Crimson: born as noble lived as phantom

CRIMSON CARDS

____________Just as I was about to move out to secure Princess Quina and hunt down the remaining assassins behind her, a sharp, flashing blade cut through the smoke. The strike was incredibly precise, executed with elite military discipline.

I raised my black blade, blocking the strike just in time. The cloaked figure attacking me was my own sister, Erina Novalanch.

“Why are you here, Erik?!” she screamed, her voice cracking with a terrifying mixture of sorrow and burning rage. She unleashed a relentless flurry of thrusts, her face twisting in grief. “Why did you come back?!”

I rhythmically parried her strikes, my matte-black blades deflecting her elemental magic without breaking a sweat. I couldn't break character.

“My apologies, but you seem to have mistaken me for someone else,” I spoke, my voice echoing with an eerie, mechanical distortion behind my faceless mask. “I am THE CRIMSON CARD.”

“Stop joking around!” Erina shrieked, driving her blade forward with all her might.

Left with no choice, I channeled a sudden, violent burst of phantom strength into my guard. The explosive impact rattled her bones, violently blowing her backward several meters down the hallway.

I sighed internally, resting my sword on my shoulder. “I guess these are the best knights this kingdom has to offer. What a pity.”

“You are wrong!” a new voice called out from the darkness.

I turned my head. Emerging from the smoldering debris was Princess Quina, still wearing her hilariously stupid masquerade mask. She was gripping a beautiful elven sword, her small hands trembling but her stance filled with absolute bravado. I nearly facepalmed behind my mask. What the heck was she doing running into the danger?

Then again, she had just made my job infinitely easier by voluntarily stepping straight into my crosshairs.

“You are wrong, and I will prove it to you by defeating you right here!” the white-haired princess declared, pointing her elven blade directly at my chest.

“So, you are here, Princess Qui—”

“I am Quilia, the Knight of Justice!” she interrupted fiercely.

I stared at her behind my mask. She didn't even bother to think of a good fake name; she literally just removed the 'n' and shuffled the vowels of her own name. It was painful to watch, but I decided to play along with her delusion.

“Quilia, the Knight of Justice, hum?” I scoffed coldly. “Are you truly ready to spar with me?”

I didn't have time to play games. My plan was simple: knock her unconscious, carry her to a hidden safehouse outside the capital, and set her free tomorrow morning once the dust settled.

I instantly triggered my devil-granted contract. DEATH’S GAMBIT.

The spectral cards flickered in my mind as I placed a rapid thirty-second bet on the princess's actions:

I was actively trying to draw the King. If she attacked, I could unleash a fraction of the King's supreme mana to safely faint her and make my escape. There was no way a self-proclaimed "Knight of Justice" would run away, and since she believed her identity was completely hidden by that stupid mask, she wouldn't call for help. I couldn't sense a single powerful entity around us. The King card was a guaranteed win.

Quina raised her sword and rushed toward me.

But right as her boots left the floor, a sudden, monstrous wave of murderous intent erupted from the shadows just a few meters away. A terrifyingly fast silhouette blurred past the princess, a lethal dagger aimed straight at her exposed throat.

At that exact microsecond, the thirty-second clock hit zero.

Flash.

_The Jack of Spades materialized and shattered in front of my face.

SNAP.

The entire universe abruptly ground to a dead halt. The roaring fires froze in mid-air, the drifting embers hung suspended like static crystals, and Quina was frozen mid-stride.

My consciousness was instantly pulled into the sky, granting me a perfect, bird's-eye view of the entire frozen battlefield. Floating down, I bypassed the princess and stood directly in front of the frozen attacker, staring closely at his exposed face.

He looked to be in his late thirties, possessing a heavily muscular, battle-hardened build. But it was his dormant magic that made my blood run cold. Even frozen in time, his raw mana reserves rivaled the absolute authority of the King's card. This man wasn't a palace knight captain or a vice-captain. If a warrior of this catastrophic caliber existed in the Krane Kingdom, there was no way he could have flown under the radar.

Then, the pieces of historical text I had read as a noble child violently clicked together.

Sage Rigger.

He was one of the legendary Four Sages of the world. On top of the continent's most powerful religion, the Sacred Soul, sat four absolute entities possessing god-like powers allegedly granted by the heavens themselves. Whenever a Sage died, a holy follower from the head church was chosen to inherit their fated power.

But what was a religious Sage doing executing a palace assassination? If the King knew a Sage was lurking in the capital, he would have never left for the summit. The last thing Krane wanted was to make an enemy out of the Sacred Soul church. Did the King have prior knowledge of this? Did the church orchestrate the war?

