"Bertold, refresh my memory: didn't you say the queen would be dead before the sun reached its peak? If I'm not mistaken, that has already happened,"
said the man distinguished from his peers by the thin crown he wore on his head.
"What I see down there is that that bitch is still breathing, or am I wrong?"
The speaker sounded disproportionately angry; for everyone around, it was the first time the man had shown any reaction other than indifference and disgust. There was something strange about it: his rage didn't come from a lost battle, but from the simple fact that his mother refused to die — cruel and macabre at the same time. The eyes of the court fell, curious and apprehensive, on the man dressed flamboyantly; it was in him, now, that true fear could be seen.
"I'm sorry, my king,"
choked the man clad in flashy clothes, his voice trembling.
"I didn't know they'd be that strong. The great families had never been seen fighting, so we lacked the data to properly understand and balance the difficulty."
The easy smile he had worn on his chest when he summoned the condemned to the arena had vanished; in its place, a palpable, almost ridiculous fear that drew pity and disgust from onlookers. The king glared at him.
"I should throw you down there with my mother and watch you be devoured alive,"
growled the king, his breathing heavy.
"However, I doubt those brats would leave you alive long enough for me to enjoy the pleasure."
The young king rose from the throne and moved forward in slow, almost feline steps. The flamboyant man trembled, collapsing to his knees, tears streaming as he tried to hide his face. The king leaned toward his ear, his voice arriving like distilled poison:
"Listen closely. They have one more challenge, and if they win, I'll have to keep my word — and you know I don't want that. So do me the favor of adjusting the difficulty… in my favor."
The man finally approached the pulpit after speaking to the flamboyant man — the same pulpit where, moments earlier, the kneeling man had nestled himself while cackling out rules and challenges. Now, it was the young king who displayed himself before everyone in the Coliseum.
He wasn't tall, nor old; his beauty, if any, was mediocre. Without the title of king, he probably would have been a nobody. Even so — and therein lay the danger — he possessed a rare ability: to impose order through fear, not nobility. To him, inspiring fear was infinitely better than earning respect. After all, respect can be lost. But fear… fear is a chain that tightens around the neck — and never loosens.
The herald crawled close to the king and, while kissing his hands, let slip the sentence he had kept stifled deep in his chest:
"No, Your Majesty, please… don't worry…"
he stammered, the words stumbling.
"I… I prepared something impossible."
Saliva dripped from his mouth; his voice trembled. It was clear he didn't doubt the orders — but fear had made him grotesque, his face stained with a mixture of sweat and yellowish mucus that revealed nausea and dread.
The young king watched the man's submission with delight, but soon his gaze narrowed, taken by irritation as he looked at the obstacle delaying the fate of his enemies.
"I hope so. Don't disappoint me. Now destroy the remaining troll and end this mess as quickly as possible. I don't intend to return my lunch because of some nameless peasant girl and her fetishes, much less give those insects precious time to recover."
After nearly thirty minutes, everyone finally understood what the girl had been doing. Those who still saw her as merely a sadist changed their minds when the announcer — now with a different stance before the crowd — raised his voice, cutting through the murmuring:
"Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have a bold one trying to cut short our spectacle. Don't worry: this ends now."
He had barely finished the sentence when a fire wyvern nearly twenty meters long launched itself at the troll, coming from outside the Coliseum. The creature lay armless and legless when the explosion of heat engulfed it. A voracious blaze ignited the air — so fast that the girl barely had time to react, rolling out of danger.
The troll was consumed by fire; and for a moment, in its final roar, there was an almost human echo — a sound that seemed more like relief than pain, as if the flames had ended an agony that had already been eating away at it long before it reached the arena.
The wyvern, still gliding as it poured fire over the corpse, traced a wide arc in the sky before disappearing beyond the Coliseum wall, returning to where it came from. Outside, for anyone watching, the scene was clear: a large open stone sanctuary, upon which rested two wyverns, each of a different size — all, however, much larger than the third one that now nestled between them, like a hatchling returning to the den of its elders.
