It didn’t take long before I was hauled into the brig on the command ship, if you could call it that. Someone had clearly tried to make the place look civilized, like they wanted prisoners to feel comfortable before the execution.

  It was still a prison.

  Wooden walls, polished but splintered in spots, boxed me in like a coffin that smelled faintly of salt and varnish. A narrow porthole leaked in gray light, but that was the only sign the world still existed. They’d even tossed in a real mattress, thin, lumpy, but honest-to-gods padding, on a bolted wooden frame. Luxurious, in the same way a padded coffin is better than bare pine.

  I sat down. The mattress sighed beneath me like it regretted it existed.

  Everything’s doomed. I’m done for. What to—

  Nope. Thinking was a mistake. Abort.

  I started counting from one to one million.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four—

  “Are you really a princess?” a curious voice cut in.

  I blinked, craned my neck. Outside the cell stood a soldier straight out of a recruitment poster. Imperial standard: pressed navy-blue uniform, polished cuirass that had maybe seen battle, short sword at his hip, helmet tucked under one arm.

  He was probably twenty, max. Clean-shaven, wide-eyed, posture so stringent I thought he might salute the furniture if it looked important enough.

  “That’s right,” I said, gesturing to my hair with a perfectly regal flick. “I even have a tiara. See? But I’m locked up, so… you’re the one in the better place.”

  He nodded earnestly. “Ah, nobles never get punished. At most, you’ll pay a fine.” His face lit up. “Mom won’t believe me! I met a princess.”

  I let out a soft laugh, the kind that slipped out before I could remember I was technically under arrest. “Yeah, that she won’t. I’d like to have your faith, though.”

  The cell door creaked like it hated its job, and a man stepped in with the smooth arrogance of someone who thought the world owed him its silence. The Count. He moved like he owned the place.

  Wait, he probably owned this ship.

  Need to update my vocabulary.

  The young soldier straightened so hard I thought I heard his bones snap. “Sir!” he barked, giving a textbook salute. “Guarding the door, sir?”

  The Count waved a hand, looking bored. “Go guard the door. I need a word with the prisoner, and she is then going to sleep. Nobody disturbs this place. Got it?”

  The kid bowed like he was afraid gravity might judge him. One imperial salute later, and he bolted, boots clacking off down the hall.

  The Count turned to me with eyes unreadable. “I’m glad, prisoner, that you went willingly.”

  I sighed and swung my legs off the mattress; the frame creaking like it shared my opinion. “Did I have a choice?”

  “No,” he said. “But not everyone knows when they’ve lost.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You activated the obelisk in Gefahr-lander. I want it.”

  My mouth opened, but my brain went straight into overdrive. Yeah, I had. But how did he know? It must’ve sent out a pulse, magic rippling like a damn beacon across the region. And that place was basically the heart of Gefahr-lander. Of course someone would’ve noticed.

  So this wasn’t just about the Irwen mess. Great.

  “I did,” I admitted. “But even I don’t know the location.”

  He stepped closer slowly. His hand dipped into his coat pocket. “Is that so? Hard to believe you don’t know where it is… When you were right there.”

  I leaned back against the wooden frame. It groaned in protest. “I teleported. I’m just as blind as you are. Honestly, when the teleports stopped working, I thought I’d never find it again.”

  That gave him pause. His eyes narrowed, flicking over me like he was reading a very suspicious instruction manual. “That… that actually makes sense.” He frowned, thinking. Watching. But didn’t say anything more.

  I tilted my head. “Didn’t expect honesty?”

  “That means our interrogation is at an end.”

  I grinned. “So I get to sleep?”

  His eyes gleamed. “Exactly.”

  And then he pulled it out. A dagger. Intricate, silver-black metal carved with runes that pulsed. I recognized it instantly.

  “Fa—Fate Binder!”

  “Oh? You know it?” His smile was all teeth. “The Emperor himself lent it to me. Said I’d need it to apprehend you. He’s personally leading the campaign in Calenfall, you know. Isn’t it poetic? The last elven city to fall… will be the one resisting your mother.”

  “Very poetic,” I muttered, eyeing the blade and trying not to panic. The renaming, the conquest, the political drama… I couldn’t care less right now. That dagger worked even on players.

  I blinked.

  Then he rammed the dagger into my stomach.

  It should’ve hurt. It should’ve torn something, broken skin, cracked bone.

  But it didn’t.

  The blade slipped through me like smoke, solid and unreal all at once. Cold metal passed through my gut without resistance. No blood. No pain. Just a strange pressure, like something inside me unzipped.

  And then my inventory exploded.

  A spray of items burst into the air, scattering around the cell like loot from a popped pi?ata. Armor, rings, weapons… gone. My clothes vanished with them, stripped away in a blink, leaving me in the most embarrassingly basic underwear.

  “What—?!” I shouted, but he moved his hand and I was silenced while he was examining my items.

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  After a while, he picked up a ring. “Ah, so that's how you found that place. Now I really have everything.”

  He smiled and lifted the silence. “You won’t find it. You stupid-” I said defiantly, but his gloved hand was already moving.

  He pressed a single finger to my lips.

  “Sleep until the execution, prisoner,” he whispered, with the kind of soft smile you give a child before a mercy kill.

  I could think.

  Not move. Not speak.

  Just think.

  That was the only thing I had left, and that meant I had one last option.

