The air in the room was thick with the scent of iron and the strangled gasps of the dying servants. Cian stood amidst the wreckage, his small chest rising and falling in a rhythmic, ancient cadence.
His brothers and sister hadn't moved. They were frozen, their minds struggling to reconcile the "Paper Prince" they had just poisoned with the monster standing before them.
Then, a fresh wave of memories crashed into Cian's mind—unfiltered and agonizing.
He saw himself—the original Cian—forced to crawl through the mud while his brothers used his back as a footstool. He felt the sting of Elara's fan as she branded his arm with a heated iron for "amusement." He remembered being held underwater in the palace fountains by Raon until his lungs nearly burst.
They hadn't just bullied him. They had tried to break his soul.
A cold, dark smile spread across Cian's face. It was the smile of a conqueror who had just found a rebellion worth crushing.
"You're still here?" Cian asked. His voice was soft, like the rustle of a blade leaving a silk sheath. "I suppose you're waiting for your turn."
"You... you crazy bastard!" Raon, the eldest, finally found his voice. His face was flushed with a mix of fear and humiliated rage. "Do you think hitting a few servants makes you a warrior? You're a weakling who can't even circulate mana! That throne is **mine**! Father only gave it to you out of pity!"
Raon lunged, his fist glowing with a faint, blue aura. To Kaelen, the man who had invented the concept of mana-infused striking, Raon's movement was as slow as a slug.
Cian didn't block. He stepped into the strike, his small shoulder driving into Raon's chest to shatter his balance. Before Raon could recover, Cian's palm struck his chin, snapping his head back.
**CRACK.**
Cian didn't stop. He moved like a shadow, his strikes landing with surgical precision. He didn't just beat them; he dismantled them. He broke their noses, shattered their jawbones, and left their faces so swollen and purple that their own mother wouldn't recognize them. He ensured that for months, they wouldn't be able to show their faces in the royal court without being mocked.
He broke Raon's knees last—making him fall to the position he had forced the original Cian into so many times.
"You wanted the throne, Raon?" Cian whispered, grabbing his brother's hair and forcing him to look at the blood-stained floor. "A throne is not a chair for a child to play in. It is a seat for a god. And you... you aren't even a man."
Julian and Kai rushed in together, fueled by panic. Cian caught Julian's wrist, twisted it until the bone splintered, and used the boy's own head to smash against Kai's. He kicked them while they were down, striking the pressure points that caused the most agony without killing them.
Princess Elara screamed, her fan dropping to the floor. "Stop! Please! We're your family!"
Cian turned his head, his gaze settling on her. "Family? You were executioners. I am simply the judge."
He didn't hit her with his fists. Instead, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her into the mess of porridge and servant blood on the floor. "Look at the mess you've made of my Empire, Elara. Clean it with your silk dress."
Raon lay on the ground, his face a ruined mask of blood, his eyes burning with a hateful, impotent fury. He was the eldest. He was supposed to be King. To be beaten into the dirt by a ten-year-old "weakling" was a shame worse than death.
"I'll... I'll kill you..." Raon wheezed through a broken jaw.
Cian looked down at him with pure, regal indifference.
"You can try," Cian said, wiping a speck of blood from his cheek. "But remember this: I am the one who built these walls. I am the one who wrote the laws you break. And if you ever look at me with that pathetic anger again, I won't just break your face. I'll erase your name from history."
He stepped over Raon's broken form and headed toward the door.
"Tell the Emperor," Cian called out over his shoulder, "that the Crown Prince is awake. And the succession crisis is officially over."