Solborn: The Eternal Kaiser

For a long breath, silence reigned.

Rosaline lay slumped against Bosch, the painter's still face pressed to hers in death. The air smelled of dust and iron, heavy enough that no one dared speak first.

Aria crumpled to her knees. Her bow clattered from her fingers as both hands pressed against her face, shoulders shaking with the kind of grief that had no sound left in it. Her spiders slipped out only to scatter back again, unable to bear what their mistress carried.

Ivan stepped toward her. He had no memories of Bosch, no ghost of Rosaline's laughter in his childhood, but the weight in the chamber pressed even on him. He crouched beside Aria and set a steady hand on her back, saying nothing.

Celestine stood rigid. Her rapier lowered, but her arm stayed locked as though still braced for battle. She forced herself to breathe, but the sound caught, turning sharp, too thin. Golden eyes stayed fixed on Bosch's face—gentle, still, more peaceful than any battlefield should allow.

Kaiser alone did not bend. He had not softened when he caught Bosch's body, nor when his blade pierced Rosaline's heart. He stood with the stillness of stone, crimson gaze cutting past the dead and the grief-stricken alike.

Then the house groaned.

A deep, shuddering crack rattled through the walls. Dust rained down from the dome overhead, blue light seeping through the fractures like veins splitting the marble.

The air grew heavier. soaked with Sol until it burned in the lungs. Every breath tasted metallic, raw, as if the very house bled power. The chamber had no paintings, no colors to smear or whisper, but still the Sol pressed, spilling in waves that bent the floor beneath their boots.

Aria dragged her hands down her face, eyes wide. "What… what is happening?"

Ivan's head snapped upward, his clones flickering around him with uneasy energy. "Feels like the whole place is about to come down."

Celestine swayed once, steadying herself on her rapier. "It's too much… Sol like this shouldn't even exist in one place."

Kaiser finally spoke, his voice level, almost detached, like he was giving a lesson. "Bosch is dead, and with him the bindings of his Sol. What he had caged with it before will not be set free."

Celestine's head jerked up, golden eyes widening. "Elsie…!" The word left her like a gasp, a prayer and a hope all at once.

Aria blinked through her tears, chest hitching. Ivan let out a short, humorless laugh, shaking his head. "Guess the bastard left us one decent thing, at least."

But Kaiser's gaze stayed fixed above. His words cut the hope short. "Not all were safe. Some paintings bound more than people. Some held what should never have been caught at all."

Another shudder split the ceiling, but this time Kaiser moved before anyone else could react. His hand slipped into his pouch, and when it drew back, a single canvas shimmered into existence.

The painting hung weightless before him, its frame cracked with age, its colors trembling as though it knew its end had come. A tall girl with vibrant green hair stood frozen within, her sharp grin caught mid-sneer, fangs glinting.

Cracks spidered across the surface.

Celestine gasped, her voice breaking. "Elsie…"

The canvas shattered. Light poured outward in shards, and from it, Elsie leapt free as if the prison had been nothing more than a curtain torn aside. She landed in a crouch, hair flashing like emerald fire, and rose to her full height with a defiant grin.

"Elsie lives again!" she declared, her voice rich with arrogance, her green eyes glimmering. "Come on, I want to her how much you all missed the best of the bestest badass ever?"

For a moment, none of them answered. The weight of Bosch and Rosaline's deaths still pressed on their shoulders, and this sudden burst of life felt almost unreal.

Elsie tilted her head. "What?" she demanded, sweeping her gaze across each of them. "You look like you've seen ghosts. Did Elsie not tell you? Nothing can keep Elsie caged. Not a prison, not whatever the hell that was, not even the end of the world."

Celestine moved first. Her rapier clattered to the floor as she rushed forward, arms wrapping tight around the taller woman. Tears spilled from her golden eyes, raw with relief and grief both. "You're here—you're really here—"

Elsie blinked, caught off guard, but her grin softened into something almost gentle. "Of course Elsie is here. Where else would Elsie be, if her friends needed her?"

Aria followed, slower, her hands trembling as she reached out. She joined the embrace, pressing against Elsie's side, her voice breaking as it left her: "You… you saved me. You gave everything, and—"

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Elsie cut her off with a laugh, though her hand brushed Aria's shoulder with surprising tenderness. "Naturally. Elsie is Elsie. Saving others is just what Elsie does. A hero doesn't measure the cost. She pays it, proudly. Also, when it comes to payment..."

The words struck Ivan like a hammer. He stood apart, arms crossed, trying to mask the churn in his chest. Kaiser had only recently tried to hammer into him that criminals were tools—useful only so long as they paid their debt to the world with their service. But Elsie… Elsie saw it differently. Arrogant, greedy, infuriating in a hundred ways, yet unshaken in her belief that life itself was worth saving, no matter the stain on it. That contradiction gnawed at him.

His clones flickered and steadied, his eyes dropping to the floor. 'Maybe… I have more to think about when this Tale is done.'