  I dragged myself from the capsule like a half-dead princess and flopped onto the couch. Limbs heavy. Brain heavier. The leather stuck to my skin like a liability.

  “This… this is bad, Jerry,” I muttered.

  “What is bad?” my watch answered.

  I actually smiled. “Remind me it’s 19 hours from now. Besides that? I have no idea,” I told him honestly. And I didn’t. I had no plan. No strategy. No clue how to fix any of it.

  But I knew one thing.

  I needed sleep.

  “Goodnight.”

  This morning, I woke on my own. Or maybe it was midday.

  Who cares.

  Anyway, I woke up. And for a good half hour, I just stared at the ceiling. Blank. Motionless. Letting thoughts scrape against each other like broken glass in a jar. Trying to find a way out of this mess.

  There wasn’t one.

  Not a single crack. No loophole. No backdoor exploit. Just a big, impossible wall I’d already slammed into.

  I threw on some random clothes without looking. Whatever was clean, or clean enough. Didn’t even check the mirror. I left the apartment and wandered into a random restaurant. I ordered something. Ate it.

  I think.

  I couldn’t even remember what it tasted like.

  Back home, I collapsed onto the couch and let the news roll.

  Our event, my event, was everywhere. Rimelion channels, reaction videos, analysis threads, and stream clips. Everyone had something to say.

  What we did right.

  Where we cheated.

  What was epic.

  Why we were doomed from the start.

  What was obviously staged.

  I didn’t care. Not even a flicker. It all felt... hollow. Like watching someone else’s drama from the bottom of a drained bottle.

  Why?

  Because of the Empire.

  The one thing I never questioned. I’d spent years testing. Fighting for them. Defending them, even when test resets wiped my progress, my name, my everything.

  But the Empire was always there. Like a memory I could lean on. Like a home I hadn’t earned, but believed in anyway.

  And now?

  Now it felt like that home had looked me in the eye… and handed me a shovel for my own grave.

  “It’s time,” Jerry said, cheerful and punctual.

  “Right,” I murmured, forcing a smile like I wasn’t already cold inside. “Going already.”

  I climbed back into the capsule, straight into my execution.

  Oh. We were closer than I thought.

  My fingers twitched first. Then came the pins-and-needles rush of blood returning to limbs that technically never lost circulation. A few seconds later, I could move again.

  Yay.

  The downside? I was being held upright by two soldiers. In a closet.

  A very crammed closet.

  “Good evening,” I smiled at them sweetly. “Which hell did we crawl out of this time?”

  Directly in front of me, like a nose-distance in front, stood a man decked out in full formal regalia. Velvet sash. Gold-trimmed jacket. The kind of posture that screamed ceremonial function, zero flexibility. He looked Important with a capital I.

  “Prisoner,” he intoned, “prepare to be judged by the Emperor.”

  “Sure,” I nodded brightly. “I’ll let that old geezer do exactly that.” I snorted, couldn’t help it.

  A fist slammed into my ribs.

  Worth it.

  “Prisoner,” he continued, voice stone-flat, “you will address the Emperor with respect. This is a sacred procedure…”

  And then came the script. The imperial legal rites. The whole long-winded spiel designed to sound like justice while being nothing but stage lighting and smoke. I’d heard it before. Hell, I’d recited parts of it during some quests.

  This wasn’t a trial. This was a show.

  They opened the door.

  Light flooded in, blinding. Of course, they hadn’t changed me into anything. Why bother? I was led out wearing nothing but that stupid, barely-there underwear. A public humiliation baked into the sentence.

  Turns out, I’d been kept in a shack, a literal shack, built on a podium in the middle of Calenfall’s main square. A stage dressed as a prison cell.

  The crowd? Immense.

  Not thousands. Tens of thousands.

  Elves and humans, shoulder to shoulder, packed like a living tide across every street, balcony, rooftop. They weren’t here for justice.

  They were here for the show. And they cheered. Not for me. They cheered for him.

  The Emperor stood front and center, gleaming in gold-trimmed armor. His presence swallowed the square. But I didn’t look at him.

  Wouldn’t give him that.

  I just grinned. Wildly. The kind of grin that says yes, I’m wearing shame as a costume, but I picked the music.

  They shoved me forward, and I stood alone, facing the crowd. I spotted a cluster of kids perched on the old garden wall, too high, too risky, just waiting for guards to notice and yell at them.

  The Emperor spoke. Ceremonial tone. Voice amplified across the square.

  I tuned him out. This wasn’t for me. This was for them. He asked if I was guilty.

  I said no, but he was.

  The crowd laughed.

  I raised my voice, louder this time. “People of Calenfall! Listen! Today is the first day of your new life! The mythical Queen Irwen is going to liberate you from the cold crutches of the Empire soon! This—”

  Pain.

  A hand silenced me.

  I closed my eyes.

  Just stood there.

  Then I felt it on my neck. A wrongness. A shiver, a spatial misalignment. Like my body was in one place and my head…

  …wasn’t.

  I was falling.

  No.

  Flying.

  Blue screens flickered in front of my eyes.

  And then—

  Darkness.

  Finally.

  Wait! This wasn’t what I was waiting for!

  --- End of [Book 2] ---

  too much for just one volume. But the Rime-Con arc wrapped up so perfectly, it felt like the right place to end Book 1. And now with the end with Irwen arc, we are heading into something exciting in book 3.