Though the Light had piqued Lyse’s interest, she whipped around when something scurrying in her peripheral vision now caught her attention. “Whoa!”
All of a sudden, there were black creatures scampering about the room—the monsters she’d taken from her pockets and placed in a basket while she was trying on her wedding dress. The Light within Lyse gave her the ability to tame monsters. They were normally most obedient, yet something had stirred them into a frenzy. They were shrieking as they bashed against the window in an attempt to break outside.
“Stop! Calm down!” Lyse called out in a panicked voice.
The two avian monsters slid down the glass and tumbled to the floor. The other three were still frantically trying to claw their way up to the sill. Lyse knew it was a mere matter of time before she could contain them no longer, so she unlatched the window in preparation to let the two birds loose.
“If you promise to stay small and to not go anywhere else, then I’ll allow you to go to the Light, okay?”
As soon as Lyse offered the compromise, the bird monsters darted out of the opened window and made a beeline for the golden pillar. While the Light attracted monsters to the capital, they rarely went straight for the beam. They would ordinarily go for any people in the area first—yet the Light seemed to be the birds’ only focus as they rushed toward it.
“What in the world...?” Lyse muttered to herself, prompting Sidis to try to make sense of the situation.
“Did you feel any changes, Lyse?” he asked.
“Nothing until just now. But...” She hesitated to finish her sentence, fearful that Donan holdouts had committed another act of terrorism.
The Donan Faith was a cult that despised the empire and demonized the Light of Origin. Its membership was primarily expatriates and foreigners of imperial descent who resented Razanate and her demand for magical strength, which inherently restricted positions of power to those with greater mana. This system left the unfortunate mana-weak children of nobles cut off from following in their parents’ footsteps, damning them to a life of ostracization and sometimes even abandonment. Such exiles eventually had children of their own, who in turn grew up under the influence of their hate for all things imperial. The resentment was fundamentally inherited.
Even with only a minuscule amount of mana, however, such imperial descendants were highly prized marriage partners in foreign lands. That was largely how they’d gained power and come to form the Donan Faith. Once the religion was established, they took to indoctrinating innocent populaces with the power of suggestion, arranging attacks on the emperor himself, and other such nefarious acts. Fortunately, just a few days ago, Lyse and the others had managed to capture a Donan leader in a serious blow to the cult. Given that, there was very little chance that they were responsible for whatever was happening now.
“It’s impossible to know for sure that we routed every last cultist. All that we can do now is to examine the scene,” Sidis suggested.
Lyse hurriedly got changed, and the couple made their way to the imperial villa. As the building surrounded the Light of Origin, knights posted there had to be particularly resistant to its effects. That being the case, Lyse and Sidis were stunned to find the guards doubled over on the ground when they arrived.
“What happened here?!” Sidis demanded, rushing over to one of them.
“Right after that shrill noise earlier...all of my power...” The knight could scarcely choke out an explanation, but the effects of what happened were quite apparent—not just by his suffering, but also by the small, dark horns that parted his black hair.
After a brief moment of consideration, Lyse came to a realization. “Lord Sidis, their mana must be being warped!”
“What makes you think so?”
“Look at the top of his head—horns,” she said, pointing.
Sidis was stupefied. “Those who can still walk, evacuate the villa immediately! Those who just arrived on the scene, carry away the immobilized! Lyse and I are going to investigate the Light of Origin!” he commanded.
Though the knights around were visibly in pain, they began dragging themselves away according to orders. Satisfied with this, Sidis entered the villa with Lyse. It was utterly silent inside. The couple followed the seamless, magically constructed white walls deeper within.
“All clear,” Sidis muttered to nobody in particular.
The lack of anyone present suggested that this was, in fact, not a terrorist attack on the Light. He cautiously cut through the semicircular building with Lyse until they reached the golden pillar of light at its heart. The twenty-meter-wide beam—too thick for even a dozen adults to encircle with their arms outstretched—towered into the heavens. It looked just like it always did, and there was still no sign of anyone else around.
“A hiccup with the Light, perhaps...?” Sidis wondered aloud.
With no trespassers in the vicinity nor any evidence to suggest it had been an inside job, the prince was left to suspect there was something awry with the Light itself. Lyse was of a similar mind too. The Light of Origin had no history of instability—not even during the Donan mana-warping incident, the attack when cultists threw black stones into it, or when Qatora was swallowed by it.
