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LONG LIVE THE DEAD | Revenge Beyond the Grave 🔥 Full Drama
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00:00Burn her! Burn her! Burn her!
00:03My name is Leia.
00:0524 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.
00:18The 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.
00:27Behind 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,
00:42why 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,
01:03I have dissected thousands of corpses and heard countless last words from the dead.
01:07I transmigrated to this backward medieval era, becoming Leila, the illegitimate daughter of a noble count,
01:15branded a cursed star for her purple eyes, pushed 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!
01:35The witch is casting a curse!
01:36A curse?
01:37Sister Cecile is right behind you, Archbishop.
01:39She's wearing an emerald silk dress but 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!
01:50The 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.
02:07Do you want to know where the saint's heart is?
02:10It never went to heaven.
02:12No 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.
02:35He'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.
02:58The sky blackens at once. Clouds swallow the sun. The flames at my feet go out.
03:02Then 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.
03:11His left arm jerks up against his will.
03:14The old scratches split open again, blackening as they tear wider.
03:18The 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.
03:26A 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.
03:37Stepping 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, but 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.
03:59At that moment, Valerius' left hand, the one covered in claw marks, is crushing his own throat.
04:06He hangs half in the air, kicked up by the saint's dead grip.
04:10His legs thrashing. The 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? Your visions prove nothing.
04:40The dead don't invent tricks. They only tell the truth people buried.
04:44Take your eldest son, for example. The one who vanished three years ago.
04:49Valerius told you he died on pilgrimage, didn't he?
04:51The Marquis goes rigid. His 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. He was chopped into pieces and hidden under the old laurel tree in
05:12the church garden.
05:16That's impossible.
05:17Cecile, show him.
05:19Her shadow stretches across the ground like spilled tar, then tears toward the cathedral in a shrieking wind. The Marquis
05:27runs after it.
05:28So do the townsfolk.
05:34When they come back, the Marquis is staggering. In his hands is a sealed gold vessel. Inside it is a
05:42shriveled heart. That is the end of fate. The square erupts.
05:46Kill him! Burn 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.
06:07Lila!
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 color of my eyes, and pointed at me
06:23in front of the church and cried witch.
06:26Lila!
06:28Bella!
06:29Don't expect me to forgive you like before.
06:31I'm not the old Lila. Not that saintly little fool.
06:36What are you saying?
06:37I was worried about you. I never thought they were really bad.
06:41I looked at the looming shadow behind her. The rest 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.
06:54Next 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.
07:06At this moment, heavy hooves crash against the stones outside the square.
07:10The crowd carts.
07:12Two lavish carriages roll in beneath the protection of mounted knights.
07:17The 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, and turns morality itself into force.
07:38That power made her the royal court's cleanest blade.
07:42The woman on the right is my second sister, Cyria.
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.
07:52and then accumulates.
07:54You should not be alive.
08:01You should not be alive.
08:03Your countdown reset
08:05A forbidden force rewrote your fate
08:11As the daughters of the woman who once married into this house
08:14You should have been house storm press pride
08:18Only I was packed off to a convent whilst still a child
08:23Then 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
08:37In light of what you have shown here
08:40And the unrest caused by your eyes
08:42You are stripped of the storm press name
08:45Effective immediately
08:46You are to be exiled to Blackstone Cult
08:52Blackstone Keep is a death sentence
08:53People say even rats go mad there
08:56I'll go
09:00Cassandra rules the capital through morality
09:02Sofia 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
09:21Power may wear the mask of virtue or time
09:24But under both lies the same foundation
09:29Bones
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
09:50The 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
10:09In life, she was all softness and worship
10:12In death, something colder has settled into her bones
10:18Lady Lyra
10:19That guard'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
10:32Now these eyes seem determined to drag me past time itself
10:37I see the dead
10:40I see the wounds that killed them
10:43I 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
11:13Lady 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
12:03My brain screamed
12:04My eyes wept blood from the strain
12:07I ordered
12:08My voice cold
12:09Back off!
12:10They didn't listen
12:11Spirits with no shape and no sense
12:13Just 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
12:24Half hidden in shadow
12:26Sat a man
12:28Like he'd been waiting for me all along
12:43Who are you?
12:44A failure
12:45My body was stolen
12:47My soul though?
12:49It just won't die
12:50Leela moaned
12:51Take a good look
12:52Blackstone Cape isn't a castle
12:54It's the Empire's sole alchemist 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
13:06My 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
13:24But 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
13:32The 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?
13:40Your mother asked me to
13:40She 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
13:51Next week
13:52The king's sickly son is taking a new bride
13:54Another 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?
