Night settled heavily over the royal palace. The corridors were silent except for the soft crackle of crystal lanterns and the distant call of night birds beyond the high windows. Most of the keep slept. The seven elf maidens remained in the infirmary, still recovering their mana. Queen Fiore had retired to her private chambers and only a few guards remained on duty.
Kaito waited until the hour was late enough, so that the two female elf sentries stationed near the restricted wing of the royal library, had both drifted into a light standing doze. Their spears rested against their shoulders, eyes closed.
He moved like a shadow.
Kaito remembered the path clearly, the same route a previous guard had taken him a couple days earlier when showing him the public sections. Turning a final corner, he stopped before a blank stretch of polished marble wall that looked no different from the rest. His heart beat steadily in his chest.
Mind Domination, he thought, focusing.
He stretched the power outward the way he once seized the Abyssal Warden's spear. The magic brushed against the hidden mechanism behind the wall. To his surprise, something answered. A soft click echoed in the stillness and the marble panel slid aside without resistance.
Kaito stared at the open doorway, pulse quickening.
"I can open locks with it…?" he whispered. The realization both thrilled and unsettled him.
He slipped inside. The restricted chamber was smaller than the main library, lit only by faint blue crystal orbs that floated near the ceiling. The air smelled of old parchment, dust, and something colder — like iron left in winter. Shelves of sealed books and scroll cases lined the walls. Many bore royal wards which glowed faintly when he passed.
Near the far end, on a low stone pedestal, lay an incomplete journal bound in dark leather. The title was written in elegant, archaic elven script that somehow translated itself in his mind:
The Vessel of Primordial Light
Kaito's breath caught. He opened it carefully.
The surviving pages described the power in vivid, almost reverent detail. A pure white light that could erase corruption, reshape reality, and answer the deepest will of its bearer. It spoke of a staff of living starlight that answered only to the chosen vessel. It described the same blinding pillar of power that erupted from him at Southwatch — the same force that reduced the thorn-beast to ash and nearly torn the village apart.
But entire sections were missing. Pages had been torn out with deliberate violence, leaving ragged edges.
Kaito's eyes scanned the shelves. One thin volume stood slightly askew, a single torn corner of parchment poking out from between its covers. He pulled it free, and inside were the missing pages, carefully folded and hidden.
His hands trembled as he fitted them back into the journal in the correct order.
The moment the last page settled into place, the world around him vanished.
He was back in Southwatch.
White light roared from his body like a living storm. The elegant staff of pure radiance formed in his hand as if it always belonged there. Trees bent and shattered under the pressure of his power. The corrupted beast screamed as the beam of light carved through its chest. Blood and thorns turned to ash. The ground cracked. Buildings trembled. For one terrifying heartbeat he felt the magic surge beyond his control, hungry to keep expanding until nothing remained.
He remembered everything.
The staff. The white eyes. The way the air itself screamed. Remembering that he almost lost himself in the raw, god-like force.
Kaito staggered back in the restricted chamber, gasping. He clutched at his chest, lungs burning as if he was truly there again. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his glasses slipped slightly down his nose.
"That… that was me," he whispered. "I did all of that… and I forgot."
No wonder Sage had looked at him with pure terror. She saw what he had become in that moment — and what he nearly destroyed while doing it.
His breathing slowly steadied, but the fear remained. Kaito forced himself to keep reading. The restored pages continued in a colder, more urgent hand:
The previous Vessel of Primordial Light was a human summoned in the same manner. He bore the luminous white power. He saved kingdoms. He was loved. Yet the light is not pure. It answers desire as much as will. Ambition, loneliness, and the hunger for control can twist it. The former bearer fell. His name was Tharos. The light within him darkened and he became the Thorn King.
Kaito's eyes widened. The journal nearly slipped from his fingers.
His hands began to shake so hard the pages fluttered.
The Thorn King was a human… like me…
The same power.
And he became the monster they're all afraid of.
The question rose in his mind, cold and sharp:
Am I walking the same path?
Will I become corrupted like him… because I'm human too?
