Beneath the deafening, concussive roar of the hurricane, Arka’s revelation regarding Rahessa slowly seeped into Ellios’s pores, violently stripping away every shred of arrogant pride he had previously worn as armor.

  For the very first time in his existence, Ellios felt infinitesimally small. As insignificant as a single grain of coral dust pulverized by the crushing waves of the Southern Sea.

  The bitter reality slammed into him harder than the night gale. On paper, he was the heir to Mount Rhagas, one of the most astronomically wealthy hubs in all of Carta. But in reality? Within the stone halls of his own family's keep, he commanded the absolute loyalty of no one. His father, Godric, was far too preoccupied calculating the profit margins of a five-hundred-year apocalyptic cycle. The Randar elders viewed him merely as a spoiled, pampered brat who inserted himself too eagerly into palace intrigue.

  Ellios possessed no standing military armadas like Louis. He boasted no fanatical, suicidal protectors like Gauss Renville.

  For his entire life, he had moved entirely alone across the continent's chessboard. He survived purely on the merit of his genius—his unparalleled ability to weave toxic diplomacy and manipulate vast intelligence webs. He undoubtedly possessed thousands of filthy, career-ending secrets belonging to the sovereign lords. His network slithered its tentacles from the most squalid dockyards all the way into the bedchambers of high ministers.

  Yet, regardless of how brilliantly his brain operated, one fatal vulnerability perpetually haunted him: he possessed omniscient knowledge, but he entirely lacked the physical, martial power to dictate when to strike. He could meticulously engineer a hundred lethal snares, but when a trap inevitably failed—as it had just catastrophically failed with Louis Ferdinand—he possessed zero muscle to withstand the resulting backlash.

  Ellios fell into a profound, brooding silence. His exhalations were shallow, forming thin white vapor that was instantly devoured by the wind.

  He turned his head marginally, observing Arka, who now leaned casually against the stone parapet beside him. The savage youth stared dead ahead at the sprawling expanse of the ocean, utterly unbothered by the screaming hurricane, and equally unbothered by the phantom name he had just invoked. The Rahessa-inflicted lacerations marring his chest served as brutal, physical proof that Arka was an anomaly that fundamentally refused to die.

  Ellios’s mind began to churn wildly, calculating astronomical, suicidal risks.

  Appending the name 'Sagara' into his primary registry of allies was not merely recruiting a new pawn. The youth standing beside him was the hurricane itself.

  Forging an alliance with Arka... was the equivalent of drawing a legendary, double-edged greatsword from its scabbard.

  Ellios did not deny that one edge of that blade would prove ruthlessly efficient. A Sagara could effortlessly sever Louis Ferdinand’s neck, butcher Porto Royale into bloody ribbons, and pulverize every single one of Ellios’s political adversaries with a sheer brutality that no standing army could ever repel.

  But... Ellios viciously bit his freezing lower lip.

  The opposing edge of that blade would perpetually remain leveled directly at his own face. To grip the hilt of the Sagara sword meant he must wholly embrace the reality that the very microsecond his grip slackened, the blade would violently reverse its trajectory and cleave him in twain.

  A dragon... Ellios thought, releasing a long, heavy sigh into the teeth of the gale. ...Will never willingly submit to a domesticated dog's collar.

  Amidst the swirling vortex of wind that actively ground Ellios’s sanity to dust, the young Randar raised his face.

  He saw that Arka was offering a broad, unchained smile.

  That smile did absolutely nothing to mask his underlying savagery; it only served to aggressively amplify it. The strands of Arka’s long, disheveled hair whipped wildly, flogged by the sheer force of the oceanic gale carrying the heavy scent of salt and death. Bathed in the pallid, strobing light of the moon, the Sagara youth appeared as the physical incarnation of the storm itself—feral, utterly unrestrained, and lethally dangerous.

  "Ell," Arka’s voice flowed with chilling serenity, cleanly severing the booming roar of the waves detonating against the reef below. "Your ambition burns far too hot..."

  Arka stared straight into Ellios’s hooded eyes, ruthlessly stripping away the final, pitiful remnants of the Rhagas heir's psychological defenses.

