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Short filmTranscript
00:00Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!
00:03My name is Leia.
00:0424 hours ago, I was New York's top forensic pathologist,
00:08calmly cutting open the chest of a powerful man.
00:11Now I'm bound with rough ropes to the cursed execution platform,
00:15my feet surrounded by grease-soaked firewood.
00:17The witch! You're in fire!
00:20Those eyes of yours that can see spirits are the mark of Satan!
00:25But I don't struggle. I'm just waiting,
00:27behind these fanatical rioters stands an army they cannot see,
00:32hundreds upon thousands of resentful ghosts.
00:39Since you wish to do God's will,
00:41why don't you first ask the Saison if she approves?
00:45The air reeks of cheap grease and pine.
00:48Lilla, those cursed purple eyes of yours can see Satan's illusions!
00:52Only fire can cleanse your sins!
00:55My name is Leia, not Leela.
00:59As the top forensic pathologist of the 21st century,
01:02I have dissected thousands of corpses and heard countless last words from the dead.
01:08I transmigrated to this backward medieval era,
01:10becoming Lila, the illegitimate daughter of a noble count,
01:15branded a cursed star for her purple eyes,
01:18pushed to death by her own father.
01:21I found my eyes had mutated.
01:23I can not only discern wounds clearly,
01:26I can also see the lingering victims who haven't yet departed.
01:31Valerie, are you sure you want to light the fire?
01:34Silence! The witch is casting a curse!
01:36A curse?
01:37Sister Cecile is right behind you, Archbishop.
01:39She's wearing an emerald silk dress,
01:40but her throat is charred black,
01:42marked from concentrated strong alkali corrosion.
01:44Didn't she keep grabbing your left hand when you made her drink that cup of holy water?
01:49Silence! The witch is casting a curse!
01:54Archbishop, does your left hand still hurt?
01:58You're lying! Start the fire! Now!
02:02Why so nervous?
02:03I sweep my gaze over the unsettled believers in the square.
02:06Do you want to know where the saint's heart is?
02:10It never went to heaven.
02:11No one breathes.
02:13It's hidden behind the secret door inside the confessional at the Archbishop's residence.
02:17I can see the empty cavity in Cecile's chest as clearly as if I had opened it myself.
02:24He cut out her heart, simply because he believed it would prolong his life.
02:31Suspicious eyes turn toward Valerius.
02:34He's the real servant of darkness, not me.
02:39Burn her! Burn her now!
02:47The wind stops.
02:50I owe you one. Command me. Now is the time.
02:54If you want him in hell, lend me your hands.
02:57The sky blackens at once. Clouds swallow the sun.
03:00The flames at my feet go out, then flare back to life in a strange blue fire.
03:06They do not burn me. They only eat through the ropes.
03:09Valerius suddenly starts convulsing. His left arm jerks up against his will.
03:13The old scratches split open again, blackening as they tear wider.
03:17The cross slipped from his fingers and clattered to the ground.
03:21He lets out a scream that does not sound human.
03:24Then he looked behind him in terror.
03:25A black shape thickens in the air as though ink has been poured over glass.
03:30Cecile takes form. Her neck is scorched black.
03:33Her body is half burned. Tears still stain her face.
03:36Stepping onto the loosened rope and rising to my full height on the execution platform.
03:43Now, I get to judge you.
03:47I had only been in this world a short time.
03:50But I had already seen enough.
03:52I knew exactly where power came from in a crowd like this.
03:55Build a line. Name a common enemy.
03:58At that moment, Valerius' left hand, the one covered in claw marks, keeps crushing his own throat.
04:06He hangs half in the air, kicked up by the saint's dead grip.
04:10His legs thrashing.
04:12The square sinks into a silence so heavy it feels like stone.
04:17Fear ripples through the people, but so does doubt.
04:21Marquis de Moray, who was sent to supervise the execution.
04:25Everyone, do not be fooled by this witch's tricks.
04:29Even if Valerius is guilty, the church should judge him.
04:33You expect us to trust the word of a demon-eyes girl?
04:36Your visions prove nothing.
