The Coliseum stood in ruins, once a grand arena, now an amphitheatre of broken stone and dust where so countless battles had taken place over the years.

  Both Lukas and Rowan were the only ones amid the ruin, bodies trembling from exertion.

  Their battle had come to an end but Lukas knew that it had not yet reached its conclusion.

  Rowan had surrendered. Lukas knew that.

  He had known it when Rowan lowered his head and let hope take root once more. It was Lukas who had been the one to plant that seed; his words and his stubborn refusal to let the beastman to be lost to anger, had allowed hope to come like a small, stubborn light in the darkness. But there still remained the soul who lived within the beastman, in the marks that lined the his flesh like scripture. Those sigils still pulsed faintly beneath the dried blood and grime that had caked on Rowan's skin.

  Lukas could still feel the Monarch’s presence, old and colossal, threaded through each line.

  But he knew that he could not run from the past.

  Lukas had to confront it, here and now. Or he would never be able to put this fear to rest.

  So, Lukas closed his eyes and used the Crown to reach within Rowan, within the marks and to the being that had caused him and so many others pain unimaginable. What the Monarch projected through Rowan’s marks was only a pale imitation, a construct of water shaped into a dragon’s form, for it did not capture the vastness Lukas remembered.

  With his mind connected to the Monarch's, Lukas stood before the same Dragon Lord that he had fought against in the Crest. Scales like storm-slick rock, eyes that held the wrath of seas, wings that could have shadowed an army—the Monarch’s presence was not mere power; it was a geography of grief and history.

  Yet there was no rage in the Monarch now.

  There was no furious roar, words to display his hunger for ruin. Lukas watched the dragon try to speak, to find the words he wished to say, and found the Monarch stumbling across words the way a drowning man flailed for breath. Seeing Rowan—the beastman who had acted as the Monarch's vessel, broken just like him and yet still choosing to believe in hope—had broken apart the Monarch’s heart of stone to reveal something raw and real.

  The Monarch barely paid Lukas any mind, focusing on the beastman who remained knelt in the sand.

  Lukas felt a rush of emotions but one stood out among them, an emotion that he himself knew well. That single, overwhelming current of feeling washed through the link between them. Because this fight had forced the Monarch to realize a singular truth that perhaps the old Dragon Lord had not been willing to accept. The Monarch’s hatred had not simply been unleashed, it had corrupted the only one he still cared for.

  Regret lingered like a tide that could not be turned back. But regret would not change the past.

  It could never change what the Monarch had done. It could not erase centuries of pain or the scars it had left across the Kingdom of Dragons. And it certainly could not unmake the blood that had stained Linemall’s Seas, nor could it return to life the children, lovers, and even families that had been lost to the very war that the Monarch had waged.

  Lukas stood there and felt anger stir again within his chest. He wanted to condemn the Monarch. Gods, how Lukas wanted to tell the tyrant that his regret meant nothing to him. Not after everything he had done. And yet Lukas said nothing.

  Because he could not.

  Lukas’ silence was not mercy.

  It was understanding, bitter and unwilling, but understanding all the same. Because as much as Lukas wished to hate the Monarch with all of his being, he could not separate the Monarch from the dragon he had once been.

  Lukas could not condemn the Monarch. Because Lukas himself had been him.

  In those memories, as Lukas had allowed his mind to slowly be lost to the the lives within the Crest, he had seen a different kind of dragon.

  Once, they had not called him the Monarch.

  Once, they called him Lord Maelys Drakos of Linemall’s Seas.

  Noble, wise, and fiercely devoted to his kin.

  A protector. A husband and a father.

  Lukas had seen how Maelys’ brothers had murdered his wife, how his enemies had slaughtered his daughters in that garden, how the world he had given everything to defend had turned on him like a serpent eating its own tail.

  Could Lukas, who had lived through those same atrocities, truly say that he would not have done the same? Could Lukas swear, with certainty, that vengeance would not have consumed him as it had consumed the Monarch?

  He couldn't.

  Because deep down, he knew that he would have done the same.

  So how could Lukas condemn the Monarch, how could he condemn Maelys Drakos when, in reality, he was no better than him?

