The silence in the infirmary was absolute, save for the rhythmic, shallow breathing of the girl on the bed.
Stacian pulled her hands away, the soft pearlescent glow of healing magic flickering out like a dying candle. The final jagged scar on Lyra's pale shoulder knit itself back together, leaving behind nothing but smooth, unblemished flesh.
"Physically... she's whole," Stacian whispered, her voice cracking. "But the trauma beneath the skin? Leornars, that isn't so easily mended. Some wounds don't bleed."
Leornars stood by the bedside, a statue carved from permafrost. He didn't look relieved. He didn't look happy. When he finally turned toward the door, Stacian flinched, her breath catching in her throat. His eyes weren't just angry—they were void. The man who had shared jokes and bread with her was gone; in his place stood a hollowed-out vessel of divine, terrifying wrath.
"Watch over her," he said. The words were a flat line, devoid of inflection, yet they carried the weight of a death sentence. "I'm coming back."
He walked out without waiting for an answer. Stacian watched the door creak shut, a cold shiver racing down her spine. She looked back at the sleeping Lyra and sighed, her fingers trembling as she tucked the girl's hair behind her ear.
"Well..." she breathed to the empty room. "Someone is going to die today."
The air in the underground laboratory tasted of copper and ozone. When Leornars entered, the heavy iron door didn't just open—it groaned off its hinges as if the very atoms of the room were trying to flee his presence. He didn't glance at the slavers suspended from the walls or the glass tubes where "specimens" floated in alchemical brine.
He walked straight to the forge-fire, his movements mechanical. He picked up a heavy iron rod.
"Helvaria," he whispered.
The rod glowed white-hot instantly. The heat was so intense the stone floor beneath him began to vitrify into glass. Leornars' fingers didn't flinch. With his other hand, he cast a continuous loop of high-tier healing magic on the metal, forcing the atoms to hold their shape even as they screamed under thermal pressure. He was holding a sun in his palm.
"Oh, Lord Leornars!"
Salene stepped out from the shadows of the inner chamber, wiping fresh blood from her forearms with a silk kerchief. "I didn't hear you enter. What brings you to my little workshop? I was just beginning the... extraction."
"Information," Leornars said.
The word hadn't even fully left his lips before his aura erupted.
It wasn't a gradual release; it was a physical shockwave. For 390 meters in every direction, the world turned stagnant. Outside on the streets of Avangard, citizens collapsed to their knees, clutching their chests as if the very oxygen had turned to lead. Inside the lab, the screams stopped. The slavers began to bleed from their eyes and pores, their internal organs buckling under the sheer spiritual weight of his fury.
He thrust the white-hot rod toward Salene.
"I want everything," he commanded, his voice echoing with a terrifying, layered resonance. "Locations. Troop movements. Supply lines. The names of every leader in their hierarchy. I don't care about the methods. I don't care about the screams. I want the truth. Now."
Salene's lips curled into a jagged, sadistic grin. She took the rod, her eyes dancing with dark delight as the heat seared her leather gloves. "You heard the Lord. Your very existence is a debt you owe to his mercy... and I intend to collect the interest."
Leornars turned his back on the carnage. "Vile creatures," he spat, his voice echoing in the hallway. "There is no mercy left for you. There is no 'in-between' anymore."
"In Avangard, the price of cruelty is a life without end and a death without peace," Althelia's voice chimed in his mind, solemn and ancient.
Leornars sat on the edge of a jagged cliff overlooking the kingdom. On his brow, the Crimson Crown materialized—a symbol of absolute authority, shimmering with a blood-red light that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. He reached up, pulling it from his head and staring at the intricate, cursed metal. He let out a chuckle. " Lord Leornars the white plague,king of Avangard. But still a boy king"he said in a neutral toner
"What use is this?" he asked the wind. "Power, wealth, a kingdom... and I couldn't even save one child from the dark. I'm wearing a crown the same thing that oppressed me years ago in my world now here it's a burden to try not be what they were. "
He gripped the crown tight, his knuckles white. "These monsters are what gods create," he muttered, his voice growing dark. "I'll carve my name in teeth and paint. I'll scream my truth until the end. I'll wear the light till I burn. I chose this crown when I chose this curse. There's fire underneath my skin... I'll take this path with absolutely no regret."
