Chapter 262 – Ocean of Blood [9]
Blank.
Eliot’s mind was blank as he fell onto the ground littered with shattered rubble. The surrounding space blurred into nothingness. The only thing he could still hear, or even sense, was his heart slowing to a standstill.
He just couldn’t understand what was happening, but the pain squirming inside his chest like a devouring worm made it clear that...
...he was not hallucinating.
His brother...his own brother, his little brother, the one he had grown up with, the one who had been with him since the beginning, that man he had thought his greatest friend and support...
...that man had betrayed him.
It hurt.
Eliot had never felt such pain in all his life. Not even when his wife had died giving birth.
He lay on his back upon the shattered ground, coughing up waterfalls of dark red blood with a foul stench, trying to look up at his brother Luke’s face.
And he saw it. That look — cold, distant, cruel. Luke was gazing down at him the way a serpent looks at a slithering worm... with disdain. The pain in Eliot’s heart deepened to a level beyond words.
He wanted to ask why. He wanted to know what could have driven his brother to betray him, to discard the legacy their father had bled for. He wanted to know everything... but he knew. His ti was running faster than anything he could hold onto, and he would soon die.
So instead of a thousand questions, he asked only one.
"W-What... was the price?" he rasped, his voice that of a drowning man. And he was drowning...only, in his own blood.
Luke heard his brother’s question and fell silent. His eyes drifted toward the dead Matthew, whose body was riddled with thorns of every color and shape. Then his gaze turned to the battlefield, to the ocean of blood churning and bubbling like the tears of a dead god.
It was a soul-wrenching sight.
The noise was quieting. The deaths were slowing.
The battle was ending.
Only after taking all this in did Luke crouch beside Eliot’s trembling body. His brother’s eyes were unfocused, his breath shallow, his body shivering as if trapped in the heart of Antarctica. Death was calling him, and Death was never patient guest.
"What was the price?" Luke echoed, then smiled. It was an odd smile, it was one that looked caught between laughter and tears.
"You are the price, brother."
Eliot didn’t react. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to. Whatever rune Luke had used was eating him alive from the inside out.
Still, Luke continued, even though Eliot could no longer answer, because he knew he was still listening.
"I wanted the governance of this House. I wanted to be the leader, the one who would return Thornspire to its rightful place. I wanted my own legacy, my own legend, my own myth. I wanted to be the one people would sing about, the one they would whisper of to their children before bed." His voice was soft — almost reverent — but to Eliot’s ears, it was the hiss of a snake.
His breathing slowed even further.
"But for all that to happen... you had to go."
Luke clasped Eliot’s bloodied hand in both of his, like a devout brother filled with love, tears streaming down his face.
"But you won’t go as a nobody, brother. You’ll go as a hero. You’ll be rembered as the one who killed the Epithet-Realm monster that sought to destroy us. You’ll be known, brother. Just not as you were ant to be. So go... rest in peace."
As he spoke, soldiers clad in Elamin’s white armor appeared around them and saw the scene. To their eyes, it looked like a brother mourning another...crying, whispering promises that his brother would be rembered, that he would be a hero.
Even the enemy soldiers approached, and strangely — or perhaps not — without attacking.
Eliot wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He wanted to scream, to curse, but all that ca from his mouth was a gurgling breath, the sound of a man sinking into the river of death.
So he stopped trying to speak. He used the last of his strength to think of what mattered most...his daughter.
The one he was leaving behind in this world of tears, fear, and agony.
He couldn’t help but agree with Luke on one thing...he had been a bad father. A man who had focused more on the reputation of his house than the well-being of his own child. A man who had given his daughter to another family, all for support, for power, for legacy...
For duty.
What a simple, yet crushing word. A word that could destroy you or give you reason to live.
Eliot had lived by two duties: to be a good leader, and to be a good father.
He had failed both. And he had failed both by focusing only on one. Regret began to choke him, stealing away the little breath he had left in this waking world.
If only he had known. If only he had realized sooner... he would have chosen differently.
Because now he understood. The house was not his legacy. Thornspire was not his legacy.
His daughter was.
And he had failed her.
’I... I’m sorry, Rea... I’m sorry...’
’I’m sorry, Fatou... I’ve failed our daughter... I’ve failed you...’
His thoughts lagged. His breathing slowed. Soon, it slowly started to stop.
Luke was still crying, but it was a strange kind of crying. Tears stread down, but his eyes remained cold as if carved from ice.
He parted his lips again.
"Rest—!"
"Oh, my master would definitely not like this scene."
A cold, feminine voice bood through the ruined land, sharp and haunting, the kind of voice one would imagine belonging to the greatest of devils. Everyone turned their heads toward it.
High above, in a sky stained black and red, stood a woman. She wore a crimson robe and a bloody mask, her hair a flowing cascade of scarlet. She hovered weightless in the air, as if gravity itself dared not touch her.
Her yellow-grey eyes blazed with fury so pure, so immaculate, that made the world itself seem to choke.
"You..." Abomination intoned.
And in an instant, she was gone from the sky and reappearing on the ground, cradling Eliot’s limp body in her arms.
She turned her head slowly, fixing her blazing eyes on Luke, who froze where he stood. His heart skipped a beat at the sight of her wrath.
"You are fucking dead."
The world paused.
Then the sky tore apart as if ripped by invisible hands. Above her, a black swirling portal ford, streaked with crimson light and from it began to rain down undead, like a divine deluge unleashed by a god of death.
The battle took a new turn. But this ti...
There would be no rcy. No hesitation.
Only slaughter.
Only a greater ocean of blood...an ocean made from the blood of traitors.
—End of Chapter 262—
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