Deus Necros

The words fell into the hall like a coin into a well, small, calm, and suddenly very deep. Ludwig didn’t shout. He didn’t threaten. He offered. And the offer itself was more dangerous than any insult.

A taste of this power. A challenge against a challenge.

He saw the prince’s eyes brighten, saw the audience stiffen again, saw the knights’ hands tighten on hilts.

“Brother!” the third prince spoke.

It cut through the tension sharply, a voice that wasn’t supposed to interfere. The Third Prince’s tone carried urgency that didn’t fit court etiquette. It was the first real crack in the performance.

It was sudden, too sudden. Never did Alex ever interfere with his older brother’s business, but here, in front of the many people he interjected.

The shock rippled outward. Ludwig saw nobles glance at one another. The older prince’s authority had been challenged openly, by family, no less. That alone was enough to make the air dangerous. Alexander didn’t care. That meant he was truly afraid.

“Don’t do it, you don’t know what you’re dealing with!” he said.

Alexander’s warning had weight because he had been there. He had seen the West. Seen the things that didn’t belong in stories.

The way he spoke, quick, sharp, almost pleading, told Ludwig he wasn’t trying to protect Ludwig’s pride. He was trying to protect everyone from consequences.

“Quiet! You came from the west with too many unbelievable stories; I need to see it with my own eyes. So, you said you can give me a taste. How? Where I’m always up for a fight.”

The Second Prince sneered at his younger brother’s caution as if it was weakness. His voice swelled again, hungry now. Ludwig could hear it; he wanted spectacle. He wanted proof that he was greater than the stories. He wanted to feel wrath and walk away untouched, to claim it as his right. Always up for a fight. Spoken like a man who had never had to fight something that didn’t care about rank.

“There is no need to go that far,” Ludwig said.

He meant it. He didn’t want a duel. Not here. Not in front of the Emperor, not with the hall packed with people who would happily turn his death into a lesson. Ludwig’s irritation was high, but survival still sat above pride. Barely.

“Coward, are we, then give up the Heart if you don’t want to fight for it!”

The prince pushed, spitting the word coward like it could overwrite reality. Ludwig felt the Heart of Wrath pulse again, like it wanted him to answer with violence.

The crowd drank it in. As if Ludwig’s own heart was agitating everyone in the hall. It was nauseating, and vile.

And the crowd ate it up. This was the kind of conflict they could understand: honor, cowardice, possession.

“There is a different way to test it,” Ludwig said as he slowly raised a curled index finger forward. With the nail on his thumb, he flicked his finger, cutting it and producing a droplet of blood.

The motion was controlled, deliberate, almost gentle. Ludwig didn’t need a blade. He didn’t need theatrics. A small sting, a bead of red forming at the cut, bright against his skin. The droplet trembled for a fraction of a second, suspended by nothing but surface tension and gravity, and Ludwig felt the hall’s breath catch as dozens of eyes focused on something so small.

“Catch,” Ludwig said as he flicked it toward the prince.

The Second Prince’s expression flickered, confusion, then contempt. A droplet of blood? That was the test? Ludwig saw him reach anyway, because pride demanded participation. His fingers opened to snatch it mid-air, like catching a falling coin.

The prince didn’t understand what Ludwig was supposed to do with a single droplet of blood. But just as he was about to grab it mid-air. The emperor seemed to suddenly teleport from how fast he moved as he pushed the prince’s hand away, the droplet landed on the palm of the emperor’s extended and protective hand.

The entire hall froze from what happened afterward.

The power of wrath funneled through the emperor like if his vines were not carrying blood, but freight trains that moved with the speed of meteors.

Wrath didn’t seep. It surged. It grabbed hold of the Emperor’s veins like they were rails, and suddenly that calm, sovereign body was being used as a conduit for something violent and alien. Ludwig felt the flare even from here, felt the air tremble around the Emperor as if the room itself recoiled.

It flew up and down his blood streams with enough power that his body visibly shook.

The Emperor’s muscles tightened against it. His shoulders jerked once. His hand flexed hard. The tremor wasn’t weakness, it was the body acknowledging a force that didn’t belong. Nobles stared, wide-eyed. Knights tensed, torn between instinct and the impossibility of acting. Even the Second Prince’s smugness died on his face, replaced by shock that came too late.

“Come back!” Ludwig said as he called back the power of Wrath from the emperor.

Ludwig’s voice snapped like a command issued to a beast. Not a plea. Not a request. The power obeyed instantly, ripping backward as if yanked by an invisible chain, returning to Ludwig with a hungry, resentful pull that made his own chest feel tight for a moment.

“What was that, father! I didn’t need your protection!”

The Second Prince’s voice sounded smaller now, uncertainty bleeding through the outrage. He’d wanted proof. He’d gotten it. And he didn’t like what it implied.

The Emperor didn’t look at his foolish Second Son, but at Ludwig, “How in all that is holy are you still sane?”

The question wasn’t rhetorical. It was genuine disbelief wrapped in imperial composure. The Emperor had felt wrath inside his own body for only a breath, and it had made him shake. Ludwig had been carrying it, living with it, wearing it, and he stood here still able to speak, still able to restrain himself.

“Who knows,” Ludwig sighed.

The sigh wasn’t dramatic. It was tired. Bitter. Like a man who’d long ago stopped expecting fairness from the world, and was now simply trying to survive the consequences of what he’d taken.