House of Blood

The rain outside fell like a curtain of iron needles, masking the sound of Valerian’s boots as he burst into the damp mouth of the cave.

Inside, a faint silver light had begun to bleed from the dark dirt floor.

Toby stood beside Calla’s motionless body, his hands shaking violently as he raised his Slate of Marks, his thumb pressed against the central break-line.

Dahlia sat huddled beside her sister, her fingers intertwined with Calla’s cold, lifeless ones, her face a pale, hollow mask of absolute defeat.

They were a single second away from snapping the slate to trigger the emergency extraction array.

”Stop,” Valerian’s voice cut through the dim cave, sharp and commanding.

Toby flinched, his head snapping toward the entrance.

When he saw the blindfolded youth standing there, drenched in mud and rainwater, his bloodshot eyes flared with fresh, bitter fury.

”Get out!” Toby roared, his voice cracking. ”Haven’t you done enough?! Leave us alone!”

Valerian didn’t argue.

He didn’t explain.

Moving with terrifying, silent speed, he closed the distance between them in a heartbeat.

Before Toby could even register the motion, Valerian’s left hand struck Toby’s wrist with a precise, numbing strike, forcing his fingers to open.

The Slate of Marks clattered uselessly to the dirt floor.

”Hey—!”

Toby stumbled back, reaching for his broken sword hilt, but Valerian was already on his knees beside Calla.

From his coat, Valerian pulled the oilskin wrapping and tore it open.

The Nine-Leaf Blood Lotus gleamed in the gloom, its deep crimson leaves casting a warm, golden glow over Calla’s waxy, translucent skin.

Without hesitation, Valerian squeezed the central root with raw physical strength.

A thick, glowing sap—concentrated, primordial vitality—dripped directly onto Calla’s parted, blue lips and into the raw, cauterized wound on her chest.

”What are you doing to her?!” Dahlia screamed, reaching out to push him away.

Valerian caught Dahlia’s wrist in mid-air, holding her firmly in place without looking at her.

”Stay still if you want her to live.”

He placed his gloved palm flat against Calla’s sternum.

Bypassing his arcana entirely, he channeled a tiny, precise shock of raw, physical kinetic force straight into her thoracic cavity.

THUMP.

Calla’s body jolted off the cold ground.

For a terrifying, agonizing second, nothing happened.

The cave fell completely still, save for the heavy sound of the rain outside.

Then, Calla’s chest heaved.

COUGH!

A violent, ragged gasp tore from her throat as she coughed up a clot of dark, stagnant blood.

The golden sap of the lotus rushed through her dead veins like liquid fire, forcibly igniting her stagnant circulatory system.

The pale, waxy hue of her skin melted away, replaced by a faint, trembling flush of life.

Her heart, flickering like a candle in a gale, began to beat—slowly, weakly, but steadily.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Dahlia fell forward, her hands hovering over her sister’s chest in absolute shock.

”Her... her life force... it’s sparking. She’s breathing...”

Toby stood frozen, his eyes wide, looking from the glowing remnants of the lotus in Valerian’s hand to Calla’s slowly rising chest.

Valerian wiped the golden sap from his glove onto his trousers and stood up smoothly.

He took a step back into the shadow of the stone wall.

”The root will sustain her heart for three days. Get her to the Academy’s medical pavilion immediately.”

Silence stretched over the cave, heavy and suffocating.

Dahlia wept silently, pulling Calla into her arms, pressing her face against her sister’s neck to feel the warm pulse of life.

But when Toby looked up at Valerian, there was no relief in his face.

There was no gratitude.

There was no joy.

There was only a deeper, darker revulsion.

”You knew,” Toby whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, quiet sickness. ”You knew about this plant all along. You could have done this from the start... but you refused.”

”The plant was miles away in a high-tier ravine,” Valerian said flatly. ”I had to retrieve it.”

”No!” Toby shouted, tears spilling over his bruised cheeks. ”You let her die first! You watched Dahlia beg on her knees! You stood there like a stone statue until it suited you to play the savior!”

Toby reached down and picked up his Slate of Marks, his fingers tightening until the stone groaned under the pressure.

”You’re not a man, Valen. You’re a cold, calculating machine. You treat people’s lives like arithmetic.”

Valerian didn’t defend himself.

He couldn’t tell them that he had sprinted through a storm, bled his own palms raw, and risked his life in a Beast King’s hunting ground to bring that plant back.

