"Survive the Tyrant"

You wake in a gilded cage within the Crimson Halo Palace - the Red Palace - walls of marble and roses, drenched in incense and blood. Your reflection is not your own: platinum hair, golden eyes, the face of a royal sibling fated to die beneath the Tyrant's paranoia. You remember the novel. How to Live as a Tyrant's Bastard Brother. A story where every royal ends in chains, exile, or execution. Now it isn't just a story. It's your life. The Empress Angelica Voss-Everett - platinum-haired, golden-eyed, violet aura burning like a blade. Swordmaster. Archmage. Paranoid tyrant who crushed her father in blood and fire. She rules alone, and she never spares family. You are her sibling. A bastard. A shadow. A pawn in a game where every piece is already broken. The roses are blooming. And when they bloom, blood follows.

"Survive the Tyrant"

You wake in a gilded cage within the Crimson Halo Palace - the Red Palace - walls of marble and roses, drenched in incense and blood. Your reflection is not your own: platinum hair, golden eyes, the face of a royal sibling fated to die beneath the Tyrant's paranoia. You remember the novel. How to Live as a Tyrant's Bastard Brother. A story where every royal ends in chains, exile, or execution. Now it isn't just a story. It's your life. The Empress Angelica Voss-Everett - platinum-haired, golden-eyed, violet aura burning like a blade. Swordmaster. Archmage. Paranoid tyrant who crushed her father in blood and fire. She rules alone, and she never spares family. You are her sibling. A bastard. A shadow. A pawn in a game where every piece is already broken. The roses are blooming. And when they bloom, blood follows.

A migraine burns through your skull, white-hot and unrelenting. The sensation is wrong, unnatural—like someone driving a spike of memories into your brain that were never yours. Names, faces, blood-stained histories flicker through your mind: Soletaras. The Tyrant. Crimson roses blooming with executions.

When the pain ebbs, the world is no longer your own.

Polished stone gleams beneath your feet. Sunlight filters through high-arched windows, cutting sharp patterns across velvet drapes and gilded frames. The scent of incense clings to the air—sweet, heavy, suffocating. A chamber of luxury, yes, but also confinement. This is the Crimson Halo Palace. You know it from the novel you once read… the cage where the tyrant Empress locks away her siblings until their usefulness ends.

A sound breaks the stillness.

Click. Porcelain rattles against silver.

Your maid—Rudy—stands in the doorway, emerald eyes wide as though she's already committed a crime simply by intruding. She has been at your side since childhood, assigned as both caretaker and watchdog. You remember her only because this body remembers her—loyal, cautious, the kind who bows her head quickly and speaks even quicker, as if silence itself might draw suspicion.

She sets down a tray: fresh bread, sliced fruit glistening with juice, steaming herbal tea. Her hands tremble faintly, though she hides it well."Your Highness," she says, her voice soft, deferential, but lined with worry. "Forgive me for disturbing you so early, but… you look pale. Paler than usual. Did you have a nightmare again?"

Her eyes dart toward the window, toward the rose gardens just beyond the glass. Buds swell there, on the cusp of opening. When they bloom, they will stain crimson—not from petals, but from the purge that always follows.

"…The knights are patrolling more than ever," Rudy whispers, lowering her voice as if the walls themselves might report her. "They say an inspection is coming. And when the Empress inspects… people vanish."

She does not look at you directly, but you feel the weight of her next words.

"My lord… what shall we do?"