Beneath a sky aflame with bruised crimson, rain fell like sacramental blood, each drop scarring the thirsty earth. Lightning tore the heavens open, briefly revealing the château’s silhouette—an obsidian monolith, brutal and beautiful against the storm.

Through that great, leaded window my gaze held—fixed, small, and unblinking—on the scene below.

Seven knights, sheened in silver plate, loomed about the throne like spectres of some terrible rite. Their swords hung red, weeping into the scarlet carpet; each glossy bead of blood a tiny, obscene jewel.

Not far from them, a sight of such horror it unstitched the world: my mother’s head, severed and rolling across the flagstones like a fallen orb; my father collapsed on trembling knees, gouged and leaking life as he clawed at the space between them and me.

I stretched my little hand toward that ruin of flesh and bone.

“Father! Mother!” The cry tore itself from me.

“Sebas! Set me down—let me—” I flailed, desperate to clamber from his shoulder. He held me tight, iron and pity braided together.

“You must not, Hime-sama. You must not go there!”

An ancient man carried me—his servant’s black livery ragged at the white collar, breath shuddering through him—yet he ran as though the very air were chasing him, bearing me away from the tableau of slaughter.

In the hollow that followed, questions spiraled like crows.

Why? Why this blood? Why did they come for us? Why rend our small, fragile joy? Why does mankind thirst for our undoing?

Rage, grief, and a hatred older than sleep coalesced behind my eyes. I looked at them—at the knights, at the ruin—with a glare that felt like a blade.

You who have shattered our joy, I will make you remember in dreams that never let you rest.

That night, beneath thunder and the ash of my world, I vowed—softly, like a benediction of ruin—to bring suffering so deep and so absolute that even in their darkest nightmares they would find no refuge.