I didn't have time to solve the mystery. The Jack's three-minute time-stop was rapidly reaching its limit.

Searching the frozen environment for an advantage, my eyes caught a fallen royal knight lying in the rubble a few meters away. Resting right beside his unconscious hand was a familiar, beautifully crafted sword. My heart leaped. It was the exact sword given to me by the man with crimson eyes—the sword I had accidentally killed him with in the cave, which the Knight Order had confiscated as evidence.

'He stole it back from the evidence vaults,' I realized.

The time-stop violently shattered. Reality slammed back into motion.

I explosively ducked, dodging Rigger’s thrusting dagger by a hair's breadth. In the same fluid motion, I slammed my right blade into its sheath, lunged across the stone floor, and scooped up my  fated sword from the dirt.

The moment my fingers gripped the hilt, a massive, electric shockwave tore through my arm.

Up until this exact second, the modified blades Grim gave me had only been able to manifest roughly sixty percent of my raw phantom mana. But this sword? The moment it tasted my phantom energy, the runes along the steel blazed to life. It was channeling more than ninety percent of my true power. There was no material on the surface of the earth capable of conducting phantom mana with this level of perfection. This weapon was forged specifically for my bloodline.

SWISH!

A heavy, wind-splitting strike crashed down from above. I barely managed to roll backward, the stone floor where I had just been standing exploding into powder.

“Looks like you’re struggling to even dodge my blade, you filthy sinner,” Sage Rigger spoke, his voice booming with divine authority as his body flared with a golden, holy aura.

Forcing a manic, crimson-eyed smile behind my faceless mask, I gripped the fated sword with both hands, my pitch-black phantom mana violently spiraling around the glowing blade.

“Let’s find out,” I whispered.

Pushing off the ground with explosive speed, I rushed straight toward the god-like warrior. The moment our blades clashed, a cataclysmic explosion of golden holy light and black phantom mana violently ripped through the palace, tearing the heavens apart.

This wasn't the end of the night. It was only the beginning.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

THUD! THUD! BOOOOOM!

The palace corridors convulsed violently under the weight of the titanic duel. Titanic shockwaves of golden holy energy and pitch-black phantom mana tore through the marble walls, creating a relentless chain of magical explosions.

Princess Quina stood frozen at the edge of the grand staircase, her knuckles turning white around her elven blade. She had truly believed she could bring peace to the world by donning a masquerade mask and acting as a self-proclaimed 'Knight of Justice.' But looking at the two absolute monsters colliding in front of her, she felt entirely, utterly helpless.

The speed of their battle was completely inhuman. Quina’s eyes couldn't even track where they were anymore.

“There he is! The Crimson Card!” she whispered, pointing toward a silhouette in the smoke.

But it was nothing more than a fading afterimage. An instant later, a massive explosion erupted directly behind her, the sheer air pressure threatening to blow her off her feet. Before she could fall, a pair of strong arms grabbed her. Erina had sprinted up from the shadows, forcefully hoisting the princess over her shoulder and rushing backward toward the safety of the medical wing. Even Quina, despite her royal pride, could see the staggering, unbridgeable chasm in power between herself and those two combatants. At her current level, expecting to interfere or end that battle was absolute foolishness.

SWISH!

“AAAAAGH!” Quina shrieked in sudden agony.

A steel-tipped arrow sliced through the smoke, piercing straight through her leg. Erina stumbled, nearly dropping her as four tall figures draped in pitch-black cloaks stepped out from the shadows, blocking the hallway ahead. The final four assassins of The Nemesis.

“Princess Quina,” the lead sniper spoke, his voice cold and distorted. “We are here to end your life.”

In a flash, the other three assassins drew their jagged blades and lunged forward simultaneously. Quina was too paralyzed by terror and the searing pain in her leg to move a single inch. But Erina’s knight instincts kicked in flawlessly. Moving with explosive speed, she carried the wounded princess and twisted her body through the air, barely dodging the lethal cluster of blades.

The situation had completely reversed. They were cornered.

“Quina, run!” Erina commanded, lowering the princess to the floor and drawing her own rapier. “I will take care of these intruders!”

“No!” Quina argued, gritting her teeth as she clutched her bleeding leg. “I will stay and fight alongside you!”

“With that leg, you will do nothing but get in my way!” Erina barked, stepping forward to intercept the three rushing blades.

