Searing pain filled Trajan’s mind. He wasn’t dead, but the spear in his chest had done extreme amounts of damage. His armor and ribcage had kept him alive, despite the titanic power packed into that attack, diverting the tip of the spear away from his heart and into a lung instead. It was still a serious injury and he was in danger of bleeding out if he wasn’t given time to administer first-aid, but Trajan could still fight, at least for a little while.

In an instant, Trajan suppressed the pain he was feeling with a swift application of magic power, while also kickstarting the healing process. He could vaguely hear the sounds of screaming and fighting from outside and knew that the fifteen knights he’d left outside were in just as bad a situation as he was, so he had no time to lose. He had no time to dig around in his soul realm and apply a healing spell or drink a healing potion, either.

Struggling back to his feet, Trajan glared at the Earthshaker Paladin, the man who had thrown the spear and killed the other four knights Trajan had taken into the warehouse. The Paladin himself stood there, watching Trajan summon the strength to stand.

“Come on, old man,” the Paladin taunted, “that’s not all the fight that the great and mighty Consul of the East possesses, is it?”

“Petrus Duronius,” Trajan growled with as much disgust as he could express. “The bait with Leon Ursus, that was false, wasn’t it?” Trajan asked, his tone low and dangerous. He ripped the spear out of his chest and stood upright, the blood flowing from his wound already beginning to slow. If he could keep the Paladin talking for just a few more minutes, Trajan would be in a much better position to fight; he needed every moment to prepare himself that he could get if he was going to win in a duel with a seventh-tier mage.

“Of course it was, no one seriously cares about some savage from the Northern Vales!” the Paladin said. “But his name had a surprising use: it was already known that you would do just about anything for a knight under your command, but when it comes to that boy, it seems you have a particular soft spot. That made it easy enough to lure you out here with minimal guards.”

Trajan breathed a silent sigh of relief. He didn’t think that anyone would willingly go after Leon and risk provoking Heaven’s Eye, but such a threat hardly mattered much to vampires who weren’t an active part of society to begin with. Now that he knew that his enemies were a part of the Kingdom, it meant that Leon was about as safe as he could reasonably be under these circumstances. Still, they used his name, and that brought Trajan here.

Normally, in a situation like this, Trajan would’ve wanted at least a few hours to prepare. He’d have needed overwhelming force to take down a seventh-tier mage, as most had enough power that pinning them down and bringing that force to bear upon them was quite difficult. Rare was the mage who made it to the seventh-tier without damn fine skills in battle, though as the Bluefire Guild founder proved, not unheard of.

The Earthshaker Paladin was most definitely a seventh-tier mage who had reached his position through training and battle—though Trajan knew for a fact that there was more to the story than that.

Regardless of how he got the power, though, to Trajan it only mattered that Earthshaker had the power and the skill to use it. He prepared himself as best as he could, hardening his skin into stone and letting the power of the Sacred Bull flow through him. Trajan felt his muscles inflate and energy course through his body; his strength surged with the power of the Sacred Bull, and his already incredibly impressive musculature became even bigger.

At this point, the Earthshaker Paladin was done waiting. His smiling face turned sharp and he darted forward with speed greater than what his earth magic would imply, slamming his fist into Trajan’s breastplate. It seemed to rain fingernail-sized wyvern scales in the warehouse as Trajan’s armor bent inward. Trajan himself was thrown back, though he managed to keep his feet beneath him even as his chest wound was ripped open again.

Earthshaker paused again, grinning at Trajan like a madman, clearly enjoying every second of this.

Trajan scowled—not even he could’ve put such a huge dent in his armor, and beyond that, the armor was beyond expensive. To see it so quickly battered was disheartening, to say the least.

“Why don’t you lay down and accept your death?” Earthshaker suggested. “That would make things a lot easier, though I would personally prefer it if you were to resist a little…”

“Julius should’ve made you a head shorter back then…” Trajan growled, and he stomped a foot onto the stone floor of the warehouse. A massive stone spike burst from the ground in front of the Paladin, but it immediately flattened and halted on its journey toward Earthshaker’s chest as if it had hit an invisible wall.

But that new wall of stone was large enough to block Trajan from the Paladin’s view, and in the instant that Earthshaker dismissively caused the flattened spike to shatter and collapse into sand, Trajan waved his hand and ripped up a chunk of the floor and hurled it at the Paladin. Again, the Paladin easily froze it in front of his face, but the chunk of stone, perhaps half the size of the Paladin’s head, had gotten quite close to smashing in his nose.

And then it exploded less than a foot away from the Paladin, penetrating the Paladin’s casual defenses and showering him in stone shrapnel.

The Earthshaker Paladin screamed, but when the dust cleared, he was revealed to have only sustained superficial wounds; a few scratches on his face, some torn clothing, barely enough to draw blood.

But Trajan wasn’t waiting around, he knew that in terms of magic power, he was completely outclassed. Rather, he used these two attacks to close with the Paladin, trusting in his prodigious strength enhanced by the power of the Sacred Bull to carry him through at least to survival, if not to victory.

