- 13 minutes ago
Long Live The Dead Ep
Category
🎥
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!
00:18You're in my assault!
00:20Those eyes of yours that can see spirits are the mark of Satan!
00:25But I don't struggle.
00:26I'm just waiting.
00:28Behind 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!
00:56My name is Leia, not Leela.
00:58As 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,
01:27I 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,
01:41but her throat is charred black,
01:42marks 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,
02:27simply because he believed it would prolong his life.
02:31Suspicious eyes turned toward Valerius.
02:34He's the real servant of darkness.
02:37Not me.
02:39Burn her! Burn her now!
02:47The wind stops.
02:50I owe you one.
02:51Command me.
02:53Now is the time.
02:54If you want him in hell,
02:56lend me your hands.
02:57The sky blackens at once.
02:59Clouds swallow the sun.
03:01The flames at my feet go out.
03:02Then flare back to life in a strange blue fire.
03:06They do not burn me.
03:07They only eat through the ropes.
03:09Valerius suddenly starts convulsing.
03:11His left arm jerks up against his will.
03:13The old scratches split open again,
03:16blackening 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.
03:31Her neck is scorched black.
03:33Her body is half-burned.
03:34Tears 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.
03:57Name a common enemy.
03:59At that moment, Valerius' left hand.
04:01The one covered in claw marks.
04:04Who's crushing his own throat.
04:06He hangs half in the air.
04:08Kicked 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.
04:19But 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.
05:17Cecile.
05:18Show him.
05:20Her 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.
05:38In his hands is a sealed gold vessel.
05:41Inside it is a shriveled heart.
05:43That is the end of fate.
05:44The square erupts.
05:47Kill 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.
06:03The trial has only just begun.
06:07Leela!
06:09You... you'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,
06:20deepened the unnatural color of my eyes,
06:22and pointed at me in front of the church and cried witch.
06:25Leela!
06:28Bella!
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,
06:47only busy putting on her act of sisterly affection.
06:50And in that instant, another truth falls into place.
06:54Next month is the coronation.
06:56The prince's bride, the future queen,
06:59was 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.
07:11The crowd carts.
07:12Two lavish carriages roll in beneath the protection of mounted knights.
07:16The royal crest and the holy sigil are carved into both.
07:21The 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,
07:36and 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, Secure.
07:45She can see the end date on every life.
07:48She 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.
08:05A forbidden force rewrote your fate.
08:10As the daughters of the woman who once married into this house,
08:14we should have been house storm pressed pride.
08:18Only I was packed off to a convent whilst still a child.
08:22Then sent to die on a pyre.
08:25Liar!
08:26The king is watching this miracle!
08:28You're an anomaly.
08:29And anomalies make powerful people nervous.
08:32Come with us. Quietly.
08:34I do not trust them.
08:35Not after they stood by while I was condemned.
08:38In light of what you have shown here,
08:40and the unrest caused by your eyes,
08:42you are stripped of the Stormcrest name.
08:45Effective immediately, you are to be exiled to Blackstone Culp.
08:51Blackstone Keep is a death sentence.
08:54People say even rats go mad there.
08:57I'll go.
09:06I'm coming.
09:07I'm coming.
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,
09:21power 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,
09:42that same agony came flooding back.
09:49The road to Blackstone Keep is lined with nameless graves.
09:53As the carriage moves north,
09:55the city gives way to empty land,
09:57then to scrub,
09:59then to sand.
10:01The farther they went,
10:02the more uneasy the guards looked.
10:05Cecile sits across from me now,
10:07no longer flickering in and out like before.
10:10In life, she was all softness and worship.
10:13In death,
10:14something colder has settled into her bones.
10:17Lady Lyra,
10:19that guard's soul was fading away.
10:22Three hours from now,
10:23he'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.
10:58And I see electric shock-like sensation swept through me in an instant.
11:04Then her injury closes.
11:07The 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 Keep'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.
12:07I 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.
12:28Like 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, from 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.
13:13Chaotic.
13:14They 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 saint's 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.
13:38Why are you telling me all this?
13:39Your mother asked me to.
13:41She told me to wait for you here.
13:43Lila.
13:44See your power for what it is.
13:46You can read how the dead died.
13:47You can mend their wounds.
13:49But that's just the beginning.
13:51Next 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.
14:07Who 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.
14:51I saw my mother.
14:54She 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, she 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, looking 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.
16:34Your 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.
16:45She was a brilliant stitcher.
16:48She 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 end.
17:07Stitch my ghost.
