The man with the long white hair was the first to break the suffocating hush. Shin Lan. His voice was low, measured, but the weight of it cut through the air like the edge of a sharpened blade.
"Aurex Valemont… how did this happen?"
His lips parted. The truth hovered on his tongue, raw, jagged, but before he could form it into words, the priest at his side shrieked like a kettle boiling over.
"The audacity!" The man's voice cracked as he jabbed a trembling hand toward Shin Lan. "For a lowborn mercenary to address the king just by his name? Show proper respect to His Majesty!"
The cry lashed through the court, high and shrill. Knights shuffled, uncertain whether to obey, while nobles muttered like hens, scandal mixing with fear.
And then, cutting through it all like a blade through silk, came the sound of a woman's grief.
"Y-you…" Her voice wavered, broke, and then hardened. "How can you be king when you let her die?"
The throne room froze.
Rex's gaze dragged downward, to the copper-haired woman who knelt over the corpse.
She clutched the lifeless body in her arms as though the force of her will alone could drag the soul back inside. Her gray eyes burned with fury through a veil of tears, her face pale and streaked, her lips trembling but unyielding.
He had seen death before. Too often. He knew the weight of a corpse, the way it did not simply become heavier but turned against the living, a dead drag that pulled everything downward with a stubborn gravity.
It took strength to carry a body, and not just muscle, something far uglier, fueled by grief and desperation. And still she held on, cradling the body close, rocking as though it were no different from holding someone sick, a child, a loved one clinging to breath.
Something twisted inside Rex's chest. A dull ache that spread, sharp and persistent, like a blade pressing inward with every beat of his borrowed heart.
He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to deny it. To weep. To rage. To fall to his knees and undo the choice, undo the blood.
But he couldn't.
"She chose to die," Rex said at last, his voice low, steady, carving the air like an executioner's stroke. "So I could be king."
The words dropped heavy. The chamber seemed to absorb them, and then nothing.
The whispers that had buzzed like flies cut short. The mocking laughter that had flitted at the edges of the nobles' lips died on their tongues. Even the priest froze, his outrage shriveling into silence as his eyes darted between Rex and the corpse.
A sharp breath hitched from the copper haired woman. It sounded like something tearing, fragile and raw.
The others stiffened as though a cord had tightened between them. Shin Lan's jaw clenched hard enough that the muscles quivered, his hand hovering near the long shaft of his lance, green eyes glinting with fury.
The boy in the white cloak, Cross, Rex thought, looked as though he might break apart, his small shoulders trembling, his golden eyes brimming with tears that he tried and failed to blink away.
Mira Lilith, though. She only smiled wider. Her lips curved, her violet eyes gleaming like lanterns lit with delight. She tilted her head, studying him as though he were the most amusing creature in the room, a toy that promised endless carnage and chaos.
Rex leaned back into the throne, the cold weight of the crown pressing against his skull as if to remind him of the role he now played. His fingers flexed against the golden scepter, sticky with the reflection of blood.
Wow…
The bitter thought crawled up, dry as sand in his mouth.
Barely a step into this so called life, and he'd already raised another death flag.
Death had always lingered at his heels, whispering, waiting. Seems this world was no different, it only meant to make him defy it all over again.
Rex had lived long enough, or rather, almost died enough in too many other ways, to recognize the weight of killing intent. It was a peculiar instinct of his, one that went beyond sight or sound. A sixth sense honed by years of surviving ambushes, duels, back-alley blades, and the quiet moments when Death itself seemed to lean in close and whisper.
He knew the difference between the posturing of anger and the stillness that came before a killing blow. Between the sharp bark of a threat and the silence of a predator about to pounce. Hostility could snarl, rage, and bare its teeth, but true intent to kill was quieter, colder, an edge that cut into the soul before the body even had time to bleed.
And this one, this strike, lacked that weight. His body registered it before his thoughts had the chance to form. His pulse stayed steady, unfaltering. His muscles remained loose, uncoiled, as though some deeper part of him already knew there was no need to brace for death. Danger, yes. Sharp, immediate, reckless. But not the mortal kind.
It was almost disappointing. After all, Rex had long since learned that you could trust killing intent more than mercy. One was honest. The other… unpredictable.
So he didn't rise. He stayed seated on the throne, fingers curling lazily around the scepter, crown still crooked on his head.
The woman came fast, a blur of motion cutting through the gasps and shouts of the chamber. Short-haired, eyes burning, she vaulted over the dais with startling grace.
In her hand gleamed a dagger, similar to the one the other woman had carried before plunging it into her own chest.
"Your Majesty!" someone shouted.
Steel boots clattered as knights surged forward, too slow to intercept. The priest beside Rex stumbled back, tripping over his own robes in his desperate scramble to be anywhere but near the incoming blade.
Rex only tilted his head. Fast, yes. But not fast enough.
The air cracked. Chains, violet and spectral, snapped into being with a hiss, wrapping the woman mid-leap.
The impact was brutal, metal links coiling around her waist and shoulders, wrenching her body backward before she could close the distance.
She let out a strangled cry, dagger slipping from her grip as she was yanked away from the throne.
Her momentum broke in an instant, her body slammed against the polished stone as the chains reeled her in like a hooked beast.
Rex exhaled through his nose, amused.
See? Not life-threatening.
Not yet.