"I'm being serious, Elias, something terrible has happened," Raileigh urged, his voice tight with an unusual edge of panic.
Elias groaned, dragging a hand down his face as he forced his heavy eyelids open. The bright, invasive sunlight streaming through the bedroom window made his skull throb, the lingering echoes of his encounter with Tamamo and what she said about names and...th the Sephirot? Still ringing hollowly in the back of his mind. He blinked away the sleep, and sat up on the mattress with a displeased look on his face.
He glanced at Jamie who was spread out right beside him, snoring soundly with her mouth slightly open and a tiny pool of drool forming on the pillowcase. She was completely dead to the world, utterly oblivious to the tension crackling in the air.
Raileigh blinked, his eyes darting between the boy glaring at him and the sleeping girl sharing the bed. A flicker of profound awkwardness crossed his face, followed by a silent, judgmental twitch of his eyebrow. He opened his mouth as if it now dawned on him to question why the hell the two of them were crashing in the exact same bed, but the heavy, urgent knot of chaos outside swallowed the thought whole. Raileigh visibly brushed the absurdity aside, waving a hand dismissively.
"Never mind that. Get up. Right now. You need to see this."
Before Elias could formulate a retort, a sudden, violent commotion erupted from the corridors outside their room. Shouts, heavy boots clattering against polished stone, and a palpable wave of sheer panic bled through the walls.
Beside Elias, Jamie stirred, her nose twitching as she let out a groggy, irritated whine. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her sleeve, sitting up half-asleep.
"Ngh... I said I can't eat anymore? Huh, Raileigh? What are you doing here? And what's that noise, don't they know Its too early? And is breakfast ready" she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
She didn't even get a chance to stretch. Raileigh grabbed both Elias and Jamie by the scruffs of their collars with surprising, panicked strength, hauling them unceremoniously out of bed and dragging them out the door before they could even find their boots.
They stumbled out the room and down the stairs just in time to see Alaric sprinting past toward the front courtyard. His usually immaculate, composed demeanor was entirely shattered; his coat billowed behind him like a storm cloud, his face carved from grim, unrelenting stone.
Gyan hurried after him and they rushed towards the center of the commotion.
"Gyan! Hey, Gyan, what is happening? Why is everyone running?" Jamie called after her.
Gyan didn't even slow down, her eyes fixed forward as she rushed to keep pace with her lord, leaving Jamie standing there with her mouth slightly open in bafflement.
Raileigh pulled the other two into a run, chasing after the adults.
"I saw it on my way back to our quarters," Raileigh said, his voice dropping to a stunned whisper. "Elias... it's over. Whatever fragile balance was holding this city together just broke. This has completely changed the dynamic of how everything is going to play out."
Elias frowned.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
'Seriously, what could possibly cause a panic like this? Have any of the other deities made a move? Is that why he's so panicked?' he thought, a cold dread pooling in his gut.
Up ahead was a gathering of people comprising of Lords, Officials their servants and some knights.
The first thing that hit them wasn't the sight—it was the smell.
A thick, metallic, nauseating stench of fresh blood, bile, and putrid rot washed over the courtyard, instantly turning Elias's stomach. There were also members of the Inquisition, and Enforcement officers—including Layl and Emma—were standing at the front of the crowd, looking at what ever it was that had caused this so much bedlam this early in the morning.
Elias, Raileigh, and Jamie pushed past the milling crowd, stepping into the inner circle.
Elias froze. His breath caught in his throat.
Mounted high on a crude, splintered wooden stake planted firmly in the manicured grass circle at the center of the residence was Ki Lin Feng's dismembered head. Her eyes were rolled back, as if staring up at the sky, her jaw slack. The stake was surrounded by a macabre arrangement of severed pats and and rotting flesh taken from other corpses.
Arms. Legs. Hands. Feet. Intestines. Ribs. Skulls.
Dangling from the bottom of the stake just under the severed head was a crude, filthy sign, scrawled across in a sickening mixture of dark, dried blood and wet excrement, bearing the mocking insignia of the Revolutionary.
"THE FIRST OF MANY. THE REVOLUTION COMES FOR ALL."
The ropes holding the sign up were lodged in holes perforated in Lin Feng's cheeks.
Elias turned his head sharply away, the visceral horror of the display making his gorge rise. A few paces away, he spotted Araba standing frozen. With one trembling hand, she frantically covered young Junior's eyes to shield him from the nightmare, while her other hand was clamped tight over her own mouth to stifle a scream.
