Reborn before my betrayal

The Belly of the Beast

The colossal worm didn’t strike with precision. It dropped its entire mass like a falling tower.

Thousands of spinning, razor-sharp teeth rotated inside its wet, red throat, creating a vacuum that sucked the loose black sand—and Kaelen—straight toward the center of the maw. The stench of digested armor and old blood filled the air, so thick it burned his lungs.

Kaelen’s body refused to move. The backfire from the obelisk had locked his muscles into rigid, agonizing knots.

As the dark sand slid out from beneath him, he didn’t fight the current. He used the last fraction of his physical strength to roll onto his stomach, letting the steep slope of the shifting dune carry him directly toward the beast’s open mouth.

If you want to swallow me, you will choke on me.

He didn't have a sword. He didn't have a shield. But deep within his chest, the remnants of the Crimson Eclipse Elixir and the trace elements of the Siren's Root poison were still churning in his blood, mixed with the raw, chaotic energy of the shattered light core. His veins weren't carrying blood anymore; they were carrying a volatile, toxic cocktail.

Kaelen opened his mouth and bit down hard on his own tongue, filling his throat with hot, copper-heavy fluid.

The moment his body cleared the threshold of the worm’s lips, entering the dark, muscular canal of its throat, Kaelen slammed his raw, blistered left palm against the soft, wet inner lining of the beast’s flesh.

He didn't try to release a spell. He simply used his open meridians as a conduit, violently pumping his own corrupted, poison-laced blood directly into the creature’s bloodstream.

"Taste it," Kaelen hissed through his teeth.

The reaction was instantaneous.

The Siren's Root toxin, designed to rot pristine mana pathways over three years, reacted violently when introduced to the raw, unrefined magical flesh of a high-tier Outlands beast. The poison didn't take years; it took seconds. The violet-colored muscles around Kaelen violently convulsed, spasming so hard they flattened him against the upper wall of the throat.

The gargantuan worm let out a low, sub-audible shriek that vibrated the very stones of the valley.

It reared backward out of the sand, its massive, sixty-foot-wide body thrashing in pure, unadulterated agony as the rot spread from its throat toward its primary nervous center. The spinning rows of teeth ground to a violent halt, jamming against each other.

With a final, massive convulsion, the beast violently vomited, spraying a deluge of black bile, dissolved sand, and Kaelen’s broken form out across the dunes.

Kaelen hit the hard ground fifty feet away, rolling down the side of a jagged stone ridge. He came to a stop at the bottom of the ravine, coughing up black fluid, his vision fading at the edges. Every bone in his torso felt cracked. He was alive, but he was completely helpless, lying in the open desert with zero magic left to draw upon.

A shadow fell over his face.

Kaelen forced his heavy eyelids open, his burning violet pupils tracking a pair of boots stopping mere inches from his head.

The boots weren't made of imperial leather or gold-plated vanguard steel. They were wrapped in thick, coarse reptile hide, stained with dried grey mud. Looking up, Kaelen saw a figure clad in a tattered, ash-grey cloak that drifted in the rising sulfur fog. The stranger wore a bone mask carved from the skull of a desert scavenger, completely hiding their face.

In the stranger’s right hand was a heavy, notched executioner's axe, its edge pulsing with a faint, unstable green flame.

"An imperial prince," a raspy, distorted voice echoed from behind the mask. The speaker tilted their head, looking down at Kaelen’s tattered royal clothes and the dark aura still radiating from his skin. "And he just killed a Throat-Worm with nothing but his own spit. The vipers in the capital are getting stranger."

Kaelen tried to raise his hand, but his arm felt like lead. "Who..."

"Your executioners are dead, but their distress signals reached the main border vanguard," the masked figure said, leaning down until the cold bone of the mask almost touched Kaelen’s nose. "A whole legion is crossing the river right now to wipe this sector clean. If I leave you here, you die. If I take you with me, I become a target."

The stranger raised the heavy axe, the green flames casting long, flickering shadows across Kaelen’s face.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't just take your head back to the Emperor for the bounty," the voice growled.

Kaelen didn't blink. He stared directly into the empty eye sockets of the mask, a cold, breathless laugh escaping his bloody lips.

"Because," Kaelen whispered, his voice carrying the weight of a man who had already conquered this continent once before. "If you kill me now, you'll never learn how to burn the Azure Palace to the ground."

The axe paused mid-air. The green flame flickered, then went completely silent as the stranger froze.