CHAPTER 75
Far from the chaos that gripped Aethelgard, beyond the fractured Palace and bloodstained stones, deep within a chamber hidden beneath the ruins of an ancient sanctum-a place untouched by time or light-a single candle flickered.
Its dim glow danced across walls carved with celestial runes, old as the world itself. Books, scrolls, and fractured mirrors were strewn in chaotic reverence across the table where a man sat cloaked in shadow.
He moved not a muscle as the echoes of the battle above still rippled in magical vibrations across the earth. But he had felt it-the surge of the Auctoritas-and it had amused him.
He rose, revealing the regal sharpness of his features-ageless and pristine, despite the decades that should have claimed him.
Alexander Franca Olinze.
The man who was once hailed as a hero.
The man who had vanished from the world in a storm of blood and betrayal.
The man whom Eiravelle once called a friend.
The man Sorayael never knew had touched her life.
And now, the man who pulled the strings behind Lysander, behind Silas.
Under his father's toxic influence, Silas's young life was a blur of gaslighting and conditional "love", where every word of praise was laced with expectation and every criticism a veiled threat.
His father's approval was a fleeting high, always just out of reach, fueling Silas's insatiable drive for validation.
His father's praise was a weapon, wielded to control Silas's actions, driving him to pursue power and success at any cost, no matter the toll on others or himself.
"I will earn my father's approval, I promised!"
"Why can't he accept that this is the only thing I can do?"
"F-Father..."
Years of blind devotion followed, with Silas pushing himself to the brink, convinced that this was what it took to earn his father's love.
But the revelation that his father's ambitions, not love, had always been the driving force behind his demands was a crushing blow, exposing the emptiness of Silas's relentless pursuit and leaving him questioning everything he'd ever known about himself and his place in the world.
His eyes, twin abysses of dark crimson, glinted with a mixture of fury and delight. "My son was useful... until the end. Regretful, soft-hearted fool," he hissed, his fingers curling into a fist as a sigil pulsed to life on the back of his palm-the true seal behind Silas' actions.
He turned toward the wall-one carved with dozens of symbols, each glowing with a constellation's mark. Some were dim. Some flickered faintly. But two in the center, The Martial King and The Dream Magic, burned with unstable, frenzied energy.
A hooded figure stepped out from the veil behind him-an older man, spine bent but gaze sharp.
(This man is the man in chapter 8 back then, one of the underlings of the master and the companion of Drelven.)
Alexander smirked. "Not yet. Let the child believe she's won. Let her taste the crown of her mother's legacy... before I bury her with it."
His gaze narrowed.
He stepped into the glow of the candle now, revealing the full terror of what he had become. No longer fully man. No longer even mortal.
The mark of the Dominus-a warped mimicry of Dominance magic-was carved into his chest, jagged and pulsing.
And far above, the skies began to shift ever so slightly. The stars... began to weep.
The lair was hidden in plain sight-a fortress beneath the bones of the first Constellation Hall. Dim light filtered through the dust-laced air, and candles flickered on pedestals carved with ancient runes long lost to man and beast.
In the dim halls of a shattered citadel layered beneath the crumbling remnants of old imperial ruin, Alexander Franca Olinze stood like a phantom cloaked in ambition.
He raised his hand lazily, and a shadow moved from the corner-a hooded underling, face covered by a shifting mask of runes. A loyal creature, stripped of name, stripped of self.
The underling bowed low. "As you will, Master."
Then his lips curled into a slow smile.
The underling bowed and vanished into shadow.
The underling arrived swiftly, stepping through the portal with the still-lingering echoes of Alexander's command whispering against his skin.
He looked toward the hall where Sorayael had just retreated after the last clash, her light dimmed, her power flickering.
A bootstep. A sword's gleam. A boy's gaze is like a burning dawn.
Krios.
He emerged from the veil of shadows, eyes unblinking, a quiet fury rolling off him like heat.
The underling cursed under his breath, stepping back. "You were supposed to be hidden at the mansion, child. Why did you come out on your own? Tired of being a shadow behind your sister's back?"
Krios tilted his head. "And yet here I am, walking straight out of the dark-like the nightmares your master should've feared. And if being the shadow of my sister is the only thing that I can help her with, I will."
He raised his blade. "You speak of my sister's death again, and I'll make sure it's yours."
The underling snarled, then lunged with a spear of blackened magic.
Krios met it with a flash of his sword.
Steel collided with magic. The floor cracked beneath them. Their auras flared-one chaos-born, the other carved in legacy.
The clash was brutal.
The underling was older, faster, trained by shadows-his movements refined and merciless. While Krios fought with something deeper.
Something raw.
