Leornars and Stacian strode into the audience chamber, the heavy oak doors creaking as they swung open. The king and several nobles were gathered inside, murmuring amongst themselves until the sudden entrance silenced the room.
Stacian clutched a large brown envelope tightly in her hands, while Leornars casually held a stick, his presence commanding absolute attention without a single word.
"Who are they?"
"Are they the new messengers?" came whispered questions from the assembled nobles.
Without a bow, Stacian cleared her throat, her gaze steady and unwavering.
"Insolence, cur!" snapped a noble, storming forward and raising his hand to strike her. But before his palm could meet her cheek, it dropped uselessly to his side, his arm suddenly completely powerless.
*SWIPE—!*
Leornars drew back his blade with a cold, merciless smile, a thin line of red appearing on the noble's shoulder before the limb fell away.
"Are you so impatient to wait for the banquet?" His voice was icy, heartless. "Are you that tired of breathing in this world? Because if you are, I'd be happy to personally escort you to the afterlife."
A sinister, crimson glow ignited in Leornars's left eye. The noble screamed at the top of his lungs, clutching his spurting shoulder as he collapsed onto the polished marble floor in pure agony.
Stacian instinctively moved forward, her hands glowing with white light, ready to heal the wound.
"Don't you dare!" Leornars commanded sharply.
The surrounding nobles gasped, utterly outraged by the sudden display of extreme violence.
"He... he dared to actually mutilate a high noble?!"
"That's barbaric! A pure act of treason!"
"Execute him on the spot and sell the girl to me—I'll be glad to have her as a concubine," Count Barnsley boasted proudly, resting a hand on his gilded rapier.
Leornars's thoughts darkened like violent storm clouds.
*Does that absolute pig know what Stacian has endured for the last 2,800 years? Does he know a single thing about her? I've been linked to her memories—I've felt her pain, the agonizing torment she waited through for two whole millennia. And this filthy pig dares to suggest making her his whore? Unacceptable. He even dared to say he'd kill me. I'll make sure you beg for death before the week is through...*
Leornars smirked coldly at Barnsley, his eyes narrowing into lethal slits.
"Stacian von Gremoriah, I command you—during the upcoming banquet, you will not harm that man. He's my prey," Leornars said, his voice dropping into a deadly register.
She bowed her head slightly.
"Understood, Lord Leornars," she replied softly.
*That amount of pure bloodlust leaking from his every word is terrifying,* Stacian thought, grinding her teeth in quiet distress. *I'm doing my absolute best to suppress my own power... but I don't think I can hold on much longer.*
Leornars's eyes burned crimson, glowing redder and redder as he stared directly into Count Barnsley's soul.
"You'll regret ever being born," he whispered softly. A bone-chilling fog drifted from his lips, brushing gently against the back of Stacian's neck. She flinched involuntarily at the ambient frost.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, deeply surprised.
*I am objectively stronger and faster than him right now... so why does every instinct in my body tell me that he would somehow defeat me?*
The king's heavy, echoing voice cut cleanly through the suffocating tension.
"White Plague and his servant... what brings you before my court? Haven't you heard the tragic news? My daughter, Princess Alisha, has been slain!"
*We killed her. Too bad for you,* Stacian thought grimly, keeping her expression perfectly neutral.
Leornars mused silently to himself. *Yikes. If I knew her death was going to have this much of an impact, I would have killed the king first just to double the drama.*
"We are here to officially inform you that the massive debt your country owed to the Kingdom of Durmount has been fully paid in full," Stacian declared coldly, holding out the brown envelope.
A stunned, absolute silence filled the massive hall.
The king stood up abruptly from his golden throne, his eyes wide with utter shock.
"You... you did WHAT?!" he exclaimed, his voice trembling with sheer disbelief.
"I'm not repeating myself," Stacian said flatly.
Tears of long-awaited relief welled in the king's eyes. "I... I can finally get to see my sister again..."
Leornars smirked darkly.
*Stacian was completely right. I had to kill the princess first, then deliver the good news to the king. Humans are exceptionally simple, manipulative creatures after all.*
"What about the grand banquet, Your Majesty?" Count Barnsley asked, stepping over the bleeding noble on the floor.
"It will still go on as planned. That is precisely what the late princess would have wanted," Stacian answered in the king's place.
