Aurelia didn't lower her twin scimitars. Her amber eyes remained fixed on Caelum's fallen form, her voice cutting through the thick, ozone-heavy dust.
"If you kill him now, you will die, you idiots!" Aurelia spat, stepping protectively over the First Prince. "Let his own rage nerf him first!"
From the crater beneath her boots, a low, wet gurgle rose from Caelum's chest—and then transformed into a guttural, terrifying sound. It wasn't a human cry; it was a vast, primeval lion's roar that vibrated through the deep-blue marble, shattering every remaining glass lantern on the upper tiers.
Fifty feet away, Daichi clutched a stone pillar as the shockwave washed over him, his breath catching in his throat. A sudden, cold realization struck him like a physical blow.
The raw, suffocating pressure... the primal, untamed strength... Daichi's eyes widened in sheer shock as he looked at the First Prince. I was wrong! Leonhart and Renji don't belong to Valen's bloodline at all... They inherit their monstrous physical might from Caelum!
The remaining white-and-blue silk of Caelum's royal robes burst into threads. His pale skin flushed dark crimson as thick, rope-like veins surged across his chest and shoulders. The sheer volume of raw, explosive mana boiling within his flesh expanded his muscles exponentially, ripping his garments to shreds.
Aurelia's face turned pale as she backed away fast. "Hey! Now is the time! Attack him NOW!"
Valen and Soren didn't hesitate. Valen swung his massive broadsword in a sweeping horizontal arc, while Soren unleashed a concentrated blade of compressed white-hot plasma, their attacks weaving together in absolute synchronicity to bisect Caelum mid-transformation.
"Damn it! Let me synchronize too!" Aurelia shrieked, her scimitars flaring with venomous green mana as she joined the fray. "He's way too damn powerful! Damn it, Lucian, you bastard—you knew we would lose to him, didn't you?! That's why you ran away!"
A shimmering optical distortion rippled in the air beside them, materializing into the faint, translucent decoy of Lucian Ariston. The Third Prince offered a dry, mocking smirk.
"Oh, yeah," Lucian's decoy purred smoothly. "I would obviously lose to a monster like this."
"LUCIAN!" All three siblings roared in unison, their voices echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
Caelum stood at the center of the crater, his chest heaving as a terrifying surge of biological transformation reshaped his frame. A thick, dark beard erupted along his jawline, and coarse, dark hair spread across his chest and forearms. His slender, feminine grace vanished entirely, replaced by an towering, hyper-masculine physique—a living statue of Greek perfection, carved from solid stone and iron.
He lifted his massive hands, closing them into fists that cracked like thunderclaps.
"It seems... that little prince inside the archive wasn't able to revive my dead brothers," Caelum rumbled, his voice dropping into a deep, reverberating bass that rattled the floorboards. "Instead... the spell funneled their collective mana, vital energy, and combat authorities directly into me. And not only that... every single one of my three hundred and thirty-three terminal diseases has been completely cured."
Aurelia swallowed hard, her grip on her hilts slipping as she stared at her eldest brother in genuine disbelief. No way... What is that level of pure, unbridled masculinity? Even though he's my brother... damn it!
"Damn it all..." Soren muttered, taking an involuntary step back as the fiery runes on his neck flickered. "He's turned into a complete beast."
With a roar that split the air, Caelum launched his massive frame forward in pure, blind rage.
The floor beneath his feet exploded into fine powder. He closed the distance instantly, unleashing a devastating, whirlwind barrage of bare-fisted strikes. Valen, Soren, and Aurelia scrambled to dodge, their boots skidding across the slick marble—but the sheer atmospheric displacement generated by his fists created invisible shockwaves that hurled all three siblings backward through the air.
Valen crashed hard against a stone pillar, coughing up blood as he forced himself back up. "Damn it! He gained a physique greater than mine... so how the hell is he still so fast?!"
Before Valen could set his stance, Caelum materialized directly above him, driving a massive, iron-hard fist straight down toward his head.
Valen raised his heavy greatsword with both hands, channeling a dense wall of black ice over the steel to parry the strike.
CRACK.
The fist struck the flat of the blade. The enchanted steel didn't just bend; it shattered into a thousand jagged iron splinters, the force throwing Valen back onto his knees.
Soren lunged from the left, dropping low to sweep his flaming sword across Caelum's hamstrings. Simultaneously, Aurelia bounded over Soren's shoulders, her dual scimitars dripping with lethal, paralyzing venom, aiming a precise, blind-spot strike directly at Caelum's spine.
