By all rights, seeing Osita should have struck terror into her heart. She should have fought to escape. He was a stranger, worse, he was the fated enemy of her husband. Yet, the panic vanished. For the first time since the onset of her strange, fractured condition, Taiwo realized she was looking at the elusive, illusionary figure she had desperately been searching for in her mind.

The moment her eyes locked onto his, an overwhelming wave of certainty washed over her, she was safe. He may have been an enemy to the throne, but a deeper, undeniable part of her soul refused to see him as a threat.

A hidden, deeply buried part of her held genuine love for him. Gathering her composure under his calm, steady gaze, Taiwo let her royal breeding take over. She adjusted her posture, wrapping herself in the effortless dignity of a queen.

"I think I am owed an explanation, King Osita," she said, her voice steady and demanding answers.

The tension melted from Osita’s shoulders, and a genuine smile touched his lips. "Please, just refer to me as Osita," he replied softly. "And yes, we indeed have a lot to discuss."

Taiwo subtly raised a brow. His soft, gentle tone caught her off guard, but what surprised her even more was his immediate willingness to explain the situation, a stark jarring contrast to her husband, who had always kept her wrapped in a shroud of secrets and lies.

Meanwhile, back in the world of Nana, Nwadiebeube was completely unraveling.

The king had fallen into a state of absolute madness, pacing like a caged beast. His eyes were wild, and his voice was reduced to a raspy, frantic loop of desperate muttering "Mine... She is mine... Where is my wife?!"

It was during this breakdown that Nwadimma finally made her appearance. She was still visibly battered and worn from her brutal, recent clash with Osita, but her instincts as a guardian remained sharp. Realizing the danger of the king exposing his vulnerability, she reacted with swift, ruthless efficiency. Slipping through the shadows, she struck him down, knocking him unconscious before dragging his limp form away, safely out of the public eye.

This was absolutely not the time for the king to be displaying such fragile weakness. Not now. Not with everything he was planning to orchestrate with the coming religion. To the masses, his image had to remain unblemished, that of an absolute, unbreakable, and dependable leader. The pathetic, broken display he was showing to the people right now threatened to ruin everything they were building.

Nwadimma’s loyalty to the grand plan was absolute, and she was willing to drown any loose ends in blood. Without a hint of hesitation, she went as far as ordering the immediate execution of every single witness who had laid eyes on the king’s breakdown. It was an easy order to cover up, seamlessly blamed on the chaos of the recent assault ,they were simply recorded as tragic casualties of the enemy’s attack.

Having secured the narrative and stabilized the immediate threat to the crown, Nwadimma’s adrenaline finally ran dry. The heavy toll of her brutal battle with Osita caught up to her all at once. Her vision blurred, and her knees buckled as she passed out cold.

With both the king incapacitated and his most ruthless protector unconscious, the weight of the kingdom collapsed onto the shoulders of the crown prince and the remaining three paragons. It was now entirely up to them to pick up the shattered pieces and manage the looming fallout.

A few grueling days bled into one another as every ounce of royal effort was pushed to bring the city back under control. But imposing order was a bitter, uphill battle when the royal palace itself lay in shambles, reduced to a hollow mountain of rubbles.

Yet, because of Nwadimma’s extreme and ruthless actions, the truth remained tightly sealed. Not a single whisper of the king’s madness leaked beyond the ruined walls, leaving the public entirely blind to the rot at the center of the crown. Instead, the sudden devastation served as a brutal awakening, violently reminding the citizens of the king’s previous, baffling orders to prepare for war.

They had all initially dismissed his decrees as a political ruse, a scare tactic. But looking at the smoking ruins of their greatest standing, reality finally set in. A devastating war was indeed standing directly on their doorstep, only it hadn’t begun in a conventional way they had anticipated. There were no marching armies on the horizon, no banners flying. Instead, the opening battle were being fought in a hidden layer of dimensions completely beyond their sight or understanding.

More days crawled by in tense, suffocating silence before Nwadiebeube finally made his public appearance.

The crowd fell completely still as he stepped forward, but the relief they hoped to feel evaporated instantly. Anyone could see from a single glance that he was a changed man. The frantic, desperate beast who had been screaming for his wife was gone, buried beneath a cold, terrifying new demeanor.

Even his own children, who had been anxiously waiting to see him, instinctively recoiled. The moment they saw the unsettling change in their father’s posture and the dead, vacant look in his eyes, they quietly stepped back, creating a distance between themselves and the man on the throne.

Nwadiebeube wasted no time. His first decree was to address the realm. Colossal, glowing projections of the king manifested across the entirety of the kingdom, sparing no corner of his domain. From the smallest, isolated local villages to the bustling, heavily fortified regional towns and the heart of the capital itself, his towering image dominated the skies.

The citizens, along with a sea of foreign spies who were desperate to uncover what had truly transpired within the Omadi kingdom, all stood frozen in rapt attention. When Nwadiebeube finally spoke, his opening words sent a visceral shock through the masses.

"My people," his booming voice resonated across the land. "You all must have seen and heard the tragedy that befell the royal family days ago."

He paused, letting the heavy weight of his words settle over the quieted crowd.

"I must apologize that it took so long for you to hear from me. My time has been entirely spent consoling the survivors and grieving the innocent lives we lost to a sudden, cowardly enemy attack."

Taking a staged, heavy moment to compose himself, Nwadiebeube let his head bow slightly before looking back at the projections. "In this brutal assault, many precious lives were taken from us," he said, his voice dropping to a somber pitch. "And in this attack, our great kingdom has lost someone truly irreplaceable. Our kingdom has lost its Queen. My beloved wife."

A collective, sharp gasp rippled through the thousands of citizens and hidden spies listening across the realm. To the common folk, it was tragic but understandable that lives would be lost in a sudden, high-tier enemy raid. What they were entirely unprepared for, however, was the Queen being counted among the victims.

The entire kingdom knew the staggering amount of resources, military importance, and high-level security the king had poured into protecting her. Whispers had long circulated that up to three of the realm’s legendary Paragons were dedicated solely to her safety. Yet, somehow, against all odds, she had fallen.

Before the rising panic could spiral out of control, Nwadiebeube spoke again, his tone shifting from grief to a dark, driving intensity.

"Forgive me, my words may have painted a bleaker picture than the truth. The Queen’s life has not been ended. Instead, she has been taken. She has been kidnapped by a cowardly foe, and we have every reason to believe she is still alive."

Hearing those words struck an even deeper, more profound shock into the hearts of the already reeling citizens. It was one thing for a life to be cut short in the chaos of battle, but for the Queen to be abducted from the very heart of their stronghold was a humiliation of a completely different magnitude, especially since everyone knew the Queen was currently carrying a child, pregnant with the king’s next child.

Slowly, the stunned silence broke, replaced by a low, rumbling fury. Voices began to rise across the towns and villages, building into an angry, unified roar.

"Who did this?!" the crowds demanded, their shouts echoing through the streets. "Who was it that stole our Queen from us?!"

The fierce chant rippled across the entire domain, a rising tide of popular rage. Almost as if Nwadiebeube could hear the exact moment the collective fury of his people reached its boiling point, he leaned forward into the projection and spoke, cutting through the noise.

"We have successfully identified the perpetrator who stole our Queen away," Nwadiebeube announced, his eyes darkening. "A figure whom we all know far too well. A man we never could have imagined would stoop to such treacherous, low-life actions. It was Osita, the former king of the Osita Kingdom."

The name dropped like a heavy weight over the realm.