The king rubbed his forehead and sighed deeply. For if the relic of the Sanctuary were ever to be stolen, his immortal soldiers alone would not be able to retrieve it. At that moment, the chief wizard took a step closer to the king and spoke a meaningful word.
"Your Majesty, I know of one way to remove your anxiety. To have the most capable soldiers in the kingdom guard the relic forever." The king's eyes shone with determination to protect the relic. "If you mean by the most capable soldiers...?" The chief wizard replied without pause. "Yes, that's right. The Royal Guard."
Hearing those words sent a chill down my spine. What he was proposing was black magic that would trap people's souls in armor, forcing them to perform blind acts. Worst of all, in the Royal Guard was my son, Elio. I desperately objected, but I could not sway the king's determination to protect the relic.

That night, I went to the chief wizard and pleaded with him. "Please, let me take my son's place. Please, you can't kill my son. He's just come of age and has been made a Guard." But the chief wizard shook his head. "Everyone else is in the same situation, Deputy Wizard. No one is exempt." At that moment, a mixture of anger and despair welled up inside me. Nonetheless, I could not give up on my son.
I went straight to Elio, and engraved the highest level of dispel magic schema into his armor. That way, even if Elio became a ghost in his armor, the spell would activate immediately and he would return to his original self after three days. In the meantime, I would have to steal away my ghostly son and wait for him to return. To my son, trembling with the knowledge of his fate, I promised hope and left.

The hope was short-lived, however. The next day, the chief wizard began removing all the enchantment schemas from the Guards' armor, claiming that they needed to perform the ritual in their purest state. When it was Elio's turn, the chief wizard glanced at me and erased all of the schematics from his armor, and just like that, my last hope for dispel magic was gone.
Then, the chief wizard's ritual began in earnest. "Now, you will become the eternal guardians of the relic." I attempted to break into the ritual, but was quickly stopped. One by one, the soldiers of the Guard, writhing in agony under the power of black magic, fell to the ground, and then, their empty armor slowly rose to their feet.
I called out my son's name desperately to the empty armor, but all that came back was the cold clink of metal against metal. He was no longer responding to my voice.

I was brought before the king for disrupting the ritual. The king did not forgive me. I was stripped of all my powers as Deputy Wizard, and I was thrown into prison. I was scheduled to be executed with the other prisoners at daybreak. But I had to survive somehow to get my son back.
While bound hand and foot, I deliberately drew a magic schema with my blood to escape the prison and left the island in a small sailboat. As I drifted out to sea, I looked back at the island, where my son remained, a cursed armor to protect the artifact. "Elio, I swear to you. I will return to rescue you..." As I drifted through the cold waters, I came close to death several times, but my resolve to bring my son back only grew stronger. Until I reached shore, that promise was the only thing holding me alive.