Trajan’s armored fists fell upon the enraged Paladin. Earthshaker wasn’t armored, but his skin hardened just as Trajan’s had, and he raised his arms to block as he planted his feet and assumed a defensive stance, lowering his center of gravity.

The first of Trajan’s punches was aimed at Earthshaker’s jaw, and his right fist bore down upon the Paladin like a meteor. The Paladin stepped back, avoiding the blow. Trajan continued with an uppercut with his left, but again, Earthshaker nimbly stepped back and avoided it. The Prince then threw himself forward, intending to shoulder-bash Earthshaker, but the Paladin twisted out of the way and kicked Trajan behind the right knee.

Fortunately, Trajan remained standing, but pain lanced through his knee. Still, as he worked himself up more and more, his muscles seemed to vibrate with the power of the Bull flowing through them and Trajan’s fury grew deeper—the Prince barely felt pain in his current state. Frost was already forming on many surfaces of the warehouse from the sheer amount of killing intent both combatants were emitting, but now the force of their auras began to have a physical effect upon the world, pushing away dust, small wood splinters, and little bits of debris like powerful wind.

Not that Trajan noticed any of this happening. His blood burned, and he began to lose his reason. He charged at Earthshaker, not intending to let the Paladin retake the initiative. A seventh-tier mage was always going to be stronger than a sixth-tier mage, but Trajan had the blood of the Sacred Bull on his side. This fight was more even than the Earthshaker Paladin would ever admit.

Trajan sent another punch rocketing towards Earthshaker’s face, and as the Paladin raised an arm to block, Trajan suddenly opened his fingers and grabbed the Paladin’s forearm. Instantly recognizing the danger he was in, Earthshaker pulled back, anchoring his feet in the ground with earth magic and yanked hard on Trajan’s arm. The Prince didn’t budge, though he was forced to release the Paladin’s arm to avoid being thrown over Earthshaker’s shoulder and onto spikes that were rapidly forming behind them. But twisting like that took a moment or two to recover from, and Trajan once more charged the Paladin.

The Prince hit the Paladin like a ton of bricks, slamming into his midsection and lifting Earthshaker off the ground by about a foot or so. Trajan kept charging, crashing through the spikes behind the Paladin and hurling him into the wall with a tremendous crash, almost knocking the stone wall down with the force of Earthshaker’s impact.

But Earthshaker fell from the impact point, landed on his feet like nothing happened, and conjured a small palisade of rock spikes to keep Trajan at bay.

“Not this time!” he roared, and he snapped his fingers, causing every piece of metal in the warehouse to rise up into the air, hover for a moment, and fired them all at Trajan.

Trajan found himself assaulted on all sides, but with the Sacred Bull’s power coursing through his veins, it was all he could do to maintain the presence of mind to keep his stoneskin active. He did nothing else to defend himself from these attacks. Instead, he projected his magic into the stone floor and tried to take control of the ground around Earthshaker and the wall behind him. However, the Paladin’s magic power was already there and easily fought him off.

Trajan grimaced as nails, hinges, and other bits of metal began to tear into him, the dulled pain bringing some amount of clarity back to his mind. He acted quickly, taking control of the ground around him rather than around the Paladin and instantly shattered the stone into sand. With a wave of his hand, this sand rose up and began to spin around Earthshaker’s stone palisade in an attempt to rip away the Paladin’s stony skin. Earthshaker’s defenses were up, though, and the sand spun uselessly around him, not even blinding him with the Paladin’s magic senses also projected.

“NOT GOOD ENOUGH, OLD MAN!” the Paladin roared in glee.

Trajan roared something utterly incomprehensible as his rage grew with tiny injuries piling up. His stoneskin held, his battered armor did its job, but neither were perfect, and Earthshaker was powerful. A nail here and a sliver of iron there would get through, leaving Trajan bleeding from a couple dozen small cuts. None of these injuries would be even remotely life-threatening on their own, and given Trajan’s power, many of them instantly scabbed over and began to heal, but Trajan could do little to stop them from continuing to add up.

The wound in his chest, on the other hand, continued to leak blood like an open faucet, and blood loss was already starting to take its toll on the Prince, severely weakening his magic power.

“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me, Trajan!” Earthshaker called out from within the cyclone of sand that still swirled around him, looking for any weakness in his defense. “After all these years and all these enemies we’ve fought, it’s me who gets to kill you!”

Again, Trajan could make no noise other than a harsh, guttural roar with his blood so stimulated. The Bull within him was raging to the point that he didn’t even notice that the screams and the sounds of fighting outside had quieted. All he saw was the Paladin in front of him, and the only thing he could think about was his all-consuming desire to rip Earthshaker apart with his bare hands.

Trajan charged one more time, completely disregarding the stone palisade around the Paladin. His massive frame crashed into the stone spikes, obliterating many of them, but Earthshaker simply jumped right out of his defensive line. Trajan’s sand followed him, but Earthshaker didn’t let his defenses lapse and the sand still couldn’t get close enough to him to start doing any real damage.

The Paladin landed on his feet and crouched down to grab something, while at the same time Trajan burst out of the remains of the palisade and barreled toward him with all the fury and power of a raging bull. He was like an unstoppable machine, and there was the briefest of moments when his killing intent got to Earthshaker and the Paladin fully believed that nothing would stop Trajan.