He couldn’t tell them that his own blood would have turned Calla to ash.

To them, he was simply a monster who acted when he chose to.

And he let them believe it.

”Break your slate,” Valerian said softly. ”The rain is stopping. Beasts will smell the blood soon.”

Toby stared at him for three long, agonizing seconds.

Then, without another word, he wrapped his arm around Dahlia and Calla, raised his slate, and snapped it in half.

CRACK.

A bright, silver pillar of spatial magic erupted from the floor, enveloping the three of them.

As the light began to pull them away from the trial grounds, Toby looked through the shimmering magic, his eyes locked onto Valerian’s black blindfold one last time.

”We’re even for the Gloom-Crawler in the outer zone,” Toby said, his voice fading into the spatial hum. ”Don’t ever come near us again.”

The silver light flashed blindingly, then vanished.

The cave was empty.

Valerian stood alone in the cold gloom.

The silence returned, thick and absolute.

He slowly looked down at his right hand.

The bandages he had wrapped around his palm were soaked with dirt and rain, but the bleeding had finally stopped.

He was truly on his own here.

With Nox’Aethel far away back in Bergis overseeing the Governor’s Manor alongside Wren, there was no familiar voice echoing in his mind—no ancient shadow to offer counsel or sarcasm.

Just the heavy silence of his own thoughts.

”A clean break,” Valerian murmured aloud to the empty air.

He turned toward the cave exit, intent on heading deeper into the Inner Wilds to make up for the points he had lost during his detour.

He took one step—and froze.

The air in the cave did not grow cold.

It grew suffocatingly, impossibly hot.

In a fraction of a second, every drop of moisture on the damp stone walls vaporized with a sharp hiss.

The smell of mold, wet dirt, and ozone vanished, replaced by an intoxicating, sweet fragrance—like wild lotus blossoms burning in ancient, white-gold sunlight.

At the mouth of the cave, blocking the gray light of the rain, stood a figure.

Valerian’s spatial awareness flared violently, every instinct honed through years of survival screaming a single, primal warning:

Apex Predator.

Even at his absolute full strength—unshackling his dragon cores and releasing his true Sanguis form—Valerian knew with deadly clarity that he would barely escape death at her hands.

A woman stepped gracefully into the cave.

She was breathtakingly, unnaturally beautiful.

She possessed sharp, exquisite, foxlike features, her porcelain skin untouched by a single speck of dirt or water.

Her full lips were curved into a playful, bewitching smile, and her golden-crimson eyes glowed with thousands of years of ancient malice, curiosity, and power.

Framing her voluptuous, elegant form were long, flowing strands of crimson-gold hair that floated in the air as if weightless.

Atop her head sat two sleek, furry fox ears that twitched slightly at the sound of his breathing.

And behind her, fanning out in a radiant halo of light, were nine colossal tails—a breathtaking fusion of silky fox fur, shimmering dragon scales, and glowing phoenix feathers.

The heat radiating from them turned the stone behind her red-hot.

Aurelix.

Under his coat, Valerian’s dark-mithril suppressor vibrated at maximum threshold, suppressing his three primordial dragon cores to absolute zero.

Aurelix tilted her head, her nine tails swaying lazily, casting dancing shadows of crimson and white-gold across the cave walls.

She took a slow, leisurely step toward him, her bare, porcelain feet hovering an inch above the scorched stone floor.

”How fascinating...” Aurelix purred, her voice a rich, velvety melody that vibrated directly through the air.

”I watched you from the sky, little mortal. You ran through a torrential storm, crossed three mountain ravines, and faced the edge of my territory... all for a tiny, fragile lotus root.”

She raised a pale, slender finger, tapping her chin with a sharp, dark nail.

”I thought you were going to eat it yourself to boost your pathetic mana,” she continued, her golden-crimson eyes locking onto his blindfold with sharp, amused intensity.

”Or perhaps trade it for points on that silly stone slate you examinees carry.

”But instead... you used it on a dying girl who hated your guts.”

She paused, taking another step closer.

She was now less than three feet away from him.

The sheer, crushing pressure of her presence forced the air from Valerian’s lungs, but he did not fall.

He did not bow.

”And then,” Aurelix chuckled softly, a sound like musical chimes, ”you stood there and let them call you a monster without saying a single word. You didn’t even tell them you bled your own hand raw to get it.”

Valerian kept his hand resting casually on the hilt of his plain iron sword.

