Chapter 144| What Remains After

The tournament officials called the match within the hour, though the announcement, when it finally came, carried none of the triumphant weight such declarations usually held.

"Given the unauthorized device’s deployment and the resulting endangerment of spectators," the official statement read, delivered by a visibly shaken tournament administrator to a stadium still largely, hauntingly silent, "Golden Reckoning is disqualified in full. Fallen Crown is declared the Ascension Tournament’s champion."

Nobody cheered.

Allen barely registered the announcement at all, still seated on the arena floor where medical staff had finally, gently convinced him to release Haruki’s body into their care, his own hands still faintly trembling, Myria’s arms wrapped around him with fierce, protective warmth that offered no real comfort against the hollow, devastating weight settling into his chest.

"Allen." Myria’s voice, careful and low, finally broke through the numbness. "We need to move. The medics need space to work."

Allen let her guide him up, barely aware of his own legs carrying him, and found Vivian and Everlyn waiting close by, both visibly shaken, Irene standing slightly apart, her fists clenched tight enough that Allen could see the effort it cost her not to turn her considerable, grieving fury toward Edward directly.

"Where is he?" Allen asked, voice hoarse.

"WHRIB custody," Myria said quietly. "They took him the moment the device finally stopped discharging. He didn’t resist."

They found Edward, hours later, in a secured holding room within the stadium’s own administrative wing, WHRIB investigators already beginning the process of formal questioning, and Allen insisted, despite Myria’s own considerable reservations, on being present when they finally pressed him for answers.

Edward looked smaller somehow, stripped of his earlier golden armor, seated at a bare metal table with his hands folded tightly in his lap, and when he looked up and found Allen standing in the doorway, something raw and devastated crossed his face.

"I didn’t know," he said immediately, voice cracking. "Allen, I swear, I didn’t know it would do that. He told me it was safe. He told me—"

"Who?" Allen asked, though some cold, sinking certainty had already begun settling into place.

Edward’s jaw worked silently for a moment before the answer finally came, barely above a whisper. "The butler."

The room went very still.

"Reginald gave you the device," Allen said slowly, needing to hear it stated plainly despite already, somehow, knowing.

"He came to my quarters the night before the final," Edward said, the words tumbling out now in a desperate, unraveling rush. "Said he’d acquired something that could level the gap between us. Said it would just be temporary, enough to finally prove myself. I was so tired of always losing to you, Allen, of being the family’s permanent disappointment beside your considerable, impossible growth, and he made it sound so simple, so reasonable—"

"A boy is dead, Edward," Allen said, the words scraping raw against his own throat. "Haruki is dead because you decided proving something to me mattered more than considering what could go wrong."

Edward flinched as though struck, tears finally spilling free. "I know," he said. "I know, and there’s nothing I can say that makes that acceptable. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life. But I need you to believe me, I never wanted this. I never wanted anyone to die. I just wanted—" His voice broke entirely. "I just wanted to matter, for once, on my own terms."

The WHRIB investigator, a composed woman named Farrow who’d remained quietly observant throughout the exchange, finally stepped forward. "We’ll need everything you can tell us about this butler," she said. "Full name, appearance, any identifying detail. This device’s origin needs tracing immediately, given what it’s already demonstrated it’s capable of."

Edward nodded, visibly grateful for something concrete to focus on beyond his own devastating guilt, and began, haltingly, providing every detail he could recall — Reginald Cross, the Veton family’s butler for decades, someone Edward had trusted implicitly since childhood, someone who had, apparently, been cultivating exactly this kind of catastrophic opportunity for reasons none of them yet understood.

Allen listened, the cold, sinking certainty from earlier settling into something considerably more alarming as the details accumulated. A butler with access to experimental, dangerous technology. A butler whose calm, patient presence had moved unquestioned through Veton family life for as long as Allen could remember. A butler who had, apparently, orchestrated a considerable, catastrophic tragedy with the same quiet, unhurried composure he’d once used teaching a young Edward how to properly hold a sword.

"This isn’t just family dysfunction anymore," Myria said quietly, once they’d finally stepped outside the holding room, leaving Farrow’s investigation to continue without them. "This is something considerably larger. Someone with access to that kind of technology, embedded that deeply within your family’s trust—"

"I know," Allen said, exhaustion and grief and cold, mounting dread tangling together into something he couldn’t properly untangle. "I need to think. I need—" He stopped, unable to finish the thought, unable to process anything beyond the hollow, aching absence where Haruki’s fierce, unguarded warmth should have still, impossibly, existed.

Vivian’s hand found his shoulder, steady and grounding. "Not tonight," she said gently. "Tonight, we grieve. Whatever this butler’s true purpose turns out to be, it’ll still be there to investigate tomorrow."

Allen let the words settle, drawing what strength he could from his family’s steady, unwavering presence, and allowed himself, finally, in the privacy of their own quiet transport home, to properly, fully break down over everything the day had irrevocably cost — a friendship barely begun, a family’s fractured trust revealed as something considerably more sinister than simple dysfunction, and a tournament victory that felt, in the aftermath of everything it had taken to earn, like the emptiest triumph he’d ever claimed.

"He saved an entire section of that stadium," Allen said quietly, staring out at the city passing beyond the window. "Two hundred people, at least. And somehow the world’s going to remember today as the day Fallen Crown finally won the Ascension Tournament."

"We’ll make sure that’s not all they remember," Myria said firmly, drawing him close. "I promise you that."

Allen nodded, unable to speak further, and let the considerable weight of grief finally, fully settle over him as their transport carried them home through a city that had watched, alongside two point three billion others, exactly how much genuine goodness could cost when the world’s darker currents finally, inevitably came calling.

Somewhere behind them, in the stadium’s now-empty stands, a single, forgotten banner bearing Party Emberline’s modest colors still hung against the railing where Mika and the rest of Haruki’s team had watched their captain give everything he had left, and it would remain there through the night, untouched, until a grounds crew finally, gently took it down the following morning to be kept, at Allen’s own quiet request, as the very first piece of what would eventually become a considerable, permanent memorial.