[334] Fight or Hide!

Inside a green glass corridor, warped silhouettes of trees rippled across a bloodstained floor. The clash of steel rang out, followed by the screams of men and women collapsing in the chaos, their cries echoing through the long passage.

Behind steel doors, only the shadows of a man and a little girl could be seen, pressed flat against a wooden throne.

"Father, what is happening?" the girl whispered, her voice trembling through the violence.

"Worry not, my princess. I will keep you safe," the man replied, his arms wrapped tightly around her, their shapes distorted across a pale, bloodless floor.

Outside, the corridor fell momentarily silent. The girl and the man held still, holding their breath in the suffocating quiet.

Then, a deafening crash slammed against the steel doors.

"Give up, useless king! You do not deserve your throne!" a rough voice bellowed from the other side.

The girl's heartbeat hammered in her chest like a woodpecker against a tree, her shadow clinging tightly to her father's as the world outside the room fractured.

The man knelt, his silhouetted hands cupping the girl's face. "Listen to me. Take your brother to Selya. Tell her... now is the time. She will understand."

"What about you, Father?" the girl asked, her voice breaking with sadness, the faint ripple of her tears spreading across the ground in the low light.

The man rose, and from his waist, he drew a blade that shimmered like a sliver of the moon. "I cannot leave. It is my duty to protect our kingdom from its enemies. And it is your duty to protect your brother," he answered.

Wiping her face, the girl understood. She gave a single, firm nod and turned toward the back door.

As her shadow vanished into the encroaching darkness, she heard the steel doors burst open with a roar, followed immediately by the harsh, ringing clash of two swords—but she already knew what she had to do, and the sound of her fleeing footsteps never stopped.