"Taking more burden upon your shoulders?" Althelia's voice echoed in his core."Althelia tell me? Do you believe in luck?" He asked
" Yes,it's a logical thing" Althelia chimmed
" Luck is a oracle the helpless cling to " Leornars said calmly
" Huh?"Althelia exclaimed
"If hope is poison, let me drain the cup," he replied. "I'll walk this path with broken wings. If this is how my story ends, let it burn not as a hero or a saint—but as a man who will carry the weak when the gods turn away."
With a flicker of space-time, the world folded. He vanished.
He reappeared in the Seraphim Kingdom, walking through the grand halls of the palace with the slow, deliberate pace of an executioner. A group of newly appointed nobles stood in the corridor, draped in silks and smelling of expensive perfumes.
"Who is this peasant?" Count Subiro sneered, waving a lace fan. "Does the palace just let anyone walk through the front door now? Look at his boots—covered in common dust."
Leornars paused. He turned his void-like gaze toward the Count.
The man's sneer froze. For a second, Subiro felt like he was staring into the mouth of a sunless abyss. The air around the Count's throat seemed to vanish. Then, without a word, Leornars looked away and continued walking.
"Ugh... what a freak," Subiro muttered, though he had to lean against the wall because his knees were shaking uncontrollably.
"Zhyelena," Leornars called out.
From the very shadow cast by his boots, a dark mist swirled. Zhyelena emerged, her form knitting together from the darkness. As she felt the crushing weight of his presence, her own crimson eyes shifted, turning a hollow, void blue to match her master's. She dropped to one knee.
"Lord."
"Find everything on that man," Leornars said. "Leave nothing hidden. Every coin, every secret, every sin.No crumbs left unchecked."
"By your will." She vanished like a candle blown out in a gale.
Leornars kicked open the heavy oak doors to the Queen's throne room. He didn't wait for an introduction. He walked straight past the rows of gasping courtiers and sat heavily upon the throne—not the guest chair, but the throne of the Seraphim itself.
"HERETIC!" a noble screamed, pointing a trembling finger. "HOW DARE YOU DEFILE THE SEAT OF—"
"SILENCE."
The word hit the room like a physical blow. The nobles were slammed into the floorboards by an invisible force, the sound of cracking wood echoing. One man tried to scramble up, gasping for air as if the atmosphere had been replaced by water.
"I said... silence."
Leornars clenched his fist. The noble was lifted into the air, his throat constricted by a phantom grip. His face turned a deep, bruised purple, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.
"The difference between you and me is burden," Leornars said, his voice dropping to a terrifying whisper. "I begged the sky for help and it looked idly on. That's the difference. You call me a heretic? I call you an insect."
"Lord Leornars?" Queen Louis entered from the side wing, her expression a mask of forced calm, though the hand holding her skirts was white-knuckled. "I didn't expect a visit today. Especially not one so... disruptive."
"Who are these... Parasites, Louis?" Leornars asked, releasing his grip. The noble slumped to the floor, wheezing and sobbing.
"The new aristocracy," Louis replied, keeping her distance. "It is what the people desired—a return to a stable social structure. Tradition brings comfort."
Leornars looked at the vaulted ceiling. "Tell me, Louis... what's the difference between a child and a tree?"
Louis blinked, thrown by the non-sequitur. "Their... biology, I suppose."
"One, if cut down, can be replanted," Leornars said, his voice low and dangerous. "The other cannot. One's life is valuable, and the other's death is seen as 'value' by the people you let walk these halls. That's the difference, Louis."
"I see," Louis said, her voice trembling slightly. "You were not speaking of biology."
"So, you chose the old ways," Leornars continued, a bitter smile touching his lips. "Tell me... did our agreement on slavery come with a 'fine print' I missed? Or am I just getting old and forgetful?"
The temperature in the room plummeted. Behind Leornars, his aura took the shape of a gargantuan, three-headed viper made of shifting shadows, its fangs dripping with ethereal venom.
