The air in the Ruo Han residence was no longer breathable. The fresh air was corrupted by the smell of medicinal herbs, burnt candle wax, and the metallic tang of Zaliyah's sweat.
The morning sun, usually a symbol of hope, was now an enemy to be shut out.
Outside the high stone walls of the estate, the silence of the morning didn't last. It began as a low hum-the sound of a few neighbors gathered at the gate-but it quickly grew into a loud, ugly roar.
"Murderers! Bring out the Demon-lovers!" a voice shrieked, followed by the heavy thud of a stone hitting the reinforced oak of the front door.
Inside, the sound of the hammer was frantic. Caius was personally driving long, rusted nails into the window frames of the master wing. His eyes were bloodshot, his silk robes stained with sweat. "More boards!" he barked at the trembling servants. "I want this house sealed like a coffin! If they see so much as a shadow move, they'll burn us all alive!"
"Caius, you're hurting the house," Riosuka pleaded, clutching a basin of cold water.
"The house is already dead!" Caius hissed, pointing a trembling finger toward the bed where Zaliyah lay. "Look at him! He comes back dressed like a prince of hell, covered in jewelry that could buy this entire province, and you expect me to worry about the woodwork? We are harborers of fugitives! If the Council arrives before I can hide them, we'll all be swinging from the gallows by sunset!"
Karas sat on the edge of the bed , his large frame hunched over. His mind racing with thoughts he couldn't comprehend and questions he had no answers to . His chest were bruised, and his mind was a fractured mirror, reflecting only the blood in the park and the terrifying cold he could feel in his body but couldn't detect the source.
He dipped a cloth into the basin and pressed it against Zaliyah's neck. The heat coming off his brother's skin was unnatural-it felt like touching a hot stove.
"Zaliyah... Zi, look at me," Karas whispered, his voice cracking.
Zaliyah didn't look. His head thrashed from side to side, his white hair fanning out like a shroud. His breathing was shallow, a steady, wet rattling that made Riru sob into her hands at the foot of the bed.
The black liquid under his fingernails had moved past his knuckles now, dark veins branching up his forearms like a poisonous vine.
"No... Malachi... please..." Zaliyah whimpered, his voice a broken, high-pitched rasp. "Don't... don't take him... the ice... the ice it's...it's too thick...".
Riosuka froze. She reached out to touch Zaliyah's arm, but her eyes fell on the red tear drop earring that had fallen from his ear onto the nightstand. She picked it up, her fingers trembling. The earring was nothing she had seen before in this city or across the central plains she had travelled. It looked small but felt too heavy, too pure, and the it was sharp enough to draw blood.
"This isn't ours," she whispered, her voice trembling with a new kind of terror. "Karas... where were you? . This is the craftsmanship of the Night-Sovereigns. Did you... did you steal this? Is that why they're calling you murderers?"
Karas looked at the earring, then at the dark smudges on Zaliyah's arms. He realized then that There's something buried deep within his thoughts, something fighting to break through, did Zaliyah bargain with an unknown entity" and was about to die in a cage of wood and nails? He thought to himself.
Outside, the crowd had reached a fever pitch. A heavy beam-likely a log from the woodcutter's yard-slammed into the side door of the kitchen.
CRACK.
The sound of splintering wood echoed through the halls.
"They're inside!" Riru screamed, scrambling toward Karas.
"Stay here," Karas growled, his blue eyes flashing with a dormant, dangerous light. He stood up, his hand reaching for a heavy fire-poker by the hearth.
But he didn't get five steps.
A sudden, violent pressure filled the room. The air temperature dropped forty degrees in a single second. The candles flickered out, leaving the room in a bruised, violet darkness.
Zaliyah's eyes snapped open.
They weren't the soft purple eyes of a human boy. They were glowing with an, electric violet light that seemed to bleed from his pupils. His back arched off the bed, his muscles snapping tight like over-tuned harp strings.
"GO AWAY!"
Zaliyah screamed, but the voice wasn't his. It was layered with the echoes of the Demon Realm, a guttural, resonant boom that vibrated the very floorboards.
His magic, suppressed by the poison and the trauma, finally found a vent. A shockwave of raw, purple energy erupted from his chest.
BOOM.
The nails that Caius had so carefully driven into the windows didn't just pop-they were shot out like bullets, embedding themselves into the opposite walls. The heavy wooden boards were pulverized into splinters, flying outward into the garden. The glass shattered into a billion diamonds, caught in the violet light.
The crowd outside fell into a deathly silence. Through the ragged, broken gaps where the windows used to be, they saw it.
They saw the "Demon" of the Ruo Han family standing in the center of the bed, his white robes billowing, his eyes glowing like twin stars. To the superstitious townspeople, he didn't look like a boy returning home. He looked like an apex predator claiming his territory.
"A demon!" someone screamed from the garden. "He's a demon! He's brought the curse into the city!"
Zaliyah collapsed back onto the bed, the light in his eyes fading into a dull, ashy violet. The effort had spent the last of his strength.
He lay there, his chest barely moving, as the cold wind from the garden swirled into the room, bringing with it the scent of rain and the terrified gasps of the neighbors.
Caius stood in the center of the room, his hammer falling from his hand and hitting the floor with a dull clunk. He looked at the shattered windows, then at his unconscious son.
"You've done it now," Caius whispered, his voice hollow and dead. "You haven't just brought shame, Karas. You've brought war."
In the distance, the low, rhythmic thumping of the Council's drums began to sound-not the celebratory drums of the Demon Realm, but the heavy, slow beat of the Human Guard's executioners.