Crimson: born as noble lived as phantom

 Two o’clock in the morning.

I stared up at the cracked, stone ceiling of my solitary cell. Exactly eight hours remained until my public execution.

The suffocating silence of the dungeon weighed heavily on my chest. If Sir Gurberr chickened out, if he decided that killing me was safer than helping me, I was a dead man. I was risking my entire survival on the cowardice and ambition of a man who had murdered a princess. It was a terrifying gamble, but it was the only hand I had left to play.

Tick. Tick.

My heart hammered against my ribs. Every passing minute felt like a drop of blood leaving my body.

Suddenly, the stagnant air inside the cell shifted. A sharp, acrid scent cut through the smell of damp mold.

Gunpowder.

My eyes snapped wide open. He actually did it.

I didn't waste a single second. I violently rolled off the stone bench, pressing my body flat against the farthest corner of the cell, tucking my head into my knees, and bracing myself for the impact.

BOOM!

A deafening roar shattered the midnight silence. The ground beneath me convulsed violently as a massive shockwave ripped through the stone floor. The world dissolved into a blinding flash of orange fire, choking black smoke, and a rain of jagged stone debris.

The floor entirely vanished.

I plummeted straight through the gaping maw of the blast zone, falling into the dark abyss below. Thanks to the reflexes drummed into my body from years of elite knight training, I managed to twist mid-air. I dodged the heaviest pieces of falling rubble, rolling hard across the slimy stone floor of the hidden tunnel beneath to break my fall.

I landed smoothly, coughing violently as the thick dust flooded my lungs.

For a few seconds, I lay there, listening to the distant, frantic ringing of magic alarms echoing from the prison above. They would be flooding my cell any minute now. I had to move.

Scrambling through the thick smoke, my hand brushed against coarse fabric.

A heavy travel pack was lying right in the center of the tunnel. Resting beside it were two beautifully forged, unsheathed steel swords. Their blades gleamed sharply under the faint light of the distant fires above.

Gurberr had kept his word.

I tore open the bag with trembling, blood-stained fingers. Inside sat the ancient tunnel ledger detailing the hidden routes of the capital, alongside a massive, heavy pouch filled to the brim with gold coins—two hundred thousand Nerr. It was a fortune, enough to buy an entirely new life in the shadows.

But at the very bottom of the bag lay a small, polished wooden chest.

I flipped the latch open. Resting on a bed of velvet was a heavy, runic key—an exact duplicate of the master key used by high-ranking wardens to unlock anti-magic restraints.

Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the key with my bound hands and jammed it into the heavy iron cuffs locking my wrists.

Click.

The heavy metal restraints snapped open and clattered uselessly onto the sewer floor.

VREEEEM!

In an instant, a violent torrent of pure, unadulterated mana exploded from my core, rushing through my veins like boiling lightning. My sealed magical reserves were finally free. The sheer sensation of my power returning made my hair float, blowing away the surrounding smoke in a single, localized burst of magical pressure.

I strapped the two swords firmly to my waist, slung the heavy travel pack over my shoulders, and looked at the ancient map.

The guards above would expect me to flee toward the slums, the commercial districts, or the outer borders of the Krane Kingdom. They would set up blockades at every major road and search every carriage.

So, I chose the one place no sane human would ever dare to look.

I turned away from the capital lines and sprinted deep into the darkest, most forgotten branch of the underground tunnels. My destination was the southern border—the Forbidden Forest of Darkness. It was a cursed territory crawling with the most ferocious, bloodthirsty magical beasts known to mankind. A place where entry was strictly forbidden by royal decree, because no one ever came out alive.

For a normal fourteen-year-old boy, it was a death sentence.

But for a shadow operator who needed to disappear from the face of the earth, heal his wounds, and sharpen his blades for a bloody revenge... it was the perfect paradise.

lipping past the capital's borders through the ancient drainage lines was surprisingly simple. The kingdom’s elite guards were too busy locking down the roads and blocking the city gates to notice a single shadow emerging from a forgotten iron grate at the very edge of the world.

