What happens if Napoleon Bonaparte is resurrected in a fantasy world to save a whole continent from a Demon Lord?
A moment after his death, the former ruler of Europe receives a visit from the mysterious Faucheur, who proposes him to reborn in anoth...
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The drum tolled like a clock the endless march of the condemned towards the gallows.
One by one, all the rebels who had not died in battle or hadn't found the courage to end their lives were taken out of the cages, and escorted by a handful of guards along the short road towards the gallows in the central square of Maligrad.
No ropes or pyres. They were still nobles, in some cases real military heroes, and at least they deserved the honor of a quick death.
Aria, who observed the executions from the terrace of a palace, found such a complex and formal ceremony almost absurd; the Empire never contradicted itself, not even in the way it dispensed justice towards traitors.
Baron Severus and his daughter were in a separate cage, and they would be the last.
Severus had asked to be able to go to the gallows before Ophelia, and to be spared at least the pain of seeing his only remaining daughter die, but the Senate had been ruthless; the rebel leader would die last, after being forced to watch the end of all his followers. And for him alone there would not be the quick blade of an axe, but the long agony of hanging.
After almost three hours of uninterrupted performances we were now close to the end; the people, who at the beginning had greeted every single blow of the ax with a roar, were now almost bored, and it seemed that most of them had remained there only to be able to say one day that they were present when the most infamous of traitors had met his rightful end.
Ophelia looked like a statue of ice, but when there were only a handful of heads left before her turn came, she abandoned herself in desperate tears in her father's arms, who held her close, gently caressing her head.
Faced with that scene, Aria had a sort of epiphany; her mind began to travel, recalling memories that certainly couldn't be defined as pleasant, but which had contributed to making her what she was.
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Aria's childhood couldn't be called a happy one.
Her mother, in addition to being in poor health, did not pay much attention to her and was often unfriendly, as if she did not really consider Aria her daughter, or did not want to take care of her.