Kaito stood alone in the restricted chamber, the incomplete journal open in his trembling hands, the soft blue light casting long shadows across the shelves. Outside, the palace slept on, unaware that its new king just learned the true weight of the power sleeping inside him.
He closed the book slowly.
For the first time since arriving in Valeria, the fantasy no longer felt like a dream.
It felt like a warning.
***
Kaito did not remember leaving the restricted chamber.
One moment he was standing over the restored journal, hands shaking so hard the pages fluttered. The next he was running.
He tore through the silent palace corridors like a man pursued by his own shadow. The two elf guards outside the library never even stirred as he passed. Doors, halls, staircases — everything blurred. He only knew he had to get away before the power inside him could wake again.
The main gates of the keep stood open for the night watch. No one challenged the young man who stumbled past them and into the darkness beyond the walls.
He ran until the palace lights vanished behind the trees.
Deeper and deeper into the ancient forest of Valeria he fled, branches whipping at his face, roots snatching at his boots. His lungs burned. His glasses fogged with every ragged breath. Still he kept going, driven by a single desperate thought:
I can't ruin this beautiful place.
The memory of Southwatch still blazed behind his eyes. The white light, staff, the way the trees bent and shattered, even the ground itself had cracked under the force of his uncontrolled power. He almost turned an entire village to ash without even remembering it.
And the journal's final words would not leave him.
The previous Vessel… was human… He became Tharos, widely known as the Thorn King.
Kaito's mind raced with darker possibilities. Yes, he loved elves. He loved them long before he ever fell into this world — their grace, their kindness, their beauty. His fantasies had always been intense, sometimes even extreme. In the privacy of his own thoughts he had imagined raw desire, every wild scenario a lonely nineteen-year-old could invent. But never by force. Never by taking what was not freely given. The idea of hurting them, of owning them the way the Thorn King, made his stomach turn.
He thought of the almost vanished male elven population, of the long shadow the previous human vessel cast across for centuries. Entire generations of people diminished because one selfish man decided the world existed only for his hunger.
I won't become that, he told himself as he ran. I can't.
At last his legs gave out.
Kaito collapsed onto a soft patch of moss and grass deep within the woods, chest heaving, glasses askew. The night air was cold and sharp; winter was already beginning to spread across Valeria. He curled forward, forehead pressed to his knees, and tried to steady his breathing.
He could not leave this realm even if he wanted to — the portal home was gone. And deep down he did not truly want to leave. Kaito missed his aunt with a dull, constant ache. The guilt of vanishing without a word still sat heavy in his chest. Yet the thought of abandoning the elves, of walking away from the chance to protect them, hurt even more.
He simply did not know how to stay without becoming a danger to everything he had grown to care about.
***
An hour later or so, Queen Fiore woke from restless sleep.
The palace was quiet. Too quiet. She rose, wrapped a light robe around herself, and made her way to the royal library in search of something dull enough to quiet her mind. She trailed her fingers along familiar spines, murmuring the titles of books she already read two or three times over the long centuries. At last she selected a dry treatise on ancient irrigation methods; perfect for inducing sleep.
As she turned to leave, something caught her eye.
The sealed marble wall that hid the restricted chamber stood slightly ajar.
A thin black gap ran along the edge of the secret door.
Confusion prickled at the back of her neck. That door was never left open. She approached, pressed her palm to the stone, and felt the residual echo of recent magic — not her own.
The chamber beyond was dark except for the soft blue glow of the floating crystal orbs. Her gaze went first to the pedestal.
Empty.
The legendary journal of the Vessel of Primordial Light was gone.
Fiore's breath left her in a sharp gasp. She swept the room, heart hammering, until she saw it lying open on a reading table near the far wall. Every missing page had been carefully restored and sealed back into place.
Her hands trembled as she lifted the book.
She already knew the contents. The restored pages made the truth impossible to deny. The previous Vessel was human. That human had become Tharos, the Thorn King.
And the power that erupted from Kaito at Southwatch was the same power.
"Kaito… no," she whispered. "This cannot be…"
The pieces fell into place with terrible clarity.
If he truly carried the Primordial Light inside him, then the same curse that had once corrupted a human vessel now slept within her new king. A power so vast that mortal flesh struggled to contain it.
