House of Blood

(special announcement: I’ve made a new book, please show it the love you have shown House of Blood. The book is titled ”Bleeding Icons”

Secondly I’m uploading 20 Chapters on the first of October to celebrate my country’s independence)

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The throne hall of the Eighth Demon Lord did not know the light of the sun, nor the cold, clean rain that washed the basalt spires of the human Vanguard Citadel.

It existed deep within the Obsidian Trench—a shattered, subterranean kingdom five hundred leagues south of the Abyssal Ravine.

Here, the air was thick with boiling sulfur, melted iron, and the heavy, metallic stench of ancient warlock rituals. Colossal ribs of long-extinct primordial leviathans arched across the vaulted ceiling, dripping liquid magma into stagnant pools of black, boiling blood below.

Ignet, the Eighth Demon Lord—the Sovereign of Corrupted Flames and Arch-Warlock of the Nether Spire—sat upon her throne of crystallized bone.

She appeared as a towering, majestic figure draped in high-collared, obsidian-woven robes that hummed with volatile Fel-Magic. Her skin was a pale, polished ash, and her eyes burned like twin coals of unholy green fire.

Around her floating seat, four grimoires bound in human skin drifted in slow, rhythmic circles, their pages turning of their own accord as complex, forbidden runes etched themselves into the air.

TAP. TAP. TAP.

A quiet sound echoed from the shadowed archway at the mouth of the hall.

It was not the heavy, armored step of a nether-guard, nor the frantic scraping of a war-beast.

It was the quiet, rhythmic clicking of iron-bound boots against cold obsidian.

Ignet did not open her eyes, though the floating grimoires around her flared with a sudden, aggressive burst of emerald flame.

”You walk into my domain unannounced, Ninth,” Ignet’s voice reverberated through the vast hall, heavy with power and layered with thousands of whispering demonic souls.

”I felt your feeble flesh-seed shatter beneath the human academy hours ago. You lost your foothold in the Citadel’s plumbing, yet you carry yourself as if you achieved a grand victory.”

Out from the billowing sulfur fog stepped the Ninth Demon Lord.

He was shrouded in a long, tattered cloak of abyssal cloth that seemed to drink the ambient light.

Beneath his hood, his form shifted subtly—a dark, amorphous silhouette illuminated only by the faint, rhythmic pulsing of nine pale, bone-white fibers protruding from his collarbone.

”A seed that dies in bad soil is not a loss, Ignet,” the Ninth Demon Lord replied, his voice a soft, harmonious chorus of nine overlapping tones that carried no heat, no anger, and no pride.

”It merely tests the depth of the roots below.”

”The roots of the World Tree,” Ignet scoffed, opening her burning green eyes.

She looked down at him from her bone throne with cold contempt.

”Principal Elias keeps his High Elf eyes locked onto the lower vaults. You play with rot and flayed flesh, Ninth, while the human brat—the Sanguis girl—and her unawakened clerk clean up your mess. You are becoming sloppy.”

”Sloppy?”

The Ninth Demon Lord took a slow step forward, stepping directly over the threshold of her throne circle.

He held out his pale, thin hand, catching a floating ember of her Fel-Flame between his grey fingers.

”No, sister. I am simply observing the board.”

”Then observe it from your own domain,” Ignet sneered.

”When the Demon King awakens to break the upper wards, we will tear the Citadel down together. Until then, stay out of my sight.”

”Together?”

The Ninth Demon Lord tilted his head.

”I think not.”

It was at that exact moment that Ignet’s smile froze.

A sudden, microscopic twitch occurred beneath her left collarbone.

It was not pain—warlocks of her stature had long since shed the concept of physical agony.

It was an unnatural, ice-cold numbness that spread through her main mana conduit with terrifying, silent speed.

Ignet looked down at her ash-colored hands.

Her fingernails, usually black as midnight, were turning a translucent, milky white.

