Kalakuta’s legs finally give out.
He collapses against the throne, sliding down until he sits on the blood-soaked steps leading to the seat of power he has just claid. Pathfinder clatters from his weakened grip, the armant’s crimson glow fading as it rolls across the marble floor.
In the silence of the throne room, with only the King’s corpse for company, Kalakuta’s mind drifts.
He thinks of Kamal.
His first friend.
The brother who tended to his wounds and broke so of the chains present on his mind so long ago.
Kamal was the first to agree as he whispered dreams of freedom in the darkness, even when hope seed like a fantasy too cruel to entertain.
"I’m sorry, brother," Kalakuta whispers, his voice barely audible. "I was selfish. So selfish."
Then cos Garett.
The man who could see patterns in chaos and turn desperate fights into calculated victories.
Garett, who followed Kalakuta’s dream even when the odds scread impossibility. Garett, just like Kamal, perished because of his Kalakuta’s hubris in the Eastern Sects.
Even then, he died standing, with a smile on his bloody face, because he believed his sacrifice ant sothing.
"Forgive , Garett. You deserved better than to die for my ambitions."
Jeophrey next.
The eccentric... a man dissociated from everything in the world. Yet for so reason, he had felt drawn to Kalakauta.
Unlike the others, whom Kalakuta had to seek out on his own, Jeophrey was the one who sought Kalakuta out. He could sense a revolution at hand, so he handed Kalakuta his masterpiece—The Pathfinder.
He also desired to make even more Armants for the cause, hoping to fabricate a masterpiece.
An A Grade Armant!
To think he would perish in his very workshop and not a battlefield.
At least he died doing what he loved...
"I used you, brother. I used all of you."
The faces co faster now, a cascade of mories. Brothers and sisters of the original movent.
The ones who started this journey with nothing but conviction and desperation.
The ones who believed in Kalakuta’s vision before it beca a movent, before it beca an army, before it beca a world-changing force.
All dead.
Every single one of them, gone.
And for what? For Kalakuta’s freedom. For his selfish need to prove to himself that he was truly free, that breaking physical chains ant sothing more than just changing location.
"Everyone wants to believe in sothing," Kalakuta murmurs, staring at his blood-stained hands. "I believed in freedom. And they... they believed in ."
The realization settles over him like a shroud.
His friends hadn’t followed freedom. They had followed him. They had taken his personal crusade and made it their own because they loved him, trusted him, needed sothing larger than themselves to give their suffering aning.
And he had led them all to their deaths.
"But I did it," he says, looking up at the empty throne. "I fulfilled the dream. I tore down the old world. I broke the chains. Maybe... maybe that makes it worth sothing. Maybe your faith in wasn’t completely wasted."
He wants to believe that.
Needs to believe it.
But the doubt gnaws at him even as he tries to push it away.
Then—
’What’s that?’
A sound interrupts his reflection.
Distant at first, but growing louder. Screams. Roars. The unmistakable sounds of battle erupting outside the palace walls.
Kalakuta’s head snaps up, his remaining eye widening in confusion. The battle should be over.
The King is dead.
The palace is taken.
Why is there still fighting?
Suddenly, shadows move in the throne room.
He hadn’t noticed them before, but now they seem to materialize from the darkness itself.
Figures in dark cloaks, their forms obscured, their faces hidden behind eerie masks. They erge from every corner, every alcove, surrounding him in a loose circle.
Kalakuta tries to reach for Pathfinder, but his body refuses to cooperate. He’s too weak, too damaged, too depleted.
Fear—an emotion he thought he’d conquered long ago—surges through him.
"Who..." His voice cracks. "Who are you?"
One of the figures steps forward, their movent graceful despite the concealing cloak. When they speak, their voice is distorted, unnatural.
"We are the Dark Guild."
The na ans nothing to Kalakuta, but the threat is obvious. These people have waited until he was at his weakest, most vulnerable mont to reveal themselves.
"What do you want?" He tries to inject authority into his voice, but it cos out as barely more than a rasp.
"What we’ve always wanted," another figure says. "What we’ve worked toward throughout the year."
More sounds from outside.
Louder now.
Screams of pain. Screams of terror. Screams that sound horrifyingly like his Freedom Fighters.
