Lionel was from the house of Saber. The Saber household had been one of the most powerful families of its era... wealth was part of it, but influence was the real currency.

At their height, they’d had over three members positioned across both the High Court and the Supreme Council. That kind of reach didn’t come by accident.

Countless Saber cadets had passed through the Alpha Academy over the years, each one on the path to knighthood, each one another thread in the family’s growing web.

In Yakutsk, the northern human realm, that web had grown dense enough that the Sabers held more real power than the royals. The crown sat on royal heads. The ground belonged to the Sabers.

"Lionel could’ve lived like a king. Actually... he was living like one."

The Scarlet Kins were a threat the Sabers had never seen reason to involve themselves with, and neither Lionel nor any of the family had any interest in changing that.

If they had wanted the power to deal with it, the route was simple and ugly: force an Akuma to pass their Inheritance to a Saber upon death. The Sabers had never needed to go that far. They had other ways of getting what they wanted.

"Come to think of it, Lionel was far too cowardly ever to handle an Inheritance."

Purple shook her head in disbelief.

All that wealth and none of it touched what Lionel actually wanted. He was madly in love with Helen from the Hagne family, and the Hagne family, as it turned out, was the family Purple’s father came from.

The love was one-sided. Helen’s interest lay elsewhere.

Worse still, a family of the Sabers’ standing wasn’t going to leave something as important as marriage to personal feelings. They wanted an alliance with a family of equal power, and they’d already arranged one for Lionel.

The Hagne family had nothing especially distinguished to their name. No great wealth, no seat at any important table.

But Helen had never needed any of that.

Her beauty and character were something that didn’t belong to a family’s standing, the kind that made even gods pause. "Godsend" wasn’t flattery. It was just accurate.

"During that period, the Clerk family faced a dire predicament. The marriage between Lionel and Cindy was of utmost importance to them."

Purple weighed her thoughts for a moment.

"I may have said that wrong. Cindy needed the marriage more than anything, yet Helen stood in her way."

At the time, the Clerk family held two Inheritances between them, and Cindy was one of the beneficiaries. She’d reached Moon Killer rank in four months, a timeline that said everything about her strength that words didn’t need to.

Desperation did what it always does, and it won. Cindy killed Helen.

For the Hagne family, the loss cut deep in more ways than one. Helen had been their quiet investment, the one they believed beauty and character would carry into a dignified marriage and pull the family’s name up with her. That door closed the moment she died.

The love conflict between Helen and Lionel was something the Hagne family had never been made aware of. So when Helen was gone, they were left with a loss they couldn’t explain and no direction to look for answers.

"In truth, Helen never knew just how much Lionel loved her. He rarely spoke, and even after she respectfully refused him, they still kept their friendship intact."

Purple frowned.

"The story is bigger than what I know, so I can’t reveal the details."

The Hagne family never saw Helen’s corpse. When the Royal Knights announced her death, there wasn’t much they could do until a rumor spread mentioning Lionel’s interest in Helen.

"In truth, the Hagne family had little interest in extending that case. They were aware that any move against the Saber family would be futile."

Not everyone in the Hagne family agreed; some went straight to the Sabers with their suspicions. The news of Helen’s death broke Lionel completely.

Some of the Hagne family didn’t believe he was innocent, but that meant nothing to him. He just wanted to find who did it and make them pay.

The Clerk family had no uncertainty about who killed Helen. It was Cindy, and they knew it.

What followed was calculated: flood the world with something larger to focus on, something loud enough that Helen’s death would shrink in comparison, and make certain no thread could be pulled back to Cindy.

"By order of the Clerk family, the Hagne family was exterminated. Only a handful survived, stubborn as they were, and even they were forced to run for their lives."

The room had grown gloomy, and Scar was carrying the weight of it more than anyone. He’d barely known anything about Purple’s father and had never thought much about why she used her mother’s surname instead of his.

He just hadn’t expected to find out this way. Through an ancient tablet, of all things.

What he couldn’t piece together was the connection... what any of this had to do with the Chosen One tablet.

"With the Hagne family wiped out, the situation for the Saber family and Lionel grew even bleaker. Still, Lionel’s fury left him no rest."

Purple gave her words a beat.

"If Lionel ever got hold of the Chosen One Tablet, it would be about now, since he soon discovered that Cindy and the Clerk family were behind the massacre."

What Lionel did next didn’t just change things for him. It changed things for everyone. The Karma Era: The necromancer’s attack and the Karma Games. Nearly ninety years ago, it all began with one man’s grief pointed in the wrong direction.

How Lionel got his hands on a necromancy Inheritance, no one could say with certainty. What was certain was what he did with it; he massacred the Clerk family. The Saber name paid the price. Everything they’d built, stripped down to nothing.

"Some believe the Karma Games were started so he could use his Inheritance to resurrect Helen. But the truth remains unknown, and even after his capture, he escaped before anyone could learn his real motive."

Scar’d heard of the necromancer’s attack; most people had. The Karma Games he knew less about, mostly just the barrier restrictions, which it eventually led to.

He hadn’t known any of the history underneath it. And now the Chosen One tablet was apparently connected to all of it, which raised a question he hadn’t thought to ask before. Was the tablet evil?

Who was he kidding?

He wasn’t exactly in a position to argue the point. Anything tied to his Inheritance was evil, that was just the pattern.

If it weren’t, humans and celestial beings wouldn’t both have decided he needed to die. Evil was practically in the job description at this point.

But something else bothered him, though.

"Purple... why is your father looking for him? Even if Lionel survived, he should be very old by now, shouldn’t he?"

It was clear Purple didn’t want to answer... the hesitation said enough. After a moment, she did it anyway.

"As far as I know, my father went searching for Lionel because he believed I looked exactly like Helen. But that couldn’t have been enough to make him abandon his wife and newborn daughter for a stranger. His reasons must have been far more important than I realized."

Scar gulped bile.

The words came out of Purple, calm and quiet. Chilling in the way that stillness sometimes was. Each one landed like a jab aimed directly at her father.

The room went awkwardly silent before Amber broke it.

"It makes sense that the Supreme Council protected the tablet before, but now that it’s out of their hands, we must assume others are already after it."

Purple nodded in agreement.

"It’s likely hidden within the underground market by now. We just need the right information. Given its history, acquiring it legally is impossible. If we want it, we’ll have to become thieves."

Hmph.

Probably half the world was already after it. The logic wasn’t complicated... the tablet had helped Lionel, and that was enough for people to believe it held something worth chasing.

Magical properties, hidden power, a shortcut to something. It didn’t matter if any of it was true. Belief was usually enough to start a race.

But something didn’t add up.

"Why would the Supreme Council release it, though? Could it be they didn’t understand what it truly was?"

Marvel spoke up:

"I don’t think that’s what happened. They may have allowed it intentionally."

Purple’s eyes immediately widened in realization.

"I see it now. V’s attack and the relentless rain crippled the Supreme Council. They’re desperate for funds... the Chosen One Tablet must be headed to auction."

Marvel glanced through her mind for a moment.

"A secret auction... I heard whispers about one not long ago. We should send someone to investigate."

Scar nodded. Getting Purple and Marvel involved was the right move, he already knew that.

The problem was the auction itself. Supreme Council oversight meant infiltration wasn’t a realistic option. That approach had too many ways to go wrong.

What concerned him more was the question he couldn’t answer. Whether Dain and the Precognition of Fate already knew, and if they did, what that meant.

Were they going to move against him before he could get his memories back? Or was this going exactly the way Dain wanted? Both possibilities were bad. One was worse.