Each strike held a whisper of his mother's lullabies.
Each dodge echoed the laughs he once shared with Sorayael.
Each swing was a prayer to a father he never truly knew.
And each breath-was a promise.
Krios's world was forever altered the moment he stumbled upon the truth about his parents' death. He'd been searching for Sorayael, asking Jezha to track him down, but what he got instead was a brutal awakening. Through Jezha's power,
Krios had overheard a conversation that would haunt him forever - a conversation between Sorayael and Xiaven that revealed the horrific details of his parents' demise.
The news hit him like a sledgehammer, shattering the fragments of hope he'd clung to for so long.
As the weight of reality crushed him, Krios felt his heart turn to stone, and a burning anger took its place.
He vowed to dedicate his life to avenging his family's death, to make those responsible pay for their pain and suffering.
With each passing day, Krios's resolve hardened, his determination fueled by the memories of his parents and the injustice they'd suffered.
The path ahead would be treacherous, but Krios was ready to walk it, driven by his thirst for revenge and his need for closure.
But he didn't know who he needed to slay when the man died a long time ago.
The man who slayed his throat when he was young.
Until.. a girl appeared. A girl that Sorayael knew more than anyone else.
The girl that he knew Sorayael treated her as her sister.
The girl.. was none other than Aeria Florencia.
The girl that bid a goodbye with Sorayael when Aethelgard and Solarian had their war long ago.
Aeria's words were like a key turning in a lock, unlocking the doors to a hidden truth.
"I will help you, Krios." she said, her smile illuminating the darkness.
As they walked the path of discovery together, Krios's eyes were opened to a shocking reality: Alexander, the man he thought he'd seen laid to rest, was alive and breathing.
The corpse that had been buried was just a clone, a clever deception.
But the truth was far more sinister - Alexander's encounter with Sorayael had left him scarred, both body and soul.
The pain and humiliation had festered, fueling his darkest impulses and setting him on a path of vengeance and destruction.
A pulse of golden light erupted from his blade. His aura intensified, burning white around his frame. The blade in his hands gleamed with ancient runes. It was as if their parents were guiding him to slay the darkness.
The underling charged again, but Krios caught his strike mid-air and shattered his weapon with a single arc.
He slammed the underling to the ground with force enough to break the tiles.
He lowered his head, his golden eyes darkening.
Then he stabbed clean through the man's chest.
The underling gasped-and vanished in a puff of dark mist, sent back, wounded and limping, to his master.
............
Alexander stood before a black mirror, watching the final moments play.
He saw the flash of Krios' eyes. Heard the words.
Felt the ripples of the boy's raw, unrefined power-awakening.
He leaned back in his throne, one leg over the other.
He chuckled once. Low. Sharp. Dangerous.
The underground chamber was silent, save for the fading echoes of Alexander Franca Olinze's chuckle. He sat alone now, legs still crossed, hand resting thoughtfully on his chin as the black mirror before him dissolved into smoke.
All was still until something changed. A shift in the air like a thread being pulled taut.
The candles flickered, ever so slightly. Then, one by one, they began to extinguish. Not by wind. Not by spell. As if the shadows themselves reached up and swallowed the flames.
Alexander straightened in his seat.
The silence grew too quiet.
Even for him.
He stood up.
His gaze swept across the room. The walls, once etched with glowing runes, had turned dim. His hand reached instinctively for the hilt of his blade, the metal cool and steady beneath his fingers.
Then a whisper, raspy, near-feral.. a female.
His breath caught.
That voice-it didn't echo. It crawled into his ears.
He turned sharply, scanning the darkness. "Who's there?" he barked, but there was no one-just cold, dense air.
Footsteps.
Light, deliberate. Predatory.
Tap... tap... tap...
He spun around again. "Show yourself!" His voice cracked slightly. Not with fear-yet-but with the anticipation of it.
A low chuckle rippled from the void. Feminine. Calm and unbothered.
A cold gust swept past his nape, brushing like a blade along his skin.
Alexander clenched his teeth. "Coward. Hiding in the shadows like a rodent-"
The voice moved. It was circling him. Left. Right. Closer. Further. It played with him like a cat with a cornered mouse.
A candle flickered back to life across the room, revealing just a glimpse of a figure-long hair, a glint of metal, a shadow of gold across one eye—before it vanished again into the dark.
Alexander backed up, the floor creaking beneath his weight. For the first time in decades, his heart stuttered.
He spun.
But there was nothing.
The answer came not in words, but in a surge of pressure-like the air itself bowed to a higher force. The ground trembled faintly. The wall behind him cracked with a single hairline fracture.
And then-
Red eyes gleamed from the dark.