Louis took a sharp step back, her heart hammering against her ribs. Her personal guard instinctively drew his sword.
"Do you really want to point that thing at me?" Leornars' voice was a low growl. "Unless you intend to use it, put it away. Otherwise, I'll find a box six feet under to hold you permanently."
The knight's blade clattered to the floor. He didn't drop it; his hands were shaking so violently he couldn't hold it.
"Slavery is abolished!" Louis insisted, her voice rising in a desperate pitch. "That is the law! I signed the decree myself!"
"THEN EXPLAIN IT TO ME! LOUIS SERRELIM" Leornars roared.
The stained-glass windows of the throne room shattered outward. The throne beneath him cracked.
"Explain why a fox girl had to walk forty-three miles through the dirt to find me because she was a slave! Explain why a child had to be ripped from her mother's arms in your territory! TELL ME, LOUIS!"
In a blink, he was standing inches from her face. She could smell the ozone on his skin, see the void in his eyes.
"It... it must be a remote region," she stammered, her regal composure shattering. "Information travels slowly... I cannot be everywhere at once..."
"WHICH REGION? WHICH NOBLE?" Leornars demanded. "Give me a name, or I will burn the maps until I find them myself! I will turn this kingdom into a graveyard of 'stable social structures'!"
"I... I don't know the specific area you mean..."
"Then I'll handle it my way. Stay out of my sight, Louis. For your sake."
"Don't forget who put you on the throne, I put you on it and can remove you" he said coldly .
" And I'm honored to serve my people,Lord Leornars " she said
He vanished into thin air. Louis collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath as if a lung-crushing weight had finally been lifted. Tears of pure terror pricked her eyes.
"I felt... I felt like I was being strangled just by standing near him," she whispered to the empty air.
While Leornars raged, Zhyelena moved like a ghost. She shadowed Count Subiro to his estate, slipping through the cracks of the physical world. Inside his private study, she found a heavy vault. Before the Count could even sit at his desk to pour a glass of wine for his nerves, she appeared behind him.
[Paralysis]
Subiro froze, his wine glass hovering inches from his lips, his eyes widening in primal terror.
"Don't worry," Zhyelena whispered, her voice like silk over a razor blade. [Blindness].
The world went dark for the Count. Zhyelena sifted through his mind like a librarian, extracting the vault code and the sordid, rotting details of his life. She opened the safe, pulling out stacks of ledgers bound in black leather.
"Illegal money laundering... recreating Pollium drugs... human trafficking. You've been a busy little rat," she murmured. She tucked the documents into her shadow and touched the Count's temple. "You won't remember the last six minutes. But you will remember the fear. It will live in your marrow."
She vanished.
Minutes later, she appeared before Leornars, who was sitting on a lone rock near a construction site back in Avangard, staring at the horizon with dead eyes.
"The documents, Lord Leornars," she said, presenting them.
Leornars scanned the pages, his eyes tracking the names. "I see. He's not the ruler of the region, but he's the one funding the trade. He's the engine that keeps the wheels turning." He closed the ledger with a snap. "Good work, Zhyelena."
"I live to serve." She melted back into his shadow.
Leornars teleported back to the clinic. Stacian was waiting by the door, her expression solemn.
"I have a task for you," Leornars said, his voice cold and calculating. "Buy every stock and share connected to Subiro's estates in the Seraphim Kingdom. I don't just want him dead. I want him financially erased. Liquidate his assets. Empty his offshore accounts. Leave him with nothing but the clothes on his back. I want him to feel the hunger he sold to others before I finish him."
He turned his gaze toward the bed where Lyra lay, her breathing now deep and peaceful.
"I'll handle the logistics," Stacian said softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "When she wakes up, I'll call you. But please... don't let the darkness swallow you whole, Leornars."
Leornars didn't answer. He simply watched the girl, the Crimson Crown flickering faintly in the reflection of his eyes.
"Oh Liverra, what have you done?" Althelia thought, her voice mourning. "You've pushed a good man until he ran out of patience. And there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."