Chapter 94 Elena Heart- POV
The next day…
The high marble walls of the Palace, once a symbol of unshakeable power, now felt like the interior of a pressure cooker.
Outside, the yellow sky groaned with the weight of an impending storm, while inside, the screams of the elite drowned out the thunder.
Duke Hallway stood in the center of the Council Chamber, his silk vest stained with ink and his mind fractured by the sheer scale of the catastrophe.
He looked at the empty seats, the shattered crystal, and the terrified faces of the minor lords. He knew the arithmetic of survival: if there was no gold to pay the soldiers, there had to be blood to distract them.
"Silence!" Hallway’s voice tore through the room, amplified by a desperate, jagged flare of his mana. "We all know who did this. We have been harborers of vipers!"
He turned his bloodshot eyes toward the representative of House Valerius. The woman didn't flinch, but her hand drifted toward the dagger at her belt.
"Valerius has always coveted the Southern trade routes," Hallway hissed, his finger trembling as he pointed at her.
"Who else has the mages capable of warping space? Who else stood to gain from the King’s 'disappearance' more than the house that sought to marry into the line for three generations? You didn't just steal the gold; you’ve hidden the King to ransom him back to us!"
"You’re insane, Hallway," she spat, her voice cold with contempt. "You’re looking for a neck for the noose because you were the one holding the keys to the Vault."
"GUARD!" Hallway bellowed.
The doors burst open. But these weren't the Treasury Guards; these were his personal "Iron-Sash" mercenaries, men who had been paid in advance from his private estates.
"Seize her!" he commanded. "And send the decree to the city gates. House Valerius is stripped of all titles and declared traitors to the Crown. Every asset they own is to be seized, by force."
The room erupted into a cacophony of steel sliding against leather. The Valerius representative didn't go quietly; a burst of azure magic exploded from her palms, throwing the first three guards against the tapestries.
The "Political Purge" had begun, turning the sanctuary of the High Council into a slaughterhouse.
While the nobles tore at each other’s throats in the Upper District, the landscape of the city transformed into a nightmare. Hallway’s decree hit the streets like a torch to dry straw.
"Find the Heart associates!" the criers screamed through the rain-slicked alleys. "Half a million gold for the head of the Assassin! If the girl does not show herself, we will burn the nests that raised her!"
The Duke had ordered a systematic sweep of the Lower Districts. Innocent weavers, distant cousins of the Heart lineage, and even former palace servants were dragged from their homes.
The atmosphere was thick with the smell of wet soot and fear.
"Bring them to the executioner’s block at the North Gate!" Hallway ordered from his balcony, watching the smoke rise from the city.
"If Elena Heart has a soul left in that treacherous body, she will come to save them. And when she does, I will have her ring, her head, and the gold she thinks she can hide from me."
Grace watched from the palace shadows as a group of Valerius mages were cut down in the courtyard below. The luxury of the palace was being stained red.
She felt a sickening sense of disappointment; this wasn't the "New Order" she had been promised. This was the desperate thrashing of a dying beast.
She saw Duke Hallway slapping a cowering scribe, demanding a list of every person who had ever spoken to Elena Heart.
The man was a liability now, a chaotic variable that would lead the King straight to their doorstep.
The feelings of "loyalty" were gone, replaced by a cold, sharp need for self-preservation.
As the rain finally began to fall, huge, heavy drops that washed the blood into the gutters, Grace realized that Hallway’s "scapegoat" plan was a double-edged sword. He was calling the Ghost King out of the shadows.
And she was terrified that the King would answer.
Elena POV
The smoke rising from the Lower Districts didn't look like ordinary fire; it looked like a sickness crawling across the horizon.
From our vantage point atop the ruined watchtower at the edge of the Whispering Woods, the distant, muffled echoes of screaming carried over the wind, cutting straight through the heavy, humid air.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my jaw clenching so hard it ached. My hand, resting on the stone parapet, began to tremble.
On my finger, the emerald ring didn't just thrum, it seethed. The Void-Anchor was reacting to my sudden spike of raw, unadulterated fury. The sea-foam light swirling inside the stone turned a deep, dangerous jade.
"He's burning the weaver's blocks," I whispered, my voice shaking with a dangerous mixture of anger and guilt.
"Hallway is dragging anyone with the name Heart to the North Gate. He knows I'm alive. He's trying to flush me out."
“My God! What is he doing? This is all my fault.” A heavy, warm hand settled over my shoulder.
Xavier stepped up beside me, his dark, silver-runed armor absorbing the faint, bruised sunlight.
He didn't tell me to calm down. He didn't give me some hollow royal speech about the "greater good." He just stood there, a solid, unshakeable anchor against the storm brewing inside me.
"He’s desperate, Elena," Xavier said, his blue eyes tracking the columns of black smoke. "A tyrant only turns on his own people when he realizes his throne is built on sand. We have their gold. Now, they are eating themselves alive."
I turned to look at him. The Celestial Tether we had forged was still humming between us, a low, electric current that made my skin tingle wherever he touched me.
Our connection had transformed into something else, a shared heartbeat, a silent vow that we were going to finish this together.
"Whatever you’re thinking—, Elena," Xavier said.
"I have a plan," I said abruptly, turning around to face him. The desperation in my own voice startled me.
"The Ravens are scattered in the outer trenches, waiting for a full war march. We don't have time for a war march. I’m going in. A high-speed, calculated extraction.”
“No!”
“Listen, I will infiltrate the North Gate execution grounds personally, draw their focus, and cut the ropes. The Ravens will act as a ghost perimeter to secure the escape routes."