However, Earthshaker’s powerful aura and killing intent reasserted itself but a moment later, and he stood back up with his spear back in hand, the tip still red with Trajan’s blood.

‘This is it, you old bastard,’ Earthshaker thought with satisfaction, and he stabbed forward with the spear less than a second before Trajan would’ve hit him.

Trajan’s momentum was enough that he wasn’t thrown back, but he was completely stopped in his tracks. There was no pain, but the Bull’s blood rage faded from his mind and his gaze fell from the smugly grinning Earthshaker Paladin and down to the spear sticking out of his chest.

At such close range, the spear had about as much trouble tearing through Trajan’s already damaged breastplate as it would’ve through a single sheet of paper. It penetrated the wyvern scales, the metal, and the cloth gambeson, tearing through the already damaged enchantments that had been designed to stop such a thing from happening. It pierced Trajan’s stoneskin like it was still soft flesh and it broke through Trajan’s ribs, the last true defense the Prince had in its way.

And it impaled the Prince’s heart, the gateway to Trajan’s soul realm.

Trajan’s legs were the first to give out. He collapsed onto the floor, barely able to hold himself upright. He limply grasped the upper haft of the spear, but even with the strength of the Sacred Bull, Trajan couldn’t pull it out. He’d simply lost too much blood, and he hadn’t the strength anymore.

His soul realm was gone. The instant the spear impaled Trajan’s heart, it had been utterly destroyed, with his magic body still within.

Trajan felt cold and began to shiver. It was a feeling that he hadn’t felt in a long time, a true chill that seeped into his bones. He tried to summon some magic power to fight it off as his surroundings seemed to fade away, but his body wasn’t responding as it should.

His mind began to grow cloudy once more, but this time it wasn’t rage that was the cause, it was… something else that he wasn’t quite aware of, everything just felt too detached. His body didn’t even feel real anymore.

His vision went dark, and images began to flash through his mind’s eye. He thought first of his father, Julius Sextus, dead for almost ninety years by now. He had been strong and fought off a great number of enemies, both internal and external. He had ruled over a golden age that Trajan had known he lacked the skills to preserve if he were to succeed his father.

Time began to bleed into itself, and for a moment Trajan thought he was there in the throne room the day he made the single best decision of his life: renouncing his claim to the throne. It had been done with a light heart and absolute certainty that what he was doing was the right thing. He knew that his younger brother would make a better King, even if Trajan was a better warrior. And even that was to later be called into question as his younger brother, Julius Septimius, passed him by in the arts of magic to ascend to the seventh-tier.

Trajan wished he could speak with his brother again and consult with him about the challenges he was facing in the Eastern Territories, but for some reason that he couldn’t quite remember, that wasn’t an option anymore.

Another face flashed through his mind, that of Dame Minerva. She was an intelligent woman, had a wonderful grasp of the Bull Kingdom’s bureaucracy, and was strong on top of that. If he hadn’t vowed to himself to support his brother in all that he could and never begin a cadet branch of House Taurus that might challenge the claims of Julius’ children, he might’ve had a thing with Minerva. However, they never tried, and right now, Trajan couldn’t help but feel some amount of regret.

At least, he thought, they had been friends.

Many more faces went through his mind, those of friends both long dead and those who still walked in the land of the living, including Kyros Raime, Constantine, Aquillius, and the Bronze and Penitent Paladins. However, the last face he saw in his mind was that of a young boy, the spitting image of a younger Kyros.

Leon.

Trajan had always supported House Raime just as House Raime had always supported his family. It had been a terrible blow to Royal authority when one of their most powerful supporting families had been wiped out, and an almost crippling blow to King Julius. Thinking of both Kyros and Julius, Trajan felt shame, regret, and immense loss. Two of the closest people to him in life had been lost so close to one another, and they could never be replaced.

And then into his life walked Leon, one of the last connections the old Prince had to his younger days, to his glory days when the Bull Kings were strong and the Bull Kingdom’s power was unquestioned. Now, so many things had changed, he was leaving so many things undone. He was terrified about what might happen to Leon with him gone. They hadn’t known each other for very long, relatively speaking, but Trajan already loved that boy like the son he never had. Perhaps it was overcompensation on Trajan’s part due to some guilt that he felt for the death of Leon’s family, but Trajan could no longer say, his days of reflection and self-examination were over.

Trajan slumped over on the ground, no longer possessing the strength to remain upright. His fingers feebly twitched a few times, and he fell still.

The last feeling Trajan ever had was regret and fear. Regret that he couldn’t do anything more for Leon and House Raime, and fear that without him, the Bull Kingdom would soon break into civil war.

He could only hope that August was up to the task, that Leon could prove himself a worthy heir to House Raime, and that Justin Isynos—or whoever had been responsible for the murders of Kyros, Alexander, Artorias, and so many others who served House Raime—was brought to justice. He had done what he could, and he knew it wasn’t enough.

It wasn’t nearly enough.

Trajan’s mind went dark.

He took his last breath, then died.