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"The Serin armies are approaching the palace."

"And the Dragon Emperor is leading them?" Kel asked, staring absently out one of the large windows.

It had only been a few days since the first report came in of Serin soldiers surrounding Mevani's capital.

"He is," the reporting man replied before bowing and leaving the room.

The thud of the heavy door slamming shut echoed throughout the hall, bouncing off stone pillars and floor tiles.

"You know what you need to do, right?" Kel turned to the only other person in the vast throne room.

The boy was sitting in a grand chair with golden embellishments and red cushions and grand regalia draped over his entire body, but his eyes were glued to the floor.

"... yeah, I do," the boy looked up, his face set with sad certainty.

His appearance hardly betrayed the difficult life that had led him to that very seat.

As a child, he and his mother lived in constant fear of his father, a man whose heart was as cold and steely as his blade.

When he lost his mother to that cold heart and hot fists, he wept bitterly for days on end. It wasn't long, however, before another safe haven appeared before him.

His mother's brother, a large and gentle man, took the lost boy under his wing, showering him with all the love and security a child deserved.

Perhaps, the boy's fate was doomed from the start, or some kind of unlucky shadow hung over him. Either way, his newfound haven was also eventually taken from him.

The fraying thread of sanity, hidden for so long behind a cheerful façade, finally snapped when he learned the news of his uncle's passing.

By the time he came back to his senses after his rampage of grief, the boy had already become a person he never wanted to be.

"What have I done?"

Leif had howled with regret, his eyes widening as he looked around him.

The kingdom of Mevani, made fragile by generations of foolish royals, was cracking. Soldiers, citizens, and officials all alike quivered under Leif's temper and glared menacingly at him from the shadows. The underground ruffians who'd helped the boy in his ascent to the throne ran freely throughout the kingdom now.

And Kel was on the floor again, bleeding from the boy's latest bout of rage.

'You.. you killed him?'

With a shaking voice and crazed eyes, Leif had taken a step toward Kel, not quite able to believe the words coming from her mouth.

'You say you're the one who killed Barclay?'

'That's right.'

Kel's face had changed in the time he hadn't visited her. It was hardened now, full of unbreakable resolve.

Between dodging blows, catching Leif's wild fists, and grunting as a few hits met their target, Kel had unfurled the story of the brave and loyal warrior's final moments.

'The worst part of all,' Kel huffed, throwing her arm up to block an incoming punch, 'is how you act like you're the only person in the whole world who ever lost somebody.'

'I lost everything!' Leif snapped, pulling back.

'And so you want to take everything from everyone else now?' Kel scoffed. "Barclay wouldn't want anything to do with a selfish lunatic like you!'

'ENOUGH!' the young king had shouted, knocking Kel to the ground.

She was panting, wiping blood from the corner of her lips when her words finally reached Leif's ears.

Like a worm, the girl's insults wiggled into his mind, filling him with guilt and regret.

Barclay wouldn't want anything to do with someone like him.

Someone who sent his home kingdom spiraling into turmoil.

Someone who made everyone around him fear his erratic anger but never earned their loyalty.

Someone who'd allowed dangerous people to pillage innocents simply because he'd been blinded by his quest for revenge.

Someone who lashed out against those who made him suffer, inadvertently inflicting the same suffering on innocent bystanders. People who didn't even know him, who never did anything wrong in their lives, lost their own everything.

Because of him.

And Kel, the only person who would dare scold him, in the same way his beloved uncle would have, had been subjected to more than one merciless beating.

What have I done?

"Barclay believed in you," Kel soothed the emotional child, pushing herself back to her feet. "He would have never come back for me that day, knowing the risks, if he didn't."

"Kel…" the young king sobbed, peering at his trembling hands. "There's so much blood on these hands."

"I know you're hurting, Leif," Kel said softly, grasping his hands with her warm fingers. "But doing these things won't make that ache go away."

She was right.

The pain that he thought he could fix through revenge had lingered in his chest. Even now, he could feel its sting as strongly as the day he opened the small wooden box sent from Serin.

It hurt.

It hurt so much.

For the next hour, Kel comforted her old friend gently while the layers of hate and anger slowly peeled away with his tears.

"I-I've come too far," the boy finally spoke. "What can I do now?"

Kel glanced at the king's medallion dangling from Leif's neck.

"There's only one thing you can do."

Now that a week had passed since that moment, Leif sat in his desolate throne room, fiddling with the same medallion. There was chaos unfolding outside in the rest of the palace as Serin's armies drew ever closer and all of Mevani had received orders to stand down.

His officials were livid, and many of his soldiers had abandoned him. The citizens were fleeing in terror as legions of armored men, all marked with the dragon, marched toward the palace.

The fall of a once great country, that had started many years ago due to foolish governing by egotistical leaders, had reached the finale.

"... yeah, I do," Leif replied as Kel asked him if he knew what he had to do.

"Let the Dragon Emperor in."