04:40The dead don't invent tricks.
04:42They only tell the truth people buried.
04:44Take your eldest son, for example.
04:46The one who vanished three years ago.
04:49Valerius told you he died on pilgrimage, didn't he?
04:51The Marquis goes rigid.
04:53His sword shakes.
04:56But your son is right behind you.
05:00He says he saw Valerius torturing a novice inside the confessional, so Valerius silenced him.
05:06He was never buried in holy ground.
05:09He was chopped into pieces and hidden under the old laurel tree in the church garden.
05:15That's impossible.
05:16Cecile, show him.
05:19Her shadow stretches across the ground like spilled tar.
05:23Then tears toward the cathedral in a shrieking room.
05:26The Marquis runs after it.
05:28So do the townsfolk.
05:34When they come back, the Marquis is staggering.
05:37In his hands is a sealed gold vessel.
05:40Inside it is a shriveled heart.
05:43That is the end of fate.
05:44The square erupts.
05:46Kill him!
05:48Burn the Karis eater!
05:51Tear him apart!
05:54The mob swallows Valerius blood.
05:59I stand on the stake and watch the archbishop die.
06:02The trial has only just begun.
06:07Leela!
06:09You...
06:10You're alive!
06:11Thank God!
06:13She is the adopted daughter who entered the convent with me.
06:17She is also the one who drugged my food, deepened the unnatural colour of my eyes, and pointed at me
06:23in front of the church and cried witch.
06:25Leela!
06:27Bella!
06:29Don't expect me to forgive you like before.
06:31I'm not the old Lila.
06:33Not that saintly little fool.
06:35What are you saying?
06:37I was worried about you.
06:39I never thought they were really bad.
06:40I looked at the looming shadow behind her.
06:43The wreath was furiously tearing at Belly's hair.
06:46Bella knew nothing of it, only busy putting on her act of sisterly affection.
06:50And in that instant, another truth falls into place.
06:53Next month is the coronation.
06:56The prince's bride, the future queen, was supposed to be me, the only marriageable daughter of the house.
07:03She was trying to take my place.
07:05At this moment, heavy hooves crash against the stones outside the square.
07:10The crowd parts.
07:12Two lavish carriages roll in beneath the protection of mounted knights.
07:16The royal crest and the holy sigil are carved into both.
07:20The doors open.
07:22Two women step down.
07:30The woman on the left is my elder sister, Cassandra.
07:34She sees good and evil as clearly as color, and turns morality itself into force.
07:39That power made her the royal court's cleanest blade.
07:42The woman on the right is my second sister's cure.
07:45She can see the end date on every life.
07:47She steals years from the condemned and gives them to dying nobles.
07:51That is how she built her influence.
07:54You should not be alive.
08:01You should not be alive.
08:03Your countdown reset.
08:04A forbidden force rewrote your fate.
08:10As the daughters of the woman who once married into this house, you should have been house stormpressed pride.
08:18Only I was packed off to a convent whilst still a child.
08:22Then sent to die on a pyre.
08:24Liar!
08:26The king is watching this miracle!
08:28You're an anomaly.
08:29And anomalies make powerful people nervous.
08:32Come with us.
08:33Quietly.
08:33I do not trust them.
08:35Not after they stood by while I was condemned.
08:38In light of what you have shown here, and the unrest caused by your eyes, you are stripped of the
08:43Stormcrest name.
08:45Effective immediately, you are to be exiled to Blackstone Cult.
08:51Blackstone Keep is a death sentence.
08:54People say even rats go mad there.
08:57I'll go.
08:59Cassandra rules the capital through morality.
09:02Sophia rules the empire through lifestamp.
09:06And I?
09:07Coming!
09:08I am being thrown into a ruin full of dead things.
09:12To them, it is exile.
09:14To me, it might be a door.
09:19Because in this world, power may wear the mask of virtue or time.
09:24But under both lies the same foundation.
09:28Bones.
09:29And if what I hold is really tied to death.
09:32Then a fortress full of corpses may be the best place in the world for me to begin.
09:40The moment I tried to pick up the chest again, that same agony came flooding back.
