“The Sword Demon.”
The Duke knew about that name. After all, it had caused quite an uproar.
“Yep. That’s one of the names I’m going with.”
Lucavion replied. But he still was not finished.
“But that’s still not enough for you, is it?”
His voice was calm, almost amused.
“After all, even though the name Sword Demon may hold weight, I’m still just a rogue swordsman. A mere anomaly. Someone who has shaken the empire, yes… but only a little.”
He raised a hand.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
And then—
A black light began to ooze from his fingertips.
Dark, fluid, yet strangely weightless.
The air around them shifted.
The chamber dimmed.
Not from the absence of light, but from the sheer presence of something else.
The black energy swirled, rising like smoke, but within its depths—
Stars.
Tiny, glimmering fragments of an endless sky, scattered within the darkness, swirling in an unseen current.
And in that moment—
Thaddeus felt it.
That same, unnerving familiarity.
The same pressure he had sensed before—when Lucavion had fought Reinhardt.
Lucavion watched him, his smirk deepening.
“This energy must feel familiar to you, mustn’t it?”
The Duke didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
Lucavion could see it. The flicker of recognition. The quiet unease.
“After all,” he continued, his voice dipping lower, his dark eyes gleaming, “you’ve felt something like this before.”
The swirling energy pulsed, expanding just slightly, the tiny stars flickering like embers within the dark.
“In that battle—”
The words settled between them, heavier than the air itself.
Thaddeus’ breath stilled.
Lucavion’s gaze sharpened, locking onto him, voice quiet—
“Against my master.”
The chamber froze.
And then—
“When you lost to him.”
The stars within the black energy flickered.
And the Duke—
For the first time in decades—
Felt something dangerously close to a shiver crawl down his spine.
******
Blood.
That was the first thing Thaddeus remembered.
The scent of it, thick and metallic, clinging to the air like a curse. The way it soaked into the earth, darkening the once-untouched fields of Ravencairn Plains.
It was the first thing any man who had been to war would come to know.
And Thaddeus had known it well.
The war against the Lorian Empire had reached its peak.
Even though the Thaddeus Duchy was responsible for the naval forces of the Arcanis Empire, the tides of battle had shifted so drastically that not even the sea could hold back the inevitable.
The Lorian forces had pushed deep—too deep.
They had nearly reached his lands.
So the battle was set.
Ravencairn Plains.
A decisive clash to hold the borders.
Thaddeus had stood at the front lines with six of the duchy’s strongest generals.
Six men who had each carved their names into history.
Six legends of the battlefield.
And yet—
That day…
That fight…
Five of them died.
Not at the hands of an army.
Not in the chaos of war.
No.
They were cut down—one by one—by a single man.
A man who moved like a shadow.
Who sliced through warriors as if they were nothing more than paper before a blade.
He had been young then.
Near Thaddeus’ own age at the time.
But his presence—his skill—his power—
It had been monstrous.
And Thaddeus remembered it clearly.
The flickering, deadly glow that wrapped around his blade.
That deep, shifting purple starlight.
It was not like anything Thaddeus had ever encountered before.
It was not divine.
It was not demonic.
It was something else entirely. Discover stories with My Virtual Library Empire
And by the time he had understood it—
By the time he had realized what he was truly facing—
Retreat.
The word still burned.
Still lingered, like an old wound that never truly healed.
That day, on Ravencairn Plains, Thaddeus’ duchy had been forced to retreat.
Not because they lacked numbers. Not because the terrain had failed them.
But because of a single man.
A lone swordsman who had done the impossible.
Who had carved through his forces with an efficiency that defied logic.
And worse—
Who had slain five of the six generals that had been entrusted to him by the Imperial Army.
By the Royal Family itself.
It had been one of the greatest losses the Arcanis Empire had suffered in that war.
It had sent shockwaves through the capital, shifting the balance of power.
The noble factions—once stable—had fractured. The Empire, already struggling against the Lorian advance, had weakened further.
And he—
Thaddeus, the heir to the Duchy at the time—
Had been forced to flee.
Not out of cowardice.
Not because he had wanted to.
But because he had no choice.
His father, the Duke before him, had given the order.
A direct command.
A command Thaddeus hated.
Because he had wanted to stay.
Wanted to fight.
To prove that the Duchy of Thaddeus was not so easily crushed.
And yet, even back then—
Even in his rage, his pride—
He had known.
That man.
The one who had changed the tides of battle, who had broken their forces with nothing but his blade and that eerie, flickering starlight—
Thaddeus had known.
If he had stayed.
If he had fought.
He would have lost.
And not just lost—
He would have died.
He still remembered that scene.
The battlefield, once filled with the thunder of war, had fallen silent.
Because there, standing amidst the corpses, drenched in the blood of his fallen men—
Was him.
His blade dripping.
His gaze unshaken.
A man whose very presence had rewritten the course of history that day.
A man Thaddeus could never forget.
A disgrace.
A moment in his life he had never been able to erase.
And now—
Decades later—
That same starlight flickered in the palm of the boy standing before him.
Lucavion.
His golden eyes darkened.
His voice, when it came, was quiet.
Dangerous.
“…Your master.”
His fingers curled into a fist.
“…Was him, wasn’t it?”
For the first time since their conversation began—
Lucavion smiled.
Not a smirk.
Not a playful, taunting curve of his lips.
A genuine smile.
And then—
He uttered the name.
The name that had haunted the Duke’s dreams.
The name that had never left him, even after all these years.
A name that had once carved its mark into the history of war itself.
“Indeed.”
Lucavion’s voice was smooth. Unshaken.
Then, with deliberate slowness, his dark eyes locked onto Thaddeus’ golden ones.
And he spoke the words that made the air itself seem heavier.
“Starscourge Gerald.”
A shudder crawled down Thaddeus’ spine.
A name he had not heard in decades.
A name that had rewritten his life.
A name that had been synonymous with defeat.
Lucavion watched him, that same knowing, quiet amusement flickering in his gaze.
“What?”
But now it was Aeliana’s time to react.