"Now that our little problem is solved, I'd like to thank the survivors who entertained us beyond measure,"
the announcer continued, alternating jabs with laughter.
"I confess I expected more legend than truth, but sometimes it's nice to be fooled, isn't it?"
His cadence was theatrical; the smile, sharp. Barely a few seconds had passed since the voice that once trembled with fear had turned into cold sarcasm, as if nothing had happened. The crowd applauded, caught between astonishment and delight.
"And, for the großes Finale, I've prepared a surprise. Something never before seen,"
he announced, drawing out the pause to stoke the anticipation.
"Something you will never forget. I want you to meet the one who gave us so much trouble to bring here, but who now shall be the ultimate executioner of the impious and the traitorous."
Everyone was stunned when they noticed the change: the girl who had always fought alone was now retreating toward the queen mother while the announcer tried to deliver his dramatic lines. The gazes turned to her, curious and suspicious, as she called, with firm gestures, the other nobles to the center of the arena. There was something odd — she seemed to be gathering everyone around a single point, as if trying to turn the scattered survivors into a cohesive unit.
The announcer, who until then had relished commanding the audience's attention, felt irritated for being ignored. Fury rose in his voice as he shouted again, eager to regain control of the spectacle:
"Very well, ladies and gentlemen! I think I won't keep you waiting. I want you to meet the enemy we've brought — and believe me: he comes from a faraway place…"
A smile of satisfaction grew on the herald's face, slow and almost wicked, as if he were about to reveal something no one would dare believe — but that, nonetheless, was true. He stood tall like the very patron of forbidden knowledge, ready to cast it at the feet of the crowd.
"This creature we've brought comes from beyond the Misty Sea… Yes, ladies and gentlemen… I want you to welcome the first creature we have brought from the…"
DARK CONTINENT!
The phrase struck like thunder. Immediately, all the eyes that had been following the girl turned to the flamboyant man, wide-eyed. A collective murmur shook the arena… and then died, compressed into a thick silence, dense as fog before a storm.
What the herald had said piqued even the skeptics' curiosity. And it was dangerous to stir curiosity in an Empire that thrived on secrets.
It was no mystery that the Empire sought to expand its borders. Ninety percent of the continent already belonged to it, and for many decades, that had been enough. But when a great maritime expedition was destroyed and only a single book returned, the age-old belief collapsed: the so-called Misty Sea was not infinite.
Twenty years of searches, maps drawn in blood, and countless sacrifices revealed an impossible truth: the Empire was not in an isolated world. It was inside another — much larger. The "ocean" was, in reality, a massive lake, surrounded by a colossal, unknown continent that formed a ring of land so vast it completely swallowed what they once thought was the entirety of the world.
The shock was devastating. With every incursion, the expeditions returned with fewer survivors… and more questions. Nothing that set foot on that hostile soil remained sane — or alive — for long. Every creature encountered seemed born solely to kill, ferocious beyond any natural logic. Even the wyverns — absolute sovereigns of the imperial skies — were hunted and brought down with ease by beings no one could describe.
They said only this: the shadows were too big. And too fast. And too smart.
It became inevitable to admit: the Empire had never been at the top of the food chain. Perhaps it hadn't even held its proper place at the bottom.
The Empire could have chosen to ignore the truth. After all, being king of a lake was still better than a slave to an ocean.
But then came the final revelation — the worst of all. The colossal continent was moving. Slowly, imperceptibly at first… closing in around the lake, swallowing it, as if devouring the Empire little by little. What had once been curiosity became prophecy. What had once been prophecy became a sentence.
War was no longer a choice. It was destiny.
