The sterile scent of the Royal Hospital was a pathetic attempt to mask the smell of mortality. Rayn opened his eyes, the crimson of his iris flickering like a dying ember before roaring back to life with a predatory glow. His body felt like it had been shredded and stitched back together with rusted wire—the price of summoning the Conqueror's Sword while his cultivation was still in its infancy.
Two hours. That was all the rest the "Sovereign" would allow himself.
Beside his bed, Vespera sat like a coiled serpent, her golden eyes never leaving the door. Standing at the foot of the bed were two of Matthew Benric's personal assistants—men in high-collared silk robes who looked at Rayn with a mixture of professional duty and suppressed disgust.
"What happened, Vespera?" Rayn's voice was a dry rasp, yet it still carried the weight of a command.
"You burned out, Rayn," she replied, her tone a mix of concern and a dragon's bluntness. "You pushed your Gnosis past the breaking point to swallow that spirit. You passed out like a mortal drunk on cheap wine."
Rayn's lips curled into a thin, bitter smile. Weak. Still so fucking weak. In his mind, he saw the face of the Gambler's Heart—the yellow eyes, the fragile, black-and-white body. He had won, but he had barely survived the recoil.
"Don't be so goddamn hard on yourself, boy," Silas's voice echoed in his mind, booming with ancient authority. "That creature... I don't know its name in this era, but it was a monstrosity of raw, concentrated desire. It was only twenty-five percent developed, a mere fetus of a catastrophe, and yet it had the potential to level that tower. The fact that you split it in half and caged it while being tiers lower is a feat that would make the old gods spit out their tea."
Silas, Rayn thought, his eyes fixing on the ceiling. Can I refine that 'Gambler's Heart'? If I consume it, can I develop it using my own power? I want that strength.
There was a long silence from Silas. "You're a lunatic. That thing is a cocktail of human greed and suicidal mana. Five thousand years ago, in my prime, I never saw something deviate into something so foul. I can't guarantee you won't turn into a puddle of black sludge. But then again..." Silas's mental image gave a dark, approving nod. "Trying doesn't kill us, right? Only failure does. If you want to stand at the top of the Heavens, you have to be willing to dance in the Abyss."
While Rayn conducted his silent dialogue with the ghost in his head, the two assistants watched him. To them, the "New Leader" looked like a mental patient staring blankly at a wall.
"Isn't this... aren't these the old man's lapdogs?" Rayn asked, his eyes suddenly snapping toward the assistants.
One of the men bristled, his face turning a blotchy red. Calling Matthew Benric, a Phase 4 initial stage legend, an "old man" was a blasphemy that usually ended in a public execution. But the man swallowed his anger, his knuckles turning white as he clutched his clipboard. Rayn was the leader now. The laws of the jungle had shifted.
"Sir Rayn," the assistant replied, his voice strained. "We are here by the order of Sir Matthew to monitor your recovery and update the Council on your health. You are... vital to the town's current stability."
Rayn let out a low, mocking laugh. He knew exactly how these sycophants worked. They didn't care about "stability"; they cared about who held the leash.
His mind drifted back to Earth—to the grey skyscrapers and the even greyer morality of his past life. He remembered his mother, Valerie, a woman who had clawed her way to a manager position in a cutthroat conglomerate. Rayn had been a child then, small but possessed of a cold, analytical fury. He remembered the boss's children—nine spoiled brats who thought they could use him as a punching bag because their father signed his mother's paycheck.
He had waited. He had observed. And then, he had broken them. He had sent all nine to the hospital in a single afternoon, their bones shattered by a child who didn't know how to stop. His mother had been fired, blacklisted, and forced to beg for mercy in a police station while Rayn watched with unblinking eyes.
But years later, when Rayn became the titan of industry, those same people—the government, the bosses, the "great families"—had come to him, bowing and scraping, begging for a fragment of his influence.
The world doesn't change, Rayn thought. Whether it's Earth or Ashburg, you are either the one holding the knife, or you are the one being bled. Emotions like love for Valerie or my brother, Ken... they are anchors. And I am meant to sail.
"Arrange a meeting with Matthew," Rayn commanded, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "I want to know how to rule this shithole properly."
"This guy doesn't even know how to control a town," one assistant muttered under his breath, thinking himself unheard. "The people are fucking idiots for electing a child."
Rayn's ears, sharpened by Gnosis, caught every syllable. He didn't even look at the man. If you spent your life worrying about the barking of dogs, you'd never reach the mountain. He simply walked out of the room, Vespera following like a silent reaper.