09:49The road to Blackstone Keep is lined with nameless graves.
09:53As the carriage moves north, the city gives way to empty land.
09:57Then to scrub.
09:59Then to sand.
10:01The farther they went, the more uneasy the guards looked.
10:04Cecile sits across from me now, no longer flickering in and out like before.
10:10In life, she was all softness and worship.
10:13In death, something colder has settled into her bones.
10:17Lady Lyra, that god's soul was fading away.
10:22Three hours from now, he'll freeze to death out here.
10:28I can see more than ghosts.
10:31I can see death itself.
10:33Now these eyes seem determined to drag me past time itself.
10:37I see the dead.
10:39I see the wounds that killed them.
10:42I hear their whispers.
10:45Sometimes I see the memory of the moment they died.
10:50I raise my hand and touch the scorched hollow of Cecile's throat.
10:58An icy, electric, shock-like sensation swept through me in an instant.
11:04Then her injury closes.
11:06The charred wound zips itself shut under a pulse of violet light.
11:12Lady Lyra,
11:15you can restore us.
11:17You can restore us!
11:25It may just be muscle memory.
11:27A doctor sees damage and wants to cut, fix, stitch, understand.
11:32And apparently, I could also mend souls now.
11:38I called these little surprises luck.
11:41The carriage rolled to a stop in front of Blackstone Cape's rusted iron gate.
11:50This wasn't an old castle.
11:54This was a giant morgue.
11:58The moment I stepped into the great hall, they came for me.
12:02My brain screamed.
12:04My eyes wept blood from the strain.
12:06I ordered.
12:08My voice cold.
12:10Back off!
12:10They didn't listen.
12:11Spirits with no shape and no sense.
12:14Just raw, hungry instinct.
12:15Suddenly, a gust of wind scattered them.
12:18Don't bother begging them like that.
12:21It's useless.
12:22Beneath the shattered stained glass window,
12:25half hidden in shadow,
12:27sat a man.
12:27Like he'd been waiting for me all along.
12:41Like he'd been waiting for me all along.
12:42Who are you?
12:44A failure.
12:46My body was stolen.
12:47My soul though?
12:49It just won't die.
12:50Leela moaned.
12:51Take a good look.
12:52Blackstone Keep isn't a castle.
12:54It's the Empire's soul alchemist's factory.
12:57They haul souls here.
12:58From commoners through criminals.
13:00Grind them to dust.
13:01And refine the purest life force.
13:03Then they ship it to the capital.
13:05Following his lead, my violet eyes began to pulse wildly.
13:09Visions flooded my sight.
13:11Overlapping.
13:12Chaotic.
13:13They were the collective memories of the dead.
13:16So you're a harvested battery too?
13:20I'm a battery they'll never drain.
13:23They chopped up my body, but my soul was too hard to chew.
13:27Listen.
13:28The Arcan isn't ripping out Saintus' hearts to extend his own life.
13:31He's just a supplier.
13:33The real customer is the king.
13:35And the one swinging the blade?
13:36That's your sister.
13:37Why are you telling me all this?
13:39Your mother asked me to.
13:41She told me to wait for you here.
13:43Leela.
13:44See your power for what it is.
13:45You can read how the dead died.
13:47You can mend their wounds.
13:49But that's just the beginning.
13:50Next week, the king's sickly son is taking a new bride.
13:55Another sacrifice.
13:57The king needs a top grade spare part to keep himself alive.
14:01Guess who they've chosen as the next offering?
14:04Bella thought she'd stolen a fortune from me.
14:06Who knew she'd actually stolen a death sentence?
14:11What's your name?
14:13Alaric.
14:14Deep under Blackstone Keep, there's something your mother left before she died.
14:18I've kept it safe for you for decades.
14:21With that, you'll get closer to the truth.
14:25I followed the spiral staircase down.
14:28The underground didn't smell of rot like I'd expected.
14:32Instead, there was a sharp, chemical scent.
14:36Something like formaldehyde.
14:38At the bottom of the stairs lay a precision laboratory.
14:41In the center, on a stone table, sat a heavy iron chest.
