what remained of a comrade.
The sergeant's expression hardened.
—Don't stare. Cover the bodies respectfully and move on. The healers and priests will take care of the rest.
"Sergeant..." Tomas's voice trembled. "She... the princess... did they really take her?" You are reading on g.com, the official source.
Harren didn't respond immediately. His eyes stared into the empty air for a few seconds, before he took a breath and sighed.
"Yes…" he finally said. "They took her, whoever those wretches are."
—…
The silence that followed was tense, with Tomas lowering his head while clenching his fists.
But soon, another soldier, more veteran, spat to the side with barely contained rage.
—We were two aisles away. Two fucking aisles. And we didn't make it on time!
“And yet we arrived faster than the rest of the castle,” Harren retorted sharply. “Now listen carefully. From this moment on, any civilian who has been near the princess during her recent outings outside the castle will be questioned. Any object she has received, whether as a gift or purchased, will be examined. And if anyone opens their mouth to spread rumors before we have official information, they will answer to me personally. Is that clear?”
A murmur of affirmation swept through the group.
♦♦♦♦
Meanwhile, in the lower courtyards, the units returning from magical beast extermination operations in the nearby forests were beginning to find out.
The news leaked out in fragments: an attack inside the palace, dead, the princess missing.
Each group that listened to it remained silent for a moment before tightening their formations and continuing.
There wasn't time to fully process it. Just to keep functioning.
One of the captains of the wall guard, a man named Dren who had served since the days of the rebellion, looked towards the palace towers and muttered to himself:
—Five years building this… and it turns out they can still get into our own house.
No one answered him.
It wasn't necessary.
♦♦♦♦
The emergency communication reached them while they were still coordinating the perimeter closure in the western forest.
The magical beasts had been more numerous than expected, but manageable.
Nothing that two captains of the Royal Guard and several regular units couldn't contain.
Then the message arrived.
Edelweiss listened in absolute silence to the devastating news.
Her face didn't change at any point, but Lily, who had known her for years, saw the way her knuckles turned white around the shaft of her spear.
When the broadcast ended, Lily was the first to speak.
—…Tell me I misheard.
"You didn't do it, Lily," Edelweiss replied. Her voice was now low, monotonous, and held a tone that conveyed danger. "Milin is gravely injured... and the princess is gone."
—Damn devils!
Lily muttered a curse under her breath and kicked a tree trunk hard enough to crack it.
—We were here… killing deformed dogs and twisted birds while all that was happening in the damn palace! Where was the internal security? What happened to the inscriptions Violetta put all over the castle to seal unauthorized transport magic?
"They failed," Edelweiss said simply, her eyes cold. "Or someone made them fail..."
Lily turned towards her.
His eyes shone with a fury he could barely contain.
—The king doesn't know yet. He's in the western village with Violetta investigating the other sighting. Magical communications to that area are… unstable. There's interference.
Lily inhaled deeply and frowned.
"To achieve this... it must be the work of several high-ranking mages or... of a being powerful enough to magically interfere with entire regions. There aren't many individuals like that..."
"Yes," Edelweiss nodded. "Whoever planned this didn't want the king to return immediately."
"Then we'll be the first to make a move," Lily concluded. "Shall we go back to the castle?"
"Yes. We'll leave the rest of the extermination to the regular units. You and I will return now. I want to see the room with my own eyes. I want to speak with Milin as soon as the healers allow it. And I want a fully detailed analysis of any reports of spatial distortion detected in any territory or region of the kingdom… No matter how strong they are, they shouldn't surpass Violetta in magical ability enough to travel to another continent."
—That's true. If that were the case, there would be no need to wait for Violetta to leave. Well… who can top the Continental Destroyer?
Lily scoffed.
The two women looked at each other for another second.
There was no need to say anything about guilt. They both felt it like a physical weight. They had sworn to protect the royal family.
The princess was, by adoption and by affection, part of that family. And they hadn't been there.
They started running back to the capital.
The forest opened up before them.
Neither of them slowed down.
♦♦♦♦
The news did not reach the mansions of the capital in the form of an official announcement.
It arrived as the worst news does: through servants who had overheard soldiers, high-ranking mages who had felt the dimensional distortion near the palace, and messengers who spoke too quietly in the corners of courtyards.
At the Valenford residence, Earl Edric received the report from his own captain of the watch shortly after midnight.
