“Th-this... what is this...?”

At the instant the Crimson Flame rushed in, Senro threw up a barrier, a glass shell born of panic. A storm of outcomes slashed through her mind. The expected blow never landed.

She looked around on instinct. No one stood there, as if the world held its breath.

Time lurched, then groaned back into motion.

Torrential rain fell like a curtain, scouring blood-streaked walls. Masked axemen reaped lives like harvesters in a red field. Without the arcane formation caging the manor, the stench alone would have rolled for miles.

“This is where it all began—the place you thought scrubbed clean.”

In the downpour, a speck of Crimson Flame kindled like a lurking ember. In a blink, the Valkyrie smiled into being beside Senro.

The axemen flowed past as if blind to them, shadows rushing by lantern light. Their target lay deeper in the manor—the last survivors.

“Eldest daughter of the Hydra Clan. I’ll give it to you—your schemes are first-rate. You borrowed the crown prince’s hand to cull your rivals, even—”

Her voice cut off. That gentle tone scraped Senro’s ears like a blade, and her fists clenched till her nails bit skin.

“Ah... the good part’s coming. Come.”

The Valkyrie snapped her fingers. The world folded. They stood in the manor’s heart a breath later.

Steel clashed like thunder. Hydra clansmen fell beneath the axemen’s sudden raid, lives snuffed like candles in wind. The axemen moved quick, killed clean, and showed no mercy—no common bandits.

Their weapons were uniform, regulation steel. Every crest was filed away to silence the trail, like names cut from a gravestone.

After the first one-sided slaughter, the Hydra finally rallied. Elemental spells flared like storm-tossed waves, pushing the tide back. For a heartbeat, the line held.

The Valkyrie only smiled and shook her head, rain beading her lashes. Beside her, Senro bit her lip till it blanched.

“What’s wrong? Gone soft?”

Senro said nothing. Her face went white. When the axemen in the crowd raised their right arms, she turned away, breath hitching.

Arcane surges rippled through the air like heat over desert stone. The axemen flipped up their masks and chanted two simple words in one voice.

They smiled with a zealot’s bliss, even as lethal elements flowered inches away.

Blinding light burst like noon torn open. Hydra casters mid-chant or mid-cast buckled under their own elements, fireworks blooming in the packed crowd.

But the fireworks brought no delighted cries—only ragged screams and limbs wheeling through rain.

“Bastards!”

A burly man at the rear roared his fury, voice like a cracked drum. He flung up a barrier of pure Arcane Power and drove in, greatsword howling.

He was a black whirlwind, riding the blast’s backdraft. In a breath he tore a gap, and every stroke hit like a falling anvil. Axemen met his blade and turned to pulp.

But one man’s rage can’t outduel a trap with a patient heart.

As he wound up for another run, the axemen fell back as one, like a tide obeying the moon. Arrows rained from the sky, a dark storm.

His pupils shrank. He whirled his greatsword to swat the storm aside. The micro arrays etched on every shaft lit all at once. Fire swallowed his rage-lit face.

“Heh. Simple tactics, perfect against simple heads. Honestly, Nero’s private hand is exquisite—he forced this ox to eat enchanted arrows.”

In Senro’s eyes, the perfect, gentle woman looked like a demon in silk. As a bystander, she dissected the massacre with careless grace, every word a thorn.

They stood apart on a cliff of calm, watching the one-sided grinding of lives to bone.

In a heartbeat stretched thin as wire, Senro fought herself. Then she lifted her head and looked again.

The courtyard was rubble under a quilt of explosions. When the fire eased, the burly man still stood.

His makeshift armor lay in shards like shed scales. His skin glowed like heated iron, flushed with a feverish red.

He didn’t fall. Blood threaded his eyes; rage burned there, a kiln ready to devour the world.

He exhaled a plume of white, gripped his heavy sword, and rose.

“Remarkable. The Hydra Clan’s next chief. That didn’t put you down. You could trade blows with a Demonic Knight and not flinch.”

He set to charge again—when clear applause rang from beyond the melee, crisp as pebbles on ice. A wistful voice followed, and he stalled. What he saw wrung a thunderous bellow from his chest.

“Ka—Dan—Lun!”

“Why shout? Do you still hope your wife and child live?”

The middle-aged man who had outplayed Senro’s group strolled in. Several axemen dragged two captives beside him, steel at their throats, cold as moonlight. The burly man froze mid-step.

The man’s face was placid as still water. His clouded eyes weighed the warrior like a grand joke, lips fighting a smile.

“You dare!”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He cut the roar clean, a knife through thread. A flick of fingers. Blades pressed closer, a breath from skin. One twitch and it would all end.

The burly man’s body bunched to spring. The naked steel halted him like a cliff. He panted, eyes locked on the captors and the calm man.

“How did you take my family...”

“A dying man—what does the truth cost me?”

He sneered, and walked right up. A nearby axeman twitched to block; the man lifted a hand, and the guard melted back like fog.

“A great Hydra Clan, ruled by relics too old to die. It’s a tragedy. A man like you, to them—”

He drew a thumb across his throat, lazy as a yawn. Veins bulged along the warrior’s forearm around the hilt.

“Then tell me how to spare my family.”

His voice was raw, a rasp over stone. Those bloodshot eyes never left the man. His sword hand coiled, ready to break.

“Hahaha. The next clan head, asking that? Isn’t that a bit naive?”

The man patted his shoulder like an old friend. He leaned in, breath warm in the rain, and whispered.

“You just have to die.”

He turned away, smiling, and sauntered back toward the axemen, spine bare as an unguarded road. He even palmed a pocket watch, clicked it open, and began to count, as if gifting time.

The burly man said nothing. His grip loosened, then steadied. He lifted his head to the faces of his wife and child, painted with despair in the rain, and smiled a twisted smile.

He hurled his greatsword, no hesitation, a thunderbolt cast by mortal hands. In an eye-blink it crossed the space. He charged after, a war chariot smashing through bodies and steel.

Inches from the man, a slim shadow wrapped in night split the air. Two black daggers crossed like crescent moons. The heavy blade spun away, helpless.

The middle-aged man’s eyes shifted from mockery to pity. He tapped the pocket watch once, a priest tolling a bell.

Chains shattered the earth and lanced out, serpents of iron striking from his sides. They punched through skin that had shrugged off a hundred spells.

“Aaaaargh!”

He roared like a beast in a pit and tore at the chains. Every link bore tiny Runes, each carved like a frost pattern. His fury lit them all at once.

His roar cut off, severed like a string.

He hung there before the man, disbelief blazing in bloodshot eyes. Iron spikes blossomed outward from within, knitting together like a cruel cage.

Black blood splattered the white robe, speckled the man’s cheek like ink. His smile never faltered. He drew a handkerchief and wiped his face, unhurried.

“So you do understand. If you die, your wife and child have no chance. Pity...”

“Since you’re not dead yet, you get to watch them die first.”

He let the handkerchief fall into the mud. Behind him, the axemen obeyed as one.

Blades rose. Blades fell.