Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

”So... Uncle Leo is digging too deep?” Seraphina asked, her dark eyes wide with genuine concern. ”If he keeps digging, he’s going to wake up a really bad bug? And the bad bug will hurt him?”

”Precisely, little one,” Lord Ignis nodded grimly. ”We cannot speak to the living. Our voices cannot pierce the veil of the mundane. But you... you can hear us. You have the ear of the Reaper. Kaelus possesses the authority and the wisdom to stop Leonidas before he breaches the seal.”

Seraphina stood up, her small hands balling into determined fists. The pink ember-puppy, disturbed from its nap, tumbled onto the rug with a sleepy whine, shaking its fluffy head.

”I have to tell Papa,” Seraphina declared firmly. She wasn’t just doing it because it was a quest; she genuinely liked the loud, boisterous Fire Archduke. Anyone who gave her a pink puppy and teased Kaelus so effectively deserved to be saved from an ancient subterranean doom. ”I have to tell him to stop Uncle Leo from digging the hole.”

”Bless you, child of the dark,” the ghosts chorused, bowing deeply in unison, their ethereal forms glowing with profound gratitude. ”The House of Valen owes you a debt that transcends death.”

With a final, flickering shimmer, the five handsome grandpa ghosts dissolved into the ambient air, leaving behind only the faint scent of old parchment and the dying embers of a fire.

Seraphina didn’t waste a second.

She scooped up the pink Pomeranian, tucking the warm, fluffy spirit under her arm like a furry football, and marched toward the heavy oak doors of the guest chamber.

’Time to go find the grumpy hedgehog,’ she thought with absolute determination.

***

The corridors of the Obsidian Gate were vast, imposing, and lined with massive, arched windows that looked out over the bubbling volcanic caldera. The floor was polished black stone, and the walls were adorned with ancient tapestries depicting the fiery conquests of the Valen ancestors.

Seraphina had managed to slip past the two junior Bastion knights stationed at her door by employing a highly advanced tactical maneuver: she had pointed down the hall, gasped, ”Look! A monster!” and waddled away while they were looking.

It wasn’t her fault they were easily confused!

She was currently navigating a particularly long, sunlit corridor, her small leather shoes tapping rhythmically against the stone, muttering the ghosts’ warning to herself to ensure she didn’t forget the details.

”Ashen Forest. Deep hole. Bad bug. Stop Uncle Leo,” Seraphina chanted softly, adjusting her grip on the sleeping pink puppy.

Because she was intensely focused on her memorization, and because her physical stature was roughly the height of an average dining chair, she was oblivious to the trajectory of the person walking briskly around the corner.

BUMP!

Seraphina collided directly with a solid, unyielding object.

The impact wasn’t severe enough to knock her over, but it was enough to make her stagger backward, letting out a small, surprised oof.

The pink puppy in her arms yipped in protest, squirming slightly.

”Watch your step,” a sharp, cold, incredibly disciplined voice snapped from above her.

Seraphina rubbed her forehead, looking up, fully prepared to deploy a charming apology to whichever servant or knight she had just bulldozed.

The apology died instantly on her lips.

Her soul, which had already endured several aesthetic shocks over the past few weeks, experienced yet another complete, total, irreversible system failure.

’Oh, come ON!’ her inner monologue shrieked in hysterical indignation. ’Are you kidding me?! Is everyone in this world a ridiculously attractive character archetype?! What is the character design budget of this universe?!’

Standing in front of her was a boy.

He appeared to be around twelve years old.

He was, without exaggeration, the most ethereal, strikingly beautiful child she had ever seen. He possessed hair the color of freshly fallen snow, a brilliant, shimmering silver that was meticulously cut and styled, falling perfectly around his sharp, aristocratic features.

His skin was pale and flawless, but it was his eyes that truly paralyzed her.

They were a piercing, crystalline, freezing shade of ice-blue.

They lacked the warm, golden depth of Julian Myer, or the feral, amber intensity of Leonidas. They were cold, and entirely devoid of childish warmth, radiating an unshakeable devotion to duty.

