Far away, within the pale granite walls of the newly constructed Academy of Harmony, the atmosphere was thick with the scent of fresh mortar, dry ink, and the nervous tension of the morning lecture. Rows of students sat at stepped oak desks, their eyes fixed on the proctor at the front of the room.
Suddenly, near the back row, Mika let out a violent, echoing sneeze.
"Achoo!"
The sound shattered the academic silence, causing several students to jump. Mika rubbed her nose aggressively with the back of her hand, her brow furrowing in irritation as she muttered something under her breath about a sudden draft.
Beside her, Hina didn't look up from her parchment, her quill scratching a precise line across the page. A small, knowing smirk tugged at the corner of her lips. "It seems like someone, somewhere, is remembering you right now."
Mika cracked her knuckles, her eyes narrowing as she stared at the empty desks where Kairo and Akio were supposed to be sitting. "If it's who I think it is, they're going to wish the void man disease caught them first."
Back on the mist-slicked basalt ledge, the giant man stepped closer, the iron buckles of his leather vest clinking rhythmically.
Kairo leaned his weight back onto his good leg, ignoring the dull throb in his thighs from the previous day's training. "Nah," Kairo said calmly, his voice easily cutting through the spray. "You didn't need to bring Mika into this unnecessarily. She would absolutely kill you if you said that to her face."
Akio, despite the terrifying presence looming over them, couldn't help but let out a sharp, nervous breath. "Alright. Bet."
The giant man stopped, his massive fists clenching at his sides. The sheer absurdity of the interaction seemed to derail his momentum. He looked at his own scarred, tree-trunk arms, then back at the two teenagers who were casually debating a classmate's temper. "Why aren't you kids scared of me?" he boomed, the veins in his thick neck bulging. "Do you not see what stands before you?"
Kairo looked up into the man's single, bloodshot eye. The blue light of his mana had completely faded, replaced by the hard, amber glare of the sun. "Well... I am that kid who conquered two lands all alone. The Prince of Harmony."
Behind Kairo's shoulder, Akio's tension broke, a proud, irrepressible smile splitting his face as he gave a small, affirming nod.
The man stared at Kairo for a long, heavy moment. The wind shifted, blowing the white foam of the waterfall across the rocks, dampening the leather of his boots. "Hmm. I see," the giant murmured, his voice dropping into a sinister, rumbling register. "But you know... people fear me for a reason. I have just escaped the prison. The highest security vault in the western reaches."
Akio suddenly burst out into a loud, hysterical laugh, his hands gripping his knees as he bent double. The sound echoed wildly off the canyon walls. "What the hell is going on?!" Akio wheezed, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. "Why are you guys just exposing each other like that?! 'I'm a prince!' 'Well, I'm an escaped convict!' Who talks like this?!"
Kairo shot a sharp glare over his shoulder, his elbow nudging Akio's ribs. "Hey! Stop laughing and focus on the situation!"
"Oh... oh, sorry, my bad," Akio gasped, wiping his eyes, though his shoulders were still shaking. "I just... I laugh a lot. Even at little jokes. It's a defense mechanism, okay?"
The giant man drew himself up to his full, terrifying height, his shadow swallowing both boys completely. "I am Max the Great," he declared, his chest swelling as he struck his fist against his leather breastplate. "The man who has conquered the seven seas!"
Kairo's eyes sharpened, a genuine spark of interest flickering in his gaze. "The seas? Ahh, that's great. I've always wanted to explore the demons of the sea. The ecology out there must be fascinating."
"You want to see the demons?!" Max roared.
With a brutal, sudden movement, he yanked up the right sleeve of his leather coat and tore back the heavy cloth covering his lower left side. Kairo's breath hitched. Where a right hand should have been, there was only a jagged, misshapen stump of twisted flesh and scarred bone. His left leg, exposed from the knee down, was a crude contraption of weathered oak and rusted iron straps, biting deep into the muscle.
"Look here!" Max shouted, his voice cracking with an old, deep-seated madness. "I have been brutally slaughtered by a monster! A creature of nightmare! And right now... it is wandering freely in your land!"
Kairo stepped forward, the mist chilling his skin as he stared at the horrific mutilations. "Wait... what? In our land?"
"Yeah!" Max spat, a spray of saliva flying from his lips. "He is here! And well, right now, my people are already inside your precious academy, kidnapping the kids. We are going to check every single child, one by one, to see whether he is the monster or not. And guess what? The people in the lower town... they are all saying it is you. The prince who conquered two lands all alone. They say you are the monster who did this to me!"
The words hit Kairo like a physical blow. The silence that followed was absolute, save for the eternal roar of the waterfall. He looked down at his hands—hands that had broken kings, hands that had carried the weight of an entire army. He thought of the children fleeing from him at the well. He thought of the empty gym, the averted eyes of the commoners, the deep, unshakable fear in his mother's eyes.
