A sudden rain pelts the stained glass windows.
A violent hacking fit rings across the crystalline adamas walls, bouncing inside of the great helms of the Loyal Knights posted at the door. Those knights can hear other voices seeping through the coughing. The Loyal Knights stand to attention when they see their prince Balor walk up.
“All of you, leave!” Balor commands, to which they abide. With the Loyal Knights gone, Balor grasps at the wall and briefly pauses. His destination reflects off of his sapphire blue eyes: the door into the Empyrean’s bedchamber.
Balor’s hand reaches out and pushes the door open. Creeeeeeeak, the door slowly cries, echoing throughout the bedchamber. Balor beholds three individuals in the room: there’s his sister Princess Lucia, the thorn-in-his-side Raphael Bela…and his father, Empyrean Divus.
The night coalesces around Balor, consuming him wholly. One cannot make out the details of his face nor his body, merely his shape and size. However, the Solasúian glow of his eyes pierces through the darkness. He takes one step forward and closes the door shut behind him. It isn’t until Balor draws near a lantern filled with dim, fiery light of eternal sunflies that he is revealed to the three in the room.
“Brother?” Lucia calls, raising her eyebrow.
Revealed from the darkness is what lurks in Balor’s grasp: the king’s blade, Arbandor. Indeed, its adamas glimmers resplendently in the light…but its presence does not go unnoticed.
“Why…do you have…Arbandor?” Divus, who lays upon a red chaise lounge, asks amid his coughing, recalling that he had given his eldest son Lelantos the sword.
Despite Divus’s question, Balor has no response.
The air rebounds with the prince’s boots as he steps forward. Raphael Bela, seated besides Divus and Lucia, suddenly stands up, left hand attached to the sword at his hip. He steps ahead, cutting Balor amid his path towards Divus.
“What are you doing?” Raphael questions.
But in this, Balor does not hesitate.
He plunges Arbandor deep into Raphael’s abdomen. Raphael’s eyes widen sharply. His own blood escapes him, dyeing the blue rug below red. Lucia exhales a sharp gasp and covers her mouth. Balor launches his left foot forward, bouncing off of Raphael’s chest. The sword is forced out of Raphael’s belly.
“Brother…why?” Lucia cries.
“Leave, Lucia!” Balor demands, glancing momentarily at his sister.
Lucia springs to her feet and rushes to her brother.
“What are you doing?”
“You need to leave, dear sister.” Balor shakes his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I can’t! I-I refuse!”
“Leave, Lucia. This is between me and your brother,” Divus suddenly speaks, freed from his coughing.
The princess immediately reacts to her father’s plea, distraughtly glancing back at him. His face stern and stoic, as if prepared for what is about to come.
“But Father…!” Lucia protests.
“It’s all right. Just leave.”
As her father’s words echo through her mind, Lucia stumbles back towards the door. Her back finds the sturdy wooden door as her brother and father stare at her in utter silence.
“I-I’ll get Lelantos! I’ll get Momus! I-I…” Lucia trails off, her hand finding the brass doorknob to the door. Not able to bear the piercing gaze of her father and brother any longer, she spins around and jerks open the door. She bolts out the door, leaving her father alone with his captor.
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With the door’s closure confirming his sister’s departure, Balor steps forward, pointing Arbandor directly at his father.
“Father, I demand answers,” Balor hisses in a low tone as he tightens his grip on Arbandor, the king’s own blade. The prince inhales sharply as he prepares to speak again, his mind struggling to contain the unbridled rage building deep within him. Though he desires nothing more than to act in this moment, he wants to hear his father confess his actions. He needs to hear him say it.
Divus returns his son’s glare with a gaze as hard and natural as stone.
“Then speak,” the Empyrean utters, his tone unbound by emotion.
“…Is it true? Has it really been you holding me back all this time? It was you protecting the humans?”
“The only one I’ve been protecting is you from your naïve ambitions.”
“Don’t you toy with me!” Balor wrathfully roars, lashing his finger at his father. “Brother told me everything you and him were plotting.”
“Then at last you know the grand plan this family has been working towards for decades to unify the kingdom.”