17:08Stitch my ghost.
17:12His cold, weightless body fast green in an embrace.
17:16Then dissolved into swirling black smoke that shrank into my shadow.
17:24Let's go, getting away the scalpel.
17:29After the coronation banquet in the Imperial capital, Bella, wearing a pure white wedding dress,
17:35held the hand of the king's most beloved third prince.
17:38I hid in the shadow of the huge stone pillar in the banquet hall,
17:41and the shadow under my feet stirred restlessly, as if echoing the undercurrent surging in my heart.
17:46My second sister Sophia appeared behind me without warning,
17:49her tone trembling imperceptibly, and her eyes were filled with unprecedented anxiety.
17:54It turned out that Bella had been a pawn from the very beginning.
17:57Used to carry a cruel exchange of vitality,
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,
18:08it was now my turn to come back and clean up this mess with my own 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 silken velvet, I see patchwork flesh and old sutures and stolen years barely held together.
18:36The seal materializes in the center of the hall, her 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 gives back.
18:48The hall explodes into planning.
18:50Cecile raises her sword and starts chatting to the crowd.
18:54Every thrust lands in the transplanted heart.
18:56Walk toward them slowly.
18:57On fire like I am burning.
19:00Today is where we can.
19:01Kill that witch.
19:02The king roars by slamming a hand on the table.
19:05The royal guard searches forward.
19:07My shadow erupts.
19:08Black blades race across the floor,
19:10spearing a huge soldier in his own shadow.
19:13Bodies crumple 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, stunned.
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?
19:31You 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?
19:41She'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 beneath the 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 Sofia's chest.
20:07For one second, everything stops.
20:10The silver flash.
20:11The wet sound of impact.
20:13Sofia 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, and 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, I say, gripping the scalpel.
20:41The blade didn't attack her.
20:42It cut out the parasite.
20:44Sofia cocks up black blood and drives her wrist.
20:47Our lives were tied to the king when we were children.
20:49She whispers.
20:51Mother knows the deal.
20:52Cecile returns in a rhyme.
20:54Sword for food.
20:55Lady Lyra!
20:56The noble sword dies.
20:57Their stolen mirrors are snapping back all at once.
21:00Did you do this?
21:01The truth lands the pieces and they're all at once.
21:04Sofia is one half of the king's living life.
21:07And 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 Sofia 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 mode
21:23below.
21:26North 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 Sofia 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, the pressure, heavy enough to crush thought.
21:55Cassandra says nothing.
21:57She does not stop him.
21:58That tells me everything I need to know.
22:01Sofia 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.
22:27A 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, he 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 Sofia.
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 Sofia too.
23:14I hurl the scalpel.
23:16The blade slices straight through the holy white ring above Julian's head.
23:20And in the instant that false halo breaks, Cassandra'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 crown of light.
23:34The dead crowd the room with their grief.
23:36My shadow breaks them in.
23:38Some become wind around Alaric.
23:40Some pardon 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.
23:49Have a raiment 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.
24:04Sofia was time.
24:06You were morality.
24:07And I.
24:08The doors blow open.
24:10The 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 heart beats in his chest.
24:23Then he squeezes it.
24:25Cassandra drops to her knees.
24:26For her gown.
24:27Strange violet light pulses from her abdomen in the exact shape of the array beneath blackstone
24:32king.
24:33And before anyone in the mirror.
24:35The king chances hand on Julian's bag 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.
24:52To my shock.
24:52She grabs him.
24:53Not to escape.
24:55To hold him still.
24:56Lyra.
24:57She screams.
24:58Now.
24:58At the same instant.
25:00Alaric steps fully out of my shadow.
25:02He 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.
25:10The king hisses.
25:11His.
25:12One good idea that you agree.
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 your heart.
25:21I turned you into the cleanest battery of 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?
25:31Allard does not clench.
25:32The ground under the throne still remembers your true title.
25:36He says.
25:36New surfer.
25:37His eyes cut toward me.
25:39I understand their hearts.
25:41The dead are bringing you 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.
25:52Allard 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.
26:20I could see it was a fresh heart.
26:21Leia.
26:22Now.
26:23Alaric 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 fantasy?
26:39You are as naive as you were decades ago.
26:41Bella's heart should not have rivaled the same.
26:43Yet the king's body swelled.
26:45His severed arm wound grew.
26:46Face after face surged in his test.
26:49And 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.
27:03Cassandra took my hand.
27:04Her tattered robe flapped loudly in the gale.