Above them, Lucian's decoy dropped from the ceiling rafters, weaving an intricate array of dark, spatial-binding runes to seal Caelum's front—the most dangerous, high-risk angle of attack.
Four deadly strikes converged on a single point in less than a heartbeat.
Caelum didn't even look.
With instinctual, animalistic precision, he shifted his weight half an inch to the left, letting Soren's fiery blade pass harmlessly through his shadow. He caught Aurelia's wrist mid-air with his left hand, using her own momentum to slam her directly into Lucian's incoming spatial runes, shattering the spell structure into harmless sparks. In the same fluid motion, Caelum drove a brutal, sweeping kick straight into Soren's ribs, sending the Fifth Prince tumbling across the marble floor like a skipped stone.
Valen wiped blood from his lip, glaring at the translucent decoy beside him. "Damn it, Lucian! Why aren't you here in the flesh right now?! Synchronizing our attacks with a damn decoy isn't sufficient!"
Lucian's decoy sighed, its eyes narrowing as it watched Caelum stance up for another charge. "Fine... I will undo my decoy magic."
"Damn it! Just do it your way!" Soren barked, pulling himself out of a pile of rubble, his chest bruised and bleeding.
Caelum didn't give them another second to coordinate. He threw his head back, his amber eyes flaring with divine rage, and surged forward once more—a unstoppable force of nature tearing through the ruined sanctum.
The deafening rumble of shifting stone died away, replaced by the wet, rhythmic sound of blood pooling on the deep-blue marble.
Suddenly, Aurelia threw her head back, letting out a sharp, hysterical laugh that echoed off the high arches of the ceiling like shattered glass.
The three brothers froze, their weapons lowered, every eye in the vault turning toward her in sheer shock. Wait... what happened to her?
Beside her, the air rippled. Lucian's faint decoy stepped out from the shadow, sliding a pale, gloved hand inside his dark coat. When he withdrew it, he held a dark, pristine human heart resting in his palm—pulsing with a faint, rhythmic rhythm.
"Oh, my foolish brother..." Aurelia giggled, wiping tears of dark delight from her eyes.
Lucian held the beating organ up into the blue light, offering a mocking bow. "Thank you, brother, for giving me your precious heart. For someone like me... I am absolutely touched."
Before the sentence could even land, Caelum moved.
In a fraction of a heartbeat—faster than the eye could process—the transformed First Prince vanished. A violent shockwave shattered the surrounding stone as his massive, iron-hard hands swept through the air in three razor-sharp chopping strikes.
THWIP. THWIP. THWIP.
Aurelia, Soren, and Valen didn't even have time to blink. Their eyes went wide as their heads were sheared cleanly from their necks, sliding off their shoulders in a fountain of dark crimson. Three heavy thuds echoed across the floor as their severed heads bounced against the polished marble.
Lucian's eyes widened slightly, a low whistle escaping his lips. "My, oh my..."
With complete indifference to his siblings' falling corpses, Lucian raised the dark heart to his own chest. Black mana threads burst from his ribs, dragging the organ inward where it slotted into his chest cavity with a wet click.
Fifty feet away, Daichi clutched his temples, his mind buckling under the rational impossibility of what he had just witnessed. Wait a minute... how is that even possible?! How is he managing to supply oxygenated blood through his body without a central cardiovascular lock?!
Lucian waved a hand casually through the static air. Translucent blue mana condensed into a sleek, dark wood table and two high-backed chairs directly amidst the carnage.
"Have a seat, my old brother," Lucian purred, pulling out one of the chairs.
Caelum exhaled a massive, steaming breath. The raw, primeval muscle mass shifted as his flesh knitted itself back together over his chest cavity, sealing the wound as if his heart had never been extracted. He pulled out the dark chair and sat down, his heavy frame creaking the wood.
"Speak, my dearest brother," Caelum rumbled, his deep, masculine voice vibrating through the floorboards. "What do you need?"
Lucian smirked, leaning back in his seat. "Aww... you didn't kill me. Am I really your favorite?"
Caelum let out a low, gravelly laugh. "You think I wouldn't notice your decoy, Lucian? And besides... that damn curse is going to kill me soon anyway. Though it seems you somehow managed to bypass it."
"Yeah," Lucian replied smoothly, steepling his fingers. "You're smarter than you look."
Caelum leaned forward, resting his massive, scarred elbows on the table. "Don't you want to know why I killed them just now? I could have executed them way before this... so why right now?"
