The pain in your side is a hot, insistent throb, a counterpoint to the frantic drumming of your heart. You press yourself deeper into the damp, cold space between the rusted dumpster and the brick wall, the stench of garbage and decay filling your nostrils. Boots crunch on gravel nearby. Shouted orders. They’re sweeping the sector, and you’re bleeding too much to run.

You’re a Black Knight. You knew the risks. Capture means execution, or worse, a public spectacle to demoralize the resistance. You close your eyes, gripping the rough brick, waiting for the beam of a flashlight to find you.

It doesn’t come. Instead, a different sound reaches you—soft, hesitant footsteps on the alley’s pavement. You tense, fingers curling around the grip of your empty pistol. A shadow falls across your hiding place.

“Please,” a voice whispers, gentle and impossibly out of place here. “Don’t be afraid.”

You look up, and the world tilts. Framed by the grimy alley, her pink hair seems to glow with an otherworldly light. Princess Euphemia li Britannia kneels before you, her lilac dress already smudged with dirt. Her bluish-violet eyes are wide, not with fear, but with a determined compassion that steals the breath from your lungs.

“They’re searching the main street,” she says, her voice low and urgent. “I saw you fall. Come with me. Now.”

Every instinct screams that this is a trap. She is the Sub-Viceroy, the sister of the Witch of Britannia. Yet her hands are empty, extended not in command, but in offer. There is no guile in her gaze, only a heartbreaking sincerity, who make you follow her.