He listened without interrupting, with a completely expressionless look, although if you looked closely, you could see the slight movement of swallowing saliva and the cold sweat running down his face.
"Is this... confirmed?" he finally asked.
—All that is known so far, my lord. Princess Asagao has been kidnapped. Her guardian, the personal maid Milin, survives, though gravely wounded. And His Majesty has not yet been informed due to problems with transmissions to the west.
Edric nodded once.
—Wake the countess. Prepare the carriage. We depart for the palace at dawn. And send a messenger to the houses of Lirien, Thorne, and Northwatch… I want to know who else is on the move and in which direction.
When Elara entered the study, still in her nightgown, Edric summarized the situation for her in short sentences. The countess listened, pale.
"That girl..." she said softly. "I saw her during the presentation. She hid behind the king whenever someone raised their voice too much. She seemed... so fragile, so sweet and precious..."
“Fragile or not, she’s the monarch’s adopted sister,” Edric replied. “And someone has just demonstrated they can open a portal within the royal palace and take her. If this isn’t met with the full force of the kingdom, the image of invulnerability Her Majesty has cultivated for five years will crumble. And when that happens, the vultures will begin circling.”
In other residences the reaction was less restrained.
Some newly minted nobles, those who owed their position entirely to the king, sent letters offering men, resources, and any help needed for the rescue.
Others, more cautious, chose to wait and see how the Crown reacted before making a commitment.
And a few—very few—made the mistake of commenting privately that perhaps the princess's absence would simplify certain discussions about succession.
Those conversations did not remain private for long.
The network of loyalists that Ashfon had patiently built up over five years was beginning to activate.
Not by direct order of the king —who was still unaware of the magnitude of what had happened—, but by the survival instinct of a system that perfectly understood what it meant to lose a member of the royal family in that way.
♦♦♦♦
The second regeneration session was more painful than the first.
Milin bit down on a piece of leather to keep from screaming while the magic of the priests and the contents of the potions forced the flesh and bone to rebuild themselves.
The process was slow, still incomplete, but it was progressing. By the end of the morning, I already had a partial forearm covered with new, sensitive skin.
Between sessions, he dictated everything he remembered.
The description of the market man.
The exact moment the stone began to glow.
The shape of the portal.
The size and characteristics of the Devil.
The last words he had said to the princess…
He did not mention the absolute terror he had seen in Asagao's eyes.
She kept that to herself in her aching heart.
When Edelweiss and Lily entered the infirmary, still covered in dust from the road and with the expression of those who have run without rest, Milin tried to sit up.
Lily stopped her quickly with a gesture.
—No. Stay lying down.
The voice of the royal guard was harsh.
—We just need you to tell us one more thing. Was there anything… any detail… that could indicate why you chose her specifically?
Milin closed her eyes for a moment.
"I don't know why they chose it... I only know that that stone, that damned stone... was given as a gift from a supposed admirer, a disgusting fraud. I... was there! I didn't detect anything at the time. No sign of magic. No apparent trickery. It was... mundane. Too ordinary at the time..."
Edelweiss crossed her arms under her breasts.
—…So someone studied her movements. Someone knew she would go out into the city. Someone prepared the perfect bait for a girl who still gets excited about presents.
The silence that followed was heavy. Lily ran a hand over her face.
Ashfon will find out. Sooner or later the interference will stop. And when that happens…
He didn't finish the sentence.
Everyone present knew what it meant.
Milin looked towards the window. The morning light was filtering in dimly.
"Find her," he said in a very low voice. "Please. Find her before... before it's too late for anything."
Edelweiss held his gaze.
—That's what we'll do.
It was not an empty promise.
It was a silent declaration of war.
♦♦♦♦
Throughout the day, the temperature in the capital changed.
Soldiers reinforced every entrance to the palace. Court magicians worked tirelessly analyzing residual evidence.
Loyal nobles began arriving in closed carriages, offering support or simply making their presence known to show which side they were on.
Rumors were multiplying in the markets and taverns, but additional patrols were keeping order for now.
And at the center of it all, in a nursing room where the smell of medicinal herbs and healing magic failed to completely erase the memory of this tragedy, a maid stared at the ceiling as she felt a new arm slowly growing on her.
He had failed once.
I wasn't going to let that be the last word in the story.