The heavy mantis blade hung in the air. Arthur watched the serrated white bone catch the dim light of the room. He gripped his dull letter opener. He waited for the impact. He knew it would cut him clean in half.
But the blade never came down.
The darkness in the corner of the room shifted. It was not a trick of the eye. The shadow physically detached itself from the pale bone wall. It thickened. It formed the shape of a tall woman.
Arthur's brain fired rapidly. The sudden adrenaline unlocked a deeply buried vault in Jin's memories. A name surfaced immediately.
Nyx.
She was a shadow-guard. Jin's mother created her. His mother was a brilliant bio-engineer from a dead, forgotten sect. She died when Jin was only ten years old. But before she died, she spent her final months working in a hidden laboratory deep beneath the palace. She took the DNA of a rare void-beast and spliced it with human tissue. She created the ultimate protector for her weak son.
She bound Nyx to Jin with a genetic blood-oath. Their DNA was linked. If Jin's heart stopped, Nyx's cells would instantly self-destruct. She was forced to keep him alive.
Arthur processed this information in seconds. He analyzed her cultivation level. The memories gave him a clear number. Nyx was in the Divinity Realm. Level 4.
In the Apex Empire, a Divinity Realm cultivator was a walking natural disaster. They did not just absorb Aether from the air. They commanded it. They could alter gravity, warp the environment, and crush lesser beings with a single thought. The Emperor had millions of foot soldiers. But he only had a dozen Divinity Realm generals. And one of them was standing in Jin's bedroom.
Nyx wore a skin-tight suit made of woven synthetic graphene. It was completely black. It absorbed the light around her. Her face was hidden behind a smooth, featureless obsidian visor. She made absolutely no sound. Arthur could not even hear her breathing. She was cold, mechanical, and perfect.
Jin's memories explained why she rarely appeared. She only acted when his life was in immediate, fatal danger. She spent years hiding in the walls and in his literal shadow. She watched his older brothers beat him bloody during training. She watched the servants spit in his food. She did nothing. Those things were cruel, but they were not lethal. Her programming only allowed her to intervene against death.
Arthur thought about the poison Vanya gave him. Why did Nyx let him drink it?
The corporate logic in his brain found the answer. Vanya's poison was a soul-dissolving agent. It bypassed the physical body entirely. Nyx's genetic sensors only detected physical threats like blades and kinetic force. She did not know the purple liquid was lethal until the original Jin's soul was already gone.
She failed to protect the original Jin. But she was here now to protect Arthur.
The lead assassin did not notice the shadow moving behind him. He was focused entirely on Arthur. He grunted and pushed his heavy arm down to deliver the killing blow.
Nyx stepped forward.
She did not run. She simply crossed the ten feet of space instantly. It was a terrifying display of raw, unaugmented physical speed. She moved faster than Arthur's eyes could track.
She raised her right hand. Her fingers were tipped with monomolecular wire. It was a material thin enough to slice through atoms. She did not use a loud, flashy martial arts technique. She just reached out and gently tapped the back of the assassin's thick, armored neck.
Shhhk.
It was a very soft sound. It sounded like someone tearing a piece of thick paper in half.
The assassin froze in place. His mantis blade stopped just two inches from Arthur's forehead. The dull orange light in his chest faded out.
Then, his head simply slid off his shoulders.
It hit the hard floor with a heavy, wet thud. A fountain of dark green blood sprayed out from the stump of his neck. The massive, headless body swayed for a second before collapsing forward. It crashed onto the floor, narrowly missing Arthur's feet.
Arthur did not flinch. He watched the blood pool around his bare toes. He viewed the event clinically. It was a perfect elimination of a hostile asset. Nothing more.
The other two assassins stopped moving. The wet clicking of their armored joints went silent. Their compound insect eyes snapped toward Nyx. They saw the headless body of their squad leader. They looked at the silent woman in the black graphene suit.
They realized they made a massive miscalculation.
