The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 82: He’s ALIVE

Chapter 82: Chapter 82: He’s ALIVE

The gates of Berkimhum loomed like a judgment.

Tall as towers, carved from blackened silverwood, they shimmered in the morning haze with the ghostlight of old magic—veined with runes so ancient even the archivists no longer dared translate them. Above the archway, the crests of twelve long-dead kings stared down like silent jurors. Cold. Watching. Weighing her.

And beneath those ancient judges stood Lara Von Roxweld.

Drenched in blood. Cloaked in steel. Every inch of her screamed survival.

She did not flinch.

Her arrival carried no trumpets, no declarations. No velvet-draped procession.

She had returned like thunder in the bones of the earth—quiet at first, then unstoppable.

Whispers had long outrun her boots.

Through every street and stairwell, from the slums to the cathedral towers, the capital had begun to tremble with the name it once feared and worshipped in equal breath:

Lara.

The Crimson Fang.

The girl who survived the fall.

She had not returned clean. And maybe that was why the people believed it.

Her armor was slashed in three places—across the left thigh, the right pauldron, and the spine. Each gash bled slowly where metal had bitten too deep. Her gloves were soaked in a crimson that was not just her own. Her boots left streaks behind her—mud, blood, soot.

But she walked tall.

The sun caught her blade where it rose over her shoulder, strapped to her back like a promise of war yet unpaid. Still dripping. Still warm.

Still loyal.

The crowd surged at the sight of her. From balconies and rooftops, from behind barricades and broken market stalls, voices rose in chorus.

"LARA!"

"THE PRINCESS—SHE’S BACK!"

She didn’t wave.

She didn’t smile.

She didn’t need to.

Even her silence felt like a promise.

The palace guards didn’t challenge her. Didn’t ask for credentials. They simply bowed—not as soldiers to a superior, but as subjects to something holy.

Behind her came the storm: her surviving guard, equally ragged and bloodied. Some limped. Some bore wounds they wouldn’t survive the week. But they carried trophies.

Bandit sigils. Enemy blades. Captured standards of lords who thought Berkimhum too fractured to resist.

The gates creaked open.

A wind passed through, low and cold. As if the palace itself had been holding its breath.

Lara stepped through.

And with her, so did judgment.

The palace courtyard was already filling. Nobles had begun to gather like circling crows—too curious to ignore the scent of returning blood, too cautious to welcome it outright.

The Knight Commander stepped forward, helm under one arm, his graying hair tied back. He bowed with a stiffness born from years of battle, not politics.

"My Lady," he said.

"Commander," Lara replied, her voice like gravel under silk.

He did not ask questions.

He did not need to.

Behind him, the nobility watched like birds eyeing a lion.

Lady Mael fluttered her fan—half awe, half calculation.

Marquess Vorn tugged at his brocade collar, lips pursed in a fake smile already adjusting to new power.

Even the priests from the inner sanctum stood near the edges, silent and dressed in dusk-colored robes.

But only one voice dared interrupt the hush.

"My love—!"

It cut across the courtyard like an arrow dipped in perfume.

Lara turned slightly as Isabella swept toward her—silks swirling, Green emerald hair styled to perfection, not a hair out of place despite the morning humidity.

She looked radiant.

And entirely untouched by war.

She crashed into her daughter, arms wrapping around bloodstained steel without hesitation. "Thank the stars," she breathed. "Thank the gods, the skies, the spirits—you’re here. You’re safe."

Lara didn’t return the embrace at first.

But she let it happen.

Her arms rose—slowly, mechanically—and held her mother in return. Lightly. Distantly.

She didn’t believe the touch.

But she acknowledged it.

She hated her.

But not enough to push her away.

Not today.

Isabella clung tighter, oblivious. "You’re skin and bone... gods, your hair—what they’ve done to you—"

"They didn’t do anything I didn’t survive," Lara said softly, pulling back.

Her mother’s hands trembled. She let go, but not entirely.

"I’ll have the baths drawn. A banquet prepared. You’ll see, everything will—"

Lara’s gaze was already past her.

Something else had caught her attention.

Someone colder.

The silk in Isabella’s sleeves still fluttered in the breeze when Claire arrived.

She emerged from the archway like a ghost who had never truly left. Her steps were crisp, her uniform without a single crease. Even her gloves looked freshly pressed—immaculate white, folded behind her back as if she were walking into a ceremony, not the ruins of a kingdom.

Lara stiffened.

Claire did not bow.

She didn’t have to.

Their eyes met.

And something cracked, invisible but sharp, between them.

"Finally," Claire said, voice like cold water poured over old wounds. "The hero of our kingdom returns. In one piece."

Her tone was controlled, but the tremor beneath it wasn’t.

