The afternoon at Belmor Palace was unnervingly quiet.

Autumn sunlight swept thinly over the stone balustrades of the courtyard beyond the windows, but even that light could not seep deep inside.

The corridors were wide and empty, the kind of structure that should have echoed with footsteps, yet sound died in a strangely muffled way. The whispers of servants, the hurried steps of attendants, none of it was visible today. The entire palace seemed to be holding its breath.

There was only one sound that cut through that stillness.

Kailen’s footsteps.

Straight and without excess, free of any needless hesitation. The sound of his neat shoe soles meeting marble did not ring out loudly, yet it grated on the nerves in an odd way. A certain ease clung to it, the kind that made those who heard it feel small. The kind that said this space was already familiar to him, or that he had made it so.

The door to the king’s office stood open, seemingly waiting for him. Kailen stopped walking for a brief moment at the sight of it.

The tinnitus that had followed him for so long rang in his ears even now.

〈Is that really all you can do? Do you think you can avenge your father and brother looking like that?!〉

He recalled the voice of the woman who had always screamed at him through her tears, and let a cold smile form.

You wanted this so badly, and here I am. How does it feel?

The thought that he could finally shake off that insufferable presence called his mother, a ghost who had died and vanished and yet never stopped haunting him, brought a brief rush of light elation.

But it was not yet complete, so he pushed that joy aside for later, and paused to straighten his clothes before stepping inside.

Guards stood at the door, but every one of them had their eyes fixed on the floor at his feet. They held their backs straight, yet they no longer looked like men guarding the place where a king resided.

When Kailen entered, the air inside the room grew heavier.

William sat in the king’s chair, ornately decorated with the double-headed eagle crest. He did not rise. More precisely, he looked as though he could not. His face said he already knew that chair was the only thing left to him.

Papers piled on the desk, but with no sense of order to them. The ink bottle sat half dried. The sealing wax had been torn open and left to harden. A thin curtain near the window trembled almost imperceptibly. That trembling resembled the unease of the room’s occupant.

Kailen stopped in front of the king. Then he dipped his head, just barely, in a shallow nod. A bow that retained only the form of courtesy. Not an expression of respect, but a procedural gesture and nothing more.

At that moment, William’s eyes wavered.

His gaze drifted through the air between half-closed lids, struggling to focus on Kailen’s face. Fatigue and fear layered over each other in those eyes. 

Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and ran thinly along his temple. His middle-aged frame still maintained its outward bearing, but his expression was that of a man crumbling from the inside.

William’s fingers tapped the edge of the desk.

Tap. Tap.

There had been a time when that single sound silenced the entire palace. It had been the signal that made ministers press their lips shut, guards snap to attention, and even breathing turn cautious.

But now it looked like nothing more than an empty habit.

The king himself seemed to sense it, because the rhythm of his fingers broke once.

“What brings you here at this hour?”

William’s voice was dry. He mimicked the cadence of a king, but fatigue ran beneath it.

Kailen smiled. Not rudely, but with the ease of a man who knows the person before him has already crumbled.

“I happened to have time this afternoon.”

The corner of William’s mouth twisted. An expression that could have been shame or self-mockery.

“It seems you came to mock me.”

Kailen answered without missing a beat.

“How perceptive.”

That brief reply made the room go quiet once more.

After a short silence, the first emotion to take shape in William’s eyes was anger. Something that clawed its way up between fear and exhaustion, the last remnant of a king’s pride.

“You dare…”

William drew a breath through his teeth.

“In front of me…”

“Dare. Dare, you say.”

Kailen picked up the end of his sentence. His voice was low and smooth, but that smoothness carried an edge like a blade.

“Is that word still valid here?”

William’s breathing grew labored. His chest heaved once, deeply. He pressed his back hard against the chair, forcing his collapsing body to hold still. Then, like an incantation, he spoke the words he wanted to believe.

“As long as I still sit in this seat… I am Krauben, and I am king!”

It was a last desperate cry. The stubbornness of a man clinging to his throne.

Kailen looked at him for a moment, then nodded. Too easily, and so it only looked more like mockery.

“That is correct.”

He did not take another step forward. He stayed where he stood and simply let the words land, as though closing the distance was unnecessary.

“You are seated in that chair right now, so I can still call you Your Majesty through today.”

Kailen’s smile deepened slightly.

“Whether you will still be in that chair tomorrow, I cannot say.”

That imperious profile caught the light.

The skin around William’s eyes trembled. His fingers scraped across the edge of the desk and stopped. The voice that followed was badly frayed.

“You treat me like a walking corpse. Do you think I cannot remove a single man like you?”

Kailen laughed with undisguised contempt. The king’s sharp, threatening air did not shake him in the slightest.

“If that had been so easily done, I would not be standing here right now.”

William’s anger surged once more, then died out entirely. His shoulders sank like settled ash. After a long moment of steadying his breath, William chose a different approach.

Not threats, but negotiation. Now was the time for that.

William’s voice dropped low. It was almost laughable, the way a man tumbling into ruin still refused to let go of his last shred of pride.

“What is it you truly want?”

Kailen tilted his head, feigning a moment of thought. His dark hair shifted loosely along his hairline. His expression showed no scheming, no conflict. The answer had been decided long ago.

“I already have everything.”

He had been acting as though he were choosing his words, but Kailen asked back with casual indifference.

“What could someone like you possibly give me, at this point?”

A faint grinding sound leaked from William’s clenched jaw. His fingers gripped the edge of the desk. It was the gesture of faded power making its last stand.

“Half of the military command is still in my hands. If I mobilize the royalists! You and your people will not come out of it unscathed either.”

Kailen’s expression, unchanged by even a fraction, made the threat look all the more pitiful. He looked down at the king and asked in a low voice.

“Your Majesty.”

Each syllable, enunciated with unmistakable clarity.

“The uniforms the royal guard wears. The rifles in their hands.”

Kailen lightly tapped the top of the desk with his fingertips, mirroring the king’s earlier gesture.

“Every ration of food, every round of ammunition, every pair of military boots… who is supplying them right now?”

William’s eyes wavered. The question alone drained him, and no adequate answer came.

William, at a loss for words, turned his gaze toward the window.

The city was faintly visible below Belmor Palace.

The view looked washed out despite the daylight. Rooftops stretched low in rows, and the plaza showed itself dimly in the distance.

There had been a time when this country lay beneath his feet, and the days of his reign swept past his vacant eyes like something already gone.

Kailen did not miss the moment William’s gaze fled. And as though to narrow even that space to flee into, he continued in a softer tone. Soft, but the kind of voice that leaves only one way out.

“Do not be foolish enough to lose control of yourself.”

The muscles in William’s face went rigid.

“You would not want to be remembered any more disgracefully than you already are.”

Kailen continued, layering his words over that rigidity like a man carefully setting down a sentence.

“His Majesty, deeply feeling the weight of his failures in governance and taking responsibility, stepped down of his own accord. If you wish to be remembered with even that much dignity… you must abdicate.”

The words took the form of a ‘suggestion,’ but in substance, it was a declaration.