The laughter in the room died a slow, strangled death.
Cian sat on the edge of the bed, the cold porridge still dripping from his hair, staining the floor he had once laid with his own hands. His siblings were still smirking, and the butler, a man named Hans from the minor House of Viscount Reed, was checking his pocket watch as if waiting for a scheduled execution.
But inside the boy's chest, something had snapped.
It wasn't just anger. It was the **Balothar Blood**. The primordial, aggressive essence Kaelen had cultivated through a lifetime of slaughter and conquest was reacting to the insult. His veins didn't just burn with poison anymore; they surged with a heat that felt like liquid sun.
*I am the one who gave your ancestors their titles,* Kaelen thought, his vision turning a sharp, predatory gold. *I am the reason your family name exists. And you dare... you dare look down on me?*
"Are you deaf, trash?" the maid, Martha, snapped. She stepped forward, raising her hand to deliver another slap to the "Crown Prince's" face. "I told you to—"
**CRACK.**
The sound was like a dry branch snapping in winter.
Cian hadn't just moved; he had vanished. Before Martha's hand could even get close, his small, pale fingers had latched onto her wrist. With a clinical twist of his body, he used her own momentum to slam her face-first into the stone floor.
Blood sprayed across the moth-eaten rug. Martha didn't even have time to scream before Cian's foot connected with her ribs, sending her skidding across the room like a discarded doll.
"M-Martha?" the butler, Hans, stammered. His smug expression shattered into a mask of pure confusion. "You... you little brat! What have you done?!"
Hans lunged forward, his hand reaching for Cian's collar. He was a grown man, a noble-born servant who prided himself on his physical discipline. To him, Cian was a dying ten-year-old.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
Cian ducked under the reach, his movement so fluid it looked like smoke. He drove his palm into Hans's solar plexus, followed by a lightning-fast strike to the throat. Hans's eyes bulged. He hit the ground, clutching his neck, gasping for air that refused to come.
Cian didn't stop. He rained down a barrage of precise, brutal strikes until both the maid and the butler were in a near-death state, their bodies broken and twitching on the floor.
"Who are you to question me?"
Cian's voice cut through the stunned silence of the room. It was high-pitched, yet it carried a terrifying, ancient resonance that made his brothers and sister instinctively take a step back.
He turned his icy gaze to the crumpled form of Martha. "You are a mere commoner. A fly that managed to crawl into the palace. If I kill you here, together with this trash, who would care? The world has millions of your kind. You are nothing."
Then, his eyes locked onto Hans. The boy stepped onto the butler's hand, the sound of grinding bone filling the quiet room.
"And you," Cian sneered, his lip curling in pure, regal arrogance. "You belong to a Viscount's family, so you thought you could stand tall in my presence? You thought your minor nobility made you something other than a servant?"
He leaned down, his face inches from the gasping butler's terrified eyes.
"Listen well, dog. A Viscount is a title *my* house created to reward those who knew how to kneel. You have forgotten the hierarchy of the Balothar blood. I am the Crown. I am the Architect. I am superior to you in every breath I take."
He stood up straight, his small frame suddenly seeming to tower over everyone in the room. He looked at his trembling hands—trembling not from weakness, but from the sheer adrenaline of the Balothar blood finally waking up.
He turned to his siblings—Raon, Julian, Elara, and Kai—who were staring at the bloody scene with pale faces.
"The show is over," Cian said, his voice cold and flat. "Get out. And take your trash with you before I decide that the floor needs a fresh coat of royal blood to match the servants'."