14:47The moment I touched the chest, my violet pupils erupted with shattered images.
14:52I saw my mother.
14:53She hadn't died from postpartum weakness.
14:56She had been down in this dungeon, frantically recording something.
15:00She wasn't a victim.
15:02She was a key node in this whole immortality experiment.
15:06Connecting it with what Alaric had told me,
15:08the current king wasn't the first beneficiary of this immortality scheme.
15:12They had used Blackstone Keep to drain life force.
15:14But when the keep stopped working, they needed a replacement.
15:17And my mother?
15:18She might have been that replacement.
15:20The moment I tried to pick up the chest again, that same agony came flooding back.
15:31Lady Mondae left a magic mark behind.
15:34It was meant cement to someone from her world.
15:37Someone like her.
15:39To end all of this.
15:44Now, can you tell me your real name?
15:57My name is Lyra. I'm a medical examiner.
16:02Cecil stood behind me.
16:05Her voice was no longer ethereal.
16:08Lady Lyra.
16:09I can feel the wind now.
16:12She pulled a long sword from her hollow chest.
16:15Looking just as shocked as I felt.
16:18I'm going to use this blade to carve out that old immortal's heart.
16:25Only the one who picks up this blade is worthy of pureness.
16:29Back then, the king ripped out my heart, trying to turn me into the purest battery for Blackstone Keep.
16:35Your mother used that open heart moment to secretly stitch part of my soul into the keep's foundation.
16:40She saved my consciousness, but trapped me here, unable to leave.
16:44She was a brilliant stitcher.
16:47She did all of this so the immortality fast would end with my generation.
16:52And she must have had her reasons for saving me.
16:55Will you come with me, Alaric?
16:57Lyra.
16:59If you want to take me with you, you'll have to use that blade.
17:03Stitch my ghost into your shadow.
17:05From then on, your life will be my anchor.
17:07See you in 3rd Prince.
17:12His cold, weightless body passed drooling in an embrace, then dissolved into swirling black smoke that shrank into my shadow.
17:24Able in 3rd Prince.
17:37I hid in the shadow of the huge stone pillar in the banquet hall, and the shadow under my feet
17:42stirred restlessly, as if echoing the undercurrent surging in my heart.
17:46My second sister Sophia appeared behind me without warning, her tone trembling imperceptibly, and her eyes were filled with unprecedented
17:53anxiety.
17:54It turned out that Bella had been a pawn from the very beginning, used to carry a cruel exchange of
17:59vitality.
18:00The king would use Sophia's hand to transfer Bella's vitality to the third prince.
18:04It was never Lila, I was Leia.
18:06After three years of protection, it was now my turn to come back and clean up this mess with my
18:11own hands.
18:14The banquet reaches its peak.
18:16Lila lifts the golden cup with shaking excitement.
18:19The prince does the same.
18:20I object.
18:21I step out of the shadows.
18:23At once, the glamour around the nobility peels away in my sight.
18:27The beautiful faces wrinkle, collapse, rot.
18:30Under their silk and velvet, I see patchwork flesh and old sutures and stolen years barely held together.
18:35The seal materializes in the center of the hall.
18:38Her dead white face.
18:39All of it appears before the assembled lords and ladies.
18:42For a heartbeat, no one moves.
18:45Then someone screams.
18:46The saint.
18:47The saint gets back.
18:48The hall explodes into trouble.
18:50The seal raises her sword and starts cutting through the crowd.
18:53Every thrust lands in a transplanted heart.
18:56Walk toward them slowly.
18:57My violet eyes burning.
18:59Today is for repain.
19:01Kill that witch.
19:02The king lords to slam your hand on the table.
19:05The royal guard searches forward.
19:07My shadow derives.
19:08Black blades race across the floor.
19:10Sparing each soldier through his own shadow.
19:13Bodies crumble and weather away before they even scream.
19:16Half a power rises from the darkness and wraps one spectral hand around the prince's throat.
19:21Bella drops to the floor.
19:22Stunned.
19:23I crouch in front of her and then I smile.
19:25Thanks for dying in my place.
