The heavy, pain-laden silence of the Mirror Hall shattered as a deafening scream erupted from the corridor beyond the thick doors. A woman's cry—hysterical, raw with animal terror…and something eerily familiar. Then came the murmur of voices, the thunder of running feet, the metallic clash of weapons being drawn.
Randel, still looming over the curled-up form of Amanda, snapped his head up. For a fleeting moment, his personal anguish was shoved aside by the honed instincts of a commander hearing an alarm.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered under his breath.
Amanda heard it too. In the fractured chaos of her mind—torn apart by the identity crisis—this sound became an anchor, yanking her back toward the outside world.
Lady Yui? She’s back? What the fuck?
For a single, precious second, the inner analyst— Yamada Light—seized control.
She forced her trembling legs to obey. Swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, she fumbled across the floor until her fingers closed around her mask. The cold metal in her hands granted her a sliver of illusory control. She slipped it on, feeling the familiar barrier conceal her tear-streaked, fear-twisted face. Now she was the Keeper again. Whoever that even was anymore.
Like an automaton, she rose and followed Randel, who had already flung the door open and strode into the corridor.
The scene in the grand hall was surreal and soul-chilling. The ball—moments ago alive with whispers and music—had frozen in place. In the center, on the once-pristine luxurious carpet now smeared with dirt and dark, near-black stains, stood two figures.
The first was Yui de Linne. But this was only a pitiful shadow of the spoiled aristocrat she had been. Her opulent blue gowns were gone. What remained were rags—once fine garments, now torn to shreds, soaked in grime, sweat, and… blood. Her face was deathly pale, marred by scrapes and bruises. One eye was swollen shut beneath a blood-crusted lid. Her beautiful hair hung in matted clumps, tangled with bits of straw and something darker. She could barely stand; her body shook with violent tremors.
Beside her, supporting her by the elbow, stood a man in the battered but unmistakable uniform of a House Aichenwald scout—Viggo, the old, taciturn veteran Randel had personally assigned to watch the border with the Linne lands. Fresh scars crisscrossed his face, and in his eyes burned the cold fire of recent battle mingled with raw, genuine alarm.
When Yui caught sight of Randel emerging from the side gallery, her one good eye flared with a mad cocktail of hope, terror, and something indescribably bitter.
“Ran… del…” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, more like the creak of rusted hinges.
She took a step and swayed. Randel, moving on pure instinct, lunged forward and caught her just before she collapsed. He held her up, feeling her emaciated frame go limp in his arms. She reeked of blood, fear, and ash.
“Yui? Gods… What… what happened to you?” His voice came out hard, but confusion cracked through it. All his recent revulsion toward her had been swept away by sheer shock at her state.
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“They… they’re coming…” she whispered, her fingers digging into the sleeve of his doublet like claws. “The nomads… from the north… Everything’s burning… Father… everyone…”
Her eyes rolled back, and she went slack, unconscious in his embrace.
“Physician! Now!” Randel barked, handing Yui off to the cluster of maids who rushed forward, their faces drained of color in sheer horror. He spun toward Viggo. His gaze sharpened to a razor’s edge. “Report. Everything. Immediately.”
Viggo straightened, discarding his usual formalities. A deathly silence gripped the hall. Even the most jaded aristocrats stood frozen, realizing they were witnessing something that could alter the course of history.
“This isn’t a routine raid, my lord,” Viggo began, his voice rough and stripped of all emotion. “It’s an horde. The largest I’ve seen in my entire service. They didn’t come from the east—they broke through the northern mountain passes of the Linne lands. Leading them…” He paused, and for the first time Randel saw genuine fear flicker in the old wolf’s eyes. “…leading them is Gul-Nadar. ‘Throat-from-Stone.’”
A ripple of agitated whispers swept through the hall. The name was known. A myth that had become living nightmare. They said Gul-Nadar wasn’t human at all—a spirit of war incarnated in scarred, gigantic flesh. That he drank the blood of defeated foes and wore a necklace strung with the bones of princes whose domains he had erased from the map.
“The Linne never expected an attack from that direction,” Viggo continued. “Their borders were thin. The horde cut through like a scythe through ripe wheat. The duke’s castle fell in two days. I found Lady Yui in the cellars…” He glanced toward the girl being carried away, his jaw tightening. “…I won’t describe what was done there. Her escort was slaughtered. She herself…” He fell silent again. The implication hung heavy in the air. “I pulled her out while the barbarians feasted in the great hall. They razed everything. Not one stone left upon another. And now… now they haven’t stopped. Their tide is rolling south. Straight toward our borders.”
Randel stood motionless, absorbing the information like a blow he couldn’t dodge. His entire world—which had shrunk moments ago to the confines of the Mirror Hall and a woman named Amanda—snapped back outward to the scale of a duchy on the brink of annihilation. Personal drama withered in the face of raw, physical extinction.
“Numbers?” he asked curtly.
“Thousands, my lord. Perhaps tens of thousands. Mounted and foot. They have… they have war mammoths. I saw them shatter walls.”
A collective gasp rippled through the hall. War mammoths. This was no longer a raid. This was invasion.
Amanda, lingering in the shadows, listened. The storm inside her mind quieted, replaced by cold, razor-sharp focus.
Gul-Nadar. Horde. Invasion. None of this was in the book. Which means my arrival… changed something. Shifted the balance. Or… accelerated events that were supposed to happen much later?
Randel swept his gaze across the stunned guests; his face hardened into the mask of a general.
“The ball is over,” he declared. His voice, amplified by the hall’s latent magic, rolled out like thunder across the room and beyond. “My lords, my ladies—return to your assigned quarters at once. Before dawn. The Duchy of Aichenwald is now at war.” He turned to his captains, who were already pushing through the crowd. “Convene the War Council. Immediately. Mobilize every reserve. Send riders to our neighbors—call for aid.”
He took a step forward, then paused and looked back. His eyes first found Kaelan, whose masked face remained impassive, though his gaze tracked every movement with predatory calm. Then they slid to Amanda, to the golden mask that hid her tear-streaked features. Their eyes locked for a single heartbeat.
In his gaze there was no longer anger, no lingering pain—only steel. Duty. And a silent question:
Are you with us?
Amanda, still torn by the war raging inside her, felt an old, familiar weight settle over the chaos—the weight of duty, of the need to act. Suddenly her crisis of “who am I” felt absurdly small against the lives of thousands who might die tomorrow. She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
The feast had ended. War had begun. And in that single night within the walls of Aichenwald, more than one heart had been broken—the illusion of safety for an entire world had shattered as well.