Lord Kingsley was already shouting orders, waving his arms as he commanded the knights who immediately spread out in search of the perpatrators.
Junior tried to squirm past Araba's hand, craning his neck to catch a glimpse of the horrifying spectacle.
"Mama, what is that? Let me see—"
"Junior, do not look!" Araba choked out, her voice cracking with terror.
Ambrose's booming, abrasive voice cut through the air like a rusted saw blade. He stepped forward, glaring angrily at the circle of pale, trembling servants who had gathered around the butchery.
"What the hell are you worthless slugs standing around gaping for?!" Ambrose roared, his face flushed with furious disdain.
"Are you waiting for it to grow legs and walk away? Get this abomination off my sight!"
The servants exchanged terrified, panicked glances. Hesitantly, two of them stepped forward, clutching thick white burial cloths, trembling so violently they could barely hold the fabric.
Before they could reach the stake, Alaric stepped past them. With a solemn, heavy expression, Alaric moved forward with steady, deliberate grace. Reaching up, he gently took the stake, carefully took off the sign and detached Ki Lin Feng's severed head, and with surprising tenderness, reached out to manually close her lifeless, staring eyes. Taking the white cloth from a trembling servant, he wrapped her remains with absolute, dignified respect before placing her gently into a polished wooden chest brought forth for the purpose.
As Alaric straightened up, Gyan dropped quickly to one knee beside him, her head bowed low to the grass.
"My Lord," Gyan murmured, her voice trembling with profound guilt.
"Please forgive me. I had the entire residence under my surveillance. With my senses I should have been able to sense when this heinous act was being carried out right under our noses. I failed in my duty."
"Get up, Gyan." Alaric said quietly.
Before Gyan could respond, Amberose cut in.
"If she had such exceptional senses," Ambrose barked, his voice dripping with condescending venom crossing his arms, "why didn't she stake out the night? Surely someone of her... capabilities... would have noticed a Lord being murdered in the streets."
Gyan kept her head bowed, her fists clenching against her side.
"I apologize, Lord Amberose. I did not know. If I had, I would have—"
"A pathetic excuse fit only for the incompetent!" Ambrose shouted, pacing back and forth, turning his fiery glare toward the assembled nobility.
"Look at this! If an assassin can slip past our wards and butcher a high-ranking noblewoman right in the heart of our estate, what stops them from targeting the rest of us? Does she not care at all for the safety of her own master—or us?!"
"That's enough, Ambrose," Alaric said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried an undeniable, chilling finality.
Ambrose scoffed, refusing to back down. He took a sharp step closer, his chest puffed out in righteous indignation.
"Oh, is it enough, Alaric? Your own cousin and children could have been next on the chopping block, yet you're just going to brush this aside with a gentle pat on the head? Some Lord protector you are!"
The air in the courtyard instantly plummeted in temperature.
Alaric's Presence shifted.
The weight of Alaric's soul began to bleed outward from his frame. The air around him shimmered and warped violently, bending the light as massive, invisible pressure crushed down upon the grass, flattening the blades into the mud.
This was the first time Elias felt his fathers Presence in such a manner but he didn't feel its force as much as those around him. His father seemed to have consciously excluded him Raileigh and Jamie as well as Araba and Junior who by now were already leaving. everyone else was either straining under the supernatural weight or, like Gyan and Emma could resist its press.
Alaric turned his piercing gaze toward Ambrose, repeating himself with a slow, venomous cadence that sounded like grinding tectonic plates.
"I said... that is enough, Ambrose."
Ambrose's breath hitched, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his temple, but his pride kept him rooted.
"Is that a threat, Dukker?"
His personal guards, already straining under the lethal shift in the atmosphere, forced themselves to step forward, their hands flying to the hilts of their drawn weapons. The blades trembled in their grips, protesting against the crushing spiritual gravity Alaric was exerting.
The courtyard held its collective breath. A full-scale noble bloodbath seemed moments away from erupting right over the corpse of Ki Lin Feng.
"Alright that's enough, both of you!"
Lord Schneider Osei stepped firmly into the space between them, raising a placating hand. His face was grim, but his voice cut through the suffocating tension like a beacon of reason.
"Look around us! This is precisely what the enemy wants—to turn us against one another while we're bleeding out in the dark. Instead of bickering like stray dogs, we need to figure out how to keep this from completely fracturing public trust and deal with the immediate fallout. I hate that we have to take this strategy but if we move swiftly we may be able to cover this up in the meantime while we think of a solution."
Before anyone could answer Schneider, a breathless gasp broke the silence.
"It's too late for that."