19:27She jerks back, finally recognizing the danger.
19:30Why are you still alive, you bitch?
19:32Catch her wrist and wrench her upright.
19:34Then I turn toward the king.
19:36Your majesty.
19:37Is this the heart you wanted?
19:39Do you even know what she is?
19:40She's not Lady Monda's true daughter.
19:43King does not panic.
19:44Not even a little.
19:46He is staring at the scalpel in my hand to be his obsession.
19:49Once, the hidden mother array beneath the floor ignites.
19:52The modern scalpel in my hand lets out a shrill metallic crack.
19:56Then it rips free of my grip.
19:57It does not fly toward the king.
19:59It does not fly toward the prince.
20:01It shoots straight across the hall and buries itself in Sophia's chest.
20:07For one second, everything stops.
20:10The silver flash.
20:11The wet sound of impact.
20:13Sophia looking down at the blade sticking out of her chest.
20:16I reach her as she falls.
20:18At a glance it looks fatal.
20:19But I am a doctor before I am anything else.
20:22Something is wrong.
20:23There is no arterial spray.
20:25And my breath catches.
20:26The blade is not in her heart.
20:28It is embedded in a black growth.
20:30At that exact moment, the king lets out a monstrous scream.
20:33One whole side of his face shrivels before our eyes.
20:36Collapsing into dried rot.
20:38Now I get it.
20:39I say, gripping the scalpel.
20:41The blade didn't attack her.
20:42It cut out the parasite.
20:44Sophia coughs up black blood and drives my wrist.
20:47Our lives were tied to the king when we were children.
20:50She whispers.
20:51Mother made it feel.
20:52Cecile returns it around.
20:54Sword gripping.
20:55Lady Lyra.
20:56The nobles are dying.
20:57Their stolen mirrors are snapping back all at once.
21:00Did you do this?
21:01The truth lands in pieces and they're all at once.
21:04With Sophia is one half of the king's living room and Cassandra is the other.
21:08My mother used her daughters as thorns hidden inside the king's body.
21:12At my call, my shadow boils.
21:14Move.
21:15I drag Sophia with me.
21:17Cecile shields us.
21:18Alaric wraps us in black force and sends us crashing through the palace windows and down into the freezing moat
21:23below.
21:25North of the capital stands the Holy Court.
21:28That is Cassandra's domain.
21:30Unlike the banquet hall, this place is clean to the point of madness, with a bleeding Sophia in my arms.
21:36Cassandra is already seated at the judgment bench.
21:39Beside her stands High Pontiff Julian.
21:41He smiles with his eyes lowered, a holy white aura blazing above him so bright it almost hurts to look
21:46at.
21:47My child, Julian says, stepping down from the dais, I have waited for you.
21:51I feel it at once.
21:53The pressure.
21:54Heavy enough to crush thought.
21:55Cassandra says nothing.
21:57She does not stop him.
21:58That tells me everything I need to know.
22:01Sophia broke the link too early.
22:03The truth is leaking.
22:04Julian needs me dead before the room catches up.
22:07All those crimes, he says softly.
22:09The archbishop.
22:10The broken marriage.
22:12The chaos in the palace.
22:13Such evil.
22:14Death is the only thing that can cleanse your soul.
22:17He raises his hand.
22:18White light gathers in his palm, dense and vicious.
22:21Enough to shred the mind.
22:23Before he can strike, my shadow spills across the floor beneath him.
22:26A scaled hand punches up from the darkness and catches the holy light barehanded.
22:31The light vanishes into shadow.
22:33The hand is scorched to pieces for the effort.
22:35But enough.
22:36Julian, he says, voice low and filthy with contempt.
22:40The pontiff sees his face.
22:41Prince Alaric.
22:42He shrieks.
22:43Impossible.
22:44Your soul should still be trapped.
22:48My pulse stutters.
22:50Alaric's identity is bigger than I ever guessed.
22:52He is the king's brother.
22:54The prince the crown should have gone to.
22:56Lyra, Alaric says without looking back, protect your sister.
23:00He draws a massive black sword.
23:02Cecile steps in front of me and Sophia.
