Chapter 115Victoria opened the secret chamber door with the ease of someone whose blood the building recognized. She stepped aside without a word."Do you need company?" she asked as Marco walked past her."Go about your business.""That's not actually an answer to my question.""It's the only one you're getting," Marco said, and kept walking.The corridor was exactly as he remembered it. Boxes of documents stacked in long rows, the weight of a thousand years of collected information pressing against every wall like something the room itself was carrying. Marco moved through it without looking at the shelves, following an instinct that had brought him back here without much conscious decision-making involved.The old man was already standing at the end of the corridor. Hunched. Smiling. Waiting with the patience of someone who existed slightly outside the normal relationship with time.Marco stopped a few paces from him. "You knew I was coming.""I knew when the door opened that it w

"Those two." Nathan's voice carried the specific exhaustion of a parent who loved his children without being blind to them. "Five months ago, I told them both that whoever won the Whitmore family's genuine loyalty would qualify to inherit the city lord position. Davis knew he couldn't match his brother in strength, so he went around the side. Victoria, the Blood King connection, chipping away at the Whitmore foundation through manipulation and coercion." His expression hardened fractionally. "Underhanded. He disgraced the Tong name with that approach.""And Thomas?" Marco asked."Allying with Blood City. Inviting a wolf in to help him win a competition that should have been settled on merit alone." Nathan shook his head slowly. "A clever idea that would have ended badly for him, the moment Blood City decided his usefulness had expired."He looked at Marco with something that settled between gratitude and assessment, the two emotions sitting next to each other without fully blending. "

Their laughter finally subsided, settling into the comfortable quiet of two people who'd just survived something neither had fully planned for. Marco wiped his eyes and returned to the question that had started all of this."So what's actually in the blood?" he asked. "You stopped the punishment from killing you and we ended up laughing about a childhood vow instead of finishing the answer."Thomas's expression sobered. "My knowledge is limited. There are secrets in this that only three people fully understand. My father. The Water Demon King. Demon King Yan." He shifted against the wall, the potions still working through his system. "I know fragments. Enough to warn you. Not enough to explain it properly.""Give me the fragments, then."Thomas considered this for a long moment, his fingers drumming once against his knee."The Sacred Demon lineage didn't come to the wilderness by accident," he said finally. "They traveled countless miles, crossed dimensions that don't connect easily,

The Magic Dynasty palace stretched in solemn purple and black, columns rising into shadow that the torchlight never quite reached. Demon King Yan lay sprawled across his throne with the boneless posture of someone who'd given up on dignified posture decades ago, while Vincent stood below him delivering reports on internal affairs in his usual measured tone.A demon official burst through the entrance doors, his robes disheveled, his breathing ragged from running."Your Majesty! Grave news!"Yan didn't lift his head from where it rested against the throne's arm. "Grave news arrives every week. Make it interesting or leave.""The Golden Lion has destroyed Redgate City completely. King Reginald is dead. Every soldier, every civilian. He's advancing toward the Magic Dynasty now."Vincent's composure cracked for the first time since Marco had met him. "Reginald ranked among the top hundred demon warriors in this entire realm.""Did he," Yan said, sounding genuinely uninterested."This isn'

Marco felt something move through him that wasn't entirely his own reaction. A vision, brief and visceral, of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, the accumulated weight of every battle this army had fought and every battle it was about to fight pressing against his perception for one disorienting moment before fading."The Execution Army moves out," Nathan announced.Two Deputy Generals knelt before him in perfect synchronization, their armor catching the light as they bowed their heads."You have full authority," Nathan said. "Make all war preparations yourselves. Don't trouble yourselves worrying about my son's input."Thomas's jaw tightened visibly. "Father—""You'll observe," Nathan said, without looking at him. "You won't command. Not this time."The Deputy Generals' expressions, carefully neutral until that moment, flickered with something that looked very much like relief. They rose and began issuing orders without sparing Thomas a second glance, their renewed authority ove