Lucian raised his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. "Oh? Now that you ask... I am curious."
Caelum opened his mouth. "It's because—"
"—To seal the secret of King Ariston," Lucian cut him off cleanly, a razor-thin smile touching his lips. "Am I right?"
Daichi's heart slammed against his ribs. King Ariston's biggest secret...?
Lucian turned his dark, vacant gaze toward the shadows where Daichi stood frozen. "Hey there... Aurelia's great-grandson. Come here, kid. Even though children really shouldn't interfere in adult affairs."
Daichi's legs felt like lead, but under the invisible pressure of the two ancient monsters, he forced his boots forward, stepping onto the blood-stained marble.
Caelum looked down at Daichi, his amber eyes softening slightly beneath his heavy brow. "Run away, Daichi. Take Kairo and Liana, and run away from here while I am still breathing. I could fall dead at any second now... I won't be able to protect you."
Lucian placed a hand over his chest, his expression dripping with false sincerity. "I promise you, brother... I won't harm them."
Caelum closed his eyes, letting out a long, heavy sigh. "Fine. I trust you... but this is adult talk."
Lucian offered a wide, unsettling smile, closing his eyes as he raised a pale hand to wave Daichi away like a child.
Driven by raw, survival instinct, Daichi turned on his heel, scooped up Liana's unconscious form, and sprinted at full speed into the deep catalog tiers toward Kairo.
"Well," Lucian murmured, his smile fading as he leaned closer across the table. "See you around, my greatest, strongest brother. It seems... my great hero father has finally arrived."
Lucian leaned in, his lips hovering an inch from Caelum's ear, and whispered a single, dark sentence.
Caelum's amber eyes dilated in sheer, unadulterated horror.
His massive frame collapsed off the chair, hitting the bloody stone on his knees as he clutched his chest, weeping uncontrollably. "Lucian... how dare you do this to me?! Why... WHY ALL THESE YEARS?!"
A sharp, sickening pop echoed within Caelum's ribs. His modified heart failed instantly.
Lucian stood up, adjusting his coat as he looked down at his dying brother with a cool, mocking glare. "Sorry... It wasn't me who killed you. It was Aurelia. She held the antidote. If she were still alive... I would have healed you."
Lucian threw his head back, letting out a shrill, hysterical laugh that echoed madly through the empty archives.
Caelum raised a trembling, blood-soaked hand to glare at Lucian one last time—just as Lucian's decoy dissolved into thin air, leaving only cold, drifting particles of blue mana behind.
Blinded by agony, rage, and the creeping paralysis of the poison in his veins, Caelum dragged his heavy body toward the severed corpses of Valen, Soren, and Aurelia.
He reached out, grabbing Aurelia's twin scimitars from the pool of blood. With a guttural, desperate roar, he drove the venomous blades straight into the severed heads of all three siblings, pinning them to the floor.
"Aurelia!" Caelum shrieked, pounding his massive fists against her lifeless chest, his tears mixing with the blood on her pale skin. "GIVE ME THE DAMN ANTIDOTE! Please... get up and heal me! I NEED TO STAY ALIVE!"
The black poison surged through his arterial walls, freezing his limbs into solid lead.
"Damn it... DAMN IT! DAMN IT! DAMN IT!"
Caelum collapsed across the bodies of his siblings, his vision fading into blackness as he raised his face to the vaulted ceiling one last time.
"Father... please... be on time..."
Meanwhile, far above the subterranean complex...
A towering, abyssal Leviathan—a ancient creature of shifting shadows and crushing spatial weight—stumbled to a sudden halt on the rocky mountain trail.
Max stood atop the creature's crest, his peg leg dug into the scales, his single eye flaring with a blind, murderous fury that caused the sky itself to darken.
"SORRY, ARISTON!" Max spat, his cutlass trembling in his grip. "YOU SHOULD BE ON YOUR OWN FROM NOW ON!"
King Ariston exhaled a long, steady breath, stepping off the beast's head. "Understood."
With a single, explosive leap of pure physical power, King Ariston launched himself off the Leviathan. The sheer, suffocating pressure of Max's boiling rage sent a jolt of terror through the massive beast—it shrieked, diving headfirst into the earth to escape its master's wrath, leaving a massive crater in the hillside.
Max didn't care. His gaze was locked onto the horizon.
He had finally found him. The enemy he was dying to kill... the true architect who had orchestrated every horror that had plagued their world.
The culprit was finally within his reach.