The Empire of Aurelia had always been more than marble halls and gilded banners. Each duchy was a puzzle piece in a kingdom built on loyalty, fear, and ambition. The Solar Throne claimed divine right, but whispers in candlelit corridors said even the Emperor bowed to necessity, not justice.
Mathis and Elise's duchy, one corner of this sprawling realm, had burned tonight. Not because the kingdom failed — it had always failed — but because someone chose to remake it in fire.
Across borders, the Falsies Empire waited, uneasy, coins clinking in the hands of merchants and nobles who cared little for dynasties. Gold was gold, and power was power, whether stamped with a sun or a phoenix.
Magic, once measured by tiers and respect, had begun to reveal its truth. No blessing came from beyond; power condensed from life itself. Ambition, trauma, contradiction — each soul carried a prism of possibility. Those who awakened it became Jackalopes, their gifts a mirror of what they truly desired, their dreams twisted by who they were, their mistakes written into reality.
In the debris-strewn courtyard, nobles screamed and ran, their gilded shoes slick with water, ash, and blood. Three heirs — Mathis, Elise, and the Falsies princess — huddled together, their innocence a fragile lens through which to see what the world had become.
Regard was chained, a scapegoat of circumstance. The Duke and kings struggled, but their authority meant nothing against the weight of chaos unleashed.
And far above the rooftops, shadows gathered. Xavier crouched, silent. Yogh's horses thundered, steel and hooves carving a path through ruin. The Tier-6 mage's lightning danced across splintered roofs. Garin's sacrifice had rewritten the battlefield, if only for a moment.
The Empire, the people, even the architecture itself — all were being read and rewritten in the language of Jackalopes. Ambition had shape. Power demanded a price. And the night had only begun.
Somewhere, in the whispering corridors between reality and desire, Evangel watched.
And the world remembered.