23:04Julian does not attack Alaric head on.
23:07He comes for me.
23:08Cecile takes the blow instead.
23:10White heat tears part of her form away, but she keeps the strike from hitting Sophia too.
23:14I hurl the scalpel.
23:16The blade slices straight through the holy white ring above Julian's head.
23:19And in the instant that false halo breaks, Sandra's world breaks with it.
23:23She does not see radiant virtue anymore.
23:26She sees faces.
23:27Hundreds of them.
23:28All the people she condemned.
23:30All the scraps of goodness stripped from them and packed into Julian's crowned light.
23:34The dead crowd the room with their grief.
23:36My shadow breaks them in.
23:38Some become wind around Alaric.
23:40Some harden his armor.
23:42Some sharpen the sword in his hand.
23:44The rest gather behind me.
23:46Farmers with pitchforks.
23:47Men's with candlesticks.
23:49Cavalrymen with split skulls and phantom horses.
23:52Cassandra presses bloody fingers to her eyes.
23:55No.
23:55She whispers.
23:56No.
23:57That can't be true.
23:58You're indispensable.
24:00I tell her coldly.
24:01Mother didn't surrender.
24:03She planted blades.
24:04Sophia was time.
24:06You were morality.
24:07And I.
24:08The doors blow open.
24:09The king enters with half his face rotten and bella in one hand like a butcher carrying meat.
24:14Lyra.
24:15He rasps.
24:16Give me the knife.
24:17Or I cut out what your mother hid inside your sister.
24:19He claws open his robe.
24:21A black smoking heartbeat in his chest.
24:23Then he squeezes it.
24:25Cassandra drops to her knees.
24:26Through her gown.
24:27Strange violet light pulses from her abdomen in the exact shape of the array beneath blackstone king.
24:32And before anyone can eat it, the king chances having Julian's back and reaches for Cassandra.
24:40The king's fingers tear through flesh.
24:43Julian's blood pours into the glowing array on the floor.
24:46The whole hall shakes.
24:47No.
24:48Cassandra gasps.
24:49Mother's plan cannot end here.
24:51Then, to my shock, she grabs him.
24:53Not to escape.
24:55To hold him still.
24:56Lyra.
24:57She screams.
24:58Now.
24:58At the same instant, Alaric steps fully out of my shadow.
25:01He is taller than before.
25:03More solid.
25:04More terrifying.
25:05His black sword slams across the king's claws and stops them cold.
25:09My dear brother, the king misses, his.
25:11One good idea.
25:13Three.
25:14Forty years and you're still a fool.
25:16Father wanted to give you the throne.
25:18Said your soul could not rot.
25:20So I took the part.
25:21I turned you into the cleanest battery in the empire.
25:24And now look at you now.
25:26Kingdom.
25:26No body.
25:27Not even proper life.
25:29What gives you the right to stand in my way?
25:31Alaric does not clench.
25:33Ground under the throne still remembers your true title.
25:36Innocence.
25:36You surfer.
25:37His eyes cut toward me.
25:39I understand at once.
25:41The dead behind me do too.
25:42Their grief turns.
25:43Not just into mourning.
25:45Into vengeance.
25:46For honor.
25:47For innocence.
25:49For what was stolen.
25:50I clench my jaw and get ready to move.
25:52Alaric drives his sword through the king's chest.
25:55I can hold him for three minutes.
25:57He roars.
25:57Three minutes.
25:58That is all.
25:59I grabbed Cassandra's arm and forced myself to focus.
26:05Cassandra leaned against the stone pillar.
26:07Coughing up blood violently from the shock of the king's heart.
26:10Yet she stubbornly shook her head.
26:12I am guilty.
26:13I have to stay here.
26:14The king.
26:15Ignoring his arm that was spurting black blood.
26:18Lowered his head and tore at something.
26:19I could see it was a fresh heart.
26:21Leia.
26:22Now.
26:22Alaric roared.
26:24The wind around him turned into countless black chains.
26:27Tightly binding the king's enormous.
26:29Misshapen body.
26:30His withered left face slowly recovered.
