The shuttle pierced through the heavy, ash-choked clouds, its silent thrusters guiding the vessel toward the restricted VIP helipad of Grandcrest Academy.
Inside the cabin, the heavy pressure between Valerius and Scarlett didn’t lessen.
Scarlett kept her back pressed against the wall, her silver eyes fixed on the cold, pale hands of the pureblood king still resting on either side of her head.
He hadn’t moved an inch.
His proximity was suffocating, but her breathing remained even, her flatline neural block desperately trying to rebuild its shattered walls.
”You speak of breaking me, Lord Thorne,” Scarlett whispered, her voice a chilling line of pure ice.
“But a weapon doesn’t break.
It only cuts the hand that holds it too tightly.”
Valerius tilted his head, his gaze holding that same unreadable intensity.
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, but before he could reply, a sudden, heavy mechanical chime echoed through the cabin.
VIP Helipad Secured.
Atmospheric Lockdown Initiated.
The pneumatic doors hissed open, admitting a rush of freezing mountain air mixed with the sharp scent of expensive incense.
But as the fog outside parted, Scarlett’s combat instincts instantly screamed danger.
The helipad wasn’t empty.
And the person waiting for them didn’t belong to the academy.
Standing in the center of the landing pad was a tall, slender man wrapped in an ornate, blood-red trench coat that brushed against the wet concrete.
His long, silver-blue hair was tied back flawlessly, and his eyes—unlike Valerius’s pitch-black ones—were a piercing, glowing violet.
He held a sleek, obsidian cane topped with a silver skull, and his presence alone was so immense that the ambient magic in the air felt like it was actively bowing to him.
This was Lord Julianus Thorne, Valerius’s uncle and the High Justice of the Syndicate’s Supreme Council.
A pureblood executioner whose power was legendary.
”My, my.
Look at the mess you’ve brought home, Valerius,” Julianus spoke.
His voice was smooth, melodic, and terrifyingly calm.
He stepped forward, the tap of his cane echoing like a death countdown.
Valerius slowly pushed himself away from the wall, stepping out of the shuttle first.
His broad shoulders naturally blocked Scarlett once again, his posture tightening into a defensive line.
“Dear uncle.
I didn’t know the High Council had so much free time to watch a student exam.”
”An exam?” Julianus stopped just five paces away, his violet eyes shifting slowly from Valerius to the shadow behind him.
“When an ancient vault disaster crystallizes and shatters into glass because of a scholarship human, it ceases to be an exam.
It becomes an empire threat.”
Julianus raised his obsidian cane, pointing the silver tip directly toward Scarlett. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
”The Syndicate Council has already voted,” Julianus announced, his tone entirely flatpan and dead.
“The human known as Scarlett is to be handed over to the high laboratories of Sector 1 by midnight.
We will peel back her memories, her veins, and her soul until we find the root of that forbidden crimson mana.”
Scarlett’s heart thudded violently against her ribs.
Sector 1.
The place where anomalies went to be erased from existence.
Her hand drifted toward her hidden gauntlet blade, her mind calculating the distance to Julianus’s throat.
Forty paces.
Too far.
“She is not leaving Grandcrest,” Valerius murmured.
His voice dropped into a register so dark it physically made the concrete beneath their boots vibrate.
A sudden frost began to spread across the landing pad, turning the rain into needles of ice.
“I have already claimed her under the asset mandate of House Thorne.
She belongs to my evaluation.”
Julianus let out a soft, elegant laugh that sent a severe chill down Scarlett’s spine.
“You think your birthright protects you from the Council’s wrath, nephew?
If you shield a rebel spark, the entire Thorne empire will brand you a traitor.”
Julianus stepped closer, his violet eyes locking onto Scarlett’s covered wrist.
“The girl dies, Valerius.
Or the empire burns you with her.”
For a long, agonizing second, the standoff frozen the world.
The enforcers waiting at the edge of the helipad didn’t dare to breathe.
Suddenly, Valerius did something completely unpredictable.
He didn’t draw a weapon.
Instead, he turned around, reached into the shuttle, and grabbed Scarlett by her waist, lifting her effortlessly into his arms.
Before she could drive her blade into his neck, he leaned down, his lips brushing the shell of her ear as he whispered a single, chaotic phrase: “Hold your breath, little ghost.”
In a blur of dark shadow that defied the very physics of motion, Valerius vanished from the helipad.
”Catch them!” Julianus’s calm demeanor shattered into a harsh roar, his cane slamming against the ground as a shockwave of violet energy blasted across the helipad.
“Bring me their heads!”
But they were already gone.
The dark, gothic architecture of Valerius’s private underground estate was silent, smelling of cold cedar and old parchment.
The heavy, iron-reinforced doors slammed shut with a deafening thud, locking the outside world out.
Valerius dropped Scarlett onto a massive, velvet black sofa in the center of his dimly lit study.
Scarlett scrambled back instantly, her breathing ragged, her hood falling back to completely expose her sharp jawline and wide silver eyes. This story is hosted at g.com.
She looked around the massive, cage-like room, then at the pureblood king who had just made himself a fugitive for her.
”Are you insane?!” Scarlett yelled, her voice trembling with an explosive mixture of fury and shock.
“You just defied the High Justice!
You just turned yourself into a target for the entire Syndicate!
Why?!”
Valerius slowly walked toward her, discarding his armored gauntlets onto the mahogany desk.
He didn’t look worried.
He didn’t look like a man who had just started a war.
Instead, his gaze held that same dark, unreadable intensity as he stopped right in front of her.
He dropped onto one knee before the sofa, bringing himself to her level.
With a slow, deliberate movement, his long, pale fingers reached out, his knuckles lightly tracing the edge of her cold jawline before moving down to grip her pulsing, star-shaped scar.
”I told you, Scarlett,” Valerius whispered, his rich voice vibrating dangerously close to her lips.
His thumb pressed into her skin, feeling the wild, frantic rhythm of her human pulse.
“The human mind is a filthy, deafening place.
For three hundred years, I have wanted to destroy the world just to make the noise stop.”
He leaned in closer, his breath warm against her cold cheek, his dark eyes locking onto her silver ones with a terrifying, absolute certainty.
”But next to you, there is only beautiful, deadly silence.
You think I fled to save your life?
No, little ghost.”
The corner of his mouth lifted into a faint, unsettling curve.
”I stole you from the Council because I am a selfish monster.
And I would rather watch the entire Thorne empire burn to ash than lose my only medicine.”
Scarlett stared at him, her neural block completely fracturing under the sheer weight of his dark obsession.
She was trapped inside his inner sanctum, surrounded by a psycho king who valued her silence more than his own throne.
The war hadn’t just begun.
It was already inside the room.
High Justice Julianus has arrived, and Valerius has officially declared war on his own empire just to keep Scarlett by his side!
The stakes are officially higher than ever.
Question for the readers: Valerius just risked his throne and his life to steal Scarlett away from the High Council’s executioners.
Do you think he did it purely out of a selfish obsession for his ‘silence,’ or is his ancient heart beginning to feel something deeper for the last ember of House Rose?
Drop your wild theories in the comments below!