Chapter 151 – Towers (10)
(Erynd)
A father's job is protection.
That's the lie we tell ourselves so we can sleep.
Because the truth is uglier: a father's job is deciding which horrors his child is allowed to witness, and which horrors he will commit in the dark so she never has to learn what they look like.
Nyxa wasn't here.
I had sent her away.
I'd begged, actually, which was an emotion I hated giving shape. I'd watched her vanish upward through the Tower like a shadow taking the stairs reality pretended didn't exist.
Good.
Let her see warm rooms. Let her see markets and rings and stupid things that are round.
Not this.
Not the moment where I stopped being a "noble" and became what the world kept trying to make me.
The woman stood in front of me, staff trembling, jaw still opened around that obscene pulsing crystal. She looked less like a villain and more like a person who had been convinced she was necessary.
Those were always the worst kind.
I stepped forward and grabbed her by the throat.
One hand.
Not because I needed to prove strength.
Because I wanted her to understand how quickly the world could end if she kept treating it like an experiment.
My fingers closed and her eyes widened. The crystal in her mouth throbbed faster, as if it could taste panic.
I lifted her just enough that her toes scraped stone.
"You're going to talk," I said quietly. "Because if you don't, your fate stays the same no matter what you believe you're serving."
Her nails clawed at my wrist, frantic. Not strong. Not trained. Just desperate.
I didn't tighten further.
Not yet.
I leaned in close enough that she could see the reflection of her own fear in my eyes.
"Start with the obvious," I said. "Who is this warlock."
Her pupils jittered. Then her mind-voice arrived again, not elegant now, not controlled. Frayed.
The Warlock is an entity. Closely related to the Demon King. Some say it is the Demon King.
My stomach went cold in a familiar way.
Demon King.
In the doom-world mythos, that title wasn't a fairytale. It was a gravity well. A thing that bent civilizations toward extinction simply by existing.
I kept my tone calm. "And you."
Her gaze flicked sideways, shame or pride, I couldn't tell which.
I was born from their predecessor, she pushed into my mind. From him. From that entity.
I stared at her, feeling the shape of the conversation turn sharper.
"So you're a cult-bred daughter playing with ward systems," I said. "And you expect me to treat you gently."
Her eyes squeezed shut. The crystal in her mouth pulsed again, like a heartbeat trying to escape the cage of her skull.
Then her mind-voice returned, quieter, trembling with something that sounded too close to certainty.
Even now… I can feel him.
I paused.
"What do you mean, you can feel him."
She opened her eyes and looked at me as if the answer was obvious.
He is both. Demon King and Warlock. It's the same presence wearing different names.
I held still, because my instincts were screaming at me to deny it on principle.
And then she added, and the words landed like a thrown stone:
Tainted One.
I didn't react outwardly.
Inside, something shifted.
Tainted.
I had heard that word from eldritch mouths before. From things that looked at me like I was a contaminated sample. I'd assumed it was because I'd brushed corruption, because I'd killed what I shouldn't have survived, because my soul had been near Outer pressure and returned with scratches.
But now…
Now I had a woman with a crystal lodged in her jaw telling me the Demon King's shadow and the Warlock's name felt the same.
And she was looking at me like she could smell that same wrongness on my skin.
I let out a slow breath.
"In the doom-world, that would make sense," I murmured. "But this isn't supposed to be that world."
Her eyes flickered, and in that flicker I saw it: not comprehension, but recognition. Like she'd been waiting for me to say those words.
I didn't like that.
I tightened my grip just enough to make her cough, a wet, helpless sound around the crystal.
"Second obvious thing," I said, voice cold again. "What are you doing here."
Her mind went quiet.
I waited.
Nothing.
I stared at her face. No answer. No lie. No bargaining.
Just silence.
I smiled a little.
Not because I was happy.
Because I understood.
"She thinks she can outlast me," I said softly to the empty room. "Cute."
Her eyes widened again as if she understood exactly what I meant.
I shifted my grip and slammed her back against the stone wall, not hard enough to break bone, hard enough to make her understand that the wall was real.
"Talk," I repeated.
Still nothing.
So I did what I hated.
I began to hurt her.