26:32Even growing younger.
26:33Madness blazed in his eyes.
26:35And his voice warped and stretched.
26:37You think I have no contingency?
26:38You are as naive as you were decades ago.
26:41Bella's heart should not have rivaled the city's.
26:43Yet the king's body swelled.
26:45His severed arm went through.
26:46Face after face surged into his test.
26:48And countless soul fragments on the ground were sucked into him.
26:52Some of the undead beside me were ground directly into dust.
26:55I was not one of the undead.
26:57But blood kept seeping from my eyes.
26:59Nevertheless.
27:00I struggled against the wind toward the king.
27:02Cassandra took my hand.
27:04Her tattered robe flapped loudly in the gale.
27:06And a white light shielded me from a flying shards of souls.
27:09The undead around Alaric were constantly being drawn away by the king.
27:13Fighting back the urge to vomit blood.
27:15I saw him turn his head and shout at me.
27:17Remember what I told you before?
27:19So the souls together.
27:21You have to command them.
27:22Alaric drove his brace sword into his chest.
27:25As a forensic doctor, I knew this brace was slightly dead all too well.
27:29Cassandra hit my hand.
27:30I stabbed the sword.
27:32Backhand it.
27:33And you were cracked.
27:34Broken abdomen.
27:38The blade tip precisely avoided all vital points on Cassandra.
27:41Neatly severing the self-destruct pact stitched inside her.
27:44Cassandra let out a low groan as I tore the purple core straight out of her body and held
27:48it high above my head.
27:49The core drew the undead energy that had flooded into the king's body swirling back toward it.
27:54Cassandra struggled to straighten up.
27:55I used the blade to stitch and mend the scattering undead forces around us.
27:59Then hurled the scalpel.
28:01It pierced the purple core and drove straight into Alaric's back.
28:04His body stretched and twisted violently in the center of the hall.
28:08Devoured by netherfire until nothing remained but a murky shadow.
28:11With his mother's heart, everything was already too late.
28:14The king's body disintegrated into act.
28:17He turned his head.
28:18Half his handsome face was eaten away by ghostly blue cranes, green and purple light flickering
28:23alternately in his people.
28:24His features twisted with eternal madness that he'd never seen before.
28:28Behind his hunched silhouette, he placed the bloodstained crown steadily upon his own head.
28:33I snapped open my purple eyes, piercing through his condensed form, and at last saw the true
28:39nature of the heart and the moment my scalpel touched it, a built-in self-destruct rune would
28:43detonate instantly, erasing all souls sown within it.
28:46Just then, Alaric, completely consumed by the heart, let out a beastly growl and swung his
28:51greatsword horizontally at me.
28:54I do not stand there waiting for love to save me.
28:57I throw myself sideways behind a broken stone pillar and wrench the scalpel back into my
29:01hand.
29:03I have to kill him, I whisper.
29:05My voice does not shake.
29:07Do I love him?
29:08Maybe.
29:09But that isn't the point.
29:11What matters is this.
29:12If I don't cut that heart out now, he will become worse than the king ever was.
29:16He drives his sword into the floor to keep from moving.
29:19Most of his face is gone to blue flame now.
29:21His hand shakes on the hilt.
29:23Lyra.
29:25Kill me.
29:26I move, fast.
29:28I rush straight into his arms.
29:30He is too locked in pain to stop me.
29:32The scalpel flashes.
29:33I drive it toward the glowing core in his chest.
29:36Alaric smiles.
29:37Then, instead of stopping me, he grabs my wrist and forces the blade deeper into himself.
29:42Boom.
29:43The blast throws me backward.
29:45As I black out, I see him dissolve.
29:47Not into ash.
29:49Into light.
29:49That, I murmur to myself in the last moment before unconsciousness takes me, is the worst
29:54grout projection I've ever seen.
29:59When I wake, the war is over.
30:01The king is gone.
30:03The immortality system is gone.
30:05Everyone who lived off stolen years begins aging naturally or dying naturally at last.
30:10Later, in the Imperial Archives, I discover the final piece.
30:14Bella really was Lady Monda's daughter.
