Chapter 296
Lion’s Castle...
Once the best knight academy in the empire, it was a place where young talent across the continent dreamed of enrolling. Back then, students swarmed the sprawling campus, and every year brought with it new faces and fresh graduates.
The lion statue remembered it clearly: the sight of thousands of students on the Stage of Proof, moving as one. In five years' time, those youths, once unpolished gems, gleamed with the grace and poise and skill of full-fledged knights.
Next year’s children too... I’m looking forward to it!
The Stage of Proof... Only for entrance examinations and graduation ceremonies was it used; aside from those two days, the grounds were located in the most secluded corner of Lion’s Castle. Almost no one came to visit, and the wind and rain accompanied the lion statue from one year to the next.
It was a lonely existence.
But it was not without purpose.
Even if only a glimpse, to see those baby-faced youths return as young knights was not only the lion’s statue's greatest joy—but also its greatest gift, as before its eternal eyes, all things live on: the flourishing of an era, the burning hearts of the knights, their towering intent—the lion statue remembered it all.
But following the fall of the empire, this single joy, that final purpose, was stolen.
Gone were the students and teachers, and years passed in silence, followed by decades.
Then centuries.
On the day that the continent shook, and the heavens roared with the fury of warring gods, the lion’s statue thought little of it. Even as the continent splintered and Lion’s Castle was pulled into another dimension, the lion’s statue remained numb. After all, it had already lost its purpose. Only an endless sea of solitude awaited.