  "...But that is no flaw."

  Arka took a deliberate step forward, aggressively closing the distance between them. The core heat radiating from his massive frame punched through the freezing air of Dum-Shadd, brushing against Ellios’s shivering skin.

  "Permit me to assist you," Arka offered casually, possessing the same inflection one might use to offer a goblet of wine, rather than offering to butcher the most formidable military prince in Carta. "I crossed paths with Louis Ferdinand within Ironseat not long ago. I vividly remember his scent."

  Abruptly, the smile upon Arka’s lips decayed into something infinitely darker.

  Ellios held his breath. His eyes dilated as he witnessed Arka’s lips begin to move in rapid, silent micro-movements, murmuring an indiscernible cadence. The pitch was far too abyssal to be caught over the roaring storm, yet the sheer resonance of it caused the barometric pressure upon the balcony to instantly plummet, creating a localized, suffocating vacuum.

  Is that an incantation? Ellios thought in abject terror. Or a blood curse?

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Arka’s hawk-like eyes were half-lidded. His right hand rose to the level of his chest, and his calloused fingers began to move in a highly complex, rhythmic pattern. His thumb systematically struck the joints of his other fingers in rapid succession—tallying something utterly invisible to mortal eyes. Calculating distance? Calculating a cardiac rhythm? Or calculating the precise, remaining lifespan of Louis Ferdinand?

  With every single flex of Arka’s fingers, Ellios swore to the gods he could physically feel the ambient temperature on the balcony drop another agonizing degree. The fine hairs on his arms and neck stood erect in unison. This was no refined art of diplomacy; this was primordial, abyssal sorcery that by all logic should have remained buried alongside ancient myths.

  Having concluded the tally, the murmuring ceased.

  Arka opened his eyes fully, then leaned casually back against the stone parapet, acting as though he had merely finished a routine muscular stretch. He drew a profound, massive breath, inhaling the violent storm air until his broad chest expanded to its absolute maximum capacity, then exhaled it with agonizing slowness.

  "He shall not die," Arka continued, the timbre of his voice returning to a flat, lethal baseline. "Death is far too merciful a release for him, Ell."

  Arka tilted his head, studying Ellios, who remained paralyzed in shock.

  "But neither shall he truly live," the young drake appended. "Let him languish at the absolute crossroads. Entombed within the purgatory between drawing breath and rotting in the earth."

  Ellios’s genius intellect instantly spun into overdrive, voraciously digesting the staggering political implications of that decree.

  "Comatose?" Ellios interjected swiftly, his voice slightly gravelly due to the extreme tension locking his vocal cords.

  Arka sneered. The smile blossomed anew, radiating the pure, unadulterated satisfaction of an apex predator who had just effortlessly snapped the spine of its prey without so much as dirtying its own claws.

  "Yes. A living corpse," Arka answered softly. "But with a fully conscious, hyper-lucid mind."

  Ellios swallowed a lump of saliva that felt as jagged as crushed glass.

  Comatose, but lucid. The political ramifications detonated within Ellios’s skull like a cluster munition. If Louis perished tonight, Marquis Ferdinand would immediately crown a successor and mobilize the entirety of Porto Royale's armadas to execute a blood-soaked vengeance. But if Louis were reduced to a living corpse, lying paralyzed and helpless for an extended, agonizing duration... Porto Royale would be utterly crippled. They could not legally crown a successor because their Prince was technically still alive, yet they would be entirely bereft of their primary, supreme warlord.

  Louis would be violently imprisoned within the decaying cage of his own flesh, suffering incomprehensible agony, while his arrogant, brilliant mind remained fully awake to witness his sovereign kingdom slowly crumble to ash around him.

  That was not mere assassination. That was absolute, psychological torture.

  Ellios stared at Arka with a volatile cocktail of profound, paralyzing horror and an awe he found impossible to conceal. Standing before him was not merely a formidable political ally; it was a weapon of mass extinction that had just willingly placed its hilt directly into Ellios’s palm.

