A few steps, and at last, he couldn’t hold on any longer.

The stone slipped from his fingers.

"Ha! Looks like fate really doesn’t want you wielding that sword," Svartulf remarked. "Very well. I see now — you’re no friend to the elves. Your soul is steeped in darkness. And so, you wish to serve me? Even after losing your hand because of me?"

"If..." Makishima struggled to form the words — "if my choice is between death and serving you, my lord, then I choose service."

"Very wise, human. Pity not all of your kind share your pragmatism."

Svartulf bent down and picked up Alvstein himself.

Makishima forced himself to focus through the red haze of agony, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. And to his surprise, he saw the Dark Lord calmly fit the stone into the sword.

"Did you think I couldn't touch it either?" Svartulf smirked. "Fairy tales. You know the legend — I stole this from the elves. How do you suppose I did that? It doesn’t harm me."

"And yet you kept it as far from yourself as possible..." Makishima thought. But the thought barely had time to form before slipping away — he was in no state for sharp deductions. The pain was so unbearable that he was nearly ready to bite offwhat remained of his scorched hand.

"Ironic, isn’t it?" Svartulf mused. "I can wield a sword forged for a hero, and you cannot. A fine weapon, truly. Perhaps I’ll keep it. Whatever its original purpose, it frames the stone beautifully."

"A masterpiece, indeed," Makishima murmured, forcing his voice to remain steady — not to betray the fury or the pain clawing at his throat, but to sound smooth, almost flattering. "A shame Prince El isn’t here to see it."

For the first time, he saw a flicker of real emotion on Svartulf’s perpetually indifferent face. Amusement. Cruel, vindictive amusement.

"Oh, he’ll see it. I will kill the prince with this very blade. If his grandfather were alive to witness it, he’d weep so bitterly the heavens themselves would shatter."

That was the reaction Makishima had been hoping for when he mentioned L’s name — but in truth, it had been a blind guess. At this point, he was improvising more than strategizing. Alvstein had been his last great gamble. He’d bet everything on the stone solving his problems for him.

And now, the stone and the sword were in Svartulf’s hands. The Dark Lord showed no sign of pain, none of the unbearable torment that the legend swore Alvstein would inflict upon him.

Either the legend was a lie (which was impossible — it was written into the very fabric of this story)… or there was something crucial Makishima was failing to understand.

"I want to see it, my lord," he said suddenly. "If no one bears witness to El’s death, how will the elves ever know the terror of it?"

Svartulf had dismissed his guards before retrieving Alvstein — he was fiercely protective of his secret vault.

The Dark Lord gave a quiet chuckle and waved a hand in permission. Fine. Follow me.

It seemed that, after the Alvstein incident, Svartulf had begun to trust him — at least enough to lower his guard.

And really, why wouldn’t he? What was there to fear from a man with a mangled stump for a hand? Or from a prisoner, half-starved and chained?

Makishima’s last hope now lay in the idea that maybe L could do something.

To piece it all together — the stone, the sword, and the prince — like the pieces of a puzzle.

Maybe a foolish hope. But it was the only one he had left.

When he stepped into the cell, his heart plummeted.

The light of the enchanted stone, now set into the sword’s hilt, illuminated every corner of the dungeon, and Makishima saw the elven prince. He was barely conscious, his body little more than a mass of wounds wherever the tattered remains of his once-beautiful silver-white garments failed to cover him.

"Words cannot express the joy of this reunion, prince," Svartulf said. "You look so much like your grandfather... as if his very soul had passed into you. But your grandfather was wiser than you. To think you actually believed you could kill me with this useless scrap of iron."

The insults poured down in a steady stream, but the prince did not so much as glance at Svartulf. L was looking only at Makishima — his eyes unbearably black, enormous with hatred.

"Before you die, know this — your human friend has betrayed you," Svartulf said, reading L’s emotions perfectly and seizing the opportunity to twist the knife. "He is nothing but a coward and a wretch, unworthy of the friendship granted to him by the noblest of elves."

Makishima wanted to look away from the prince’s face. He tried to look away. But he couldn't.

The absurdity of the setting made the whole scene even more revolting. This was supposed to be a lighthearted tale about magic, swords, and heroes, yet it had twisted into a nightmare with no awakening. The thought flashed through his mind: this is the end. He had lost. He was trapped here, in this nauseatingly cliché text, in this cardboard fortress of Darkness, filled to the brim with horrors that were all too real. And L was about to die.

What was worse — dying, or spending every day trembling for his life, catering to the whims of a mad, immortal Dark Lord?

Perhaps, before long, Makishima would envy L’s fate.