The Fel-Flame hovering around her palms was dimming, its volatile mana turning sluggish, thick, and gelatinous—like curdled lard.

”What...” Ignet whispered, her voice losing its thunderous layer of souls.

She looked up, her burning green eyes locking onto the Ninth Demon Lord.

”What did you do?”

”The silver dust,” the Ninth Demon Lord said softly, taking another step forward.

”A refined spatial-parasite spore harvested from the Abyssal Ravine. It does not ignite upon contact with Fel-Magic; it feeds on the thermal friction of your own core. The more high-grade mana you channel to speak, the faster the fibers weave through your soul-realm.”

”Insolent worm!” Ignet roared, her pride exploding into violent rage.

She slammed her palms together, releasing the full, terrifying might of an Arch-Warlock.

BOOM!

A pillar of absolute, hellish green flame erupted from her body, tearing through the obsidian throne and shattering the primordial leviathan ribs above.

The four grimoires flared into blinding, radioactive suns of dark magic, unleashing a tide of three thousand screaming, soul-consuming curses straight toward the Ninth Demon Lord.

The blast was catastrophic—enough to level a mountain or vaporize an entire legion of human knights.

Yet, as the green inferno cleared, the Ninth Demon Lord stood completely untouched in the center of the molten crater.

Around him, a three-foot bubble of absolute spatial vacuum had swallowed her spell.

The green fire, the soul-curses, and the Fel-Mana had not been deflected—they had been compressed into a tiny, dense bead of black glass that floated above his open palm.

CRACK.

The Ninth Demon Lord closed his fist, shattering the bead of compressed magic into nothingness.

”Your spells are magnificent, Ignet,” the Ninth said softly, his voice devoid of mockery or malice.

”In an open war against the human armies, your fire would burn three kingdoms to ash. But in a small room... against an opponent who eats space itself... your fire is merely fuel.”

Ignet gasped, her legs suddenly giving way beneath her as pale, bone-white fibers erupted through her skin—pinning her wrists and ankles to the molten obsidian floor like living iron stakes.

Her four grimoires fell from the air, crashing into the ash with dull thuds.

Her Fel-Core was completely choked, her eight hundred years of warlord mastery neutralized in less than two minutes of conversation.

She lay on her back, coughing up thick, pale-green marrow, looking up at the dark, hooded silhouette looming over her.

”Why...?” Ignet choked out, her ash-colored face contorting in sheer, unadulterated shock.

”We are... Demon Lords... of the same Council... Why would you attack me?!”

The Ninth Demon Lord knelt beside her, his pale, slender fingers reaching down toward her chest.

His nails lengthened into six-inch needles of dark, crystalline bone.

”Because the strong don’t need an excuse for the weak, sister,” the Ninth Demon Lord answered flatly.

”I simply need your heart.”

”You... monster...” Ignet wept through her teeth, her green fire dying out, replaced by milky darkness.

”The Demon King... when he awakens... he will rend your soul into ten thousand pieces for this treason...”

”And when the Demon King arrives...” the Ninth Demon Lord whispered softly, looking down at her crumbling face with dark, terrifying tranquility, ”he will honor you.”

”For your sacrifice will pave the way for our grandest work.”

He pressed his bone needles directly against her sternum.

SQUEAK-CRACK.

Ignet screamed—a high, piercing sound of absolute soul-agony as the Ninth Lord drove his hand straight through her ribcage, bypassing her flesh to wrap his cold fingers around her pulsating, emerald-green Lord Core—the Arch-Warlock’s Heart.

”Aah...!”

The Ninth Demon Lord slowly pulled his hand back.

In his palm sat her heart—a fist-sized, glowing crystal of pure, condensed Fel-Mana, pulsing with the life-force of a thousand consumed souls.

Ignet’s body began to break down instantly.

Her pale ash skin crumbled into fine grey dust, her robes collapsing onto the floor like empty rags.

Within seconds, nothing remained of the Eighth Demon Lord except an empty seat of shattered bone and the lingering reek of burnt ash.

