The pain hit Valerius like a siege hammer to the sternum.
He didn't scream—Emperors are trained not to scream—but he collapsed against the warm iron of the furnace, clutching his chest. It wasn't a heart attack. It was worse. It was the phantom echo of a magical impact, transmitted instantly across the palace through the golden thread of the Vinculum Mortis.
"She's... been hit," Valerius wheezed, his vision swimming.
Vexilla was already moving. She had staggered for a fraction of a second, her hand flying to her own chest, but her demon physiology metabolized the shock faster.
"The Elf is fighting," Vexilla growled, her eyes shifting from red to a glowing, molten gold. "And she is losing. If she dies, I die. And I refuse to die in a basement."
"The East Wing..." Valerius gasped, forcing himself upright despite the nausea. "The Lab... takes... ten minutes... by foot."
"We don't have ten minutes."
Vexilla grabbed Valerius by the collar of his ruined wedding shirt.
"Hold your breath, husband."
"Wait, the structural integr—"
BOOM.
Vexilla didn't take the stairs. She didn't take the secret passage. She channeled mana into her legs and launched them straight up, smashing through the wooden ceiling of the basement, through the floor of the servant's quarters, and into the corridor above.
Splinters and plaster rained down. Valerius coughed, waving away dust.
"Efficient," he choked out. "The repair bill will be astronomical."
"Point the way," Vexilla commanded, hefting him like a sack of grain.
The Royal Alchemy Lab
Princess Elara was not trained for brawls. She was trained for duels of honor.
She sidestepped a lash of black, oily shadow that cracked the stone floor where she had been standing a microsecond before. She raised her left hand, chanting in the High Tongue.
"Lux Veritas!"
A beam of concentrated starlight erupted from her palm, blindingly bright. It struck Duke Kaelen square in the chest.
It should have incinerated him. Starlight was the antithesis of corruption.
Instead, the weeping eye symbol hovering behind Kaelen dilated. The light was sucked into the pupil of the shadow, vanishing without a sound.
"Elven magic is so... linear," Kaelen sighed, dusting off his velvet lapel. "You assume that light banishes darkness. But where do you think the light goes when the candle dies?"
He flicked his wrist.
Three tendrils of shadow shot from the floor, wrapping around Elara's ankles and left wrist. The touch was agonizing—cold that burned like liquid nitrogen.
Elara cried out, the sound strangled. The Aether-Rot in the vial she still clutched in her right hand seemed to vibrate in resonance with Kaelen's power.
"You are not human," Elara gasped, struggling against the bindings. Her skin where the shadows touched was turning gray. "Humans cannot hold the Void."
"We adapt," Kaelen smiled. He walked closer, the monocle reflecting the terrified Elf. "My master requires a vessel. The Emperor is the ideal candidate—weak will, high political access. But you... you are a nuisance."
He raised a hand, his fingers forming a claw. The shadows tightened, lifting Elara off the ground.
"Let's see if the Demon Queen feels it when I snap your spine."
[System Warning: Character Life Signs Critical]
CRASH!
The heavy oak doors of the laboratory didn't just open; they disintegrated.
A blurred shape of crimson and black slammed into Kaelen, carrying the momentum of a runaway siege engine. The impact sent the Duke flying across the room, smashing through a display case of rare crystals.
Vexilla skidded to a halt, her boots gouging deep grooves in the floor. She dropped Valerius—who landed on his feet, albeit shakily—and summoned her dagger.
"Nobody," Vexilla hissed, her horns flaring with hellfire, "kills the Pointy-Ears but me."
Kaelen extracted himself from the pile of shattered glass. His suit was torn, revealing skin that was entirely gray and covered in weeping sores. He didn't look in pain. He looked annoyed.
"The happy couple," Kaelen drawled. "And here I didn't send an invitation."
Valerius straightened his coat. He looked at Elara, suspended in the fading shadows, then at the monstrous form of the Duke. His mind, honed by years of navigating a court of vipers, analyzed the situation instantly.
Magic immunity: High.Physical durability: High.Weakness: Arrogance. And the connection to his 'Master'.
"Duke Kaelen," Valerius said, his voice calm, cutting through the magical static. "Article 5 of the Imperial Constitution states that treason is punishable by beheading. However, practicing Necromancy within the palace grounds carries a hefty zoning violation fine."
Kaelen laughed, a wet, gurgling sound. "You make jokes, Valerius. Even at the end."
"I'm not joking," Valerius said. He stepped forward, placing himself slightly behind Vexilla. "I'm stalling."
"For what?"
"For her."
Valerius pointed to the floor.
Kaelen looked down.
A massive, spectral wolf jaw erupted from the shadow of the workbench behind him.
The Sewers / The Lab Connection
Minutes earlier, deep in the sewers beneath the Noble District, Rengar had found it.
It wasn't just a ritual circle. It was a pipeline.
The sewers beneath Kaelen's estate had been modified. Tubes of glowing green fluid—Aether-Rot—pumped from a massive, beating organ attached to the wall. It looked like a giant, disembodied heart, but covered in eyes.
