CHAPTER 9: RUG RAT
The attack was over—but the screaming didn't stop.
The gates to the Emperial Castle lay in ruins.
Captain Cael Ardour stood drenched in blood—not his own.He held the limp bodies of the Grand Chancellor Carmilla Ardour and Hailey Bates.They were alive, barely.
Flesh melting from their frames.
Their screams—inhuman—sounded more like metal tearing than pain.
Cries of agony echoed as bodies broke apart, flesh peeling like wax under flame.
Pools of blood swirled with the torn remnants of silk robes, emblems, limbs.
Everywhere: panic. Servants ran. Guards ran. People trampled each other.
No one knew where the attack came from, only that death lingered in the air.
Two figures didn't run amidst the chaos.
Siah and his mother Sally stood motionless. Frozen. Eyes wide, unable to blink. They stared at what remained of the once-protected threshold—now a melted crater of death.
Thousands had been caught in the attack.
Hundreds more now crawled, skin sloughing off, moaning, begging for help.
Then came the voice.
"Don't come any closer!"
It was Cael Ardour, shouting through the cries.
He turned to Theal, who sprinted toward the wreckage.
"The enemy used a Complex plain! Until the effects wear off, no one below the fifteenth stage should be here! Go away!"
But Theal didn't listen.
Looking at his sister.
Hailey. Her arms were gone.
Her eye balls melted within their sockets running down her cheeks.All she could do was scream. She couldn't even cover her face.
Theal dropped to his knees. Defeated.
Useless. Powerless.
Cael roared. "Crew service men! Arrest everyone within the vicinity!"
The heads of the Major Houses emerged from the smoke.
House Hubris's Patriarch scoffed.
"You and your sister think you can give us orders?" he sneered, lighting his cigar.
He took a long drag and sat beside Kael Chagrin of House Chagrin.
Together, they watched the chaos unfold like spectators at a play.
The rest scattered to chase down the perpetrator.
Cael vanished into mist, Carmilla Ardour and Hailey vanishing with him.
Stetto ran.
Each step was agony. His legs barely obeyed. His lungs burned. His vision swam.
His thoughts were louder than the chaos behind him.
"I'm sorry, Siah… I had to."
He tripped over a fallen beam, caught himself on a splintered post.
"This world—is dog eat dog."
He pressed on.
The alleys twisted like veins.
Stetto cut through them, avoiding chaotic streets, weaving through shadows.
"That Decoherence Print… it wasn't an Engraved level print… that was—"
He stumbled, coughed blood.
"—that was Ancestral leveling print."
A sharp pain tore through his chest.
"The damn General lied. That attack used up all my Nits of Hue and still burned half my soul…"
He vomited on a stone wall and kept moving.
Finally—The Frozen River.
Shimmering ice blanketed the water's surface. Stetto collapsed at its shore, the cold biting deep into his bones.
He breathed once. Then darkness took him.
Boots crunched on the snow.
Two silhouettes approached.
Decorated military coats — black fur necks and collars.
General Duncan Keller lit a thin cigarette.
"Well, well," he chuckled. "The Black Pearl was right. This rug rat's got fangs."
The other, General Asher Flowers, stared at the crumpled figure in the frost.
"Very useful."
"I guess so he survived triggering an Ancestral-level Print," General Duncan Keller smirked. "Barely. But still."
General Asher Flowers frowned. "I still think the Black Pearl should've tuned it down. The boy sustained heavy injuries."
General Duncan Keller flicked ash. "General Lai Tyla lost a lot of Equi on this bet but the mission is complete now the pieces are in place."
Then— crackling in the ice behind them.
General Duncan Keller turned, grin widening.
"We have company…"
Five figures emerged from the mist.
The heads of the Grelon Empire's Major House's.
General Duncan Keller crouched down ouching the ice and turned to General Asher Flowers.
"You go on ahead with the boy. I'll entertain our guests."