Not with gore. Not with spectacle. Not with the theatrical cruelty weak people loved because it made them feel strong.
With precision.
With denial.
Vector wasn't only a spell-killer. It was also a rhythm breaker. A disruptor. A way to make the body's internal "yes" become "no."
I pulsed it through her pathways, short and controlled, disrupting the mana circulation that kept her comfortable. A pinch of heat. A sudden chill. A sharp pressure behind the eyes, like a migraine birthed on command.
Pain that didn't leave marks.
Pain that didn't bleed.
Pain that told the body: you are not in control.
She gasped around the crystal, whole frame trembling, nails digging into my wrist.
Her mind-voice shuddered, leaking anger now.
You… you can't…
"I can," I said calmly. "And you're about to learn the difference between 'I won't' and 'I can't.'"
Her eyes burned with hatred.
Still no answer.
Fine.
I increased the pressure. Not enough to kill her. Enough to make her body shake. Enough to fracture composure and force truth to the surface.
She still didn't speak.
Which meant two things.
One: she was trained.
Two: she was not the real decision-maker.
That was the part that made my stomach twist.
Because if she wasn't the decision-maker, then someone else had built this room. Someone else had placed the crystal. Someone else had written the green ward infection like a recipe.
And that someone else was about to walk through the door.
I felt it a breath before it happened.
A shift in the air behind me.
A displacement that didn't match the elevator's route, didn't match normal doors, didn't match physics behaving politely.
I spun.
Too late.
Something hit me from the side like a hammer wrapped in authority.
My shoulder exploded with pain and I staggered, grip loosening. The woman fell to her knees, gagging around the crystal, eyes wide and watering.
Three men stood in the open space now.
Not mutated guards.
Not Tower staff.
Patrons.
The kind who wore fine cloth and hid knives in paperwork.
The first one stepped forward slowly, clapping his hands once, as if I'd just performed an interesting play.
"My, my, my," he said, voice amused. "What are you doing down here."
His tone was light.
His eyes weren't.
The second man spoke, a shade tenser. "We didn't expect…"
"Don't lie," the third cut in immediately, voice younger, sharper. "No. We did."
The second man's jaw tightened, irritated at being corrected.
The third stood half in shadow at the edge of the lantern glow, hood low, body language wrong in a way that made my instincts itch.
Then he stepped forward.
The shadow peeled off him like wet cloth.
He was younger than the other two, face too smooth, expression too controlled, but there was something familiar in the way he carried himself. The posture. The distance behind the eyes.
My blood chilled.
My breath caught.
"No," I said, and the word came out raw.
Because the second man, now fully visible, was not a stranger.
It was Rion.
Rion's face was older than I remembered in the subtle ways that mattered. Harder around the eyes. Cleaner in expression. Like someone had sanded the boy down into a weapon.
He met my gaze without flinching.
"Erynd," he said quietly, like we were meeting in a hallway and not in a Qlippothic infection chamber.
The first patron chuckled softly, as if enjoying the tension like wine.
And my mind did something it almost never did anymore.
It froze.
Because I recognized the first patron's voice.
Not his face.
Not yet.
But his voice hit a memory-scar in my skull, and my stomach dropped with the horrible certainty that this wasn't just a Tower problem.
This was personal.
I forced my eyes back to the third figure.
The younger one.
The one I didn't recognize at all.
He smiled slightly from the edge of the light, as if he was pleased that I was trying.
As if my confusion was part of the plan.
The first patron stepped closer, hands relaxed, posture indulgent.
"You're very far from your banquet," he said. "And you're making a mess in my Tower."
My Tower.
I inhaled slowly, ignoring the ache in my shoulder, ignoring the woman coughing behind me, ignoring the urge to kill first and ask questions later.
Rion's presence made everything worse.
Because Rion shouldn't be here.
Not like this.
Not with them.
Not in a place where people planted rot into cores and called it research.
I let my voice go flat.
"Explain," I said.
The first patron's smile widened.
"Oh," he replied. "We will."
And then he glanced past me at the kneeling woman with the crystal lodged in her mouth, and his eyes gleamed with something almost affectionate.
"But first," he said softly, "let's see what you do when you realize the monster in the room isn't her."