Elsie, oblivious to the storm she had stirred in him, threw her head back with a sharp grin. "So!" she said, fangs flashing, voice cutting through the dust and grief. "Who's going to explain what in all the Hope's names Elsie just missed while she was stuck being wall decoration? Because judging by your faces, it was something."

Her arrogance rang clear, but her presence, vibrant and alive, was a crack of sunlight through stormclouds.

And for Celestine, clutching her like she might vanish again, it was enough.

The whole house convulsed as another shake came, the walls groaning as if they were ribs about to crack. Dust rained in torrents, choking the air, and then the ceiling split wide with a scream of stone.

A colossal arm tore through.

Black as tar, slick with ink that bled in steady rivulets, it burst into the chamber with claws wide as spears. Each talon gleamed like obsidian glass, dripping thick darkness that hissed when it struck the marble. The arm slammed downward, its weight alone enough to make the chamber lurch.

Celestine, Aria, and Elsie still locked in their desperate embrace barely had time to move. Elsie snarled, shoving the others back, her tall frame squaring against the shadow of that hand. "Get behind Elsie!" she barked, arrogance rising even here, even against something that dwarfed her like a god.

But she was not the first to meet it.

Ivan was.

With a sound like shattering glass, dozens of him bloomed into being, bodies rushing forward as if pulled by a single heartbeat. A wall of Ivans rose between the claw and the three women, their limbs braced, their faces grim.

The already-existing clones dove under the new ones, lifting them up, holding their weight with trembling arms. The new ones threw themselves upward, forming a desperate pyramid of bodies, each straining against the claw descending from above.

The impact was cataclysmic.

The floor cracked open, spiderwebbing fractures racing through the marble. The chamber shook as if struck by a hammer the size of a mountain. Clones erupted into white mist by the dozens, dissolving into nothing the instant the claw pressed down upon them.

But still, they stopped it.

Ivan gritted his teeth at the front, his true body straining, veins standing out along his arms. His eyes burned with determination. The dragon's hand loomed over him, its skin slick with ink, its strength dimmed but not broken. The stench of it was unbearable—rot and seawater, old and alien.

"This… isn't… enough!" Ivan snarled. His voice cracked, and more clones flickered into being only to vanish in mist a heartbeat later. He pushed back with all the will in him, and still the claw ground lower, dragging him toward the stone.

Then came a single sound.

Kaiser jumped beside the real Ivan, one hand snapping to his shoulder and shoving him down, out of the line of destruction. The pyramid of clones collapsed like a house of cards.

But Kaiser had already taken their place. His palm pressed flat against the dragon's claw and for an instant, the world seemed to hold its breath.

Then the frost bloomed.

From Kaiser's hand surged a flood of white-blue ice, racing outward in branching veins. The dragon's black flesh crystallized in jagged patterns, ink stiffening, cracking, shattering as the frost consumed it. The beast roared from above, a sound that shook marrow and stone alike. The claw recoiled, shrieking against its own imprisonment, thrashing as the ice dug deeper.

With one violent jerk, the entire arm ripped back.

It shot upward, crashing into the painted ceiling. The canvas did not withstand the force.

With a sound like glass breaking across heaven, the painting exploded outward, shards of paint and Sol scattering in a storm of color and dust. Marble gave way to sky, and the chamber was suddenly open, the air rushing in cold and sharp.

Above them, framed by ruin, the dragon emerged.

It pulled itself from the shattered painting with a horrible grace, its body unraveling from ink and darkness into flesh that strained against the laws of the world. Its wings tore free first, black sails drenched in dripping ink. Its scales followed—deep obsidian streaked with veins of pale silver, as though moonlight had been buried beneath oil.

It was immense. Even weakened, even bleeding darkness, it filled the air with presence alone. The very air bent around it, light twisting, Sol spilling from its form in waves that pressed like oceans against the chest.

And beyond it, beyond the beast, the outside world was revealed at last.

The old sunset.

The horizon burned gold and crimson, endless, eternal, the same hour frozen in the same sky. The familiar brilliance of Bosch's final painting spread across the heavens, cruel in its beauty, mocking in its peace.

The dragon roared again, sound shattering against the dome of sunset, rattling the very marrow of those below. Ink streamed from its jaws, falling in rivers that smoked against stone.

On the fractured floor of the ruined chamber, Ivan gasped, forcing himself upright, his clones remaining flickering weakly at his sides. He stared at the beast above, chest heaving. For all his effort, for all his sacrifice, it had barely been enough to delay it a single moment.

Beside him, Elsie wiped black dust from her cheek and sneered up at the dragon. "Ha! Elsie accepts the challenge!" she declared, standing tall even as the ground shook beneath them. "But if this thing thinks it can scare Elsie—it'll regret it!"

Celestine pressed a hand to her chest, her breath still uneven from grief and shock, but her golden eyes burned with focus again. Aria clutched her bow tighter, wiping her tears with the back of her hand, her gaze hardening through the wetness.

Kaiser lowered his frozen hand, steam rising from the frost that still clung to his fingers. His crimson eyes never left the beast.

And when he finally spoke, his voice was low, absolute, cutting through the roar as if it belonged here more than the dragon did:

"Now, let them see what Bosch truly caged."