Chapter Text
They said the war ended with a treaty. That was the lie they told so no one would ask how many bodies were left unclaimed in the fields.
How it began was a blur. There were no real victors, only kingdoms who suffered from the aftermath.
The battlefield now quiet, but nowhere close to peaceful. No matter how hard they try to forget, the land will always remember.
The land will always remember the bloodshed, and it will always hold on to the shape of those that had once been alive.
The land will always feel the ash of a war that never truly ended.
The border drawn between the human kingdom and the demon realm was not just a line, but a scar. Even the air felt wrong, as if it learned to carry the memory of fire.
They called it peace.
But peace did not leave villages empty.
Peace did not leave names carved into stone faster than they could be buried.
A war so devastating, so merciless, will always be impossible to ignore.
A war where humans and demons were against each other.
It ended the way all desperate wars did,
not with victory, but with an agreement neither side trusted.
A treaty written by survivors.
Years passed.
The human kingdom rebuilt itself as The Arctic Empire, while the demon realm remained the mysterious Obsidian Court. They crowned new rulers, told new stories, buried what they could.
But the hatred never left. It settled. Waiting for the tension to grow.
And it was growing. A kind of tension that wasn’t loud, but even the slightest noise could cause a landslide.
Trade routes failed.
Borders tightened.
Messengers stopped coming back.
And in both kingdoms, the same quiet realization took hold:
War was coming again.
And somewhere, a future was being signed into existence.
one that would demand a prince, a demon crown, and a consort no one had asked to become.
This time, however, they would try to stop it before it began.
Not with swords.
But with sacrifice.
“They will accept the terms,” someone said, though no one had asked who they was.
A pause followed.
Then another voice. It was calm, but careful, wrong in the way honesty always was in rooms like this.
“And if they don’t?”
No one answered immediately.
Because the truth was simple, and unbearable:
They had already decided what peace would cost.