"Divinity Realm," one of the assassins choked out. He stumbled backward. His voice vibrated loudly through his mutated amphibian throat sac. He sounded terrified. "The Shadow-Blade. The First Prince said you died with the old Queen."
Nyx did not answer him. She did not waste energy talking to dead men. She moved again.
She flowed toward the second assassin like dark water. The man panicked. He swung both of his heavy mantis blades in a wide, desperate arc. He tried to cut her in half before she could reach him. He channeled all of his Core Formation Aether into the strike. The blades hummed with dangerous energy.
Nyx simply stepped inside his guard. She ducked under the swinging blades effortlessly. She placed her open palm flat against the center of his heavy chitin chest plate.
Arthur watched closely. He wanted to see how she fought. He expected her to push the man or use a hidden weapon.
Instead, the air around Nyx's hand warped and distorted. A massive ripple of concentrated kinetic Aether shot from her palm. The sound was deafening. It was like a cannon firing underwater.
The force of the blow completely ignored the assassin's thick exterior armor. The kinetic shockwave transferred directly into his internal organs.
The man's chest caved inward. Thick bone snapped loudly. The glowing Chimera Core in his chest shattered into a thousand useless pieces. He flew backward across the room. He slammed hard into the far wall. The impact cracked the solid bone structure of the palace. He dropped to the floor in a broken heap. He was dead instantly. His internal organs were turned to liquid paste.
Two down. One left.
The third assassin looked at his dead partners. He dropped his bone weapons on the floor. He turned around and sprinted toward the broken doorway. He gave up on the mission. He just wanted to live. He needed to get back to the First Prince and warn him that the seventh prince had a Divinity Realm monster guarding him.
Nyx did not chase him. She just stood still in the center of the room. She flicked her left wrist.
A single thread of black wire shot out from her fingertips. It whipped across the room like a striking snake. It wrapped tightly around the fleeing assassin's waist just as he reached the hallway.
Nyx yanked her arm back sharply.
The wire sliced clean through the heavy black insect armor. It sliced through the dense muscle, the reinforced spine, and the stomach. The assassin took two more running steps before his body fell apart. His top half separated entirely from his bottom half. He collapsed in the hallway in two pieces. A massive pool of thick red blood quickly formed on the floor outside Jin's door.
The entire fight took less than twelve seconds.
The room went completely silent again. The only sound was the dripping of blood and amniotic fluid onto the floor.
Arthur stood against the wall. He lowered the dull letter opener. He let it drop from his hand. It clattered on the floor. His hands were shaking slightly. It was a natural physiological response to extreme violence. His Earth brain was still trying to process the absolute carnage he just witnessed. He had just watched a woman dismantle three heavily armored monsters like they were made of wet cardboard.
Nyx retracted the black wire back into her fingertips. She turned around slowly to face him.
She walked across the room. Her black boots made absolutely no sound on the hard floor. She stepped carefully over the headless corpse of the first assassin. She stopped a few feet away from Arthur.
She dropped slowly to one knee. She bowed her head low. The smooth obsidian visor reflected the dim blue light of the ceiling moss.
She did not speak with a physical mouth. A cold, synthetic, and melodic voice echoed directly inside Arthur's mind. It was a telepathic link established by their blood-oath.
"My Prince," Nyx said. Her mental voice carried absolutely no emotion. "I apologize for the delay. The Emperor's death caused a planetary Aether shockwave. It temporarily disabled my stealth perimeter. I could not intercept the assassins in the hallway before they breached your door."
Arthur looked down at her. He took a slow, deep breath to steady his racing heart. He was Jin now. This was his guard. This was his mother's legacy. Most importantly, this was his only real asset in this brutal game of survival.
"You are late," Arthur said. He kept his physical voice steady and flat. He sounded completely in control.
"Yes," Nyx replied in his mind. She did not make excuses. "The First Prince sent them. The succession purge has officially begun. The other siblings will make their moves soon. Your quarters are no longer safe."
Nyx looked up at him. Her blank black visor offered no clues to her thoughts. She waited in silence.
"Awaiting your orders, My Prince."