The Empire's Flag Is Set Ablaze
The empire's flag was set ablaze. The emblem that had once fluttered higher than the sky now scattered to the winds as ash. The royal castle lay trampled, its walls reduced to rubble. Marble pillars that had endured a thousand years collapsed helplessly in the flames, while the streets became a chaotic hell of smoke and blood, screams and death.
Most of the citizens drew their final breaths inside burning homes, beneath shattered ramparts, or beneath the swords of the invaders. Their wails and prayers no longer reached the heavens. This country—this once-mighty empire—was vanishing.
I was its crown prince. With my father now dead upon the blood-soaked throne, I had become the sole survivor and the last king. A wretched monarch burdened by a hollow crown, blazing castle walls, and the crushing weight of a murdered homeland. In this bloodstained ruin, the nation had met its end. Upon this earth, an era had closed its final chapter.
Everything had burned. Everything had crumbled. Everything had disappeared. The brilliant history, the glorious wars, the laws and order that had sustained the realm for centuries—all of it had dissipated like smoke.
Therefore, with the last scraps of my authority as the monarch of this fallen empire, I speak to those of you who bear witness to this tale.
When I believed it was all over, she came walking through the inferno. The one who had wrought all of this stepped forward between fields of burning flowers, carving a path across ashen plains dyed the color of blood. At her every footfall, blossoms unfurled that had no place in this world—petals sharp as blades, vines drenched crimson, and from within the obsidian roses rose the screams of the dead.
The Flower Witch.
She did not speak. She made no sound whatsoever. Not because she refused to, but because she could not. The witch was mute.
Yet her eyes—those eyes spoke clearly. They burned with endless hatred, with a despair that threatened to shatter the mind, and with a pain that would never cool.
She looked at me and, quietly, so very quietly, shed tears.
Inside the blazing castle, before the last remaining throne, the Flower Witch finally brought a black flower into bloom. The sky tore open in scarlet. The magic circle spread like blood, and time itself seemed to freeze in perfect silence.
The heavens split. The spell array bled outward. Even time held its breath.
With trembling hands she slowly raised the blade. It was both sword and flower, death and her final greeting.
She said nothing. Only wept as she drove that blade into my chest.
“…….”
As I fell, I looked upon her face one last time. Blood smeared across her features, eyes blurred with tears. No sound came from her throat, yet the sorrow tearing through her heart ran deeper than the flames devouring the world.
And then—time stopped.
The moment my heart ceased beating, my vision plunged into absolute darkness. Like a blade slicing through icy water, thousands of memories replayed in reverse, rushing past me.
Before the kingdom fell, before the flowers bloomed, before she became the witch—
I opened my eyes.
Breath scraped raw down my throat. The world around me resolved into a landscape both hauntingly familiar and strangely foreign. Wet hair. A heart that beat once more. A time when the ruined nation had not yet met its ruin.
I understood at once. This was no dream. It was regression. A return from the edge of death to a time turned backward.
To prevent her from ever becoming the witch. Or—perhaps to keep her from killing me.
And far from the place where the Crown Prince had returned, in a distant castle, a story both familiar and entirely new was about to unfold—together with this tale’s new protagonist.