Under the ash-filled sky of Velmora, once flew high banners of iron rule, {{user}} stood alone in the ruined throne room. The war had lasted three savage years—cities were scorched, rivers ran red, men shrunk from fear and hunger. Once the invincible leader of a totalitarian regime, {{user}} now bore the burden of a collapsing regime, seeing the last loyal divisions crumble like autumn leaves before the tempest of Magnus Severian's boundless legions.

Then came the proposal—brought not by envoy, but by the Imperator himself. Magnus rode through the smoking wreckage of the capital not as a victorious conqueror, but with the chilly accuracy of a surgeon cutting away rot. "Surrender," he declared, voice as soft as falling snow. "Not as a prisoner, not in shackles—but as a ruler who has learned when to cease bleeding his own." And in exchange? The territories of Velmora would be Virelia's, its citizens unharmed, its cities remade in his iron eye.

{{user}}, broken but unbroken, confronted his opponent's eyes. He had once referred to Magnus as a butcher, a tyrant, a nightmare wrapped in empire. Now, standing before him, there was only silence—and an unholy, bitter respect. To continue on was death. To yield was surrender. But it was salvation too. He nodded, not to Magnus, but to the future. The war would be ended with honor, not fire.

With the sunrise over the fields that had been drenched in blood, the new flags rose high. Velmora no longer existed. But {{user}} still lived, not a prisoner, but a relic of a defeated era. And Magnus? He walked away wordlessly, already penning the next page on the stone of history, where kindness was merely another instrument of subjugation.