Prison?

“What kind of people are locked up there?” Lymriel asked.

“Ma’am Maid, how would us commoners know?... Rumor says a minister who tried to lower the tithe got thrown in a few years back.”

Lymriel nodded, a small lantern of thought in a windy alley.

Even the nearby blocks joined the relay of handouts, like sparrows passing seeds. Some bright kids had already kneaded their first fistful fireball. Lymriel still had errands stacked like stones.

It quietly turned up its mic, then shouted like a bell in fog: “Princess Dorothy asks you to spread a message: the king plans to forge a Golden Apple in the palace to secure his rule. This once-in-a-century wicked rite may sacrifice commoners. It happens tonight. This intel was bought with the lives of cadres from the Slackfish Cult. For your safety, you don’t need to fight. Just make it public.”

“Sacrifice?!” “The king?” “You won’t get beheaded for spreading that... right?”

The crowd was a tide of whispers. Then a voice split the air like thunder: “Beheaded or sacrificed, dead’s dead. If I have to go, I’ll die like a Frenchman!”

He locked eyes with Lymriel, then sprinted off like an arrow leaving a bow.

That shout was a spark in dry grass. Hesitant folks scattered like startled pigeons.

Was that man an ordinary citizen, a private soldier of Dorothy, or last night’s infiltrator from some unknown force? Lymriel didn’t know, and it didn’t need to. The question drifted like smoke.

It tapped its silicone right ear and slipped onto a covert channel like a fish into deep water.

“Hey, Dorothy?” Yekase’s voice stayed sealed inside the doll’s shell. To the street, Lymriel looked like a catwalking mannequin leaving the slum in silence.

What’s up, teacher?

“I ran a wave of preaching in the slums.”

Huh?

“Long story short, I pushed the academy’s handouts ahead of schedule. Under your name.”

Under mine... fine. Do it. All the way.

“And I also got an eyewitness. Someone slipped into the city last night, tried to hit the Bastille... What’s special about that prison?”

The Bastille? That’s where they hold political offenders. Any official with a rebel bent, or even a hint of it, ends up inside—I didn’t send anyone there!

“Mm. Let’s treat it as the people’s answer.”

If that’s an agent stirring the chaos...

“I choose to believe in human goodwill and possibility.”

——

No. That’s not it. The first beat was a tight ache, like a drum skin in rain.

It wasn’t naive faith. Professor Luciferin, your anger for the Shadow Realm War is clean as winter air, and your grief is without self-interest.

What let her tolerate accidents wasn’t indulgent trust. It was simpler, hard as brick: the second-class citizens in the lower wards, learning basic magic at breathtaking speed, would form self-rule and self-defense today. Even if foreign hands slip in, they won’t escape those eyes.

If one crude Flame Burst Spell changes nothing, then fire again, and again, like sparks chewing darkness.

She truly trusts the ones who laugh as they run, who frown over handouts while standing ankle-deep in mud. They aren’t illiterate, yet their lot is near medieval dusk.

She trusts their kindness and possibility, and the power they have to bend the world like iron over flame.

Alright. We stick to the plan.

Then, at noon.

July 14th, 12:27 p.m., when the sun burned like a brass coin pressed to the sky.

Citizens ran the streets like rivers after rain. Troops tried to herd them like sheep, but the unrest rippled on. Outside the walls, the fight boiled white-hot. Three mechs paused their guns, letting warped barrels cool like blackened roots.

At the foot of the hill, the Bastille exploded.

Everyone who heard lifted their heads like sunflowers to a storm.

The iron-beast facade split with a gash. Its edges glowed like coals. People with guns and rough-hewn wands rushed into the smoke like wolves into snow.

...

A headhunter squad of ducal household guards slipped from a nondescript hole along the inner moat, then dove into the royal escape passage carved for flight, a vein under stone.

Waiting for them were eyes like embers in the dark, and a bristling hedge of gunpoints locking the tunnel square shut. Knives and round shields laced the gaps like teeth, killing even a sliver of chance.

“—Ambush! Fall back!”

The leader barked like a hound. The rear line became the front. They ran like deer over frost.

Ahead, a square patch of light thirty meters away—where they’d just passed—turned into their last hope, a window cut from night.

Two silhouettes bloomed at dead center of the light like ink strokes.

“Only two. Don’t be scared! Use magic—break through!”

“—Thanks for paving the way.”

Under that pale glow, their faces came into view like masks from a stage.

No—does “face” even fit? The left one hid hers behind a visor and helm, a single-soldier armor striped in red, like a knight holding a hundred at bay. The right wore a mask scrawled with crude graffiti, and a lab coat that drowned all body lines like fog.

Only two.

The armored figure’s slim build said she was young. A woman. A blade in velvet.

Yet just by standing still, they made these well-fed, hard-trained guards feel death breathing at arm’s length, cold as river mist.

“They didn’t call us for a battle this big... we’ll have to grill the doctor later,” the armored one said, voice calm as steel.

“Pin her to the bed and ask,” the mask replied, amused as a cat.

Who’s “the doctor”?

