The worthless Ex-Convict returns to rule the world.

CHAPTER 7: Blood of the Sovereign

 

The lower bulkheads were far older than the rest of the facility.

Thicker, heavier, and veined with ancient runic wards that hummed with a dead, inert frequency. The security door loomed in the gloom, covered in faded warning sigils:

RESTRICTED ACCESS. LEVEL OMEGA. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Eren placed his palm against the surface. There was no kinetic force to absorb, no magic active in the metal to devour.

“If the poison is my fuel,” Eren thought, “then my aura is the key.”

He closed his eyes and pushed his Sovereign Core outward. The toxic haze clinging to his skin thickened into a dense gray-green vapor that pulsed in rhythm with his chest. He slammed the concentrated cloud into the door.

The cloud hit the bulkhead.

And the metal began to dissolve.

Slowly at first. A thin sheen of corrosion spreading across the surface, eating into the obsidian like acid into flesh. Then faster. The warning sigils vanished. The reinforced layers peeled away. The entire door liquefied in a hissing cascade of black sludge that poured down the corridor and vanished into the drainage grates.

Eren opened his eyes.

Beyond the bulkhead, a staircase descended into darkness and Eren stepped through.

The chamber was ancient.

The walls were carved from stone. Not obsidian, but something older, veined with silver and gold that pulsed with a faint, steady light. The air was cold and clean, free of gas or rot, and it carried a scent he hadn't smelled in three years. Something floral. Something alive.

Eren descended the stairs.

The chamber opened into a wide, circular room. Consoles lined the walls. Not the crude technology of the Iron Abyss, but something sleeker, more advanced. Screens displayed data in a language he didn't recognize. Cables snaked across the floor, connecting machines that hummed with quiet power.

And in the center of the room, suspended in a column of blue light, was a cryogenic stasis pod.

Eren approached it slowly.

Through the glass, he could see a woman.

She was tall, even in stasis, with the kind of physique that spoke of decades of combat and training. Her hair was silver-white, cropped close to her skull, and her face—sharp, aristocratic, beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful—was frozen in an expression of absolute agony.

Black, sickly veins crawled across her neck, arms, and chest—an advanced, incurable Apex Necrosis eating her alive.

They pulsed with a sickly, malevolent light, spreading from her chest outward, covering her arms, her neck, her face. The necrosis was eating her alive. Slowly. Methodically. A curse that had no cure.

Eren studied the pod.

On the console display, a military crest flickered beside her file: General Serena Vane, Supreme Warlord of the Vane Military Syndicate.

“General Serena Vane,” he whispered. “Supreme Warlord of the Vane Military Syndicate.”

He'd heard the name before. Everyone had. She was a legend in the realm. A commander who had never lost a battle, a leader who inspired absolute loyalty, a woman who had built an empire out of steel and blood. 

The Vane Syndicate's dreadnought fleet was the most feared military force in the world. And her own people had locked her away in this forgotten vault beneath the sea to rot.

“They left her here,” he realized. “They sealed her in and walked away. The same way they did to me.”

Eren touched the pod's glass. The golden engine in his chest pulsed in response to the necrosis.

“My blood absorbed three years of dark-site poison, " he realized. "Poison is my power. Necrosis is just another form of rot.”

Eren looked at his hand. At the scars. At the blood that still flowed beneath his skin. Blood that had been transformed, rebuilt, awakened by the poison he'd absorbed.

He bit his palm. Dark blood welled up, laced with brilliant golden threads. He pressed his hand directly against the pod's bio-intake valve.

The blood flowed.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the pod began to glow.

The machine whined. Golden light flooded the fluid inside the pod. The black veins on Serena’s skin convulsed, turning gray, then silver, before burning completely away into clean tissue.

The pressure seal hissed, and the glass canopy slid open.

Eren watched as the necrosis dissolved and the agony on Serena's face softened. Her breathing, visible as faint fog on the glass, grew deeper, steadier.

The pressure seal hissed, and the glass canopy slid open.

General Serena Vane opened her eyes—a striking, cold blue. She sat up smoothly, flexing her fingers, assessing her body and her surroundings in a single second.

"How long?" Her voice was rough, unused, but it carried authority.

"I don't know. Years, maybe." Eren stepped back, giving her space. "You were in stasis. The necrosis was killing you."

"I remember." She looked down at her hands, turning them over, flexing her fingers. The black veins were gone. Her skin was clean. "I remember the curse. I remember the pod. I remember..." She looked up at him. "What I don't remember is you. Who are you?"

"Eren…I'm Eren Strong."

The name meant nothing to her. He could see it in her eyes. No recognition, no flicker of memory. Why would there be? She was a warlord, a legend. He was a convict, a ghost, a man the world had forgotten.

"I was a prisoner here," he said. "Sub-Level Zero. They threw me in three years ago and left me to die."

"And yet here you stand."

"Here I stand."

She studied him. Those blue eyes traced over him. The prison rags, the bare feet, the scars, the golden glow behind his pupils. She was a soldier. She knew how to read a threat.

"You cured me," she said. "I felt it. The curse burning away. That was you."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Eren considered the question. He could have lied. Could have spun a story about mercy or destiny. But he was tired of lies.

"Because you're useful," he said.

Serena Vane smiled.

It was not a warm expression. It was the smile of a predator who had just found something interesting.

"Useful," she repeated. "That's a dangerous thing to say to me."

"I know."

"Do you? Do you know who I am?"

"General Serena Vane. Supreme Warlord of the Vane Military Syndicate. Commander of the deadliest fleet in the realm." Eren met her gaze. "And right now, you're a woman who owes me her life."

The silence stretched.

Then Serena laughed. A short, sharp sound that echoed off the ancient walls.

"You're either very brave or very stupid," she said.

"I'm neither. I'm just a man with nothing left to lose."

She stood. The movement was fluid, powerful. The body of a warrior who had spent decades honing herself into a weapon. She was taller than him, broader in the shoulders, and she radiated a pressure that made the air feel thick.

"You cured me," she said. "That means you have power. Real power. The kind that doesn't come from cultivation or training or stolen marrow." She stepped closer. "What are you?"

Eren held her gaze.

"I'm the man who's going to bring down the Tyrell Clan," he said. "And  you're going to help me."

Serena tilted her head. The predator's smile returned.

"The Tyrell Clan," she said slowly. "I've heard of them. Minor nobles. Ambitious. The kind of family that claws its way up by stepping on anyone weaker." She paused. "What did they do to you?"

"They ripped out my Spirit Marrow. Framed me for treason. Threw me into this pit and left me to rot." Eren's voice was flat. "They used my core to buy a seat on the High Council. My ex-fiancée wears it in her chest like a trophy."

Serena's eyes narrowed.

"And you want revenge."

"I want everything they took from me. And then I want everything they've built on top of it."

The warlord studied him for a long moment. Then she nodded slowly.

"I've been in stasis for..." She paused, calculating. "Unknown. Long enough that my syndicate may have moved on. Long enough that my enemies may have claimed my assets. Long enough that I may have nothing left to return to."

She stepped closer, close enough that Eren could feel the heat radiating off her skin.

"But I am still General Serena Vane. And I do not forget my debts." She extended her hand. "You saved my life. I will give you my fleet, my soldiers, my resources. Everything I have. In exchange..."

"In exchange for what?"

"For the one thing I've never been able to find on my own." Her smile sharpened. "A reason to burn the realm to the ground."

Eren took her hand.

The grip was firm. Calloused. The hand of a woman who had spent her entire life holding a blade.

"Deal,” Eren said, shaking her calloused hand. "Now come with me, I'd like to introduce you to the man who locked you down here."