But at this moment, he was willing to give almost anything for the prince to survive.

He wasn’t sure if what he was feeling deserved the grand description of his heart bleeding, but one thing was certain — he didn’t want this to be his final memory of L: a bleeding half-corpse, eyes filled with hatred. The stench of pain and fear thick in the air.

And, let’s be honest, the sour taste of guilt on his tongue.

"Do you know what happens next?" Svartulf went on. "You die, Prince El. And you die by the sword your kin forged to destroy me. My only regret is that your grandfather isn't here to witness it."

At last, L turned to look at Svartulf. And then — quietly, but firmly, with a dignity that should have been impossible in his state — he said:

"It makes no difference how one dies. The death dealt by a sacred weapon is the same as the death dealt by any other. But if nothing else, I can take comfort in the fact that by bringing this sword here, I forced you — monster — to feel, if only for a short moment, like an ordinary man again. My grandfather told me... for you, there is no torment worse than that."

Svartulf lunged forward in a fury, closing the distance between them.

And that was when Makishima finally understood.

An ordinary man.

Shougo Silver-Tongue?

More likely, Shougo the Fool. Shougo the Utter, Unparalleled Idiot.

To be fair, the prince could have been a little more upfront with me, he thought.

Svartulf’s magic didn’t work near Alvstein. That was the stone’s secret. It didn’t cause him physical pain, but it robbed him of power.

Makishima’s right hand — the one that had grasped Alvstein from the box — was now nothing but a charred stump. So he reached into his pocket with his left.

Fantasy novels usually handled this sort of thing with far more grandeur.

Dark Lords were supposed to be slain by elven swords with unpronounceable names. The hero should have been a noble elf, not some highwayman he picked up along the way. And, of course, a proper epic hero would never strike his enemy with a cowardly stab in the back.

But Makishima had long since realized that epics were not his genre.

And Svartulf — so fixated on the elven blade and the enchanted stone — had conveniently overlooked the fact that Makishima might have another weapon on him.

The knife slid into Svartulf’s throat as smoothly as into butter.

If there was one thing Makishima Shogo excelled at — aside from overthinking, self-loathing, and running his mouth — it was handling small, bladed weapons.

The elven prince’s eyes widened in shock — he had clearly not expected this outcome. In fact, he had probably long since stopped expecting any outcome at all.

"So you really are... a hero...?" Svartulf rasped. Blood gushed from the gaping wound that stretched from ear to ear.

"What did you think?" Makishima said, his voice edged with dark satisfaction. He knelt down, grabbing the Dark Lord’s head by the hair.

"Then why... did the stone burn your hand?"

Makishima shrugged.

"There’s not much in life that’s purely black or white. I am a criminal. My soul is dark enough that I could stand there and watch the prince suffer, thinking it would bring us closer to our goal. But, as you yourself said — you don’t need heaven’s blessing to kill someone."

Svartulf let out one last, wet gurgle and died.

...And so, not by sword, but by cunning — and by the strength of courage, loyalty, and friendship — Svartulf the Cruel was defeated. Not even his dark sorcery could save him.

The moment he perished, the sinister force that bound men to his will dissipated. As if waking from a deep slumber, the people in the fortress looked around in bewilderment, realizing where they were and what they had been doing.

No mortal knows the hour of his own demise, and where one falls, another may find eternal glory.

Let us therefore give praise to the two heroes who dared to stand against Svartulf for the sake of restoring peace and prosperity to the Two Kingdoms!

"I told you I wouldn’t let you die in this dungeon, my prince," Makishima said, doing his best to inject some genuine remorse into the painfully clichéd line.

The moment he freed L from his shackles, the prince — without a word — punched him square in the jaw.

And hard, too, considering he looked like he was barely clinging to life.

His eyes were wild, almost feral. He pounced on Makishima like a cat, straddling him, knees digging into his ribs, and started punching him in the face — mouth, nose, cheekbones.

Blood gushed from Makishima’s nose, pooling in his mouth, the taste so familiar he almost felt déjà vu. It was just like with Kogami.

Except this time, he actually felt guilty. That hadn’t been a factor in his fights with Kogami.

He barely fought back — maybe threw a few half-hearted punches out of instinct, but mostly just raised his hands to soften the blows.

Eventually, he managed to twist free and shove L off him.

They both sat there, battered and breathless, and that was when they noticed—

Makishima’s hand was no longer burned. L’s wounds were gone.

And surrounding them were no longer the dark stone walls of Svartulf’s dungeon, but the familiar bookshelves of the Library of Babel.

Two pages slipped from the book of elves and swords, fluttering down to the floor as softly as fallen feathers.