They keep walking and go through the first gate to finally enter the castle, Piere walks to a desk right at the left of the first welcoming door. At the left is a spot to welcome people in the palace but since no one is authorised to enter it, the person at the desk looks bored because of this.

But the person quickly sees Piere approaching, a huge smile draws on their face, seeing that they'll finally have to work. They talk first, welcoming the three of them :

-"Hello and welcome to the royal palace. How can I help you ?"

Piere takes the piece of paper out of his pocket, then he talks, handing the invitation :

-"Hello. We got invited by the king himself, where do we have to go ?"

The person at the desk takes the piece of paper to check it, then they answer Piere's question :

-"I see. Just go to the public dining room. I'll tell the king that you arrived."

The dining room they have now arrived in is a really big room, the walls are tall and covered in a royal blue and golden wallpaper. In the middle of the rectangular room, is a really long wooden table surrounded by comfortable looking chairs, everything in this room looks expensive going from the chandelier to the enormous carpet under the table.

The king REALLY does love to show that he is rich, even though almost nobody can see it. They are now patiently waiting in the room, near the door.

After a few minutes waiting, Ysaline looks everywhere around and kind of admires the room they are in. Actually, it is her first time seeing so many expensive things at once. She, in fact, grew up poor and still doesn't have that much money despite working hard and sharing her life with someone working for the king.

After those few minutes waiting, the king finally shows up, accompanied by two guards, one of them is Cleyton. As soon as Ysaline sees the king, she bows and signs her kid to politely bow as well.

The king walks in the room and directly goes to his seat, without paying attention to the ones he invited, so he sits at an extremity of the table, on an even more comfortable and expensive looking chair, he doesn't even look at the three waiting at the door. After the king takes his seat, Cleyton signs to the ones invited that they can sit, but only at the other side of the table, at the opposite of the king.

Cleyton also informs them that the feast will be served really soon. Indeed after only a few short minutes waiting in an awkward silence, some of the cooks enter the spacious room to place a lot of different dishes on the table. Too much for only four people.

Before starting to eat, Piere is curious about why the king invited them, he really never do that in normal time, so he asks :

-"Your majesty, may I ask why you invited my family and I ?"

The king stops eating, he looks at Piere straight in the eyes for a really few short seconds, then he answers, rather coldly :

-"No questions."

But Piere really wants to know why the king would invite those random citizens, and he would reward him since he found nothing about the demon they have been looking for during so many years :

-"Please answer, why would you invite my family and why would you reward me ? You know really well that we found nothing about that damn demon." Piere starts to get upset.

The one he is talking to looks again at the guard sitting at the table, then he turns his head to look at Cleyton then he moves his gaze back to Piere. The king talks confidently :

-"Cleyton told me you saw someone suspicious at the inn but you decided to NOT arrest that person. What if it was that bloody demon ? Doesn't it bother you to let someone kill innocent people in the Ahulian streets ?!" The king higher his voice a bit while talking, in order to scare

Piere, surprised because one of his colleagues betrayed him, first looks at Cleyton and starts talking :

-"What ? Are you serious Cleyton ?" Then he looks back at the king and explains that all of this is a lie :"Your majesty, that is not true. We found absolutely nothing at the inn. There were NO demon." The guard's anger is slowly starting to grow but he perfectly controls it since he knows the king is really capable of everything.

But the older one doesn't answer, he just looks at Piere while he is trying to convince the king.

So the day keeps going, the short brown haired guard is still upset about his colleague lying about him. After they finish eating, they are accompanied by some other guards to one of the castle's interior courtyard, the guards keep repeating that they'll receive a present here. The king isn't here anymore, he is in fact looking at them from a window, accompanied by Cleyton, the latter asks :

-"Your majesty, are you sure it is right to do that ?"

-"Everything I do is correct. Now shut up."

One of the guards in the courtyard is discreetly looking at a window, the one where the king is, it seems like he is waiting for some orders from the king to give Piere's family the present. While waiting for a few minutes, one of the guards, the same that was looking at the window reassure the family :

-"Don't worry, your present is coming soon. You will be rewarded for Piere's hard work."

Then he looks back at the window. This time Piere notices it, he also feels like something is odd, as he already said earlier on that same day.

So Piere secretly looks at where this random guard is looking at, then he finally notices that the king is observing this scene, so Piere silently wonders :

-"What is he planning to do now..?" His eyebrows slightly frown before looking back at his wife.

The same guard who was unstoppably taking looks at the king suddenly exclaims and order the other guards :

-"NOW !"

So all of the guards gather around Ysaline and her kid with their weapon. Piere doesn't have time to react that they are already heartlessly stabbing the youngest one to death with a well sharpened spear, all of the guards possess one of it. Ysaline is traumatised by seeing the death of her own kid, she now understands why Piere said that the king isn't usually nice, she now tries to protect her kid by covering them with her whole body, in order to prevent the spears from stabbing the poor kid.

Piere rushes in hope to save both of his wife and child. He runs to the group of guards and starts punching them with his bare hands. When coming to the palace he forgot to take his weapons with him, thinking the king would just blame him for not finding the demon he is obsessed with.

Piere manages to punch and hurt some of the guards, but he isn't strong enough to get everyone, so he is just being pulled back by two other guards, they just pull him and let him admire this horrible scene. He cries and calls for help as much as he can in hope someone else would hear and react but no one does, the palace's walls are too thick for anyone to hear him.

It is now Ysaline's turn to be stabbed with those same spears, her husband can't take it anymore, so he just kneels down and lower is head realising he just lost the two human beings he cherishes the most in this world. The king knew this man would be devastated about the loss of those two random people, it is the price Piere has to pay for not catching the demon and for lying about saying that there were no demons in that inn.

In fact, the king only trusted Cleyton for this bit. On his side and in his mind Cleyton deeply regrets having lied but he thinks that if he had told the truth, the king wouldn't have interest in the dark blond elf guard. So Cleyton doesn't really mind the sentiment of regret he has right now.

After a few more minutes, Piere is left alone in that almost desert inner courtyard, only the two cadavers are lying down in front of him. After drying some of his tears and looking around to make sure no one is here, he crawls to the dead ones.

Arriving at their level, he hugs the two still warm dead bodies, crying one more time. Someone is still watching him from the window, it is the one who betrayed him. Cleyton is observing him, not really knowing how to feel but guilty about what just happened but he is quickly called by one of the other guards, they have work to do, like keeping an eye on the city and even keeping an eye on the prisoners.