Chapter 9 Saved by the enemy
Seokga pushed open the door to his mother’s chambers, the faint scent of medicinal herbs and frost lilies greeting him like a fragile embrace. Lady Elara sat propped against silk cushions in her ornate wheelchair, her silver hair cascading like moonlight over her frail shoulders. Despite the exhaustion etching lines around her storm-cloud eyes, her face lit up with pure, radiant relief the moment she saw him.
“My son… you did it,” she whispered, her voice trembling with joy and worry in equal measure. She reached out, and he knelt beside her, letting her cool hands cup his face. The arrow wound from the dungeon had mostly closed thanks to the lingering Spirit Realm blessing, but bruises still marred his skin. “Top three in the Grand Selection. The academy… Azure Peak will open its gates to you. I prayed so fiercely to the ancestors.”
He smiled, the divine arrogance in his soul softening for her alone. “I told you I would fight, Mother. For us. The stepbrothers’ schemes failed. Kael tasted my palm today—he won’t forget it soon.”
Elara’s grip tightened, pride warring with fear. “But Varak… your father… he was furious. Seraphine whispered in his ear the entire time. Be careful, Seokga. Power draws eyes—both mortal and worse.”
A sharp knock interrupted them. A clan servant bowed low at the threshold. “Young Master Seokga, Lord Varak summons the family to the Grand Crimson Hall for dinner. Immediately. He… insists on celebrating your… achievement.”
Seokga’s eyes narrowed. Celebration? From that man? He kissed his mother’s forehead. “Rest, Mother. I’ll return soon.”
The Grand Crimson Hall glowed under lantern light, serpentine carvings on the pillars seeming to writhe in the shadows. Varak sat at the head of the long obsidian table, flanked by Seraphine’s smug grace and the three stepbrothers—Kael’s glare venomous, the twins Draven and Thorne exchanging knowing smirks.
Seokga took his seat beside Elara’s wheeled position, tension thick as qi-smoke.
Varak raised a goblet of spirit wine, his voice booming with forced magnanimity. “The Crimson Fang Clan has produced another contender for Azure Peak Academy. Seokga, against all odds, secured a place in the top three. The clan will advance you… after one final formality.”
He paused, eyes flicking briefly to Seraphine. “A standard verification for forbidden dark powers. The Nexara’s Veil of Damnation—an ancient rite to ensure no corrupt essence taints our bloodline before academy entry.”
Seokga’s blood ran cold. The Eclipse Sigil pulsed faintly in warning.
Before he could speak, the grand doors burst open with a gust of freezing wind. In strode grotesque figures—Glacier Wraiths, demon-like enforcers with skin like cracked hail and fresh snow, their forms semi-translucent and jagged with frost shards. Icy chains dangled from clawed hands, and their eyes glowed pale blue voids. They moved with unnatural silence, exuding an aura of binding and judgment.
“By order of the clan and allied inquisitors,” one rasped in a voice like grinding ice, “the boy Seokga shall undergo the rite.”
Seokga shot to his feet. “Father—!”
Varak looked away, jaw clenched, staring into his wine as if the table held greater interest. Someone had forced his hand—Seraphine’s subtle smile confirmed it. Elara gasped, reaching weakly for him, but the Wraiths seized Seokga’s arms with bone-chilling grips.
“No! This is madness!” he roared, struggling as icy manacles snapped around his wrists. Fear laced his voice—not for himself, but for what exposure could mean. The family watched in stunned silence as the creatures dragged him away into the night.
Blindfolded and disoriented, Seokga felt himself hauled through twisting passages. The air grew damp and metallic, echoing with distant grunts and guttural whispers—conversations in some abyssal tongue that sounded like rocks being crushed underfoot. He had no sense of distance or direction; the blindfold was thick, enchanted perhaps.
They cannot test me, he thought desperately. If they sense the Eclipse Sigil, they’ll brand it as demonic corruption. I must escape before—
He reached inward for his qi, the faint Spirit Realm foundation stirring. Vein Resonance: First Echo—nothing. The meridians felt clogged again, worse than before. He pushed harder, drawing on the Sigil’s twilight essence.
A sudden tightness clamped around his neck. Cold metal bit into his skin—a Voidreaver Collar, power-restraining artifact pulsing with nullification runes. His qi sputtered and died like dying embers.