14:14Alaric
14:14Deep under Blackstone Keep
14:16There'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
14:29The underground didn't smell of rot like I'd expected
14:32Instead there was a sharp chemical scent
14:37Something 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
14:49My violet pupils erupted with shattered images
14:52I saw my mother
14:54She hadn't died from postpartum weakness
14:56She had been down in this dungeon
14:58Frantically recording something
15:01She 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
15:16They needed a replacement
15:17And my mother?
15:19She might have been that replacement
15:21The moment I tried to pick up the chest again
15:23That same agony came flooding back
15:31Lady Mondae left a magic mark behind
15:34It was meant cement to someone from her world
15:38Someone like her
15:39To end all of this
15:43Now
15:44Can you tell me your real name?
15:58My name is Lyra
15:59I'm a medical examiner
16:02Cecil stood behind me
16:05Her voice was no longer ethereal
16:07Lady Lyra
16:10I can feel the wind now
16:12She pulled a longsword from her hollow chest
16:14Looking just as shocked as I felt
16:18I'm going to use this blade
16:20To 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
16:31Trying 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
16:42But trapped me here
16:43Unable 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
17:01You'll have to use that blade
17:03Stitch my ghost into your shadow
17:05From then on
17:06Your life will be my anchor
17:09I'll be my head
17:10I'll be my head
17:11I'll be my head
17:11I'll be my head
17:12I'll be my head
17:12His cold weightless body fast grew in an embrace
17:16Then dissolved into swirling black smoke that shrank into my shadow
17:24Let's go, getting away the scalpel.
17:51It turned out that Bella had been a pawn from the very beginning, used to carry a cruel exchange of
17:59vitality. The king would use Sophia's hand to transfer Bella's vitality to the third prince. It was never Lila, I
18:06was Leia. After three years of protection, it was now my turn to come back and clean up this mess
18:11with my own hands.
18:14The banquet reaches its peak. Leta lifts the golden cup with shaking excitement. The prince does the same. I object.
18:22I step out of the shadows. At once, the glamour around the nobility peels away in my sight. The beautiful
18:28faces wrinkle, collapse, rot. Under their silk and velvet, I see patchwork flesh and old sutures and stolen ears barely
18:35held together. Seal materializes in the center of the hall. Cursed dead white face. All of it appears before the
18:41assembled lords and ladies.
18:42For a heartbeat, no one moves. Then someone screams. The saint. The saint is back. The hall explodes into pain.
18:50Cecile raises her sword and starts chatting to the crowd. Every thrust lands in the transplanted heart. Walk toward them
18:57slowly. An unviolet eye is burning. Today is for the king. Kill that witch. The king lords by slamming a
19:04hand on the table. The royal guard searches forward. My shadow erupts. Black blades race across the floor.
19:10Scaring each soldier in his own shadow. Body's promise and weather away before they keep his feet. Half a power
19:17rises from the darkness and wraps one spectral hand around the prince's throat. Bella drops to the floor. Stunned. I
19:23crouch in front of her and I smile. Thanks for dying in my place.
19:27She jerks back, finally recognizing the danger. Why are you still alive? You bitch. Catch her wrist and wrench her
19:34upright. Then I turn toward the king. Your majesty. Is this the heart you wanted? Do you even know what
19:40she is? She's not Lady Monda's true daughter. King does not panic. Not even a little.
19:46He is staring at the scalpel in my hand. Once, the hidden mother array beneath the floor ignites. The modern
19:53scalpel in my hand lets out a shrill metallic crack. Then it rips free of my grip. It does not
19:58fly toward the king. It does not fly toward the prince. It shoots straight across the hall. And buries itself
20:04in Sofia's chest.
20:08For one second, everything stops. The silver flash. The wet sound of impact. Sofia looking down at the blade sticking
20:15out of her chest. I reach her as she falls. At a glance it looks fatal. But I am a
20:20doctor before I am anything else. Something is wrong. There is no arterial spray. And my breath catches. The blade
20:27is not in her heart. It is embedded in a black throat.
20:30At that exact moment. The king lets out a monstrous scream. One whole side of his face shrivels before our
20:36eyes. Collapsing into dried rot. Now I get it. I say. Gripping the scalpel. The blade didn't attack her. It
20:43cut out the parasite. Sofia cocks up black blood and drives my wrist. Our lives were tied to the king
20:48when we were children. She whispers. Mother made a deal. Cecile returns it around. Sword for people. Lady Lyra. The
20:56nobles look back.
