The prince's heart skipped a beat.
"W-Who… who?" he stamred, trying to step back, but stumbling over his own feet. His eyes trembled as he looked at the remains of the elite soldier, still dripping fresh blood before him.
Strax took a step forward. The sound of his boot landing in the crimson puddle was enough to make Edward let out a choked scream. The oppressive power hanging in the air was overwhelming, suffocating. Every cell in his body scread to flee, but he was frozen — not by chains or magic, but by pure, primal terror.
"Xenovia," Strax repeated, his voice cold as ice and hot as lightning all at once. "The violet-eyed woman you tried to kidnap for a forced marriage… then locked away in a cell."
Edward's eyes widened. Now he knew what Strax was talking about.
"That was… it was just politics!" he tried to justify, his voice as thin as a cornered rat's. "A strategic union! Nothing personal! We didn't even… even touch her yet!"
Strax kept walking. Slow steps. Precise. Every word from the prince was another shovel of dirt in his own grave.
"You didn't touch her…" Strax murmured. "But it's your fault, isn't it? Locking her up… trying to control her… forcing her to co here… of course it is…"
"I didn't know!" Edward scread, tears streaming down his now ghostly pale face. "It was the council! They decided! I'm just the—"
"Coward." The word cut like a blade.
Edward collapsed to his knees, sobbing.
Strax stared at him for a long mont. Absolute silence fell over the throne hall, broken only by the prince's ragged breathing and the drip of blood from the corpses scattered around.
"Your n are dead. Your army was crushed. And you…"Strax extended his hand, and blue lightning crackled between his fingers — as if the very sky had been set ablaze."…will answer for the scars she now carries on her soul."
"Wait!" Edward cried, crawling forward until he collapsed in a puddle of hot blood on the throne room floor. "I can pay! I can double it! Triple it! I can give you gold, power, land, slaves, won—"
He didn't even see when Strax vanished. In a blink, the warrior was in front of him, hand wreathed in lightning, already clamped around his throat.
Edward let out a gurgling gasp, eyes wide. Blue sparks cracked violently around his neck, burning flesh, cauterizing live at with the acrid stench of charred skin.
"You've taken enough from this world, Edward von Luxem," Strax whispered like a final sentence. "Now… give it back."
He closed his fist.
The air quivered.
Edward let out a guttural, animalistic scream, his throat twisting under the brutal pressure. But it wasn't just physical force. Sothing far more vicious began right then. Pure energy pierced his body like flaming needles, racing through his veins like blue electric lava.
The first things to burst were the blood vessels in his eyes.
Two dark streams erupted from the sockets, the eyeballs swelling grotesquely before exploding with a wet pop, leaving hollow, pulsing holes. Black veins crawled across his skin like rotting roots as his body convulsed violently.
His jaw dislocated, bones cracking while his tongue, twisted and twitching, hung out as if being electrocuted in isolation.
Strax raised his arm higher, and Edward, still held by the throat, thrashed like a fish frying in boiling oil. His skin began to split, deep gashes opening where vaporized blood hissed out like steam from a pressure valve, his screams still trying to escape his crushed windpipe.
His sternum split open like an inverted zipper.
His ribs bent outward with sickening tallic snaps, like twisted iron claws. The exposed heart pounded frantically, trying to sustain life in a body already condemned. But Strax wouldn't let him die. Not yet. Not that easily.
A concentrated bolt of lightning slamd into the open chest, and Edward's heart was instantly scorched — shriveling like a chunk of at thrown onto burning coals, turning into a smoldering lump of charcoal that crumbled to ash.
And still, he writhed.
Strax twisted his hand, and the body began to fold inward — bones snapping, limbs twisting at unnatural angles, as if the skeleton itself was trying to escape the flesh.
The skin unraveled.
Slowly.
Cruelly.
It was peeled from the body inch by inch — first from the face, revealing red muscles and clenched teeth. Then the torso, the legs. It was like skinning a human alive, and each new muffled scream echoed through the empty throne room like a hymn of agony.
At last, Strax closed his hand completely.
Edward's body exploded in a sphere of blue light and blood, scattering steaming pieces of flesh and bone across the hall. His faceless head was hurled like a ball against a marble column, shattering with a wet, final sound.
A piece of jawbone slid down the throne's step, still dripping blood.
Strax remained silent.The only thing audible was the slow drip of remains — the sound of cooked flesh tapping against stone.
He let go of Edward's necklace — partially lted from the heat of the execution — and let it fall with a dull tallic clink onto what remained of one of the beheaded generals' chests.
"Disgusting," Strax muttered, turning his back to the corpses. "Now only the royal guard and the Emperor remain."
And Strax moved forward.
The inner hall's gate groaned, opening slowly with a deep scrape of iron against stone. The hinges wept as they yielded, as if even they hesitated to let that man through.
Strax stepped across the threshold.
His body still crackled with electricity, as if the storm of the outer world had concentrated into his soul. His eyes — twin suns of controlled blue fury. His cloak was soaked in blood down to the hem, dripping with every step upon the imperial carpet, now a crimson trail leading to the throne.
The first to see him were the guards of the inner sanctum.
Three n. Gleaming armor. Rigid posture.
"Halt!" one shouted. "You cannot enter the imperial hall ard! Declare your—"
Strax raised his hand. No warning. No rcy.
CRACK.
Lightning.
