Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

And then, with deliberate slowness, the man in the plum velvet coat turned around.

The shadow of the wide-brimmed hat shifted, revealing his face.

He was incredibly handsome, possessing a pale, aristocratic beauty that rivalled even Julian Myer.

His skin was the colour of alabaster, flawless and entirely devoid of human blemish.

His features were sharp, refined, and completely emotionless.

But it was his eyes that made Seraphina’s heart physically stop beating for a full, terrifying second.

They were not human eyes.

The sclera, the part of the eye that should have been white, was a deep, saturated, not red, but more like a deep shade of rose-pink.

And the pupils were not round.

They were vertical, razor-thin slits, like the eyes of a venomous serpent or a predatory feline, glowing with an inner, sickly, luminescent crimson light.

It was a look of absolute, unadulterated, apex arrogance.

He did not look at the screaming crowd.

He did not look at Sir Lucas or Sir Boris, who were charging toward him with drawn weapons.

He didn’t even look at Duke Kaelus von Nacht, the terrifying Reaper of the North whose killing intent was currently cracking the cobblestones beneath their feet.

The man’s slit, demonic eyes bypassed the Archduke entirely and locked directly onto the small, trembling, dark-haired child hiding behind Kaelus’s legs.

Eye contact.

In that single, microscopic fraction of a second, the bustling, noisy, chaotic world of the Oakhaven Night Market vanished for Seraphina.

The music stopped.

The screaming faded.

The warm light of the lanterns turned to freezing ash.

Seraphina was suddenly, terrifyingly alone in an endless void of blood and darkness.

It was the realisation of standing before an entity of such ancient, unfathomable malice that human logic ceased to exist.

The man’s eyes bored into her soul.

He wasn’t looking at a six-year-old girl in a crimson pinafore.

He was looking directly at her Supreme Dark Core.

He was looking at the anomaly.

’He knows,’ Seraphina’s adult mind screamed, a hysterical, soundless wail echoing in the void of her terror. ’He knows what I am. He sees it. He sees... the dark magic.’

The weight of the monster’s gaze hit her with the force of a sledgehammer.

The air in her lungs turned to ice.

The blood in her veins felt like sluggish lead.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t blink.

She was completely paralysed by the biological, spiritual imperative of prey caught in the gaze of a predator that defied classification.

’Inhuman,’ Seraphina realised, the pieces of the puzzle violently slamming together in her paralysed mind.

This was why the children of Oakhaven were vanishing without a trace.

This was why Julian Myer, with all his wealth, guards, and high-tier tracking magic, had found absolutely nothing.

They had been looking for a human criminal.

They had been looking for a thieves’ guild, a corrupt noble, a rogue mage.

They were hunting a shark with fishing nets.

They were up against something ancient.

Something that wore human skin like a tailored suit and slaughtered with the casual, effortless grace of breathing.

A monster.

The silence of the void was broken by a sudden, violent, protective roar.

”DOWN!”

The sound of Kaelus’s voice shattered the mesmerising, paralysing grip of the monster’s gaze.

The Archduke did not hesitate.

Recognising the target of the stranger’s inhuman eyes, Kaelus violently shoved Seraphina to the cobblestones, throwing his own massive, heavily armoured body entirely over her, shielding her completely from the stranger’s line of sight.

The physical impact knocked the breath out of Seraphina, breaking the spell.

The sounds of the market, the screaming, the clash of steel, the crackle of magic, rushed back into her ears like a roaring waterfall.

Kaelus stood over her, his stance wide, Requiem raised in a perfect, flawless guard.

His violet eyes were no longer just glowing; they were practically burning with a blinding, catastrophic light.

The Archduke of the North had realised exactly what had just happened.

An entity had stepped into his personal strike zone.

It had bypassed his elite vanguard, assassinated a prisoner containing vital intelligence regarding the safety of his daughter, and had then possessed the suicidal audacity to lock eyes with his child and terrify her.

The cold, calculating tactical engine in Kaelus’s mind did not stall; it exploded.

What replaced it was a fury so ancient and primal that it transcended mere anger.

It was the boiling, volcanic wrath of a Leviathan whose territory had been violated.

”LUCAS! GALLAHAN! SECURE THE PERIMETER AROUND HER!” Kaelus roared, a sound that literally shook the hanging lanterns from the trees, sending them crashing to the ground in bursts of flame.

The knights, recognising the apocalyptic tone in their liege’s voice, abandoned their charge toward the stranger and instantly formed a triangular shield wall around Seraphina, their heavy shields interlocking, their faces pale but resolute.

Julian Myer, having emerged from the alleyway, stood frozen, staring at the man in the plum coat, his golden eyes wide with a mixture of dawning horror and disbelief.

Kaelus stepped forward, leaving the protective circle of his knights, closing the distance between himself and the elegant monster.

The air around Kaelus began to warp and distort.

The ambient moisture in the humid night air instantly crystallised, turning into thousands of razor-sharp, floating shards of black ice.

The temperature plummeted from a warm summer night to the biting, lethal frost of a Northern blizzard in a matter of seconds.

The cobblestones beneath Kaelus’s boots cracked and frosted over, unable to withstand the density of the dark mana he was unleashing.

”You,” Kaelus said. His voice was no longer a shout.

It was a guttural whisper that carried clearly over the screaming crowd, promising agonising annihilation of the soul. ”You dare look at her.”

The elegant man in the plum coat did not draw a weapon.

He did not drop into a combat stance.

He looked at the enraged Archduke, his slit, rose-pink eyes blinking once, slowly, like a lizard basking in the sun.