An hour later, at 5:00 PM, Rayn entered the Dawinton Palace. The sunset cast long, blood-red shadows across the hall. Matthew Benric sat in his usual high-backed chair. Beside him stood a vacant throne—an old, dusty seat draped in rich red cloth, its cushions a deep, regal crimson.
"That chair," Rayn said, pointing to the empty seat as he sat down without being asked. "That was Dawinton's, wasn't it?"
Matthew looked at the chair, his eyes softening for a micro-second. "Yes, Rayn. It is the place of my one and only friend. Now, tell me... why the fuck are you here two hours after passing out? What is so urgent that you've come to bother an old man?"
Rayn leaned forward, his crimson eyes gleaming in the dim light. "Two things. First: Put Victus and Freddy in the same cell. No guards inside. Just them."
Matthew raised an eyebrow. He understood the cruelty of the request instantly. In the dark, in the heat of their shared failure, one would eventually blame the other. One would kill, and the other would die. And the survivor? The survivor would be a murderer in the eyes of the law, giving Rayn the perfect excuse to execute them both without getting a single drop of blood on his own white suit.
"Done," Matthew said. "What's the second?"
"I want to know the truth," Rayn said. "What really happened when you and Dawinton started the rebellion against the Sterling family? You mentioned a woman. You mentioned a 'hidden meaning.' I'm not a child, Matthew. Tell me the story you didn't tell the crowd."
Matthew sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of sixty years of regret. He started telling the story of what happened 50 years ago. He didn't know that Rayn had already planted a twin stone in the prison cell where Victus and Freddy were currently rotting.
In the Iron Pit, Victus sat against the cold, damp stone wall. His Gnosis was shattered, his "Gambler's Heart" stolen by Rayn. Beside him, Freddy sat in a catatonic stupor. Victus saw a small, glowing artifact wedged into a crack in the wall. He picked it up, pressing it to his ear.
Through the stone, he heard Matthew's voice.
"Before you were even a thought in the world's mind, Rayn," Matthew began, "Me and Dawinton were just twenty-year-old recruits in the First Division. We served the Sterling family for 10 years straight. They were the true masters of this land. And they were... In those 10 years we found they were the definition of human filth."
Matthew's voice grew dark, trembling with a primal hate. "They raped the women of this town like it was a sport. They'd finish, and then they'd slit their throats to save on the 'cost' of silence. They started wars for amusement. We followed them because we had no choice. We were cogs in a machine of gore."
"But then," Matthew continued, "one day came the screams. We were on patrol near the leader's quarters. We heard a woman screaming—a sound so familiar it felt like a bolt of lightning to the heart. Dawinton and I ran. We broke down the door."
Matthew paused, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the arms of his chair.
"We found the Division 1 leader... the man we called Leader of Ashburg... raping Dawinton's girlfriend. She was the light of his life, Rayn. Dawinton wanted to kill him right then and there. I had to tackle him, to hold him down, because if he had struck the leader, we both would have been executed before we could draw a second breath."
Rayn's face was a mask of stone. "And the woman? What happened to her?"
"She survived the night," Matthew whispered. "But she was changed. A year later, she gave birth to a child. Dawinton... he was a man of incredible, foolish love. He married her. He took her in, despite the shame, despite the memory of what happened."
Vespera, standing in the corner listening Matthew tolding, narrowed her eyes. "So you are saying... Victus is not Dawinton's biological son?"
Matthew's silence was the answer. "No, Vespera. Victus is the product of that bad nightmare. He is the son of the very tyrant Dawinton eventually overthrew. But Dawinton loved that boy more than life itself. He never told him. He didn't want to hurt him with the truth. He wanted Victus to believe he was a Prince of Ashburg, not the spawn of a Sterling monster."
In the prison cell, Victus let out a sound that wasn't human. It was a strangled, soul-shattering wail. The man he had hated... the man he had betrayed and eventually helped kill... was the only man who had ever truly loved him. He had murdered his own protector, the man who had hidden his "bastard" blood to give him a kingdom.
"Is that why the rebellion started?" Rayn asked, his voice echoing in the silent hall. "Because of the rape?"
"No," Matthew said, his eyes turning hollow. "The rebellion didn't start when she suffered. It started when she died. And the way she died... it made the rape look like a kindness."
Rayn leaned in, the shadows of the palace seeming to swallow him whole. "What happened to her, Matthew? Tell me how she died."