Stepping out of the tunnel, the suffocating, heavy air of the Forbidden Forest of Darkness instantly wrapped around me. Towering trees with pitch-black bark stretched high into the sky, their thick canopy completely blocking out the moonlight. The forest was dead silent, save for the eerie, distant groans of monstrous entities.

I took a deep breath, adjusting the twin swords at my waist. I was officially a ghost.

SKRRRRT!

A sudden, jarring sound sliced through the stillness.

The bushes to my left violently burst apart. Out tumbled a monstrous creature the size of a carriage—a Giant Black Abyssal Ant. Its massive, chitinous exo-skeleton gleamed like polished obsidian under the shadows, and its jagged, razor-sharp mandibles snapped together with enough force to crush an armored knight into paste.

The beast lunged. It was incredibly slow, burdened by its massive weight, but its brute strength was undeniable. It brought down a massive, spiked front leg, smashing the earth where I stood just a microsecond prior.

Boom!

The ground shattered. Thanks to my knight prodigy training, I had already initiated a backward flip. Channelling my newly freed mana into my calves, I propelled myself upward, unsheathing both of my forged steel swords in a single, fluid motion.

As I descended, I coated the blades in sharp blue magical energy.

"Haaah!"

I slammed downward, driving both swords directly into the narrow, unarmored joint connecting the monster's head to its thorax. The magic-infused steel sliced through the flesh like a hot knife through butter. With a horrific, screeching hiss, the giant ant collapsed heavily into the dirt, its legs twitching before going completely still.

I exhaled, wiping the black monstrous fluid from my cheek. I did it. I can survive here.

SKR-SKR-SKR-SKR-SKR-SKR!

My victory was cut short. The ground beneath my boots began to vibrate violently. From the dark depths of the treeline, dozens of glowing red eyes flared to life. An entire swarm—a massive colony of the exact same giant black ants—emerged from the shadows, their mandibles clicking in a furious, bloodthirsty frenzy.

'There are too many of them!' My mind panicked.

I didn't hesitate. I turned on my heels and sprinted. They were slow, and I knew I could easily outspeed them if I channeled my mana into a continuous sprint. But as I rounded a massive, gnarled tree root, I froze.

Standing right in the path of the oncoming swarm was a frail, thin old man. He had long, snowy-white hair cascading down his shoulders and wore tattered, dark robes. Slung casually over his shoulder was a comically large, pitch-black greatsword that looked far too heavy for his fragile frame to even lift.

'He's going to get butchered!'

Driven by a sudden instinct to save a helpless civilian, I pushed my body to its absolute limits. "Hey! Old man! Run! Get out of the way!" I screamed, lunging forward to grab his tattered robe and pull him out of the swarm's path.

I was just inches away from reaching him when the old man finally moved.

He didn't run. He didn't even look back at me.

With a single, deceptively effortless motion, his thin, wrinkled arm swung the massive black greatsword through the thin air in front of him.

CRACK!

There was no flashy magic light. There was no chant. Just a pure, terrifying shockwave of raw physical pressure that violently warped the atmosphere. The sheer wind pressure alone tore the surrounding trees out of the soil, sending a deafening shockwave echoing through the entire forest.

When the dust cleared, I fell to my knees, completely paralyzed by sheer, unadulterated terror.

The entire swarm of giant ants had completely vanished. They weren't just dead; they had been entirely erased from existence. In their place lay a gargantuan, smoldering crater stretching dozens of meters into the forest, splitting the very landscape in half.

I stared at the destruction, my throat completely dry. I was a knight prodigy, but I had never seen a human command such god-like, absolute strength. Who… what kind of monster was this old man?

The old man slowly rested the massive black sword back on his shoulder. He turned around, his sharp, ancient eyes locking directly onto my trembling form. A faint, knowing smile creased his wrinkled face.

“I am Grim,” the old man spoke, his voice surprisingly deep and clear, carrying an aura of absolute death. “The world also calls me the Craftsman of Death. It is an absolute pleasure to finally meet you... young master Erik Novalanch.”

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