Slowly, deliberately, Kairo's knees buckled. He let his frame sink down onto the wet, green moss of the ledge, his head bowing as the golden sunlight struck the back of his neck.
"Well..." Kairo whispered, his voice small, entirely devoid of the prince's pride. "I think you should just take me away. If that's what they want... at least the other kids will be safe from the intruder. If I am the curse... let me be the one you take."
"What are you doing, Kairo?!" Akio yelled, stepping forward, his hands clenching into fists as he glared at the kneeling prince. "You can easily defeat him! You can crush this guy in seconds! Why are you giving up?!"
"Yeah," Kairo said, his voice cracking slightly as he stared at the turquoise pool below. "I can easily defeat him. But what about the thoughts of the people? The mindset of this land? I can fight an army, Akio... but I just can't change how they look at me. I can't change their minds."
Max looked down at the broken prince, a cruel, triumphant sneer spreading across his scarred face. "Ok then. I will kidnap you. Don't worry, boy, I won't torture you... much. Well then—guards! Kidnap this prince!"
From the narrow fissure behind Max, a dozen heavily armed men rushed onto the ledge, their cutlasses drawn, their faces hidden behind dark cloth. They surrounded the boys from all sides, the steel of their blades reflecting the harsh morning light.
Akio gritted his teeth, a low, dangerous growl escaping his throat as he stepped in front of Kairo, his muscles tensing for a fight. But he looked down at his friend's defeated posture, then out toward the distant castle. "Fine," Akio spat, his shoulders slumping as he raised his hands in surrender. "I will come along with you too. Because... because the people treated me like a monster before, too. You're not going alone, Kairo."
"STOP!" Max's booming voice suddenly shattered the air, so loud it seemed to momentarily check the flow of the waterfall.
The pirate captain stepped forward, his single eye scanning the two boys with a look of sudden disgust. He leaned down, sniffing the air around Kairo, then looked at Akio's defiant expression. Max huffed, a massive cloud of gray vapor rising from his nose. "Well... it's fine. Forget it. These two kids... they don't look like the sea genie at all. They're just pathetic."
One of the pirate guards stepped up, his blade trembling as he looked at Max. "B-but Captain... the boys... if we leave them—"
"Silence!" Max barked, turning his terrifying gaze upon his own man. The guard instantly shrank back, his face turning pale with fear. The men were so utterly terrified of Max that a single word from him felt like a death sentence; they knew that to talk back meant a swift execution on the rocks below.
"Well, for now," Max ordered, turning his back toward the canyon view, "tie them up. I will make sure that their guards are completely down before we move the main horde into the academy."
The pirate guards advanced, heavy hemp ropes in their hands, their boots squelching against the wet moss. Kairo remained on his knees, his eyes fixed on the gray stone between his fingers, his mind trapped in a dark vortex of self-doubt.
"You won't be tying anyone today."
The voice did not come from the tunnel. It did not come from the ledge. It seemed to emanate from the very stone of the mountain itself—a low, terrifying resonance that carried no anger, only an absolute, crushing finality.
Max froze. The pirate guards stopped in their tracks, their blades lowering instinctively as a sudden, unnatural chill swept through the canyon, freezing the spray of the waterfall mid-air.
Standing at the far corner of the mossy ledge, where the shadow of the upper cliff blocked out the sun, a single man emerged.
King Ariston stood entirely alone.
[THE SHADOW OF THE CLIFF] ---------------------> [THE GOLDEN LIGHT] King Ariston (Barehanded, No Armor) Max & The Pirate Horde Aura: Crushing, Heavy, Sovereign Aura: Chaos, Terror
He wore no royal armor. There was no gold filigree on his shoulders, no heavy iron plate protecting his chest. He was dressed in a simple, gray linen tunic, his massive forearms exposed and covered in the faint soot of the castle forge. He carried no weapon; his hands hung loosely at his sides, bare and calloused.
Yet, the moment he stepped into the light, the ambient sound of the waterfall seemed to drop by half. The air around him grew thick, heavy, and hard to breathe, a localized gravity that caused the gravel near his boots to vibrate and dance. The sheer, unadulterated weight of his presence—the absolute aura of a sovereign who had ruled through blood and iron—flooded the canyon like a rising tide.
Ariston lifted his head, his dark eyes locking onto the pirate captain. The subtle anxiety that had stiffened his shoulders in the morning was entirely gone, replaced by a cold, terrifying serenity.
"Long time no see," Ariston said, his voice a booming crescendo that struck the canyon walls and echoed back like thunder. He took a single, deliberate step forward, the stone beneath his boot cracking with a sharp crack.
"It's me. King Ariston."