30:16Just not by the Earl.
30:18She was the child of an affair.
30:19That was why the king could still use her heart.
30:22Shared blood is useful, even when it is not perfect.
30:25I return to Blackstone Keep.
30:27The dead come with me.
30:29My sisters walk beside me.
30:31When we pass through the Stormcrest lands, my father kneels and offers me his staff as
30:36if submission might by forgiveness.
30:38I look at them and feel nothing.
30:40I take only what my mother left behind.
30:42Then I begin searching for Alaric.
30:44The dead help me collect every scrap they can find.
30:47But his fragments are too small.
30:49Too scattered.
30:50Even my violet eyes can barely hold on to them.
30:53So I go back to Blackstone Keep.
30:55What are you trying to do?
30:56Sophia asks weekly.
30:58Rebuild him?
30:59His body turned to ash.
31:01His soul shattered.
31:02You'd be stitching emptiness.
31:05As long as even one trace of him still exists in the world's field, I say without looking
31:10up.
31:10I can recreate him.
31:14This was an unprecedented full organ reconstruction surgery.
31:18Alaric once told me that mother had kept a fragment of his soul.
31:21I dragged my broken body back to the underground laboratory of Blackstone Fortress point 40 years
31:26ago.
31:26In that deal, mother had traded her own heart for it.
31:29Carving it into the ground ruins of the laboratory as the core that summoned me across time and
31:33space, among mother's belongings, I found a letter written in modern English.
31:37Unfolding it, I stared at the familiar modern handwriting, I am the beginning of this tragedy,
31:42and you, night, are its end.
31:44Alaric's body was ground to dust by the king 40 years ago.
31:47I thought a heart for a heart was in equal exchange.
31:50Yet it was nothing but the king's life.
31:53The king had never kept his promise to release mother's daughter, Xandra and Sophia.
31:56Instead, he controlled him for his own purposes.
31:59After her heart was cut out, her mother died with bitter pain.
32:03Her soul frightened as he entered in this ancient castle.
32:06Searching day and night, until she finally created a great son of a traveler from another
32:10world.
32:11Her third daughter, one out of wedlock in Calvon, was sent to a convent with dear child.
32:16I am sorry to meet him in this way.
32:17Her handwriting was scribbled hastily.
32:20As if written in extreme urgency, these were her final words.
32:23And she revealed the method of resurrecting.
32:25Lila's heart must have stopped beating before you arrived.
32:28From the moment you opened your eyes, you have been living off the life force within
32:32Alaric's heart.
32:33I looked at the shattered spirit and his fragments piled on the operating table,
32:36my eyes glowing with a divine, desperate resolve.
32:39If you are willing to give half your lifespan to rebuild his circulatory system, he will live.
32:44He is a capable ruler.
32:45I lay beside the operating table, gripping the scalpel tightly.
32:49This was the ultimate surgery.
32:50With no assistance needed, I sliced open my own chest.
32:54At precision, I cut out half of my own heart, being violent, shimmering with the radiance of
32:59underworld fire.
33:03Those soul fragments were drawn to the heart in my hand.
33:06Alaric's eyes snapped open, and in those emerald green pupils, my haggard yet triumphant face was
33:11reflected.
33:12He sat up, staring blankly at his own hands.
33:15His memories seemed frozen in the moment he had driven my blade into his body.
33:19Only when he saw me, pale but smiling, did he blink and disbelieve and pull me into a fierce
33:23embrace, a real, tangible embrace, with a heartbeat, breath, and the warmth of my body.
33:29I can actually hold you now, Layla.
33:31His voice was hoarse, trembling at the end.
33:34You have given me new life.
33:35A week later, the imperial capital changed dynasties.
33:39I looked down over the entire realm, restored to life, then turned to smile at Alaric.
33:44In his eyes, I saw a flood of emotion.
33:46I glanced back at the city's inhabitants, humans and undead alike, all looking up at me
33:51in reverence.
33:52In this world, the nature of power was no longer to take but to protect.
33:56Long live the dead, I whispered softly.
33:59Alaric took my hand and kissed my fingertips.
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