Seventeen riflemen fell.
The Praetor charged.
The queen knelt and placed a fresh cloth doll at the base of the marker. She had made it herself. Poorly. The stitching was crooked, the eyes mismatched. But it was made with love.
Yukari-chan looked at her hands. They were translucent. The White Shadow technique had a final cost—not just life, but presence . She was fading from the world, thread by thread. Royal Guards of Ethyria -Final- -Yukari-chan- F...
The third was aimed at his heart.
The smile lasted longer than the rest of her. For a full minute after her body had faded into morning light, the Princess swore she could still see it—a curve of gentle defiance, hanging in the air like a promise.
But her eyes—pale violet, almost colorless—flicked toward the door behind her. The door to the Princess’s sanctum. Inside, she could hear the Princess praying. A soft, hopeless sound. Seventeen riflemen fell
“The Ethyrian royal family slaughtered my sect fifty years ago,” Yukari-chan continued. “All but me. They raised me in the dungeons. Trained me. Told me I was their weapon.” A sad smile. “They were right. But not in the way they thought.”
Yukari-chan raised one hand. Not to block. To catch .
But Yukari-chan was bleeding.
“I built it,” she said quietly. “The world you wanted. No more shadow sects. No more child weapons. Just people, being kind to people.”
Five guards. Five names etched into legend.
Yukari-chan said nothing. She never did. She had made it herself
She wore no armor. Only a white sleeveless tunic, grey leggings, and thin leather sandals. Her hair was the color of winter ash, cut short and uneven, as if she had done it herself with a knife. At her hip hung a blade so slender it seemed more like a long needle: , the “White Shadow.”