The sun should have risen over Valyndor.
Instead, a pale shimmer—thin as dying breath—clung to the broken spires of the capital, painting the ruins in a ghostly haze. Dust drifted through the air like the ashes of a world that had already accepted its end.
Among the rubble walked a single figure.
His armor, once polished to mirror the royal banners, was now cracked and tarnished. His steps were heavy, dragging through the silence as though the ground itself resisted him. Leonidas, last Commander of the Royal Knights, moved with the lingering stiffness of someone who had slept far too long… or not at all.
He stopped before the remnants of the royal palace.
The grand archway—where he once saluted the king each morning—was now bent inward, as if crushed by a colossal hand. Statues lay shattered, and the courtyard fountain had dried to a basin of stone dust.
Leonidas tightened his grip on his sword. The blade hummed faintly, veins of blue runic light pulsing within the steel. It remembered things he did not.
"...What happened here?" he whispered, though the ruined world offered no answer.
A cold breeze stirred the debris, and with it came a voice—thin, melodic, and wrong.
"Awake at last… Knight of the Fallen Dawn."
Leonidas spun, sword drawn.But no figure stood behind him. Only drifting fog.
The voice came again—this time from beneath the cracked floor, echoing through the stone like a memory refusing to die.
"You slept through the kingdom's dying breath. You were spared its agony… or perhaps, denied the honor of witnessing it."
Leonidas' heart hammered."Show yourself!"
A faint outline emerged within the mist: a tall silhouette cloaked in a shifting mantle of shadow. No features, no face—only a hollow glow where eyes should be.
It tilted its head, studying him like a scholar examining a peculiar insect.
"You seek answers."
"I want the truth," Leonidas said, raising his blade between them. "What became of Valyndor? Where is the king?"
The shade's voice darkened, vibrating through the palace stones.
"Your kingdom was not destroyed."
The breath left his lungs."Not… destroyed?"
"No. Valyndor was taken."
The ground trembled. Cracks split open, and through them seeped light—twisted, swirling, the color of fractured moonlight.
Leonidas staggered back as the palace floor tore apart, revealing a yawning rift beneath. On the other side, he glimpsed impossible geometry: towers bending into spirals, rivers flowing upward, and cities suspended like marionettes on the threads of fate.
A realm that defied reason.
A realm that should not exist.
The shade extended a hand toward the rift.
"Welcome to Wonderland, Leonidas.Where time disobeys its master…and your king awaits judgment."
Leonidas swallowed hard. The hum of his runic blade intensified, as if urging him forward.
He had sworn an oath to protect Valyndor.Even if that kingdom now lay in a nightmare's domain, he would not abandon it.
With a final breath, he stepped into the rift.
The world of Valyndor collapsed behind him like glass shattering under a silent hammer