The king nodded solemnly, wiping his cheek. "Her official burial will take place the day before the banquet..."
The surrounding nobles bowed respectfully toward the throne—all except Leornars and Stacian, who remained standing tall, still, and completely unimpressed.
"Perfect," Leornars murmured under his breath as they turned to leave. "The stage is finally set."
The next day, a grand celebration swept across the upper sectors. For his perceived services, Leornars was officially gifted the vast plot of land he had requested, alongside four thousand platinum coins. But as he prepared his party to leave the borders of Durmount, a thin, ominous column of black smoke caught his sharp eye, rising steadily from the nearby ancient woods.
He immediately called Stacian over.
Summoning both Bellian and Ascian from his shadow, he ordered his dark beasts to sprint ahead and investigate the source of the fire. Within minutes, they returned—Ascian carrying the lifeless, charred body of a demi-human child gently between his jaws.
The casual smirk on Leornars's face vanished instantly.
*TAP.*
A cloaked figure emerged from the deep foliage, casually stepping down from a high tree branch onto the mossy dirt. Clad in a tattered dark hoodie, the man locked eyes with Leornars without a hint of fear.
"I'm Liam. Black Acer Number 5," the man said with supreme confidence, his eyes flicking casually to the dead child on the ground.
Leornars's voice dropped into an abyss of ice. "Did you do this?"
"My friends and I did this," Liam replied smoothly, leaning back against the tree trunk and resting his hands behind his head.
Leornars's posture didn't shift, his tone remaining terrifyingly unyielding.
"Oh, I see. That's good."
Liam smirked. "This tiny village was far beneath me, that's the truth. But I had a minor use for it. You filthy mongrels went and destroyed our trade route, so we leveled the place. I'm going to slaughter every last one of you."
Leornars's voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, his crimson eyes gleaming with a lethal, terrifying intensity.
"I fully planned to ignore all of your pathetic syndicate members and simply leave... but you dared to attack a place I personally took the time to purify—the lake."
"So what!?" Liam shrugged, completely unfazed and chuckling to himself. "What are you gonna do about it, kid?"
"This is really not going to end well, is it?" Stacian muttered under her breath with a tired sigh. She walked over, lifted another dead demi-human child by the limp hand, and gently laid him flat on the grass before wiping her fingers clean with a silk handkerchief.
Leornars stepped forward, his heavy boots crunching softly on the autumn leaves.
"I'll grant you a quick death and let you live long enough to pray... if you tell me where the rest of your friends are hiding."
Liam scoffed loudly, genuinely believing Leornars was pulling a pathetic bluff. "Boy, get the hell out of my face before I break your neck where you stand."
Leornars offered a thin, terrifying smile that didn't reach his burning eyes.
"Oh, I see. So you're the type who will only talk once you have no intact bones left in your body."
Stacian rushed ahead toward the devastated settlement, her heart sinking as she took in the horrific scene—children orphaned, women widowed, and men slaughtered in cold blood like livestock.
The young demi-human girl Leornars had saved days prior was kneeling in the mud beside her father's mutilated corpse, weeping quietly.
Something deep within Leornars's dark, guarded soul shattered into jagged pieces.
Liam opened his mouth to continue yapping his arrogant threats, but before his brain could process a single nerve signal, he was violently slammed face-first into the dirt—both of his ankles completely shattered and torn apart in a fraction of a microsecond.
Extreme confusion flashed across his face as intense agony hit his nervous system.
"HUH?! WHAT THE—?!" he shrieked, clawing frantically at the mud.
*STAB—!*
Without a word, Leornars unsheathed a jagged black dagger and drove it straight through the palm of Liam's left hand, pinning it securely into the earth.
A dense, toxic aura of dark life-ki exploded outward from Leornars's body, causing the surrounding grass, trees, and soil to instantly rot, blacken, and wither into dead ash.
Reaching down with a hand coated in black frost, Leornars clamped his fingers tightly around Liam's throat, lifting his heavy body effortlessly and squeezing until the bones in his neck groaned under the pressure, choking the very air from his lungs.
"You're going to start talking now," Leornars hissed into his bleeding ear, his red eyes burning with the absolute promise of eternal torment. "And you'd better pray your answers satisfy me."