  The concussive boom of the waves pulverizing the reef violently dragged Ellios’s consciousness back to the present. His intricate reveries regarding political stratagems and the calculated paralysis of Porto Royale were instantaneously pulverized when his ears registered the drastic, chilling shift in Arka’s tone.

  There was no longer a trace of the jovial, teasing smile. The atmosphere immediately surrounding them abruptly hollowed out, entirely usurped by an aura of pure, concentrated bloodlust so dense it made Ellios momentarily forget the mechanics of drawing breath.

  "Ell," Arka called out. His baritone voice was now as glacial as the eternal permafrost capping the Northern Mountains. "I intend to drive a blade directly through the heart of Rahessa."

  Ellios swallowed a mouthful of saliva that tasted as bitter as raw bile. The Young Drake had officially named his price. Arka had just sanctioned the alliance to systematically dismantle Louis Ferdinand, and now, Arka was forcefully collecting his toll. A toll paid in highly classified, apocalyptic intelligence that even House Randar actively refused to touch in the open light of day.

  Arka took a dominating step forward, physically caging Ellios between his towering, massive frame and the freezing stone parapet of the balcony. Those hawk-like eyes drilled straight into him, violently demanding answers.

  "What is the exact sum of their inner circle?" Arka demanded with brutal bluntness. "Where precisely do they reside and conceal themselves? And by what specific mechanisms do they sink their talons of influence across this continent?"

  The rapid-fire barrage of inquiries hammered Ellios relentlessly. The fox’s genius intellect knew with absolute, terrifying certainty that actively exhuming intelligence regarding the Jasmine Temple of Rahessa was the exact equivalent of enthusiastically digging his own shallow grave. However, before Ellios could even attempt to construct a convoluted, diplomatic evasion to stall for time, Arka spoke again. This time, his voice plummeted into a whisper infinitely more lethal than a drawn blade.

  "And furthermore..." Arka tilted his head a fraction. The glint in his eyes perfectly mirrored a primordial, unquenchable vengeance that even this hurricane could not extinguish. "...Aira Lysandra Rahessa."

  The name slithered from Arka’s lips like the most corrosive, lethal venom.

  "I wish to see with my own eyes..." the Sagara youth continued, his jaw locking tight, "...precisely what her heart is forged from."

  In that exact microsecond, Arka raised his right hand to the level of his chest. The massive hand, heavily scarred by the lingering curse of Rahessa, splayed its fingers wide, then slowly, agonizingly closed into a crushing fist around the empty air before him, exerting a terrifying, sheer physical force. The thick musculature in Arka’s forearm and shoulder pulled taut as steel cables, his veins bulging to an extreme degree as if he were physically crushing solid titanium, wringing the absolute void with pure, unadulterated hatred.

  Thump.

  Ellios violently flinched backward, his spine slamming flat against the slick, wet masonry of the wall. His eyes dilated to their absolute maximum limit.

  Illuminated by the strobing, fractured moonlight bleeding through the storm clouds, Ellios’s mind executed a terrifying betrayal—or perhaps the sheer spiritual pressure radiating from the Sagara genuinely possessed the capacity to violently warp physical reality. As Arka crushed the empty air, Ellios swore to every god he knew he physically witnessed it.

  He saw a genuine, anatomically flawless human heart trapped within the vice grip of Arka’s fist. The organ was still a vibrant, wet crimson, beating frantically, desperately thrashing between the calloused fingers that mercilessly, methodically pulverized it into paste. A hyper-realistic illusion of fresh, hot blood steadily dripped from the gaps between Arka’s knuckles, staining the stone floor of the balcony before being violently washed away by the howling vortex of the storm.

  Horror.

  A strain of horror so pure, so primal, and so utterly paralyzing it crawled rapidly from the tips of his toes straight to the crown of his skull. His body shook with violent, entirely uncontrollable tremors.

  Amidst the tedious, convoluted political intrigues of the young aristocracy he had so gleefully orchestrated his entire life, Ellios finally recognized one absolute, undeniable truth tonight: he was no longer negotiating a standard political treaty. He had just formally bound himself in a blood pact with a God of Death who stood fully prepared to incinerate the entire continent of Carta to ash.