"Even if I was the one who killed him, what would you do about it? you even do anything, boy?"

  That was what Burn said.

  Yvain, no matter how unusually posed and talented beyond his years he was, was shaken by Burn's response. Burn didn’t attempt to clear himself of the accusation.

  Instead, he seemed ready to front any animosity head-on, unafraid of Yvain's potential wrath.

  He appeared to be a man indifferent to his reputation, uned with being painted as the vilin… or was it because he was a vilin?

  But…

  "Because of his nature, Burn couldn't have killed my father," Yvain asserted. Though Burn might have had both the motive and the means to kill Belezak, if he had truly wanted him dead, "he would have do right then and there—at his ation."

  Waving his hand toward Veryon’s body, Yvain said, “Get rid of it. And amuse me of the method. The oh the best idea will get my reward.”

  Duke Olfield’s face paled, his mouth agape, as if he’d just witnessed a ghost rather than the cold demise of Duke Benjamin Veryon.

  “W-without… trial…”

  Beside him, Duke Merweather’s eyes bulged, his usual posure washed away by a tide of disbelief. He looked from the fallen duke to Yvain, as if trying to ect the dots of a very disturbing puzzle.

  “Y-Your Majesty… this is… with your own hands…”

  Marquis Reune, meanwhile, clutched at his fine doublet, his knuckles whitening—a stark trast against the rich fabric.

  The air thied with their shock, an unspoken terror that crept up their spines aheir hearts rag. No one had expected the young king to act so decisively, so ruthlessly. It was as if the grouh them had shifted, tilting their world into uncharted darkness.

  Amidst this palpable dismay, Yvain's expression remained chillingly detached. His voice, devoid of warmth, sliced through the heavy silehe's proceed with the magic pact."

  It was not a suggestion but a and, ohat echoed ominously around the opulent hall.

  As he spoke, the air shimmered with the power of the magic pact. Strands of light, ethereal and anding, wove through the gathered nobles, binding them not just to the thro to an unyielding itment to the people and the kingdom's ws.

  These luminous tendrils demaheir absolute submission, allowing no room for personal interpretations or a twisted sense of justice.

  The magin and sn, formed a visible work—a stark reminder of their new, noiable reality.

  As the light touched eaoble, it seemed to sear a promise into their very souls, reshaping their duties ainies with a spectral hand guided by the young king’s icy will.

  In the fractured splendor of the throne hall, the nobles found themselves pelled by forces beyond their trol to kneel amid the ruins.

  Duke Veryon's rebellion had left its mark—a chaotic vista of toppled ns, shattered statuary, and the carcasses of pad military mechs strewn about like the aftermath of a great storm.

  These meical giants, once symbols al defense, now y in ignoble heaps, their twisted metal forms casting eerie shadows across the marble floor.

  The atmosphere was heavy with the dust of destru and the sharp st of ozone, a sileament to the battle's ferocity.

  As the nobles k, the air was thick with the tension of subdued defiand the weight of iable submission. The spectral strands of the magic pact danced in the dim light, illuminating their bowed heads with ghostly glimmers.

  The se was a stark trast to the usual regal order, now repced by the raw, exposed bones of a pa distress.

  And on that day, Yvain Edensworn asded as the undisputed sn of Edensor.

  ***

  “Your Majesty, it has ended.”

  Hearing Gahad’s report, Burn hummed. He looked toward the fortress of Veryon’s duchy. There, on top of the walls, were twenty of battle mech armors, the new version Veryon had ordered from the intergactic merts.

  "That boy had spent the past week systematically dismantling his own military and guard mechs for training, simultaneously diminishing Veryon's influehin the paow, with everythiroyed, he had no mechs left at his disposal..."

  Burn gri Gahad, pointing at twenty shiny new battle mech armors, “Let’s gift them for the young king.”

  Gahad sweated profusely, “Y-you’re telling us to fight those without destroying them…? H-how, Your Majesty?”

  “Gather the knights. This will be our new war training session,” Burn said.

  Meanwhile, on the opposite side, perched atop the formidable ramparts of Veryon's fortress, the 17-year-old son of the te Duke Veryon cut a figure that was decidedly average.

  With a tenance as nondescript as a page in an unopened ledger, he was the epitome of mediocrity—save for the arrogahat g to him like a well-tailored cloak.

  Beside him, aligned with militant precision, stood twenty of the test model battle mech armors, their steely exterilinting uhe cold sun.

  This young Veryon, known for his hedonistic trifecta of women, alcohol, and woefully misguided adventures with children, had a reputation smeared in corruptio sharpened by ing.

  As news of his father’s demise reached his ears, his face torted into a grotesque mask of twisted grief, only to be swiftly repced by a smirk of realization. The duchy, with all its military might and opulent resources, was now his to and.

  Grinning with the glee of a fox who’d just ied the henhouse, he surveyed his metalliions.

  "Ah, father, you old fool, you've iently givehe keys to the kingdom," he mused aloud, his voice dripping with irony.

  The new mech armors, he believed, were the perfect tools to topple Emperor Burn and usurp young King Yvain, thereby installing himself as the untested ruler of the nd.

  After all, the teology was so exclusive and expehat not even the royal family would be able to purchase them in bulk like his house.

  As he stood there, the wind catg his cloak in a dramatic flutter, he couldn't help but revel in the sheer audacity of his pn.

  "With these shiny tin soldiers, Burn’s end is nigh, and as for Yvain... well, the boy king will soon bow to a new ," he boasted to the empty air, a sneer curling his lips.

  His steps were clear: marshal the forces, march to the pace, and carve a path to the throhrough ing, force, and perhaps a bit of theatrical fir.

  After all, what was a coup without a touch of drama? The very thought made him chuckle—a sound as chilling as it was infused with wicked delight.

  “We’re on top of the fortress. This is an advantage! So let’s just use the ser beam. ATTACK!”

  The young man anded, his voice eg off the stoic stones with fervor.

  The twenty battle mech armors, teological behemoths in a nd of swords and sorcery, came to life. As they powered up, the space hummed with an energy that would have mystified any medieval bard into posing balds of bewitched earthquakes.

  The mechs, like knights of old reimagined by a mad alchemist, aimed their formidable ser beams at the horizon.

  With a synized grace that belied their brutal purpose, the beams verged into a singur, searing nce of light that pierced the evening gloom.

  The air crackled and shimmered as if the very fabric of reality protested the unholy dispy of power. Birds, caught mid-flight, residered their life choices areated with a haste that would shame the swiftest steed.

  To the medieval onlookers, this spectacle might have seemed like a dragon's fury had been harnessed by the hands of a vengeful wizard king.

  But no, this was not magic of the old scrolls; this was magic birthed from the fe of iy and audacity—the kind that flirted dangerously with the limits of known ws and moral codes.

  The barrage from the mech armors did not merely attack; it performed a ballet of destru, a chraphed devastation that paihe sky with strokes of indest agony.

  The beams, unfiving and precise, left nothing in their path but echoes of their thunderous might.

  But as the dust settled, it became apparent to everyohat the enemy army below… remained unscathed.

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