And the people… the people were never fools. They knew there was something hidden behind the endless incursions, the soldiers who never returned, the silent orders that were never explained. But this was the first time the Empire dared to show a fragment of the truth. There, before everyone's eyes, it would be revealed — for the first time — the enemy that had been reaping the lives of their brothers and sisters.
And the entire arena, despite being packed to the brim, felt far too small to contain the fear that rose with that revelation.
"What do you want from us, pariah?"
The Hohenzollern twins grumbled, irritated at having to answer the call of the girl who, to them, was nothing more than an inconvenient accident in the glory they believed they should be reaping.
Unbothered, she walked as if nothing around her mattered — and that only inflamed the wounded pride of the two even more. They had thrown themselves into battle headfirst, displaying strength, synchronicity, blood. But in the end, it was that commoner girl who drew the stares, as if she had been the one responsible for turning the tide of the massacre.
Of course, they would never admit the truth: that the girl from Nassau and Noah Hohenstaufen had taken down more trolls than all of them combined. To acknowledge that would be dishonor — and the twins would rather rip out their tongues than give credit to rivals.
But the commoner… oh, her they thought they could harass, humiliate, put "in her place." It was easier to take their frustration out on someone who, in their eyes, had no name, title, or noble blood. However, to their surprise, she didn't even look at them. She ignored their whispers, their disdain, their wounded-peacock posturing. She simply didn't care about being the center of attention. And it was exactly that — her insolent calm, her complete disinterest — that infuriated the twins the most.
They had killed, fought, sweated… but she was the one receiving the praise. She was the one stealing the glances. She was the one who seemed, inexplicably, unshakable. And that was something the Hohenzollerns, with all their ancestral pride, simply could not tolerate.
"Shut up and listen to me. We need to stay together. If we split up, whatever's coming will kill us for sure."
The girl spoke with the coldness of someone who had already calculated the odds. If the creatures grew more dangerous with each opened gate, she wouldn't have the strength for the next fight alone. They could be intelligent enemies, unknown beasts — maybe even more winged ones in disguise. The truth was simple: her tricks would no longer be enough. Torturing the troll had kept her occupied, but hadn't granted her the rest she'd hoped for; she was even surprised someone had realized the true reason for that delay so quickly.
"Thank you for giving us the chance to rest. I hadn't thought of that,"
admitted Noah Hohenstaufen.
A tall and naturally imposing noble, Noah could be arrogant, but he wasn't a fool. He'd realized the girl had sacrificed personal advantage, giving up the spotlight to buy time for everyone — a gesture that, as contradictory as it was, inspired respect. Even with her face marked by blood and rage, there was something about her that felt familiar to him.
"I agree,"
said the young woman from the Nassau family.
"Whatever comes through that gate will be far too smart to be beaten with mere tricks. If it's all about strength, we're stronger united. If we stay apart, we lose. The ones who might've held us back are already dead; there's no reason not to protect each other's backs."
The firstborn of the Nassaus held a cold and calculated posture. When speaking of their dead comrades, she showed more relief than sorrow — methodical, enigmatic, the kind of person rarely trusted by their manner. She was the opposite of Noah: where he radiated warmth and charisma, she radiated precision and danger. Still, Noah accepted her strategy; sometimes, trust is as effective as a blade.
"I agree as well,"
declared another, firmly.
"Whatever comes out of those gates, we face it together."
The words sounded ambiguous among the condemned: to some, they were a call to unity; to others, a trap. There were always those who suspected betrayal. But Noah carried a promise of protection: he would fight to the end to defend the others. In the eyes of the young, he and the girl now represented two poles of the same dilemma — honor versus pragmatism — but both were ready to fight for the same ideal.
"Very well, since we've agreed to unite, we first need to get out of here alive. Follow me,"
concluded the commoner girl, raising her voice.
"I have a plan, but I need everyone's help."
Even though she looked the frailest, her presence was commanding. Everyone there knew she hadn't made it this far by chance; there was something about her — an idea, an instinct — that might, at last, give meaning to the gray l