Forced to retreat, Quina dragged herself around the corner into an adjacent, ruined courtyard. Erina was left behind, single-handedly facing the ferocious onslaught of the three assassins. But the calculation was off. The fourth assassin—the sniper—was no longer with the group. He had slipped into the shadows, hunting the princess.

SWISH!

The sniper materialized on a stone ledge above, firing another lethal arrow directly at her head. This time, anticipating the trajectory, Quina violently rolled across the stone tiles, letting the arrow shatter harmlessly against the marble.

“You don’t have anywhere left to run now, Princess,” the assassin hissed, leaping down from the ledge with his dagger drawn, cornering her against the broken balcony.

Quina stopped crawling. She slowly pushed herself up against the wall, a cold, fierce light suddenly igniting within her elven eyes.

“That’s my dialogue,” she whispered.

Before the assassin could even register her shift in tone, Quina lunged. Despite her injured leg, her thrust was blindingly fast—an elven technique hidden from the human world. Puchi! Her elegant blade cleanly pierced straight through the center of the assassin's muscular torso.

The man gasped, his eyes widening in pure shock as he realized the catastrophic mistake he had made by coming after this "helpless" princess alone.

Quina violently ripped the steel back out of his flesh. The assassin stumbled backward a few steps, clutching his heavily bleeding chest in disbelief.

Raising her weapon toward the dark, cloud-covered night sky, Quina gently touched the glowing elven runes engraved along the crossguard. She opened her lips, her voice echoing with a regal, ancient authority.

“Rise now… Tsukihime.”

VREEEEM!

The sword violently erupted into a breathtaking, ethereal blue light that entirely illuminated the ruined palace courtyard.

“This is a royal elven sword, forged by Grim, the Craftsman of Death himself,” Quina declared, the magnificent blue aura of the blade causing her white hair to drift beautifully in the wind. “My grandfather gifted it to me on the day I turned fifteen. Now… get back on your knees.”

Back in the smoke-filled corridor, the rhythmic clashing of steel echoed violently.

Clang! Sparks flew.

Erina breathed heavily, her rapier dancing through the dark as she single-handedly held the line against the three remaining Nemesis assassins. They were elite, synchronized, and ruthless—but Erina was a high-ranking knight of the realm. She wouldn't fall easily.

Spotting a split-second opening in their vanguard, Erina channeled her remaining elemental magic into her blade. With a fierce battle cry, she lunged forward, executing a flawless piercing maneuver. Puchi! Her rapier sunk deep into the throat of the leftmost assassin. The man choked on his own blood and collapsed limply to the floor. One down.

But the victory cost her everything.

Overextending her posture left her completely defenseless. Before she could pull her rapier back, the remaining two assassins capitalized on her opening with terrifying speed.

Thud! A heavy, magic-coated boot slammed violently into her ribs, shattering the bone and sending her flying backward onto the hard marble floor. Her rapier slipped from her numb fingers, clattering into the debris far out of reach.

“Guh…!” Erina gasped, vomiting a spray of blood as she tried to force her trembling arms to lift her body.

The two assassins stood over her, their blades gleaming coldly in the moonlight. But as they looked down at her broken form, they didn't raise their swords to deliver the killing blow.

“Don't waste time finishing her off,” the lead assassin hissed, wiping her blood from his cloak. “The Knight Order reinforcements are closing in, and the Sacred Soul Sage is currently tied up by that masked freak. Our primary target is the princess. Leave her.”

Without a second glance, the two killers turned on their heels and sprinted down the corridor toward the courtyard, leaving Erina bleeding out on the stone floor.

Erina lay there in the quiet dark, the distant, earth-shaking explosions of Erik's battle with Sage Rigger vibrating through the foundation beneath her. Yet, the intense physical pain in her body paled in comparison to the absolute chaos inside her mind. Her thoughts were completely, desperately consumed by her little brother.

'That magic earlier…' she wept internally, staring blankly up at the smoke-covered ceiling. 'It was him. I know it was him. There is no way I could mistake my own brother's mana signature.'

A wave of profound confusion and grief washed over her soul. 'But how…? He is only fifteen. Where did he gain that kind of monstrous, world-bending strength? What was he doing here in the palace under a mask? Was he truly the one who poisoned Mother and Father, or… did I make a horrific mistake?'

The questions spun violently in her head, but her body had reached its absolute physical limit. As the distant clashing of the black hellfire and golden holy light roared in the background, Erina’s vision slowly faded into absolute darkness, and she fell unconscious onto the blood-stained floor.

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