Return of the General's Daughter

A month had passed. Prince Aragon stood on the marble balcony of the royal palace, his eyes surveyed the sprawling lawns of Aegis Palace. Once a lush emerald sea, the grass was now marred with dark stains of crimson—the lingering memory of the Estalis soldiers who had died defending their king. Their blood had seeped into the earth, their loyalty bought with their lives. Aragon had shown them no mercy; his blades had cut through their defiance with cold efficiency.

Earlier, while the Phoenix Legion and what remained of the Estalis army clashed upon the palace grounds, Aragon and Vaskar pressed forward with grim purpose. At their side, were Generals Marcus and Abner, their loyalty unshakable. Together, they stormed the inner keep where King Rasco Petro had taken refuge with his five wives and fifteen children, barricading himself behind stone walls and loyal knights.

The defenders stood resolute, swords drawn and eyes aflame with desperation. But before blood was spilled, Aragon's voice rang out—clear, commanding, undeniable.

"I am Prince Aragon, the son of King Delmar who was assassinated. His blood flows in my veins making me the rightful heir of Estalis. Lay down your arms and you may yet live."

A silence stretched across the hall. The knights bristled, torn between loyalty and survival. Yet when their eyes fell upon Marcus and Abner—two of their most trusted generals now standing at Aragon's flanks—their will faltered. Steel clattered against stone as one by one, their swords slipped from trembling hands.

The massive oak doors of the keep groaned open. Aragon stepped inside, his pulse quickening as his gaze fell upon the king's last sanctuary. Women, children, and the elderly huddled together, forming a trembling wall of flesh and fear around their sovereign. The once-proud King Rasco stood among them, his face pale, his hands clutching at scraps of dignity.

His voice trembled, yet carried the desperate weight of a cornered beast."Come any closer and their blood will be on your hands." He gestured sharply, and the women flinched, the children whimpering. "Do you see them? My wives. My sons. My daughters. If you strike me down, you doom them all. My knights will slaughter them before you ever reach me."

His wives and children, who were old enough to understand gasped in disbelief. They looked back at him with faces full of disbelief and shock.

Aragon's boots echoed on the stone floor as he advanced, unhurried, his expression carved in cold indifference. He stopped a few paces away, his hand resting lazily on the hilt of his blade, though his eyes never left the king.

"You think I care for your brats and your women?" Aragon's voice was calm, cruelly measured. "They are nothing but the spoiled fruit of a rotten tree. Kill them if you must. Their blood is yours, not mine."

The king's face twisted, anger warring with disbelief. "Monster! You would dare—these are innocents!"

"Innocents?" Aragon's tone was laced with contempt. "They have lived off the backs of the starving, the broken, and the enslaved while you bled this kingdom dry. Their innocence died the moment you sat on that throne."

Rasco's eyes darted to the generals at Aragon's side, seeking some sign of hesitation, but Marcus and Abner stood firm, their gazes hardened. There would be no salvation there.

The king's hand shook as he drew a dagger, holding it clumsily to the throat of his youngest daughter—a trembling child no older than three. The hall gasped. "One step closer," he growled, his voice breaking, "and she dies. I will take them all with me if I must!"

"No!" A cry of anguish echoed through the halls of the keep. "Not my daughter, Your Majesty." One of his concubines fell on her knees to beg him.

Aragon tilted his head, a shadow of a smile tugging at his lips. His eyes gleamed with something unreadable.

"You truly are pathetic, Rasco. A king of Estalis reduced to hiding behind the pulse of a child."

Before the insult had finished leaving his lips, he moved. Too fast for the eye to follow. The next sound was a strangled gasp—Rasco's final breath—as he crumpled to the floor, a knife buried cleanly between his brows.

The little girl stumbled back into her mother's arms, untouched, though her cries pierced the chamber.

For a moment, time seemed to stop. The only sound was the clatter of Rasco's crown rolling across the stone floor before it came to rest at Aragon's boots. Aragon bent, picked up the crown, and regarded it with a cold smirk. "Estalis no longer belongs to cowards."

The silence that followed the king's fall was suffocating. Only the steady drip of blood from Rasco's lifeless body broke the stillness. The torchlight flickered against the stone walls, casting his corpse in grotesque relief—a monarch stripped of power, reduced to nothing more than a husk on the cold floor.

Then, as if waking up from a nightmare, screams erupted from the women, raw and piercing, as they threw themselves over the body. One of the consorts wailed, her hands smeared red as she tried in vain to shake life back into the man who had been their anchor. The children sobbed uncontrollably, clinging to their mothers, their tiny voices trembling with fear and confusion. The youngest boy, too small to understand, only cried louder when he touched his father's still hand.

General Abner lowered his eyes, his jaw tightening. He had fought beside Rasco once, before betrayal had soured his loyalty. Even so, the sight of women and children crumbling into grief struck something heavy in him. He shifted uneasily, whispering to Marcus. "They were not soldiers. They never asked for this."

Marcus's expression was hard, but his voice was low, as though admitting something to himself. "They are victims of his pride. Rasco chose their fate the moment he raised that knife to his own daughter's throat. His hands was also the one that ended his father's life. We cannot forget that."

Abner nodded, though reluctantly. His fingers flexed against the hilt of his sword, as though resisting the urge to offer comfort.

Aragon, meanwhile, remained unmoved. He stood in the center of the carnage, the crown still in his hand, his gaze cold and distant as if the grief unfolding before him were nothing more than the settling of dust after battle.

One of the older wives raised her tear-streaked face to him, her voice hoarse with rage. "May the gods curse you, usurper! You speak of justice, but you are no better than the tyrant you killed. You are worse—heartless!" She turned to the knights and to the king's brothers, who were stupefied by the suddenness of the events.

"Kill him! He killed the King!"