20:57The stolen ears are snapping back all at once. Did you do this? The three plants in pieces and they're
21:03all at once. If Sofia is one half of the king's living life. And Cassandra is the other. My mother
21:09used her daughters as thorns hidden inside the king's body. At my call. My shadow boils. Move. I drag Sofia
21:16with me. Cecile shields us. Alaric wraps us in black force and sends us crashing through the palace windows and
21:22down into the freezing mode below.
21:26North of the capital stands the holy court. That is Cassandra's domain. Unlike the banquet hall. This place is clean
21:33to the point of madness. With a bleeding Sofia in my arms. Cassandra is already seated at the judgment bench.
21:39Beside her stands high pontiff Julian. He smiles with his eyes lowered. A holy white aura blazing above him so
21:45bright it almost hurts to look at. My child. Julian says. Stepping down from the dais. I have waited for
21:51you.
21:51I feel it at once. The pressure. Heavy enough to crush thought. Cassandra says nothing. She does not stop him.
21:59That tells me everything I need to know. Sofia broke the link too early. The truth is leaking. Julian needs
22:05me dead before the room catches up. All those crimes. He says softly.
22:09The archbishop. The broken marriage. The chaos in the palace. Such evil. Death is the only thing that can cleanse
22:16your soul. He raises his hand. White light gathers in his palm. Dense and vicious. Enough to shred the mind.
22:23Before he can strike. My shadow spills across the floor beneath him. A scaled hand punches up from the darkness
22:29and catches the holy light barehanded. The light vanishes into shadow. The hand is scorched to pieces for the effort.
22:35But enough. Julian. He says. Voice low and filthy with contempt. The pontiff sees his face. Prince Alaric. He shrieks.
22:43Impossible. Your soul should still be trapped.
22:48My pulse stutters. Alaric's identity is bigger than I ever guessed. He is the king's brother. The prince the crown
22:55should have gone to. Lyra. Alaric says without looking back. Protect your sister. He draws a massive black sword. Cecile
23:02steps in front of me and Sofia. Julian disappears.
23:05Not attack Alaric head on. He comes for me. Cecile takes the blow instead. White heat tears part of her
23:11form away. But she keeps the strike from hitting Sofia too. I hurl the scalpel. The blade slices straight through
23:17the holy white ring above Julian's head. And in the instant that false halo breaks. Sandra's world breaks with it.
23:24She does not see radiant virtue anymore. She sees faces. Hundreds of them. All the people she condemned. All the
23:31scraps of goodness stripped from them and packed into Julian's crown of mine.
23:34The dead crowd the room with their grief. My shadow breaks them in. Some become wind around Alaric. Some harden
23:41his armor. Some sharpen the sword in his hand. The rest gather behind me. Farmers with pitchforks. Mans with candlesticks.
23:49Cavaliers with split skulls and phantom horses.
23:52Cassandra presses bloody fingers to her eyes. No. She whispers. No. That can't be true. You're indispensable. I tell her
24:01coldly. Mother didn't surrender. She planted blades. Sofia was time. You were morality. And I. The doors blow open.
24:10The king enters with half his face rotten and Bella in one hand like a butcher carrying meat. Lyra. He
24:15rasps. Give me the knife. Or I cut out what your mother hid inside your sister. He claws open his
24:21robe. A black smoking heart beats in his chest. Then he squeezes it. Cassandra drops to her knees. Through her
24:27gown. Strange violet light pulses from her abdomen in the exact shape of the array beneath Blackstone King. And before
24:33anyone can hear it. The king hands his hand in Julian's bag and reaches for Cassandra.
24:40The king's fingers tear through flesh. Julian's blood pours into the glowing array on the floor. The whole hall shakes.
24:47No. Cassandra gasps. Mother's plan cannot end here. Then, to my shock, she grabs him. Not to escape. To hold
24:55him still. Lyra. She screams. Now. At the same instant, Alaric steps fully out of my shadow. He is taller
25:03than before. More solid. More terrifying.
25:05His black sword slams. His black sword slams across the king's claws and stops them cold. My dear brother. The
25:10king hisses. His. One good I deliver you for you. Forty years and you're still a fool. Father wanted to
25:17give you the throne. Said your soul could not rot. So I took your heart.
25:21I turned you into the cleanest battery. I can't hide. And now look at you now. Kingdom. No body. Not
25:28even proper life. What gave you the right to stand in my way?
25:31Alaric was not clenched. The ground under the throne still remembers your true title. Jesus. You surfer.
25:37His eyes cut toward me. I understand at once. The dead were bringing you to. Their grief turns.