The three guards were vaporized in a blinding flash. The thunder ca a second later, reverberating through the pillars like a dragon's roar. When the smoke cleared, only scorched silhouettes remained burned into the mosaic floor. No screams. No final gasps. Just silence and the stench of roasted bone.
More guards stord in from side corridors, shouting orders, trying to form a defensive line before the throne where Emperor Lucius von Luxem was already standing, pale, clutching the arms of the throne as if they could sohow save him.
Strax walked.
Simply walked. Like an inevitable force. A march no spear or decree could halt.
"Combat positions!" shouted the captain of the royal guard. "Protect the throne at all costs!"
Six n ford a half-circle. Reinforced shields. Enchanted blades. Disciplined. Devout.
Useless.
Strax raised both hands this ti. The runes on his shoulders began to glow — symbols from a forgotten dragon language he had learned, whispering the na of the storm.
"Tornta."The word echoed in a tongue none of them understood. But death — that, they all understood.
From the ceiling, dozens of electric chains descended like blue serpents, latching onto arms, legs, necks. Each soldier was yanked into the air with a sharp pull.
One by one, they were electrocuted with inhuman intensity.
Veins burst.
Eyes lted.
Teeth cracked from the heat.
But Strax didn't let them die quickly. He hurled them against walls, columns, ceiling, and floor — a grotesque spectacle of snapping bones and tearing flesh — until their bodies beca shapeless bags of broken at, discarded like useless dolls.
A knight charged from behind, sword raised, screaming:"FOR THE EMPIRE!"
Strax turned without looking. His hand beca a spear of pure energy and pierced the man's stomach with surgical precision.The sword dropped. The body trembled.Strax raised his arm, and the impaled man rose with it, writhing.
With a snap, he detonated the knight's torso from the inside out. The armor flew apart like empty cans, ribs scattered through the hall like bloody shurikens.
The last guard fell to his knees, sword trembling, eyes wide in terror.
"P-Please… p-please, I have a daughter…"
Strax stopped in front of him. Silence.
For a mont, only the sound of blood dripping from the ceiling to the floor.
Then...
"Then you should've stayed with her." Strax pointed two fingers. "Bye."
A bolt of lightning, thick as an obelisk, crashed down from the ceiling and incinerated the kneeling man. Not even a shadow remained.
At last, he stood before the steps of the throne.
The obsidian stairs glistened with the reflection of blood spread across the hall, as if the very structure had been stained by the fury of gods. The columns trembled with the echoes of destruction, and the air reeked of tal and death.
It was then that a deep, firm voice rang from the top of the stairs — cold as steel, calculated like a headsman's blade.
"So you've co."
Strax raised his gaze.
There, at the top of the staircase, cloaked in imperial purple with the Thalassa sigil embroidered in living silver, stood the man himself.
Emperor Aldric III.
His face, aged by ti but still firm, was a cruel reflection of Strax's father — the sa piercing eyes, the sa strong jaw… only corrupted by the weight of absolute power. The aura around him pulsed with ancient magic, solidified through decades of rule and dark pacts.
Strax clenched his fists. Sparks still flickered across his skin from the storm. Each heartbeat felt like a war drum echoing through the bones of the castle.
'He hid his strength... how pathetic...' Strax thought, eyes locked on the old emperor.
But then, a subtle sound — the drag of tal on stone — broke the silence.
And from behind the throne, wrapped in shadows like serpents slithering forward, two figures erged.
The first was a woman.
Tall, lithe, her movents fluid like a panther ready to pounce. Her bronzed skin glead beneath the flickering flas of the candelabras, and her eyes — winter-sky blue — held a lethal coldness. Her blonde hair, cut short at the neck, gave her a militaristic edge. Her body was clad in tight black leather armor, reinforced with gleaming tal plates on her shoulders and arms, glowing faintly with sealed enchantnts. At her waist, two curved blades rested like sleeping predators.
She stopped beside the throne and smiled.
"So this is little Strax? Doesn't look much different from the heads I've already taken… my brother really picked soone boring." Her voice was syrupy… sarcastic, savoring every word.
Just behind her, the heavy footsteps of the second warrior made the columns vibrate.
He was a wall of living muscle. A giant of over eight feet tall, arms as thick as tree trunks, with burning amber eyes. His red hair flowed like a lion's mane, and across his bare chest roared a detailed lion tattoo, wrapped in softly glowing runes. His entire body looked built to kill.
In his right hand, he dragged a war hamr so massive an ogre might hesitate to lift it.
"I woke up for this?" the giant murmured with a lazy yawn. "Was hoping for a dragon, but looks like just an angry brat with a God complex."
Strax didn't move. He just watched. Calculating.
Their aura was... off.
They weren't regular humans. Not elite soldiers. Not even royal champions. They carried a scent… wrong. As if their bodies had been shaped by another force. One that flowed through the shadows.
Aldric smiled calmly, arms crossed over the royal mantle.
"Ah... you don't know yet?" he said in an almost casual tone. "They're gifts from our ancient allies… the Gods. The woman is Kaelis, current vessel of Athena. The brute answers to Grunnar — vessel of Ares."
He spoke as if explaining the weather.
"I can feel a god's power inside you as well…" Grunnar said with a grin as his body began to grow, towering until he stood face to face with Strax. "But you're weak."
[Two Gods are watching you]
[The Goddess Athena offers a truce…]
[The God Ares offers a fight…]
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