Holding the pulsing emerald heart in his hand, the Ninth Lord raised his other arm, carving a jagged, dark spatial tear into the ambient air of the hall.

He stepped through, leaving the Obsidian Trench behind.

---

Deep beneath Sector Three of the Vanguard Citadel.

In a hidden, subterranean laboratory untouched by academy wards, copper pipes hissed with green vapor.

Rows of glass vats lined the damp stone walls, filled with murky, bubbling fluids and floating flesh-constructs.

In the center of the chamber sat a massive brass cylinder, reinforced with crimson Sanguis runes and silver suppression seals.

Inside the cylinder floated a terrifying sight: a perfectly formed artificial human vessel—a hollow construct stitched together from flayed flesh, refined bone, and pristine mana conduits.

Standing before the cylinder was the Mad Doctor.

He was a thin, skeletal man wrapped in a stained leather apron, his face covered by a brass plague mask with glowing red glass lenses.

His hands, long and twitching with nervous energy, held a silver scalpel as he adjusted the fluid levels on the brass control panel.

SHRRRRK.

A dark spatial tear opened directly behind the Mad Doctor.

The Mad Doctor didn’t flinch.

He turned slowly, bowing deeply with a croaking, raspy laugh.

”Ah, My Lord... You return early. Did the negotiation with Lady Ignet prove... fruitful?”

The Ninth Demon Lord stepped out of the shadow portal.

Without a word, he held out his hand.

Floating above his grey palm was the emerald heart of the Eighth Demon Lord, radiating immense, unholy pressure that made the bubbling glass vats violently vibrate.

The Mad Doctor’s red glass lenses flared bright with ecstatic, mad delight.

He gasped, falling to his knees before the glowing heart.

”Is that... the Lord Core of Corrupted Flames?! My Lord, you actually harvested it!”

”Assimilate it,” the Ninth Demon Lord commanded coldly.

”The vessel’s flesh is complete, but it lacks a true engine. Her heart will provide the raw, destructive core required to break the lower vaults.”

”Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes!” the Mad Doctor cackled, rising hastily to his feet.

He picked up a pair of heavy, lead-lined tongs and carefully took the pulsing green heart from the Ninth Lord.

Walking over to the central brass cylinder, the Mad Doctor unbolted the top hatch.

A cloud of freezing alchemical mist poured out.

Using complex silver levers, the Mad Doctor lowered the emerald heart directly into the chest cavity of the floating artificial vessel.

CLICK.

The moment the heart seated itself into the vessel’s sternum, the entire underground laboratory shuddered violently.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The murky fluid inside the cylinder turned a fiery, radioactive green.

The artificial vessel’s eyes snapped open—revealing empty, glowing emerald sockets devoid of humanity.

Black, vein-like fibers spread rapidly across its pale, artificial skin as the high-grade Fel-Mana began fusing with its engineered bloodlines.

”Look at it!” the Mad Doctor wept with joyful madness, clutching his brass mask.

”It lives! It breathes! A false god forged from the flesh of lords!”

”It is not yet complete,” the Ninth Demon Lord noted softly, gazing at the thrashing vessel through the glass.

”It has the power of a Lord, but it lacks the refined blood-key needed to pass through the Governor’s barrier.”

”The Sanguis blood,” the Mad Doctor agreed, turning his brass mask toward the Ninth Lord.

”We still require the pure blood of Lady Mirain... or the throw-back blood of that blind clerk, Valen.”

”Then prepare the harvesting arrays,” the Ninth Demon Lord said, turning back toward the spatial portal.

”The academy’s internal conflicts will soon reach their peak. When Mirain and her clerk step into Sector Three, we shall harvest the final key.”

”And the vessel?” the Mad Doctor asked, grinning maniacally behind his mask.

”Keep it hungry,” the Ninth Lord replied softly as the darkness swallowed him whole.

”When the time comes, it will feast upon the Citadel.”