He was dressed in the immaculate, formal uniform of a Paladin-in-training from the Holy Sea. He wore a pristine white tunic, a brilliant azure-blue cape pinned with silver crests of the Sun God, and polished silver boots.

He looked like an angel that had been carved from a glacier.

He was the textbook definition of the ’Cold, Devout, Prodigy Ice-Prince’ trope!

Seraphina stared at him; her jaw was slightly slack. She wasn’t listening to a single word he was saying, shamelessly fangirling over his facial symmetry.

’He’s not too much older than me, and he’s already this pretty?!’ Seraphina marveled internally, utterly spellbound. ’If he grows up, he’s going to be a menace to society. He’s going to break so many hearts. He looks like he spends his free time praying and ignoring love letters. I am collecting character tropes like trading cards!’

The boy, entirely unaware that he was currently being aesthetically appraised by a reincarnated girl, narrowed his piercing blue eyes at the staring, silent child.

”Are you deaf, or merely lacking in basic spatial awareness?” the boy asked, his tone dripping with the frigid, uncompromising arrogance of a child raised in absolute piety. He brushed a speck of invisible dust from his pristine white tunic, looking down his sharp nose at her navy dress. ”The halls of the Archduke demand decorum. Running blindly like a feral street urchin is unacceptable. State your name and your purpose, so I may direct you back to your governess.”

Seraphina blinked.

The haughtiness of the twelve-year-old was staggering.

She wasn’t offended; rather, she was amused.

’Oh, he’s got the arrogant-tsundere personality too,’ she cheered internally. ’This is fantastic. I want to poke his cheek and watch him malfunction.’

”I don’t have a governess,” Seraphina finally replied, offering him a bright, unbothered, missing-tooth smile. She adjusted her grip on the pink puppy. ”I have a Papa. And I’m going to find him. You have very shiny hair, Mr. Little Paladin. Does it naturally glow, or do you use magic shampoo?”

The boy’s cold, composed expression fractured for a microsecond. A faint, nearly imperceptible flush of pink touched the tips of his pale ears.

He had expected the small child to cower, apologize, or cry under his stern reprimand. He had not expected to be complimented on his haircare routine.

”My... my grooming habits are irrelevant!” the boy snapped, quickly recovering his icy facade, standing straighter. ”You are deflecting, wandering unescorted in a high-security military installation. This is a severe breach of protocol. I am Cassian, a Squire of the Holy Order. I am detaining you until your guardian can be located.”

He reached his hand out, intending to firmly grab Seraphina’s shoulder to guide her toward a guard station.

Cassian’s hand never touched her.

SNAP!

The sound was not a magical explosion. It was the sharp, violent, loud crack of solid, thick oak being physically obliterated by brute force.

Cassian froze, his hand hovering mid-air.

From the shadows of an adjacent training alcove, stepping into the sunlit corridor with the heavy, thudding footsteps of a walking mountain, emerged Sir Boris.

The giant of the North was not wearing his full plate armor.

He was dressed in a sleeveless, sweat-soaked training tunic, his massive, scarred, tree-trunk-sized arms completely exposed and bulging with veins.

In his hands, he was casually holding a thick, solid oak training dummy. The wooden pole, which was roughly the circumference of a small tree trunk, had just been snapped in half over Boris’s knee as if it were a dry twig.

Boris tossed the shattered halves of the training dummy over his shoulder. They hit the stone floor with a heavy, ominous clatter.

The giant knight turned his head, his eye locking directly onto the twelve-year-old Paladin.

The aura radiating from Sir Boris was not the playful, doting uncle who procured wild honey. It was the raw, terrifying bloodlust of a Vanguard Commander who had just witnessed a strange boy attempting to lay hands on his precious Sovereign.

”Is there a problem here, boy?” Boris rumbled.

His voice was so deep and resonant that it vibrated the glass in the nearby windows.

Cassian, the devout, highly trained prodigy of the Holy Order, slowly turned his head to look at the giant.