[The Flesh-Crafters of the Void]
The "Weeping Eye" is not a god, but a biological weapon from the Age of Myths. It requires biomass to produce Aether-Rot. Rengar has discovered that Kaelen isn't just summoning magic; he is farming it from the bodies of the city's missing poor.
Rengar didn't understand the magic, but she understood anatomy.
"Heart," she growled. "If it beats, I can kill it."
She didn't attack the organ directly. She smelled the magical ley line connecting it to the surface. To the Palace.
She sank her claws into the ley line—a thick vein of pulsing black energy running along the sewer ceiling—and pulled.
The Alchemy Lab (Present)
In the lab, Kaelen screamed.
It wasn't a scream of pain from Vexilla's dagger or Elara's light. It was the scream of a puppet whose strings had just been yanked.
The spectral wolf jaw—Rengar's spirit projection transmitted through the Soul Link—chomped down on Kaelen's shadow.
"Now!" Valerius shouted.
"KNEEL!"
Valerius used [Absolute Charisma] again. It was weaker this time, the cooldown barely reset, but combined with the disruption from Rengar's attack, it was enough.
Kaelen's knees hit the floor.
Vexilla lunged. "Die, filth!"
She drove her dagger not into his heart, but into the Weeping Eye shadow hovering behind him.
The shadow shrieked—a sound like tearing metal.
Kaelen convulsed. The gray skin of his face began to crack, glowing with an unstable violet light.
"You... cannot... stop... the Awakening," Kaelen gurgled.
"Move!" Valerius tackled Elara, dragging her behind a heavy obsidian workbench. Vexilla leaped backward, crossing her arms to shield her face.
Kaelen exploded.
It wasn't a fire explosion. It was a gravity implosion. The room warped inward, glass and stone sucked into a momentary singularity where the Duke had been, before blasting outward in a shockwave of cold force.
Valerius felt the wind knocked out of him. Dust choked the air.
Silence returned to the lab.
Slowly, Valerius stood up. The lab was demolished. One wall was missing entirely, revealing the night sky.
Where Kaelen had been, there was nothing but a scorched mark on the floor in the shape of an eye.
"Is he dead?" Elara asked, her voice trembling. She was slumped against the workbench, the dark bruises on her ankles already fading thanks to her passive regeneration.
"No," Vexilla spat, kicking a piece of debris. "That was a Void Shift. He escaped. But he left his meat suit behind."
She pointed to a pile of gray ash in the center of the scorch mark.
Valerius walked over to the ash. Something glinted in the pile.
He reached down and picked it up. It was a heavy, iron ring with a signet he didn't recognize. Not Kaelen's crest.
[The Ring of the Silence]
The ring bears the insignia of the "Silent Gods"—the very deities Valerius worships publicly. This implies the corruption is not external to the Human Realm's religion, but coming from within the Church itself.
"He's gone," Valerius said, slipping the ring into his pocket. "But Rengar found something."
He tapped his chest. "I can feel her satisfaction. She found the source."
The door—or what was left of the frame—creaked.
Captain Thorne (Kaelen's nephew) appeared, sword drawn, looking terrified at the devastation. Behind him stood the Royal Guard.
"Your Majesty!" Thorne gasped, staring at the missing wall and the Demon Queen standing amidst the wreckage. "What... what happened? We heard an explosion!"
Valerius looked at Thorne. He looked at Vexilla (Demon), Elara (Elf), and the destruction.
He smiled, a tired, charming smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"An experiment, Captain," Valerius lied smoothly. "My wife, the Princess Elara, was attempting to create a new fireworks display for the wedding. She miscalculated the... stoichiometry."
Elara blinked. "I did what?"
"And Vexilla," Valerius gestured to the Demon Queen, "was heroically saving me from the combustion."
Thorne looked skeptical. "And... my uncle? Duke Kaelen? He was seen entering this wing."
Valerius's expression hardened.
"Duke Kaelen is not here, Captain. But I believe you will find he has... vacated his estate. I suggest you check the sewers beneath his home. I hear there is a terrible plumbing issue."
Thorne paled, sensing the threat beneath the pleasantry.
"I... understand, Sire."
As the guards dispersed to secure the perimeter, Valerius leaned back against the broken workbench. His adrenaline was crashing.
"Three wives," he muttered to himself. "One night. One exploded lab. And a necromancer Duke on the run."
Vexilla sheathed her dagger. She looked at Elara, then at Valerius.
"You came back," she said, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.
"I live here," Valerius shrugged.
"No," Elara corrected, standing up and brushing glass from her dress. She looked at the Human Emperor with a new, complicated expression. "She means you came for us. When you could have run."
"If you die, I die," Valerius recited the mantra.
"Liar," Rengar's voice boomed.
They turned. The Beast Chieftainess climbed through the hole in the wall, smelling of sewer muck and triumph. She dropped a heavy, pulsating sac of flesh onto the pristine (shattered) floor.
"You came because you are the Alpha," Rengar grinned, showing all her teeth. "And Alphas protect the pack."
Valerius looked at the horrific flesh-sac, then at his three deadly wives.
"I need a drink," Valerius said. "And a bath. In that order."