Trash Warrior Becomes War God

CHAPTER 8

The doors of the Imperial Throne Room swung open without announcement.

Isabella Cross, Tower Master of the Green Tower, walked in like she owned the place — robes sweeping marble floors, silver-streaked hair pulled back with the kind of precision that made lesser mages self-conscious. The imperial guards stiffened. Court officials exchanged alarmed glances. Nobody entered unannounced. Nobody except her.

Emperor Constantine didn't look up from the scroll in his hand.

"You're disrupting my afternoon, Isabella."

"You'll want to be disrupted for this." She stopped ten feet from the throne and extended her palm. Resting on it was a small golden badge, engraved with a crest that hadn't been seen in public for over a decade.

The scroll in Constantine's hand crumpled.

He was off the throne in three steps — a movement so sudden that two imperial knights reached for their swords before freezing at his raised hand. The emperor stood over Isabella's palm, staring at the badge like a man watching a ghost materialize from smoke. His jaw tightened. Something fractured behind his eyes — something that didn't belong on the face of a man who had ordered mass executions over breakfast.

"Where did you find this?" he asked, very quietly.

"I didn't find Elena," Isabella said, reading the question beneath the question. "Only the badge. It was in the possession of a half-beast youth — a boy abandoned by his mother. Raised on nothing. Surviving on less." She closed her fingers slowly around the badge. "She's alive, Constantine. She made a choice. And she left evidence of it behind."

The silence that followed was the kind that pressed against the walls.

"A half-beast child," he finally said.

"Yes."

"Her child."

"It would appear so."

Constantine turned away. He walked to the tall arched window overlooking the capital's sprawling lower districts, hands clasped behind his back. From this height, the common people looked like insects. He had always found that view clarifying.

"She always was reckless," he said.

"She was your sister."

"She is my sister." He turned back, and whatever vulnerability had crossed his face was gone. Buried. Replaced with the smooth, unreadable mask of a ruler. "Do you think I wouldn't forgive her? She could come home tomorrow dragging a troll behind her and I would — " He paused. "The problem is not what I feel."

"The Harrington family. The Voss bloodline. The eastern houses." Isabella listed them with the practiced exhaustion of a woman who had sat through too many council sessions. "A half-beast heir is a crack in the wall, and they will all bring hammers."

"They would kill the child."

"Or worse — use him." Isabella's voice was flat. "A bastard of royal blood and beast lineage is either a scandal or a weapon, depending on who holds him."

Constantine was quiet for a moment. "The boy stays hidden."

"I intend to see to that personally."

"And Elena." His tone shifted — less a grieving brother now, more an emperor filing a report. "That task belongs to me. You focus on the child. Seal the information. Anyone who knows—"

"I understand."

"No." He looked at her with perfect calm. "I want to be certain you understand. If this spreads — if even a whisper reaches the wrong house — it doesn't matter who speaks it. The outcome is the same."

Isabella held his gaze without flinching. She had known Constantine for thirty years. She had watched him send men to their deaths with less expression than he used ordering wine. She was not surprised. She was also not willing to pretend she wasn't disturbed.

"Then we're in agreement," she said.

"We are." He nodded once, the way men nod when a decision has already been made and conversation is merely ceremony. "Thank you for bringing this to me directly, Isabella. You may go."

She went.

The moment the doors closed behind her, Constantine stood very still. The throne room breathed around him — high ceilings, cold marble, the faint echo of distant footsteps in the corridor.

He raised two fingers.

From the shadows behind the left pillar, a figure in black materialized without a sound.

"The servants who were present during that conversation," Constantine said. Not a question. Not a request.

"Seven in the east hall. Two at the door. One in the antechamber."

"All of them." He returned to his throne and picked up his scroll again, smoothing the crumpled edge with one thumb. "And begin the search for my sister. Full resources. No announcements." He finally looked at the text in his hands. "That will be all."

The shadow dissolved back into the pillar.

Ten seconds later, the throne room was perfectly quiet, as if Isabella Cross had never been there at all.

Kensington Academy smelled like chalk dust and barely-contained aggression.

By the time Marco reached the arena grounds, the crowd had already degraded from spectators of a duel into something resembling a poorly organized riot. The stands were packed — not just knights, but every profession in the academy, drawn by rumor and the irresistible scent of conflict.

"Move it, Priest. You're blocking the view."

"Touch me again, Thief, and you'll be picking your fingers off the floor."

A Hunter in the third row had an arrow nocked — not aimed at anyone specific, just ready, which was somehow worse. Two Druid students had climbed the stone railing and were refusing to come down. Someone had released a summoned flame sprite near the Mage section and it was currently chasing a Shaman's apprentice in agitated circles.

Marco surveyed the chaos with the expression of a man who had seen worse.

"Is this always what duels look like here?" he asked.

Father Dominic appeared at his elbow, clasping his hands with the serene composure of a man who had learned to emotionally detach from institutional dysfunction. "Only the popular ones."

Across the arena floor, Vincent stood in polished armor, arms folded, watching the stands erupt with the calm of someone who expected to win and found the disorder beneath his attention. He was eighth level. Real combat experience from the Western Red Mountains. He looked like someone had sculpted a knight out of arrogance and then added a face.

Sofia stood on the opposite side of the arena.

She was looking at nothing. Not Vincent. Not the crowd screaming around her. Not Marco when he found her position in the stands. Her face was composed — not nervous, not determined, not cold in the performative way people were cold when they wanted to be noticed. Just absent. Present in body. Elsewhere in mind. Like the chaos around her was weather, and she was simply waiting for it to pass.

Marco watched her for a moment.

Three days, he thought. She either learned it or she didn't.

In the Mage section, a fireball the size of a fist sailed over three rows of heads. The Shamans erupted. The Priests shouted about divine order. A Hunter's arrow actually fired — into the ceiling, mercifully — and the resulting crack of stone sent half the front row ducking.

The duel hadn't even started.