Reborn before my betrayal

The Court of Vipers

The black flames devoured him in seconds.

The lead assassin didn't even have time to scream before his skull mask fractured, his body collapsing into a heap of gray ash on my bedroom floor. The jagged shortsword clattered against the stones, its dark aura completely choked out by my forbidden blood-fire.

I stood there, my palm dripping crimson onto the floor, my eyes locked on the remaining two shadow guards.

They fell back two paces, their blades trembling. These were elite killers trained to hunt high-tier mages, but they had never seen a weak, unawakened prince incinerate a commander using nothing but a drop of blood.

"Who... what are you?" one of them stammered, his voice laced with pure horror.

"I am the mistake you shouldn't have made," I whispered.

I didn't wait for them to recover. I lunged forward, wiping my bloody palm across the hilt of the fallen shortsword. The weapon instantly ignited with my black flames. With one clean, brutal arc, I took off the second assassin's head. Before his corpse hit the ground, I drove the flaming blade straight through the chest of the third.

Silence returned to my bedchamber. Three elite killers, dead in under sixty seconds.

My body violently groaned. The forbidden incantation had consumed nearly every ounce of my life force, leaving my unawakened core burning with a dull, hollow ache. I fell to my knees, gasping for breath, using the hilt of the sword to keep myself upright.

I was physically spent, trembling from the heavy toll of the dark magic. But I couldn't afford to collapse. Julian would send a second wave the moment these three failed to report back.

Stumbling toward my chamber's medicine chest, I smashed open a false bottom I remembered from my future life. Inside lay a single, forbidden Crimson Eclipse Elixir—a volatile stimulant that forcefully burned the user's bone marrow to temporarily generate physical adrenaline and mimic mana flow. It would wreck my health for a week, but right now, survival was my only metric.

I swallowed the bitter fluid. Instantly, a searing, synthetic heat exploded through my veins, forcing my exhausted muscles to lock back into place.

I tore a strip of silk from my canopy bed, bound my bleeding hand tight, and stared out the window at the breaking dawn.

Just you wait, Julian, I thought, my jaw clenching. The hunt has officially reversed.

Two hours later. The Imperial Throne Hall.

The grand chamber was packed with hundreds of high nobles, battle-hardened generals, and royal ministers clad in shimmering silk. At the end of the long marble hall sat my father, the Emperor, resting his chin on a gloved hand, radiating a suffocating aura of supreme power.

Standing on the lower platform just below the throne was Julian, wearing an immaculate white tunic. But as I walked down the center aisle, his eyes locked onto me, and I saw his face turn completely pale.

He didn't just see a survivor. He saw that I was wearing the exact black leather bracers of his dead assassination squad over my bandaged wrists.

"Ah, the Third Prince has arrived!" the Grand Chancellor announced, his voice echoing off the high arches. "Prince Kaelen, step forward to receive your imperial rewards for securing the northern borders."

The crowd murmured with praise. In my past life, I had knelt like a loyal dog, begging for an army to keep bleeding for this family.

I stepped forward, but I didn't kneel. I stood straight, looking my father dead in the eye.

"Speak, Kaelen," the Emperor rumbled, his deep voice carrying a terrifying weight. "What rewards do you ask of the crown? Gold? A grand duchy in the fertile south? Or command over the Imperial Third Vanguard?"

Julian leaned forward slightly, his fingers clenching into fists behind his back. He was terrified I was about to expose his assassination attempt in front of the entire court.

I let out a cold, sharp laugh that cut through the majestic silence of the hall.

"I want none of your rotting gold, and I refuse the Vanguard," I stated clearly.

The entire throne room went dead silent. Nobles looked at each other in utter shock. The Emperor’s eyes narrowed into slits of cold thunder. "You dare refuse the crown's grace?"

"I ask for one thing, and one thing only," I said, my voice echoing like steel against steel. "I demand my permanent, absolute exile from the royal lineage. Strip me of my title, erase my name from the ancestral books, and grant me passage into the Forbidden Outlands."

"Have you gone mad?!" Julian burst out, unable to control his composure any longer. He stepped down toward me, his face a mask of simulated brotherly panic. "Kaelen, the Outlands are a suicide sentence! It is a desolate wasteland filled with ancient curses and rogue monsters! You cannot survive there!"

He wasn't worried about my life. He was terrified because he knew that if I left the empire’s borders, his shadow guards could no longer track me. I would be completely outside his reach.

I turned to Julian, giving him a slow, mocking smile.

"Are you afraid of a wasteland, brother? Or are you afraid of what I'll build inside it?" I whispered loud enough for the nearest dukes to hear.

Before Julian could answer, a loud, thunderous crash shook the eastern wall of the throne hall.

BOOM!

The heavy stained-glass windows shattered into millions of sharp fragments. A massive, choking cloud of purple miasma poured into the room. Across the floor, several high-ranking ministers suddenly collapsed, their skin turning pitch-black as they choked on their own blood.

An emergency alarm bell began to wail across the entire palace complex.

"Assassins! The Eclipse Cult has breached the inner gates!" a guard screamed before a black dagger pierced his throat from the shadows.

The throne room erupted into chaotic madness. Nobles ran for their lives, trampling each other. Julian immediately drew his sword, backing toward the Emperor's guards to protect himself.

But I didn't run. My Emperor’s memory instantly recognized this exact attack. In my past life, this raid had slaughtered half the court, and Julian had used the chaos to secretly execute our younger sister, Princess Iris, blaming her death on the cult.

Through the thick purple fog, I saw a shadowed figure sprinting directly toward Iris's seating box, a jagged blade raised to slit her throat.

My synthetic adrenaline surged. A savage, monstrous smile spread across my face as I gripped the hilt of the shadow guard sword beneath my cloak.