Lara saw it.

Not contempt.

Not admiration.

But absence.

An absence she recognized too well.

Claire’s gaze shifted, almost unwillingly, to the space beside Lara.

The space where he should’ve been.

Atlas.

Her throat tightened.

She didn’t speak it aloud. But her eyes asked the question anyway.

Lara said nothing.

And in that silence, Claire’s control fractured just a hair. Her shoulders rose and fell, like breath tried to become anger and failed.

Lara turned her head slightly, breaking the gaze before either could say what didn’t need saying.

Then came the last one.

The king.

Henry Von Roxweld.

He walked slowly, a long obsidian cane tapping the marble with each uneven step. His robes were still royal blue, lined in silver thread, but they hung loose now—like clothing trying to outlive the man inside it.

He had not worn his war crown today. Just the thin circlet of rule. A threadbare symbol now. A crown that looked more like a collar.

Lara’s breath sharpened.

She hadn’t seen him since before the collapse—since the day her battalion was sealed into the third realm. He hadn’t sent a message. Not one. No letters. No prayers. No orders.

She was dead to him.

And now she stood before him, alive.

The old man stopped before her.

For a moment, the wind filled the silence.

The weight of centuries breathed through the gates, brushing the stone steps with dry leaves and unspoken names.

Then, at last, Henry raised his gaze to her face.

A flicker of something passed through his eyes.

Recognition?

Relief?

No.

Just calculation.

He gave a small nod.

"Come inside, daughter," he rasped. "We have much to discuss."

His voice was tired, not cruel. But somehow, that made it worse.

It was the indifference that stung.

Lara stood frozen.

The blood on her boots had not yet dried. The bruises on her ribs still screamed with every breath.

But this?

This was what made her hands shake.

She took a step forward.

Just one.

Then she stopped.

Her jaw locked. Her shoulders squared.

And her voice, when it came, was louder than any trumpet, sharper than any blade.

"You won’t ask about Atlas?"

The name fell like thunder through a glass palace.

The nobles flinched. A ripple passed through the court like a sudden earthquake, knocking whispers loose from painted lips and velvet sleeves.

Even the guards glanced up from their posts.

Claire’s spine went rigid.

Isabella’s mouth opened.

Henry didn’t flinch.

He didn’t blink.

He simply stared at his daughter with the tired eyes of a man who had watched too many torches burn out.

"What’s the issue?" he said. "The dead don’t matter."

He turned.

"The coming war does."

Lara’s vision tunneled.

The roar of the crowd outside, the scent of blood on her gauntlets, the weight of her blade—none of it compared to the heat rising in her chest now. Not rage. Not grief.

Betrayal.

Claire stepped forward—but didn’t interrupt. Her eyes stayed locked on Henry, wide with disbelief.

Lara imagined, for one horrifying moment, drawing her sword again.

Right here. In front of them all.

Not against the invaders.

But against the man who wore her family name like a dying brand.

Her grip tightened.

But she didn’t.

Not yet.

Henry’s cane tapped again. And again. Each step retreating. Each step forgetting.

And behind him, the nobles followed.

Shadows dressed in perfume and silk. The architecture of power closing ranks.

Lara didn’t move.

Claire was the only one who stayed.

At her side.

Watching.

Waiting.

Wanting to ask—

’Is he truly dead?’

But before the question could leave her lips, Lara was already turning.

Already striding toward the stairs.

Toward the marble terrace that overlooked the entire city.

Her voice rose.

Not to the king.

Not to the court.

But to the people.

Her people.

The ones who had bled for a banner no one believed in anymore.

The ones who’d buried brothers in unnamed graves and stitched their wounds with thread meant for sacks, not skin.

The ones who’d waited.

Not for victory.

But for meaning.

They watched her now. Not like a princess.

But like a hinge.

Something old was cracking. And something older was clawing its way out.

Lara’s hand tightened at her side. She felt her pulse against the hilt of her blade, like the heartbeat of the kingdom itself had lodged in her palm. The memory of Atlas’s last breath—feral, defiant—flashed behind her eyes.

She opened her mouth.

And mana surged.

It wasn’t shaped. Not a spell. Not a trick of war.

Just truth.

It raced through her lungs like lightning in a bottle, desperate to be let out.

And when she spoke, it wasn’t just her voice—it was thunder cast in flesh.

"ATLAS!"

The palace walls trembled.

Guards flinched.

The court recoiled.

Even the air seemed to pause, clinging to the syllables like children to stories.

Her eyes swept the courtyard. The streets. The tower balconies where orphaned soldiers leaned on crutches to watch their broken empire breathe again.

"The Prince of Berkimhum," she roared, "is ALIVE!"

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