Fiore closed the book with careful hands, returned it to its pedestal, and resealed the chamber. Then she moved with purpose.
A heavy winter cloak. Soft riding boots and a quiet word to the stable master.
Moments later she was astride one of the palace's mythical white horses — a creature of silver mane and glowing eyes that could run for hours without tiring. The night air bit at her cheeks as she urged the horse through the gates and into the dark forest.
Winter was coming.
And somewhere out there, her young king was running from a truth that terrified him almost as much as it now terrified her.
***
Kaito sat alone on the cold forest floor, arms wrapped tightly around his knees. The deeper he ran, the more the truth of the journal had settled into his bones like ice. He was a burden. A danger. The same kind of vessel that had once become the Thorn King. Every kind face he previously met in Valeria — the maidens, the villagers, the Queen herself; would eventually suffer because of the power sleeping inside him.
He did not know what to do. He could not go back. He could not leave. The weight of it all overwhelmed him.
A raw, broken scream tore out Kaito into the freezing night. Then the tears came, hard and uncontrollable. He pressed his forehead to his knees and sobbed, the sound swallowed by the dark trees.
Far behind him, Queen Fiore felt the sudden spike of distressed magical energy like a blade across her senses. She leaned low over the neck of her mythical horse and urged it faster. The cold night air whipped her silver hair and cloak behind her as the horse raced through the forest paths.
She found him by the sound of crying.
Fiore swung down from the saddle the moment the horse slowed and ran the last distance on foot. She burst through the undergrowth and saw him — Kaito, curled on the grass, shoulders shaking.
He heard the footsteps and flinched hard, head snapping up, eyes wide and red behind fogged glasses.
The Queen did not slow. She dropped to her knees and launched herself into his arms, holding him as tightly as she could.
"Oh Kaito," she choked out, her own voice already breaking. "What are you doing out here all alone?"
She buried her face against his chest. Kaito's arms came up automatically, clutching her just as hard. Fresh tears spilled down his face.
"You shouldn't have come," he managed between sobs. "I'm dangerous. You have to stay away from me. Please—"
Fiore lifted her head. His glasses were completely fogged. She could barely see his eyes.
"I saw the book," she whispered. Tears spilled freely down her own cheeks. "The one you left open. Kaito… do you truly possess the power of the Primordial Light?"
He nodded once, sniffling.
The Queen's face crumpled. A louder, broken cry escaped her as she looked up toward the dark canopy.
"Why?" she cried out to the silent gods. "Why him? Why our only hope?"
She pulled back just far enough to slam a fist against the grass in helpless anger.
"Why did this have to happen?!"
Then the words she never told a soul, spilled out of her in a rush of raw grief.
"Why?! The only man I have ever had feelings for in all my millennia on this planet—"
Kaito stopped crying. The confession struck him so hard the world seemed to go quiet. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and drew her back against his chest. The Queen collapsed into him, sobbing harder.
"Must you take the only man I have ever loved?" she wept against him. "He has done no wrong. He does not deserve this curse!"
Kaito's arms tightened around her. He rested his cheek against her silver hair and rubbed slow circles across her back while fresh tears slipped down his own face.
"I love you too," he whispered, voice rough. "I wish there was something I could do about all of this."
Fiore gasped. She pulled back just enough to stare up at him, eyes wide and shining with new tears. For a heartbeat she simply looked at him. Then she reached up, framed his face with both hands, and kissed him.
There was no hesitation this time. No shyness. The kiss was fierce and full of everything she had been holding back for so long — love, fear, desperation, and absolute certainty.
Kaito's glasses fogged completely. He could no longer see, but he did not need to. He kissed her back just as fiercely, arms locking around her.
When she finally drew away, she kept her eyes closed and buried her face against his chest once more. Kaito held her, one hand gently stroking her hair, the other steady on her back. He still did not know what the future would bring or how to master the power that terrified them both. But in that cold, dark clearing, with the Queen of Valeria wrapped tightly in his arms and her quiet confession still echoing between them, he felt something solid take root beneath the fear.
He was not alone.
And neither was she.