[Section One: The Introduction and the Twin]

The general who slaughtered an empir before his beard was fully grown.

In the year 196 of the Carnival Calendar, the world fractured. The Aquarialyn Empire collided with the Icardian Empire in a merciless saga that ended in a massacre. Callisto Aquarialyn crushed them utterly.

A youth of only seventeen autumns, yet he was a two-legged monster. They nicknamed him "The Empire's Mad Dog" because his thirst for blood was unquenchable, and his blade was never sheathed except in the chests of kings.

When Icardia fell to its knees, he spat his condition in its face:

"Three billion gold coins!"

A price capable of drying up the seas of gold across the nine continents. The stabbed empire was unable to pay, so he ripped out its very heart... its crown prince, Jayden Icardian. He was offered as a humiliated sacrifice in exchange for a fragile ten-year truce—no more.

Why did the butcher Callisto accept?

Firstly, out of his own madness; he took pleasure in the way it gnawed at his back.

On the day the hostage was handed over, Princess Giselle was weeping not tears, but blood—a river of spilled rubies from her pitch-black eyes. She was seeing her brother off, knowing he was walking into a slaughterhouse.

She was fifteen, yet she was venom steeped in the body of a girl; an executioner if she drew the sword, a tyrant if she whispered magic, and a mastermind if she spoke of war. She surpassed her brother, and she terrified her father!

The king realized the abyss ahead: war would return in exactly ten years. And even if the empress's womb cried out with a valiant crown prince, he would be a mere nine-year-old child when the drums of war beat; a child on the throne, and a throne with no sword to protect it.

In a moment of mad despair, the emperor killed his daughter; he buried Giselle and resurrected a ghost named Jayden! He dressed her in the identity of her twin brother, exploiting the curse of resemblance that used to make the servants stammer between them. The war of succession would not allow them the "luxury of weeping"...

The empress slit her wrist on that ominous night, killed by a rumor that slithered like a snake through the palace corridors:

"Jayden... was slaughtered in captivity!"

On that night, Giselle ascended the throne, the mask of Prince Jayden suffocating her face. Before a crowd that believed their crown prince was alive and well, she vowed her soul to the devil. She swore to strip Callisto’s flesh from his bones, and to turn his empire into ashes scattered by the winds of the graveyards.

[Section One: The Introduction and the Twin]

The general who slaughtered an empire before his beard was fully grown.

In the year 196 of the Carnival Calendar, the world fractured. The Aquarialyn Empire collided with the Icardian Empire in a merciless saga that ended in a massacre. Callisto Aquarialyn crushed them utterly.

A youth of only seventeen autumns,

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