  The Monarch had made certain that those who wronged him paid the ultimate price. His vengeance had been thorough and unrelenting. But vengeance was a poison that did not know when to stop flowing. Once it began, it would eat through everything—justice, mercy, and even purpose—until nothing remained but hatred incarnate. The Monarch’s rage had swallowed whole not just his enemies but the innocent, the world around him, and finally himself.

  Lukas had seen that same hunger in his own eyes, once. He had felt that same consuming bitterness when the Crest had stripped him of everything he loved and believed in. Now, standing before Maelys Drakos, Lukas saw the ruin left behind not as something external, but as a reflection of himself.

  A memory passed between them then.

  A memory of the Monarch's death.

  Lukas saw the cavern deep beneath Linemall’s Seas, the same one where they had first crossed paths. There was no light there, no warmth. The Dragon Lord lay there in his final moments, surrounded not by kin or glory, but by silence. The Monarch had died a bitter old dragon, hollowed out by the very vengeance that had once sustained him. He had waited for death to deliver him to the peace he had been denied in life—to his wife, to his daughters, to any glimmer of love left beyond the veil.

  But there had been nothing to embrace him but darkness.

  After all of it, death had not set him free. But death was not the end for the Monarch.

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  Because it was Rowan who had given him reason again, the child who had unknowingly pulled him from the quiet oblivion that should have been his eternity.

  The Monarch had found his way to the Land of the Living once more, his soul finding solace in the beastman's body. The old Dragon Lord had never admitted it—not to Rowan, not even to himself—but Maelys loved the beastman in the same way Lukas loved Rosalia. Not as a vessel but as family, as the last soul who reminded him what it meant to care for another.

  And yet what had he given Rowan in return?

  The Monarch may have given Rowan power, may have given the beastman strength enough to overcome any enemy that stood in his path. But what use was strength when the only thing it guarded was hate? What meaning did it hold when the heart behind it was chained to bitterness?

  Lukas saw understanding dawn on the Monarch.

  The Monarch had given Rowan the same curse that continued to plague him to this day. He had given Rowan the strength to destroy, but never to heal.

  The old dragon's eyes, once burning with the fury of a thousand storms, had quieted to the stillness of a dying tide. For the first time, Lukas saw not the Monarch—not the Dragon Lord who had set the world ablaze—but the soul beneath it all. A tired, ancient soul whose heart had grown too heavy to keep beating.

  The air between them trembled faintly with the fading pulse of their connection, and when Maelys spoke, his voice was but a whisper carried on the hush of salt and wind.

  “My words may not mean much to you,” Maelys murmured, “but… I am sorry. I do not deserve your forgiveness, my child. I know what I have done. But I truly am sorry.”

  Lukas said nothing.

  Acceptance. That was what Lukas saw in Maelys now. Not defiance. Not rage. Just the still, final quiet that came after centuries of struggle.

  “Tell Rowan that he will be better than I ever was,” Maelys continiued. “Tell Rowan that…tell that kid I love him.”

  The marks that had branded Rowan’s body began to shimmer.

  One by one, the black sigils peeled away from the beastman’s skin like falling embers, rising into the air in slow, spiraling trails of light.

  Rowan stared at them, his breath catching in disbelief.

  The beastman reached out with trembling fingers, tracing the fading lines where the Monarch’s presence had once been etched.

  The Monarch looked toward Rowan one last time through Lukas' eyes.

  This was farewell.

  Maelys had done enough. He had hurt enough. Even the ones he had loved most had been forced to bear the weight of his rage.

  Lukas could feel the fear trembling through that ancient soul.

  Maelys was terrified, not of death itself, but of what came after.

  He knew what awaited him beyond the veil and it was nothing.

  There would be no light, no embrace of the family Maelys had lost, no voices to welcome him home. There was no place in the afterlife for one who had drowned his world in hatred.

  But Maelys was more afraid of what would happen if he stayed.

  Because if the Monarch stayed, Maelys knew the cycle would never end.

  The rage would return.

  It always did.

  And Maelys had seen enough suffering—caused enough of it—to know that it had to end with him.

  The marks continued to lift from Rowan’s body, leaving his skin unblemished. The light that rose from them gathered in the air, swirling around the beastman like a thousand motes of silver.

  Lukas could feel the Crown’s connection faltering but still holding strong, allowing him to stand witness to what came next, to witness the Monarch’s departure from the world of the living.

