---
Night strangled Veyladoris in velvet hands.
The ballroom's bloody echoes faded behind Nymera as she slipped deeper into the inner palace corridors, clutching the stolen assassin's blade wrapped in cloth.
The blade pulsed faintly against her palm.
Alive.
Not with simple magic — but something older.
Darker.
A tracking sigil had been embedded in the steel, designed to cling to its victim like a ghost.
If it had pierced her flesh tonight, they wouldn't have needed another assassin.
The blade would have guided death straight to her door.
> [System Alert: Tracking Sigil Active. Source Magic: Ancient Bloodcraft Detected.]
[Warning: Highly Unstable. Immediate Investigation Recommended.]
---
Nymera moved swiftly through forgotten hallways, guided by flickering lanterns and the weight of instinct.
The Sovereign Palace was a maze designed to confuse and consume — too many halls, too many towers, too many secrets hidden in its ancient bones.
Only the Vaelis bloodline had once known all its paths.
And though she was not truly born of them...
the memories she had stolen whispered where her feet should tread.
Down.
Always down.
---
Stone gave way to older stone, polished marble replaced by rough black basalt.
Carvings emerged — twisted faces of forgotten gods, sigils of powers banished by time.
The air grew colder.
Thicker.
Magic clung to her skin like a shroud.
And still the blade throbbed — louder now, a drumbeat for the dead.
---
At last, she reached an archway hidden behind a collapsed wall — a passage swallowed by ruin, ignored by those too afraid or too blind.
A single symbol had been carved into the keystone above:
A crown broken in half.
Thorns strangling its pieces.
Nymera traced it with her fingertips.
The mark of the First Sovereigns.
The founders who had ruled before history was allowed to forget.
And the enemies the current court would kill to erase.
---
> [System Notice: Location Discovered — Forbidden Crypts of the First Sovereigns.]
[Accessing Hidden Quest Line: "Roots of Ruin."]
Her heart hammered.
She should turn back.
The system's warnings were clear.
Every step here was treason — the kind of treason that didn't end in trial, only in quiet graves.
But Nymera had never been particularly obedient.
Not in her last life.
Certainly not now.
---
She pressed forward.
The tunnel narrowed, the stone walls slick with moisture and old blood.
Faint blue lights flickered along the ceiling — wisps of trapped souls, or simply failed magics. She didn't want to guess.
At last, the tunnel ended at a chamber.
Circular.
Massive.
In its center rose a single pedestal of obsidian.
Upon it, something shimmered — a mirror, rimmed with iron thorns.
And hanging in the air above the mirror — a second blade.
Twin to the one she carried.
Not forged.
Grown.
Living.
Waiting.
---
Nymera stepped forward, and the air shifted.
The mirror's surface rippled, reflecting not her masked form — but herself as she truly was.
Silver hair tangled.
Violet eyes burning.
Her true face.
And behind her reflection...
a throne of bone.
A crown of bleeding stars.
A battlefield drowned in night.
Destiny whispered across the stone like a prayer:
"Break the wheel. Or become its final spoke."
---
> [System Alert: Destiny Fragment Detected.]
[Warning: Contact with Fragment Will Alter Fate Beyond Recovery.]
She hesitated.
Touch the mirror — and what little control she had left might be shattered.
Refuse — and remain blind while enemies sharpened their blades unseen.
Choice.
Always choice.
---
Nymera reached out.
The mirror's surface kissed her fingertips, cold as the grave — and then:
Pain.
Not physical.
Not even magical.
A ripping.
A remembering.
---
She stood — not in the crypt — but in a memory older than her stolen life.
She saw:
Armies clashing beneath black suns.
Kings and queens torn apart by beasts with silver eyes.
The First Sovereigns falling not to battle, but betrayal — murdered by their own creations.
Systems built from blood, magic forced into circuits of obedience.
NyxCore was not the first system.
It was the last.
A prison wrapped in promises.
A tool designed by monsters who had once called themselves saviors.
And it had chosen her because she carried the broken blood of gods.
---
Nymera staggered back from the mirror, gasping.
The assassin's blade slipped from her grasp, landing with a dull clang against the stone.
The tracking sigil sputtered... and died.
Whatever power fed it had been severed.
---
> [Hidden Knowledge Unlocked: True Origin of Systems.]
[Skill Upgrade: System Resistance Lv.1 (Partial Immunity to Forced System Commands.)]
Nymera wiped cold sweat from her brow.
Her mind buzzed with half-formed truths and lethal implications.
The court's systems of rule.
The wars that had shaped the kingdom.
The reason every ruler fell — and why villains like her were always needed to reset the cycle.
It was no accident.
It was design.
---
Footsteps echoed faintly from the tunnel behind her.
Slow.
Measured.
She was no longer alone.
Nymera snatched the assassin's blade and melted into the shadows, heart hammering.
A new figure emerged into the crypt's threshold.
Tall.
Wrapped in black.
Not Lucien.
Not a court noble.
Someone else.
Their face was hidden beneath a plague-doctor mask — long, hooked beak, black lenses.
Their voice — when it came — was soft, genderless.
"You were not meant to find this place, Lady Vaelis."
Nymera's dagger twitched in her hand.
"And yet, here I stand," she said.
The masked figure tilted their head.
"For now."
Magic shimmered faintly around their gloved fingers.
A spell.
Binding?
Banishing?
Something worse?
> [System Alert: Incoming Hostile Spell. Countermeasures Available: (Y/N).]
Nymera smiled.
"You'll have to do better than whispers and illusions to kill me."
She hurled the dagger — not at their heart, but at the arch above their head.
Stone cracked.
Dust fell.
The figure cursed — an oddly musical sound — and leapt back.
Nymera ran.
Not because she was afraid.
Because knowledge was heavier than gold.
And now she carried enough to drown kingdoms.
---
She burst from the tunnel's mouth into open air, the scent of roses and blood slapping her in the face.
The masquerade was gone.
The night had ended.
But her war had just begun.