Damn it all. He slumped as they shoved him into a cell. Memories flooded him in the darkness. As the proud god Seokga, none would have dared. He recalled his first love—Lirael, the silver-haired sister of that treacherous Lyra. Seductive, promising eternity… only for his own divine brother to steal her away in a web of lies. The Serpent Sisters—Lyra and Lirael—nothing but veiled demons in goddess flesh, their dual nature a betrayal that still burned.
They will all pay, he vowed silently. Once I escape this treacherous mortal cage.
Exhaustion claimed him. He drifted into a restless nap, the Sigil’s pulse a faint, corrupted heartbeat.
Hours later, a brutal splash of freezing water jolted him awake. Seokga snarled, lashing out instinctively with a qi-infused palm strike. Instead of devastating force, only a weak puff of shadowy smoke emerged, dissipating harmlessly.
Laughter erupted—multiple voices, rough and mocking. More than one guard.
“Pathetic cripple. That fancy amulet from your mother won’t save you here.”
Damn that silver lotus… its sacrifice left me vulnerable. Seokga clenched his fists. Time to play the cripple, then.
They dragged him roughly from the cell through winding stone corridors. The blindfold stayed on until they reached a vast, echoing hall. When it was ripped away, Seokga blinked against torchlight.
The chamber was circular, walls etched with glowing Eldritch Sigils of the Voidheart and godlike runes in ancient Celestial script—phrases like “Purge the Eclipse” and “Devour the False Dawn” pulsed with ominous power. Masked figures in hooded crimson robes stood in a circle around a central obsidian altar carved with binding arrays.
One masked figure stepped closer. Beneath the hood, Seokga caught a familiar cruel glint—Draven, one of the twins.
“Let the fun begin, brother,” the twin whispered, voice dripping malice.
The ritual commenced.
The lead inquisitor chanted in a guttural tongue, activating the Nexara’s Veil of Damnation. Black tendrils of void-energy rose from the altar, lashing onto Seokga’s body like living whips. Pain exploded—each tendril burrowed into his meridians, probing and tearing at his qi pathways as if flaying his soul. It felt like molten ice and shattered glass grinding through his veins. The Eclipse Sigil recoiled, hiding its essence, but the corruption it carried made the rite agony.
“Reveal thy hidden sins!” the inquisitor bellowed. Tendrils tightened, squeezing his core. Seokga bit back screams as visions of his divine past flashed—Lyra’s betrayal, the execution blade, Faeyn’s sacrifice. Blood trickled from his nose and ears. The Sigil’s twilight flames flickered dangerously, nearly exposed.
Hour after torturous hour, waves of Soulflayer Probes assaulted him—psychic barbs that dug into memories, seeking demonic pacts or forbidden arts. Each failed probe sent backlash pain, like needles of frozen lightning through his nerves. His body convulsed on the altar, muscles locking in torment. The masked figures chanted louder, Draven’s eyes gleaming with satisfaction behind his hood.
Yet Seokga endured. The divine will of a fallen god held firm. The first stage ended with a resonant gong. The tendrils retracted, leaving him gasping, bloodied, but unexposed.
“Passed the Veil’s First Binding,” the inquisitor announced grudgingly. “Now… the Abyssal Soulflayer Chamber—the Demons’ Torment. If any strange powers linger, the Void Devourers will suck them dry until nothing remains.”
Guards hauled the battered Seokga toward a side passage. His mind raced—another round of this could shatter the Sigil’s concealment.
A new masked figure stepped forward, taller, aura commanding. The figure barked a command in a foreign, sibilant tongue—words that twisted the air like commanding shadows. The guards hesitated, then bowed and handed Seokga over without question.
Seokga protested hoarsely, “Wait— who are you? If this is another of my brothers’ games—”
A precise strike to the base of his skull knocked him unconscious before he could finish.
He awoke hours later in a bright, familiar room—ornate furnishings, frost-lily arrangements, and soft lantern light. It resembled one of the private healing suites in the Crimson Fang estate.
Blinking, he sat up on the luxurious bed. His eyes met Seraphine’s poised form across the room. The concubine smiled, elegant and dangerous, blood-red lips curving.
“Welcome back, Seokga. How are you feeling?”
What the hell?