  Maelys closed his eyes. And that was when Lukas finally spoke. His voice was low, trembling but sure. “I…I forgive you.”

  For a heartbeat, the Monarch did not say a word.

  Then Maelys’ great body shuddered, and his eyes opened in faint disbelief. The old dragon let out a soft, rasping sound that might have been a laugh, might have been a sob. The corners of his mouth curved again in that same weary smile as he shook his head, unable to believe what he had just heard.

  “Thank you. I would not have been able to do the same,” he said quietly. “Linemall is in your hands now. Serve them well, Pallas."

  Lukas did not grant forgiveness for the Monarch's sake. He forgave Maelys because he himself could no longer carry the weight of hate.

  Lukas forgave Maelys because to continue hating was to remain chained to the past, to the pain, to the endless, gnawing emptiness that had taken so much from the both of them.

  “I will,” Lukas whispered. “Rest well, Maelys.”

  As he spoke, their connection brightened, one final surge of light before it faded into stillness.

  Lukas saw, through Maelys’s eyes, the last thing the old Dragon Lord saw before his soul departed from the Land of the Living.

  And Lukas could not help but smile.

  Because this time, Maelys would not drift endlessly.

  Maelys Drakos would not wander the seemingly endless expanse of the Underworld as a hollow echo of himself, forced to roam its fiery depths alone. No longer would his spirit twist through the void, searching for the light that would never come.

  This time was different.

  Through the bond granted by the Crown, Lukas saw what Maelys saw. And there—beyond the veil—stood those he had once loved.

  Maelys’ wife came first, graceful and fierce, with eyes like the moonlight glinting off calm waters. The one whose death had begun the hardening of his heart. She smiled as she stepped forward, her presence radiant and opening as though the centuries between them had never passed.

  Beside her stood Maelys' daughters, their faces bright and alive, laughter shining through the tears that begun to well up in their eyes. Lukas recognized them well. They had been little more than shadows of in the Monarch's mind but now they were real, whole, waiting for their father who had finally come home. They had not been waiting for the Monarch. They had been waiting for Maelys.

  And among the souls of the dead stood someone Lukas knew all too well. Lord Jaren Drakos, his father in this world and Maelys’ son.

  That was when Maelys finally began to cry.

  The old dragon had forgotten what it felt like to sob, letting the tears fall down his face. They came freely now in slow, glimmering trails that slid down the curve of his scaled cheeks. He did not roar, did not speak nor did he try to hide the sound that broke from his chest.

  Lukas felt the echo of those emotions as though they were his own.

  Through the fading tether of the Crown, the Dragon Lord’s grief, love, and peace flowed into him, washing away the last traces of bitterness that had clung to his heart.

  Maelys Drakos was not perfect, not by any measure of mortal or god. He had been proud, wrathful, and deeply flawed. But perfection had never been the measure of redemption.

  None of them were perfect.

  None of them ever would be.

  They all made mistakes. Some greater than others and some that could tear entire worlds apart. But what mattered—what truly separated the damned from the redeemed—was this moment of recognition.

  The willingness to look upon one’s own sins and see them for what they were.

  That was the difference between the Monarch and Maelys Drakos.

  The Monarch had believed himself above forgiveness, convinced that the world owed him for the pain it had dealt. He had seen vengeance as justice, destruction as balance. He had demanded the world bend to his grief. Maelys, however, had looked upon that same grief and asked to be forgiven. He had chosen to face the emptiness within himself and fill it, not with rage, but with humility. And for that, higher powers finally answered him with the peace he had looking for all alone.

  As the vision dimmed, Lukas felt the last echo of Maelys’ soul slip away, not into nothingness, but into light. The Coliseum around them was silent save for the faint whisper of wind stirring through the broken stone.

  Rowan knelt, his head bowed, eyes wet with quiet tears.

  Above them, the sun seemed to brighten as if foretelling what was to come.

  A brighter future for them all.

  And so it was that, as the final battle of the Tournament of Khaitish came to its close, Maelys Drakos—the Monarch of Linemall’s Seas, a father and a sinner—at last found peace.

  The old Dragon Lord was not redeemed by might, or power, or even divine decree.

  Maelys Drakos was redeemed by choice.

  A choice to be better. And that was what really mattered.

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