”I owe no explanations to mortals, Beast King.”

Aurelix’s fox ears twitched.

A low, vibrating purr of delight escaped her throat.

”Oh? ’Beast King’?”

She stepped right into his personal space, leaning in so close that Valerian could feel the radiant heat of her skin and smell the burning lotus scent on her breath.

”You know what I am, yet you do not tremble. You stand before me with a plain piece of iron, pretending to be a blind sellsword.”

Without warning, one of her immense tails, the Tail of Shadow, flicked like a striking viper.

SWISH!

The tail whipped straight for Valerian’s throat with speed that defied spatial logic.

Valerian didn’t use a single drop of arcana.

He didn’t ignite his dragon fire.

Relying purely on raw physical martial instinct, kinetic prediction, and the spatial feedback of his blindfold, Valerian tilted his head back by a fraction of an inch.

The tail grazed his collar, cutting a fine line through his leather coat, smashing into the stone wall behind him and blasting a hole three feet deep into the rock.

Aurelix stopped.

Her golden-crimson eyes widened slightly, her smile widening into something genuinely thrilled.

”Pure physical dodge...” she whispered, her voice lilted with wonder.

”No mana activation. No defensive spell. Just raw, perfected martial instinct. How curious...”

Before Valerian could reset his stance, Aurelix moved.

She didn’t strike—she bypassed his martial guard entirely with spatial fluidity that made his instincts useless.

In a flash of golden movement, her soft, burning hand pinned both of his arms to his sides.

”I have been trapped in this tedious pocket realm for centuries,” Aurelix murmured, her face inches from his, her eyes glittering with dark mischief.

”Bound as a ’Beast King’ for bratty Academy students to hunt.

”I am so terribly, utterly bored of Elysium.”

Valerian gritted his teeth, his muscles straining against her impossible grip, but she held him like an iron vise.

”What are you—”

”And the only way a Beast King can bypass the Realm’s boundary arrays...” Aurelix purred, her crimson-gold tail wrapping around his waist, ”...is bound to a master.”

She pinched his chin, forcing his mouth open.

A radiant orb of liquid white-gold flames—her condensed Primordial Essence—manifested over her tongue.

Before Valerian could channel his internal kinetic force to reject it, Aurelix leaned down and forced the burning essence straight into his throat.

GLUP.

A scorching, divine heat erupted down Valerian’s esophagus, tearing through his internal pathways.

At the same time, Aurelix brought her sharp, foxlike nail across Valerian’s exposed neck, drawing a single, tiny bead of his dark, golden-crimson blood.

She brought her thumb to his throat, catching the drop, and pressed it against her own lips, tasting it.

The moment his true Prim Sanguis blood touched her tongue, Aurelix’s six eyes widened in profound, exquisite shock.

BOOM!

A blinding, dual-colored magic array—woven of white-gold phoenix flames and dark crimson dragon runes—erupted beneath their feet.

The ancient contract rules of the First Era activated automatically.

The pocket space of Elysium groaned as the Master-Beast Contract sealed itself into the fabric of their souls.

”Ah...” Aurelix gasped, a flush of dark pleasure rising on her cheeks as her physical form began to break down into glowing, white-gold embers.

”You... you aren’t a mortal at all, are you? What a delicious little secret...”

Her physical body vanished completely, sucked entirely into the soul-seal forged on Valerian’s chest.

Valerian fell to his knees, clutching his chest as the burning essence settled inside him.

His throat burned, and his head throbbed from the sudden, massive weight of an ancient Beast King entering his spiritual sanctuary.

Inside his mind space—deep within the dark, quiet expanse where his three suppressed dragon cores rested—a pillar of white-gold light materialized.

Aurelix stepped out of the flames, lounging lazily in the air of his mental realm.

Her nine tails fanned out behind her, and her golden-crimson eyes looked down at his spiritual manifestation with a victorious, teasing smile.

”Well, well, master...” Aurelix’s voice echoed directly inside his head, sweet, playful, and dripping with dark amusement.

”It seems I’ve found myself a very interesting cage.

”I do hope you don’t mind sharing your head with me.”

Valerian slowly stood up in the quiet cave, wiping a trace of blood from his neck.

Behind his blindfold, his slitted crimson eyes narrowed in bitter resignation.

He was alone in Elysium, his cover barely intact, and now an ancient, chaotic god-beast was comfortably sitting inside his mind.