Tower of Heaven

Atlas\' entire body was broken. Dodging simply wasn\'t an option. He watched the blade approach his face in slow motion. The guards ran at the "Third Prince\'s Attendant." They would tackle him in another second and subdue him, as he didn\'t have cultivation backing his strides.

But in the moment it took for them to arrive, he had already attacked, and he had already drawn blood.

Only, it wasn\'t Kade\'s blood.

"Heuuugh…"

Klyde held his chest and tried to contain the blood rushing out as he gulped for air. Atlas gritted his teeth, only able to watch as his young brother took a blade through his heart.

The guards slammed Cain to the ground and broke his legs, immediately separating him from the pair of princes. His screams rang through the stage, destroying the atmosphere that once enveloped it.

"Hahahaha! Hahahahaha!"

"You cannot stop me, Atlas Vaun! Even if I lose this trial, I will come back! The ruination of this world cannot kill me!"

He roared, doing everything to gather attention on himself, but his attempts were meaningless.

Atlas struggled to raise his body, at least enough so he didn\'t have to experience this scenario lying down.

As the guards held down the maddened attendant, he focused all of his attention on this body\'s brother.

Klyde\'s body had taken too much stress in the purification process. He was already on the verge of death and in need of a long healing process if he wanted to return to normal.

He also had a Spiritual Wood Constitution, but it could not patch his heart back together.

Despite his best efforts, the blood rushed out uncontrollably. He took hurried breaths as his throat was filled with blood, but every time he inhaled he found himself choking on liquid.

"Brother…hicc…!"

"I don\'t think… I will be able to… live… for forgiveness…"

He cried. The tears that ran down his face mixed into his blood and washed it away like rain. He knew he was dying. He didn\'t have any cultivation to bolster his physique and protect him.

"..."

Atlas\' eyes were red. The ending he saw was one where everyone lived. He wanted to give the Second Prince the best possible future he could.

He saw this family and became a part of it for a period. He felt their love for each other and their desire to persevere through trauma. Kaladyn and Kale didn\'t give up on Klyde until the very end, regardless of the kinds of crimes he committed.

This was not the ending he wanted.

He didn\'t want to see the Emperor die, and he didn\'t want Klyde to suffer for the mistakes of the Dark Cult.

However, this was not a fantasy. This was reality, the same reality that never went the way people wanted it to.

"I wanted…to atone…"

Klyde cried, mourning his inevitable death. Unable to do anything else, Atlas could only hold him in his arms and comfort him.

"Everything will be okay."

It would not, but he would never say that. Not in a million years.

He held the young man who had been destroyed by fate and consoled him as he entered the embrace of death.

On that stage made of marble, on that stage that was nothing more than a heap of rubble, two members of the Imperial Family met their ends.

Only the reactions to their deaths differentiated them.

The Third Prince\'s tears gradually stopped flowing. As did his blood. His cries turned into whimpers and then faded into nothing at all.

The disappearance of the warmth in his body was the hardest to bear with.

Atlas gently set his corpse down onto the ground and struggled to his feet. Even as his legs trembled, begging for him to sit down, he took step after step and arrived in front of Cain.

"Hahahaha! So, you\'ve come to see me off!"

Cain\'s jovial attitude stood in direct contrast to the iciness of Atlas\' demeanor.

The man was on the floor with two men keeping their knees on his back so he couldn\'t move. They chained his legs and arms together to limit his range of movement, so he was essentially nothing more than a bundle of meat.

In Atlas\' eyes, he was just a punching bag.

"Bastard."

Bang!

A fist slammed into Cain\'s face and knocked several of his teeth loose.

"Hahaha! Atl–"

"BASTARD!"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

That was the only sound that echoed through the square. Everyone kept silent, allowing the sound of the attendant\'s face being caved in by the slew of attacks to take prominence.

Atlas kept beating Cain until he collapsed from his own exhaustion. He didn\'t know how long he continued to attack. He just kept attacking and attacking and attacking without any rhyme or reason.

All he saw was red.

He didn\'t see clearly again until he awoke from his unintentional slumber.

"Hahahaha…"

Nevertheless, he could not release his anger.

"...looks like I lost!"

Because, even in the end, all he heard was laughter.

When his mind came back to reality to the aching feeling all over his body, he was greeted by sunshine through a window. When he looked out into the world, what he saw was an empire attempting to find its peace.

\'The Knight King must have taken care of the aftermath.\'

It seemed that his character had been pushed to the sideline because neither Atlas nor Cain took his role. In that kind of world, the Knight King was too much of a variable to have a large presence.

Atlas still hadn\'t seen an ounce of him. He heard that the Knight King had been corrupted, but that was the extent of it. Clearly, he was among those who had been touched by the light of the–

"–Sacred Chains…"

Atlas looked down at his own hands. Somehow, they were there. They adorned his wrists as golden bracelets ready to transform at any time.

"They became like that when you fell unconscious. It seems that they have acknowledged you as the Emperor."

"Knight King."

Kade gave a short greeting, his eyes still on the outside world.

"Greetings, Your Majesty. Though the coronation has not taken place yet, I believe it is right to address you as such."

After all, the former Emperor himself spoke those words that crowned Kade.

Atlas sighed. The scenario was meant to last eighteen days. It had only been a week, and considering that it was still ongoing, it would not end until those eighteen days passed.

\'It was a day of tragedy.\'

The day that marked the deaths of the Emperor and the Third Prince was a tragedy for Kade but a fortune for the rest of the Empire.

\'For some reason, this trial is giving me the chance to turn tragedy into something else.\'

He was still in a position to change this empire.

\'It may not be the ending I wanted to see…\'

He sighed, facing the Knight King.

\'...but it is the best ending I could possibly achieve.\'

"Tell me everything I need to know."

He would learn the ways of an Emperor, at least just for this short period of time.

And when he left this land, he would make sure that it would never return to its dark days again.

That was the least he could do for this Empire that he\'d grown attached to.