After passing through a dark hallway, she came to a camp with Velvent soldiers running around with strange devices and wearing cloth instead of plate armor; these were just details she could notice about everything. With Edmund by her side, she got into a wagon and went toward a city in the distance, where explosions could be heard.
Edmund smiled at her and talked about how they would need to fight a dungeon guardian, just like he had before, but now it felt real. Like before, he assured her he would do most of the job, and she would only need to deal one deadly blow.
As the wagon entered the city, she noticed the tall buildings. The bright light from a crystal on the dungeon's ceiling made everything she was experiencing feel unreal, like a dream. The explosions and sounds of what looked like a battle were getting closer. The wagon needed to avoid the rubble of parts of buildings in the middle of the street and the destruction all around.
They stopped in front of a building that looked like a temple, with soldiers guarding it. Edmund jumped out of the wagon, pulled a sword full of crystal adornments from underneath a pile of clothes, and offered a hand so that she could get out. With a smile, she got his hand and jumped out. They walked up the stairs, and, like many times before, she would use the hero's sword and save the world.
There was nothing inside the temple, only another entrance on the other side and a sword, half of which was inside the floor. The details on the floor themselves were beautiful to her eyes. When they got in front of the sword, Edmund tried to pull with one hand, but it gave up after one try. He laughed quickly, asking her to pull it herself right after.
She pulled the sword; it didn’t have any resistance whatsoever; it had the same length as the one Edmund trained her with and the one he had in his hands right now; the details on the blade were unreal; it looked like the steel was alive because of how the blade pulsated as she looked, but Edmund called for her attention as a portal opened between them and the other entrance.
A figure emerged from it, a man with dark red hair, grayish skin, and darker freckles below his eyes across his nose, wearing light armor with transparent gems on his chest, arms, and legs, holding a black-handled long sword. Ariadne was taken aback by it. Edmund told her to follow him, but as soon as he said that, the dungeon guardian leaped forward, trying to strike her.
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She reacted only as much as to defend against the blow, which made her fly back and out of the building and hit the second floor of another with such a force that she was entirely out; for her, it was only a moment, but more time had passed, and when her eyes opened, two Velvent soldiers were by her side trying to wake her up using something with an intense smell. She walked to the edge of where she was and saw Edmund covered in black bruises and blood and with his clothes torn in the middle of the street, fighting against that figure.
It took a moment for her to realize the bodies on the street that weren’t there before were Velvent soldiers in various states. A gruesome look; her eyes met with Edmund’s for a second, and without any excitation, he shouted, giving her a command to throw her sword with all her might against the figure, and so she did without a thought; her body moved like it had done the movement thousands of times before, but she had only trained with Edmund months up to that point.
When her sword pierced the figure, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Edmund felt victimized as he held it in place. At the last second, he tried to avoid it, but it was too late, and Ariadne’s sword pierced his chest on the right side. She jumped off the building and ran toward Edmund, who was using the remainder of his strength to pull himself out of the sword while the figure faded away like a statue of dust being carried away by the wind.
He was already on the ground when she got close, tears in her eyes. For the first time, someone other than her father was good to her, and she killed him with her own hands. Edmund told her everything would be fine and that she needed to continue his actions. He made his father promise he would go to the other dungeons. He was struggling to talk; the soldiers came running next to him, but when they saw his state, they just sighed as she cried on top of him.
Edmund’s last words were, “The... her..o is not... Co… ming, so you nee...d to... fight.” Before he closed his eyes, she started to cry even more on top of him, but she noticed that the sounds around her suddenly changed, and when she opened her eyes again, she was in the ballroom. Tears still poured from her eyes; confused, she looked around, and Eliza was there but a little younger.
It took some time for her to realize that she had returned, but she returned before her father went to Velvent. With the information about Edmund, she could prevent her father’s death and her kingdom from falling, even Edmund’s death. So, she asked her father to go with him, and after the initial no, he let her go more because of the sudden change in her personality.
After the trip, when she got to the capital of the kingdom of Velvent and accommodated herself in the castle's guest room, she wasted no time before dashing out to the royal smith where Edmund said he had lived before. Her father always put two guards with her, but it didn’t prevent her from looking around until her eyes met a white-haired young man sitting in front of a warehouse.
The first feeling she felt was surprise; he was alive, but right after, happiness as she walked towards him smiling and asking him what his name was and what he did there, no answer; it made her impatient and then she said, “Are you deaf, peasant?” she asked as she tapped his chest with her fan.