Luca POV

I learned young that kingdoms don’t fall in a day.

They rot first.

Quietly.

From the bones outward.

You don’t notice the decay until your hands are already red from holding the pieces together.

Tonight, I was holding a corpse.

Not a person — a legacy.

The Volkov empire.

The one I was once sworn to protect.

The one I was now sworn to bury.

Bodies littered the hall of the old manor — marble floors stained crimson, glass shattered like truth under pressure. Smoke curled from blown-out walls; gunpowder still lived in the air like a ghost.

The war wasn’t over.

But the end had already begun.

I stepped over the dead and walked deeper into the battleground I once called home. Every memory carved itself against my ribs — birthdays, training, punishment, loyalty… betrayal.

My boots stopped in front of him.

The man who raised me.

The man who trained me.

The man who destroyed me.

The Volkov king.

His blood spread across the floor in a dark, expanding shape — the final signature of a reign built on fear.

My pulse should have been steady — soldiers don’t shake over justice — but my voice cracked when I whispered:

“It’s over.”

He didn’t respond. Couldn’t.

For the first time in my life, I looked at him and felt nothing.

No hatred. No love. No grief.

Just the weight of the crown he’d forced onto me — forged from violence, duty, and guilt.

The weight I would spend the rest of my life trying to break.

A footstep echoed behind me — cautious, hesitant, familiar.

Elena.

I didn’t turn.

I couldn’t.

Not when I had blood on my hands — some deserved, some not — and she still belonged to the light.

She spoke softly, voice trembling not with fear… but with devastation.

“You didn’t need to do it alone.”

I closed my eyes. The truth tasted like ash.

“I did.”

Her breath stuttered behind me — hurt so quiet, pride so fragile.

Because she didn’t understand.

Because she couldn’t.

Because if she stepped close enough to see what I’d become, she’d never touch me again.

“Elena,” I breathed, daring only her name.

Just her name.

Her voice was a wound.

“You think I can’t love the parts of you that bleed.”

I wanted to turn.

Wanted to bury my face in her hair and let her be the one thing untouched by war.

But I was not untouched anymore.

The manor kept burning. The world kept falling. And the crown lay between us — sharp enough to cut the both of us open.

“Elena,” I said again, because saying stay was too dangerous.

And saying go would kill me.

War thundered back into the hall — shouts, footsteps, gunfire.

I reached for my weapon.

She reached for me.

But I broke first.

I stepped away.

Not because I didn’t love her…

but because I did.

And love had no place in a kingdom made of ruins.

Not yet.