27:06And a white light shielded me from applying 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 him.
27:22Alaric drove his brace sword into his chest.
27:25As a forensic doctor.
27:26I knew this brace.
27:27He was fighting dead all too well.
27:29Cassandra held my hand.
27:30I stabbed the skeleton.
27:32Backhanded.
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 it
27:48high 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 nether fire 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 flames.
28:21Rain and purple light flickering alternately in his people's.
28:24His features twisted with an eternal madness he had never seen before.
28:28Behind his hunched silhouette.
28:30He placed the bloodstained crown steadily upon his own head.
28:33I snapped open my purple eyes.
28:36Piercing heels condensable.
28:37And at last saw the true nature of the heart.
28:40The moment my scalpel touched it.
28:41The open self-destruct rune would detonate instantly.
28:44Erasing all souls sown within it.
28:46Just then.
28:47Alaric, completely consumed by the heart.
28:49Let out a beastly growl and swung his greatsword 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.
29:00And wrench the scalpel back into my hand.
29:03I have to kill him.
29:04I 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.
29:14He 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.
29:27Fast.
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.
29:39He grabs my wrist and forces the blade deeper into himself.
29:42Boom.
29:43The blast throws me backward.
29:45As I black out.
29:46I see him dissolve.
29:47Not into ash.
29:49Into light.
29:50That.
29:50I murmur to myself in the last moment before unconsciousness takes me.
29:54Is the worst gruff rejection 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.
30:20That 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.
30:28The dead come with me.
30:29My sisters walk beside me.
30:31When we pass through the stormcrest lands.
30:34My father kneels and offers me his staff as if 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 onto them.
30:53So I go back to Blackstone Keep.
30:55What are you trying to do?
30:56Sophia asks weakly.
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.
31:09I say without looking up.
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 ago.
31:26In that deal.
31:27Mother 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 space.
31:34Among mother's belongings.
31:35I found a letter written in modern English.
31:37Unfolding it.
31:38I stared at the familiar modern handwriting.
31:40I 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 an 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 Cassandra and Sophia.
31:56Instead, controlled him for his own purposes.
31:59After her heart was cut out.
32:01The mother died with bitter computer.
32:03Her soul fragments ended in this ancient castle.
32:06Searching day and night.
32:07Until she finally created the great son of a traveler from another world.
32:11Her third daughter.
32:12Born out of wedlock in Calvon.
32:14Is sent to a pond at her dear child.
32:16I am sorry to meet her in this way.
32:17Her handwriting was scribbled hastily.
32:20As if written in extreme urgency.
32:22These 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.
32:30You have been living off the life force within Alaric's heart.
32:33I looked at the shattered spirit and his fragments piled on the operating table.
32:36My eyes glowing with a divine.
32:38Desperate resolve.
32:39If you are willing to give half your lifespan to rebuild his circulatory system.
32:43He will live.
32:44He is a capable ruler.
32:45I lay beside the operating table.
32:47Gripping the scalpel tightly.
32:49This was the ultimate surgery.
32:51With no assistive needed.
32:52I sliced open my own chest.
32:54At precision.
32:55I cut out half of my own heart.
32:57Being violent.
32:58Shimmering with the radiance of underworld fire.
33:03Those soul fragments were drawn to the heart in my hand.
33:06Alaric's eyes snapped open.
33:07And in those emerald green pupils.
33:09My haggard yet triumphant face was reflected.
33:12He sat up.
33:13Staring blankly at his own hands.
33:15His memories seemed frozen in the moment.
33:17He had driven my blade into his body.
33:19Only when he saw me.
33:20Pale but smiling.
33:21Did he believe in disbelief.
33:22And pull me into a fierce embrace.
33:24A real.
33:25Tangible embrace.
33:26With a heartbeat.
33:27Breath.
33:28And the warmth of my body.
33:29I can actually hold you now.
33:31Layla.
33:31His voice was hoarse.
33:33Trumbling at the end.
33:34You have given me new life.
33:35A week later.
33:36The imperial capital changed dynasties.
33:39I looked down over the entire realm.
33:41Restored to life.
33:42Then turned to smile at Alaric.
33:44In his eyes.
33:45I saw a flood of emotion.
33:47I glanced back at the city's inhabitants.
33:49Humans and undead alike.
33:50All looking up at me in reverence.
33:52In this world.
33:53The nature of power was no longer to take.
33:55But to protect.
33:56Long live the dead.
33:57I whispered softly.
33:59Alaric took my hand and kissed my fingertips.
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