25:43Not just into mourning. Into vengeance. For honor. For innocence. For what was stolen. I clench my jaw and get
25:52ready to move.
25:53Alaric drives his sword through the king's chest. I can hold him for three minutes. He roars. Three minutes. That
25:59is all.
26:00I grab Cassandra's arm and force myself to focus.
26:05Cassandra leaned against the stone pillar. Coughing up blood violently from the shock of the king's heart.
26:10Yet she stubbornly shook her head. I am guilty. I have to stay here.
26:15The king. Ignoring his arm that was spurting black blood. Lowered his head and tore at something.
26:20I could see it was a fresh heart.
26:22Leia. Now. Alaric roared. The wind around him turned into countless black chains.
26:27Tightly binding the king's enormous. Misshapen body.
26:30His withered left face slowly recovered. Even growing younger.
26:34Madness blazed in his eyes. And his voice warped and stretched.
26:37You think I have no community? You 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. His severed arm went through.
26:46Face after face surged into his chest. And 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. But blood kept seeping from my eyes.
26:59Nevertheless.
27:00I struggled against the wind toward the king. Cassandra took my hand.
27:04Her tattered robe flapped loudly in the gale.
27:07And a white light shielded me from applying shards of souls.
27:10The 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.
27:18Remember what I told you.
27:19So the souls together.
27:21You have to command him.
27:22Alaric drove his ray sword into his chest.
27:25As a forensic doctor, I believe this race was fighting death all too well.
27:29Cassandra held my hand.
27:31I stabbed the spell.
27:32That kind of thing.
27:33You were cracked.
27:34Broken abdomen.
27:38The blade tip precisely avoided all vital points on Cassandra.
27:42Neatly 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.
27:56I used the blade to stitch and mend the scattering undead forces around us.
28:00Then held 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, devoured by netherfire until nothing remained but a
28:10murky shadow.
28:11To 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 beautiful eyes.
28:25His features twisted with an eternal madness I'd never seen before.
28:28Behind his hunched silhouette, he placed the bloodstained crowned stability upon his own hand.
28:34I snapped open my purple eyes.
28:36Piercing heels condensed for him.
28:38At last saw the premature of the heart.
28:40The moment I stopped attention.
28:41The broken self-destruct rune would detonate instantly.
28:44Erasing all souls sown within it.
28:46Just then, Alaric, completely consumed by the heart, let 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 and wrench the scalpel back into my hand.
29:03I have to kill him, I whisper.
29:06My 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.
29:34I 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.
29:43Boom.
29:43The blast throws me backward.
29:45As I black out, I see him dissolve.
29:48Not into ash.
29:49Into light.
29:50That, I murmur to myself in the last moment before unconsciousness takes me, is the worst growth rejection I've ever
29:56seen.
29:59When I wake, the war is over.
30:02The 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.
30:32When we pass through the Stormcrest lands, my father kneels and offers me his staff as if submission might by
30:37forgiveness.
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?
30:57Sophia asks weakly.
30:59Rebuild him?
31:00His body turned to ash.
31:01His soul shattered.
31:03You'd be stitching emptiness.
31:05As long as even one trace of him still exists in the world's field, I 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, 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 space, among
31:34mother's belongings, I found a letter written in modern English.
31:38Unfolding it, I stared at the familiar modern handwriting, I am the beginning of this tragedy, and you, night, are
31:44its end.
31:44Alaric's body was ground to dust by the king 40 years ago.
31:48I thought a heart for a heart was an equal exchange.
31:51Yet it was nothing but the king's life.
31:53The king had never kept his promise to release mother's daughters Cassandra and Sophia.
31:57Instead, controlled him for his own purposes.
32:00After her heart was cut out, the mother died with bitter pain.
32:03Her soul fragments numbered in this ancient castle, searching day and night, until she finally created the way to summon
32:09a traveler from another world.
32:11Her third daughter, one out of wedlock with Calvon, was sent to a conda in her dear child.
32:16I am sorry to make her in this way.
32:18Her handwriting was struggled 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.
32:37My 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.
32:51With no assistive needed, I sliced open my own chest.
32:54Out of precision.
32:55I cut out half of my own heart.
32:57The beat violently, shimmering with the radiance of the 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, my haggard yet triumphant face was reflected.
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 breathe in disbelief and hold me into a fierce embrace.
33:24A real, tangible embrace.
33:26With 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.
33:36A 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.
33:47I glanced back at the city's inhabitants, humans and undead alike, all looking up at me in 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.
33:58Alaric took my hand and kissed my fingertips.
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