“You won’t even deny it?”
“No,” the old Empyrean exhales haggardly as stray coughs briefly interrupt him. “Why would I deny my life’s work to establish true peace?”
“Peace!?” The prince exclaims. “We are in a war for our very survival as a race, one that you clearly have no regard for! Why would you—” Balor attempts to continue, however his father’s voice sharply slices through his, forcing him to silence.
“—Are drawn blades all you ever dream of, child? I intend on winning this ‘war’ of yours, and it would have been a bloodless victory if you had not slain your own brother!” Divus speaks.
“Don’t speak to me about Lelantos! Both of you desired to trade the kingdom away to the humans!”
“Balor, the humans are only our enemies if we make them as such. They would be invaluable allies to the kingdom if—” Divus attempts to explain, but his son shouts over him.
“—Allies!? You would make allies of the very same scoundrels that nearly murdered Lucia!?”
“This secret treaty with humankind was wrought from that tragedy, Balor. Like you, I was so overwhelmed by my anguish and was resolved to put all of humanity to the torch, but your mother made me see reason.”
Balor’s eyes narrow as Divus mentions his mother.
”She was wise enough to see beyond the barbarism and understood what needed to be done,” Divus continues. “The integration of humankind was her dream and we’ve all made sacrifices to bring it to fruition: Lelantos, Momus, even your sister.”
The prince seethes through his clenched teeth, unable to bear the thought of his sister’s involvement. A shudder like a cold chill races down his spine as he finds words to speak.
“No…” he denies. “I will not stand these lies anymore! This madness must end!”
“I have no intention of pleading for my life, death has sought me for years,” Divus mournfully utters as he looks up at his son. “If you so covet this accursed mantle, it is yours to take.”
Balor’s visage twists as his father makes a defiant stand. He takes a stance as if prepared to strike his own father down, yet he freezes up. Time swirls onward, his face twitches, his cheeks burning in crimson, but he remains motionless. The only thing that moved is his mind, where a disharmonious cacophony of thoughts blurs the line between his desires.
Divus raises his hand and gently rests it upon the fuller of the trembling blade pointed at his throat. Softly, tenderly, the old Empyrean calls, “Son…”
As thunder cracks the sky, the sensation of a grip at Balor’s right heel snaps him to his senses. He casts a glance downwards and beholds the bloodied hand of Raphael nabbing at him. Instinctively, the prince bucks like a panicked horse.
“Balor… I beg of you… please don’t—” Raphael haggardly and desperately pleads until an unceremonious kick to his face delivers him to silence.
However, as blood is drawn from his lip, Raphael is undeterred. Determinedly grappling Balor’s entire lower leg, he climbs up the frantic prince, begging him not to commit murder. Striking him like a spark that ignites a flame, Balor heaves a heavy, swift boot to Raphael’s chest, which propels him off of his feet and out the window.
Raphael flies into the stained glass, crashing through the stoic image of Empyrean Nomos Pallas Barn, son of the Hero King. Lingering in the air for just one moment, Raphael can feel the cool rain soak his skin. But as he falls, the rain turns into needles, stabbing at his flesh. Before he knows it, his bloodied body hits the ground in a grassy thud.
With the sound of shattering glass echoing throughout the hallways, servants and Loyal Knights curiously converge upon the area. A deep, loud creak emits from the wooden door as they crack it open, unveiling a gruesome sight: the prince, Balor Pallas Barn, letting out an roar, repeatedly slashing and stabbing the body of the Empyrean, his father. Their eyes widen, their faces visibly turned, they witness in horror as Balor commits regicide. Hunched over the body of his father like a wild beast, the prince continues to hack and slash at his father’s carcass until his purple doublet is covered in blood.
Down below, out in the pouring rain, Raphael stares up into the darkness of the sky. The rain masking his tears, his heart is in greater pain than his body. With his vision fading to black, it seems like the end of him—the end of everything. His Empyrean is dead. He is dead. There is nothing left.
But in the final second of his fading consciousness, he makes out the voice of…someone—who, he cannot say. The blurred image of a someone appears there, before his waning eyes. Then all…fades into black.