“If there was some kind of hiccup, then I wonder what instigated it,” Lyse said pensively. The cause of all this was still unknown. But more importantly—in that moment, both she and Sidis suddenly sensed a presence beyond a pillar in the atrium containing the Light. “Lord Sidis...”
“Allow me,” offered Sidis. Lyse nodded in assent, entrusting the matter to her fiancé. Inhaling sharply, he hurled a fireball in the direction of the presence. Casting magic near the Light was a great feat that only Sidis was capable of. His spell struck the pillar and engulfed the area in a loud, booming blast.
Rather than returning fire, his opponent should opt to make a break for it and thereby reveal themselves. Sidis and Lyse anticipated that much, but they never expected what emerged—for Sidis’s opponent stood there, looking up at them with big, round eyes while panting. The breathy sound echoed through the atrium as the couple froze in shock.
“Why is there a dog here?! Is that you, Your Majesty?!” bellowed Sidis upon collecting himself.
The fluffy, white, amber-eyed hound tilted its head to one side. Adorable as the gesture was, it did little to answer the question at hand.
“It must not be him,” Lyse mused. The dog simply kept panting—and wagging its tail. It seemed to want attention. “You sure look like His Majesty, though...”
Sidis had no other explanation himself. “There’s no way a normal dog just waltzed in here all on its own, let alone made it this close to the Light of Origin,” he said, shaking his head.
“That’s true...”
Lyse couldn’t make heads or tails of the situation either. Any ordinary canine would have succumbed to the Light’s influence, as it was almost toxic to normal humans and animals, exemplified by the knights outside the villa. Only the Razanate imperial family could withstand the magnitude of its power. The couple was right to be wary of the unfamiliar hound, and they began attempting to capture it.
“Lyse, corral it from the other side. I’ll nab it when it runs this way,” Sidis suggested.
“Got it,” she said as she went around. When she did, the dog began to grow and morph as it transformed into a man with short blond hair and amber eyes, all wrapped up in a white robe with gold accents. “That has to be His Majesty!”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Sidis demanded.
But he received no response from Egbert save for a smile and another quizzical tilt of the head, all just as cute as when he was a dog. As Lyse and Sidis stared at him wide-eyed, they heard footsteps approaching from behind. When they turned to see who it was, they spied Emperor Egbert with Duke Alcede in tow.
“What just...” Egbert stammered when he saw his doppelganger. “What in blazes is the meaning of this?!”
“He looks exactly like you,” Alcede said calmly, glancing back and forth between the twin Egberts. “Since when did you have a clone, Your Majesty?”
“I don’t, you dolt,” Egbert quipped in all sincerity after a beat. “I’ve never cloned myself.”
“Hmm, that’s right,” Alcede mused. He was just as shocked as the couple as he stood there comparing the two emperors some more. “If even Your Majesty has no clue—”
Interrupting the duke, the Light began screeching once again. Lyse knew whatever happened earlier was about to happen again—and this time, they were right beside the source. The last moments of her previous life flashed before her eyes, and anxious what-ifs about what came next ran through her mind.
As Lyse realized she needed to run, Sidis called her name and extended his hand. She took hold of him, and he dragged her in a sprint toward the villa entrance. Alcede and Egbert followed close behind. The moment they made it indoors, the Light unleashed a burst of energy strong enough to be felt physically. The heavy feeling crashed over them in waves. When it was over, Alcede righted himself as Egbert wobbled in place.
“Are you all right, Lyse?” Sidis’s first concern was his fiancée. Both of them were thankfully fine.
“Oh, don’t worry about me or anything,” Alcede groaned as he sat on the ground, clutching his head. “Ugh. It’s as if I’m seasick, but it all hit me at once. How are you doing, Your Majesty?”
“Not great either,” Egbert responded. “But we’ve got two big problems.”
“What, Your Majesty?” Lyse asked.
Egbert pointed at the Light of Origin on the other side of the door. “My clone’s got a clone now.”
Indeed, standing before the Light was a pair of fake emperors with their hands on their hips.
“How uncanny,” Sidis remarked.
“They’re exactly like His Majesty too...” added Alcede.