Kalakuta’s heart races. Despite everything—despite his epiphany about selfishness, despite his acceptance of using others for his dream—he realizes sothing fundantal.
He doesn’t want to die.
Not yet.
Not like this, surrounded by mysterious enemies in a throne room still warm with his victory.
He has earned the right to see what cos next. To witness the world he fought so hard to create. To finally, truly rest.
The throne room doors burst open.
A familiar figure strides in, and relief floods through Kalakuta’s body like a physical wave.
His brother—The Knight.
The man who has stood beside him through countless battles, who has guided him through monts of doubt, who has been the one constant in this ever-changing crusade.
Javier Aditi!
"Brother!" Kalakuta gasps, hope rekindling in his chest. "These people... the Dark Guild... we need to fight them together. I’m weak, but if we combine our strength—"
His brother shakes his head.
The gesture is small, almost gentle, but it carries the weight of finality.
"I’m sorry, Kalakuta."
The words land like physical blows.
"What?" Kalakuta stares, unable to process what he’s hearing. "What are you sorry for? Brother, what’s happening? The sounds outside—the fighting—what’s going on?"
"The Freedom Fighters are being eliminated as we speak," Javier says, his tone almost emotionless. "They are being torn apart by my Magivores. It will take so ti, but the goal is to kill everyone who followed us here."
"H-huh?"
Kalakuta’s mind reels.
Nothing about this makes sense.
The words are in a language he understands, but they form sentences that reality refuses to accommodate.
"You... you’re not making sense. Why would your Magivores attack our people? Did you lose control? We need to—"
Laughter erupts from one of the Dark Guild mbers. Sharp, mocking, feminine.
"Oh, this is precious. He still doesn’t understand. After all this ti, after everything, he actually doesn’t see it."
The voice is familiar.
Kalakuta’s eye widens in recognition.
"You... I know that voice. Forr Minister of Combat? But you died. During the campaign in the Central Continent, you were killed by Southern forces during—"
"Enough."
Javier’s voice cuts through the confusion like a blade. He turns to the laughing figure, his expression stern despite the gentleness in his tone.
"Acting Leader, be quiet. This isn’t the ti for mockery."
The figure—the Combat Minister, apparently very much alive—imdiately falls silent, though Kalakuta can sense the smile behind her mask.
Combat Minister.
His brother does not display any surprise by the fact that his woman, his own lover, is actually alive despite supposedly dying in battle several months ago.
Not just that, he has just addressed her by a different title. Finally...
... He speaks to her with authority.
The pieces begin to shift in Kalakuta’s mind, forming a picture he desperately doesn’t want to see.
"Brother..." He whispers. "... How do you know these people?"
Javier regards him for a long mont, and for the first ti since Kalakuta has known him, there’s sothing like genuine regret in his eyes.
"Kalakuta, I don’t just know them."
He gestures to the assembled Dark Guild mbers, and as one, they move. Every cloaked figure drops to one knee, heads bowed in perfect synchronization.
"I created them."
The throne room spins. Kalakuta tries to speak, but no words co out.
His brother stands before the kneeling figures, looking every inch the leader he truly is.
"I am the founder of the Dark Guild," he says, each word carefully enunciated, ensuring Kalakuta hears and understands. "I built this organization from nothing, piece by piece, over these past months. Every mber you see before you answers to . Every action they’ve taken has been according to my design, mirroring that of the Freedom Fighters."
The kneeling figures speak in unison, their voices creating an eerie chorus:
"We greet the Supre Leader."
The title echoes through the throne room, bouncing off walls slick with blood, reverberating in the space between Kalakuta’s shattered understanding and the terrible new reality being forced upon him.
His brother—his trusted advisor, his closest friend, his most loyal companion—stands among these dark figures not as an enemy or an ally of convenience.
But as their creator.
Their master.
Their Supre Leader.
Kalakuta stares at the man he thought he knew, blood pooling beneath him, body broken, world crumbling, and for the first ti in his life since breaking his chains, he feels truly helpless.
"Why?" The word escapes as barely more than a breath.
Javier’s expression softens, and that sohow makes it worse.
"It is all for the sake of this world."
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