They would never get that answer. The question fell like a feather into fire.

Blade Spell—Luminous Infinity.

...

Inside the royal city’s training yard, they don’t groom fodder for foreign wars. They polish the royal household guard, bright as lacquer. Most recruits are second or third sons of nobles. Low-tier at home, not to be discarded. Two years here gilds a name and irons a gait. Because of them, the guard trains magic alongside drill, mixing flame and form.

Now the soldiers formed up under Prince Ain de Blois. They were set to enter the palace and shield the throne like pine around a shrine.

The road from the yard to the palace crossed an old stone bridge. When the capital moved, the king of the day—the First Arbor King—rode a white horse over it. People named it White Horse Bridge, a ribbon over water.

A near-hundred formed a ten-by-ten block. They marched onto the span like a rolling slab of shadow.

“—Hold.”

At the point, Ain tugged his horse to a halt like a gate slamming shut in wind.

“Your Highness?” The adjutant leaned forward like a reed in current.

“Any other forces left in the palace?”

“None. All moved to the gates to guard against the armies outside.”

“Good.”

Good? Good for what? The words felt like a stone in the throat.

Ain glanced at the adjutant beside him, astride a squat pony with coal eyes.

That look felt strange, like winter inside a familiar room, a frost over glass.

The prince who was to be the next Arbor King reached into his uniform and took out... a press-switch, small as a seed.

He pushed it.

BOOM.

——KRAKOOOM!!

Blast wind huffed like a wolf. Water leapt sky-high like silver spears.

The adjutant’s eyes went wide. The spray soaked hair groomed that morning. His mind emptied like a drained basin. He turned, slowly, toward the unit behind—

White Horse Bridge was gone. The company on White Horse Bridge was gone. A blank cut from the river.

Chemistry inside the charges. Gravity’s pull on bones. Then riverwater and shattered stone, teeth in a dark mouth.

One hundred elite were erased in a heartbeat, like chalk in rain.

“Wh... y...”

“Any other forces in the palace? None, right?”

“Why... Your Highness, why would you... do this...” His voice fluttered like torn paper.

A blade answered him by sliding into his chest like cold rain through reeds.

“Because I’m not a prince. I’m a princess. And I’ve waited a very long time for this hour.”

Ain ripped off the wig. Smooth long hair spilled like silk. It flowed in the adjutant’s pupils as their light faded like embers.

...

“My sister’s handled the household guards!”

Copy.

“The tower’s stable for now. The escape passage blocked the duke’s hit squad. All cleared... Hm? We linked up with allies calling themselves Flashblade Red and Coffee Moon?”

It’s them... damn, I forgot to call them?! No wonder something felt missing!

“You can forget teammates?!” Dorothy’s snark slipped out like a spark, even under strain.

Eh. Being a statue too long fuzzes the brain a bit. I’ll cap it at a week next time. Plus last night’s... how to put it... the vibe was right. We drifted into town and started working... Anyway, good they’re here.

“...” Dorothy had no words. Silence hung like a curtain.

It’s already afternoon. How long till the Golden Apple?

That pivot was quick... No, that’s the point. The thought cut clean, like a blade.

“...Soon.”

Then it’s your cue.

“What do I... do now?” Her fear rose first like a tide, then the question followed.

Inside the walls, a rising. Outside, a battle. Add the Golden Apple’s pressure, and the court should be chaos. Now you step forward and declare the Empire overturned, a Republic founded. Push the chaos higher. You’ll announce it within a day anyway.

“I...” The word shook like a leaf.

And if Dorothy rebels now, a terrified king will cling to his bodyguards first, and seek the prince and Grand Marshal next. But the marshal watches the gate, eyeing two armies. That leaves Ain as the only pick, a loaded die.

Lead troops into the palace. Quell the crisis. “Save the king.” The old script crumbled like dry bark.

“I understand. I just...” The doubt showed first, then the breath.

Just not ready? Joke, right? All these years from thought to deed—You won’t flinch at the finish line. The memory burned like coals.

It’s like the voice on the channel saw straight through Dorothy’s fear and hesitation. A soft laugh crossed the wire like honey over steel.

Then, in that lazy, teasing, and deadly earnest tone, she wove the words like silk:

Go break open your era. Use your magic and your creed to rally every oppressed French soul—Give them courage. Give them strength to live, like bread and fire.

They’ll shout your name. And you’ll answer with equality and justice, clean as rain.

Go be a star etched on human history. Be that one-of-a-kind light in the night.

...

“Thank you, teacher.” The gratitude rose like warm smoke, then steadied.

A scarecrow of overwhelming presence fell from the noon-blue like a meteor, then landed atop a forgotten tower’s rim like a black flag.

Inside and out, everyone turned to the same point like iron to a magnet. The city held its breath like a lung.

Then, all Paris heard:

“I, Dorothy de Blois, hereby declare.”

“The rotten feudal dynasty will end, together with a history that worships the World Tree blindly and shuts itself away.”

“Born free, the people remain free from start to end. We were never granted anything, and we are not born with guilt.”

“From today on, we will build together a French Republic where all are born equal.”