Everyone turned.
Heidi Dahl stood at the edge of the crowd, her expression grim. Her attendant, Ensu, had just finished whispering in her ear. She listened, then nodded, her face darkening.
"The rest of Lin Feng's corpse has been found," she announced. "In five other locations across the city the people are already aware of Ki Lin Feng's passing. Her body parts are laced with Black Dandy and it has already began affecting the people, spreading as it fuels the people's rage. The healers have already synthesized a cure, but the problem is now how to administer it to an angry mob."
'Wasn't that the same stuff the revolution used at the Flower Promanade a few days ago?' Elias wondered.
At the mention of the notorious, highly volatile narcotic substance, while a collective wave of horror washed over the gathering and a collective groan of despair rippled through the gathered Lords. Some immediately started muttering under their breath, frantically trying to calculate damage control.
"Damn it all," Lord Ezra Nova cursed, running a hand through his hair.
"The healers have already synthesized a basic counter-cure," Heide rushed on, gasping for breath, "but the substance has already triggered mass hysteria in the lower districts. The populace is already flooding the main thoroughfares, screaming for blood!"
"There's more," Heidi said, cutting through the noise.
Everyone fell silent.
"A projection was released," she said. "From a memory storage artifact that was embedded in Lin Feng's chest."
Before she could finish a shimmering projection suddenly flickered into existence right above the gathering. .
Within the few minutes that the projection was active, it showed crystal-clear, undeniable audiovisual evidence of Ki Lin Feng's clandestine, illegal deals, her secret political bribes, and her shady backroom conspiracies with various Lords and high-ranking officials currently standing in the courtyard.
The data was comprehensive, damning, and completely unvarnished. Even though the original memory crystal had held fewer than five fragments remaining after her fight with Nostrad, the Revolutionary had clearly used his terrifying Arcane Eye to peer backward through the conceptual echoes of her mind, forcing the crystal to regenerate and playback a selected hundred of the hidden venality she had ever committed, broadcasting for the entire city to witness.
However her involvement with the Hidden Patrons. This fact gave Rivas Oberoi who had maintained composure the entire time and Gide Baiden who was panicking more than anyone else some ease. But it also was a sign that their temporary alliance was over. Rivas was already planning his next move.
Murmurs of absolute terror broke out among the officials. Faces drained of color as incriminating details of their own corrupt involvements echoed out across the open lawns.
From beyond the estate walls, a low, rumbling roar began to swell—the unmistakable sound of thousands of furious citizens, chanting, screaming, and marching directly toward the residence where these Lords and Officials lived in an unstoppable tidal wave of rage.
Ambrose snapped his head around, glaring daggers at Alaric as if this were somehow his personal fault. But as his eyes swept past Alaric, they landed briefly on the three children—Elias, Jamie, and Raileigh. His gaze lingered on the twelfth prince and for a fraction of a second, a dark, calculating flash crossed Ambrose's face, making it look as though he wanted to weaponize them against the chaos .
Instead, he bit his tongue, turned on his heel with a disgusted scoff, and stormed away toward his own house, his guards scrambling to follow.
Alaric followed followed him in order to deliberate the next course of action.
"Find the source of the projection. Contain it. You may want to get the people under control but leave it to the knights. We may be able to use this ordeal in our favor. See if you can locate the revolutionists base and capture the Revolutionary. I just know that sick bastard won't hide during this pandemonium. Use whatever force is necessary, but do not escalate when facing civilians, drugged or not. We cannot afford more bloodshed."
Emma nodded. "Understood."
Emma and Layl vanished into motion in a blur of motion. The remaining lords scrambled after Alaric and Amberose, the guilty ones realizing that their own political necks were suddenly on the line.
Left standing alone with the servants cleaning the grim remains of the courtyard, Raileigh stared out toward the billowing smoke rising from the distant capital streets. He turned to Elias, his expression grave.
"We need to do something about these riots... but how? If that mob breaches the estate, they won't care who's innocent or guilty. They're going to tear everything down."
Elias stared numbly at the blood-stained grass where the corpse parts were being hurriedly cleared away. Then turned to walk away.
Raileigh grabbed his arm.
"Wait."
Elias stopped, looking back over his shoulder.
"I have an idea," Raileigh said, his golden eyes gleaming.
Elias's expression flattened. "No."
"You don't even know what it is."
"I know that look. It's the same look you had when you decided to 'test' me by trying to kill me."
Jamie bounced forward, her curiosity instantly overriding the lingering horror of the scene. "Oh? What idea? Tell us, Raileigh!"