I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 818: Survivors

Eight minutes had passed since they had drunk the wine.

Two minutes remained.

Morvana leaned forward on her throne, her golden eyes fixed on Jack with a cold, terrifying intensity. “A compelling demonstration, human,” her voice then lowered to a gravely serious tone.

“You have manipulated betrothals, leveraged tournament rules, and coerced my husband into silence. But you seem to forget where you stand. You stand in the heart of Caeloria. Even if Maelor backs his bastard, this Council will never sign the decree. We will nullify the betrothal. We will declare the tournament void. Power in this kingdom belongs to us.”

Jack looked up at Morvana, his heterochromic eyes remained unblinking.

“Power in this kingdom belonged to whoever controlled the Bloodrush,” Jack replied flatly. “And you lost that control as we speak.”

Tymandra gasped, her hand flying to her throat as a sudden, subtle discomfort fluttered in her chest.

Beside her, Caspian swallowed hard, his throat suddenly feeling dry, parched, as if he had swallowed fine sand.

“You sat on these thrones for centuries,” Jack continued, his voice echoing with rhythmic, hypnotic precision, “believing that your blood made you immortal. Believing that you could starve the lower tiers, harvest the Vilebloods, and sell their essence to fuel your personal standing. You believed you were the apex.”

Gale stopped tapping his fingers. He rubbed his neck, his face flushing slightly as a strange, prickling heat began to spread behind his collarbone. “What… what is this…?”

“Tell me, Councilors,” Jack said smoothly, stepping back into the center of the hall, his arms resting casually at his sides. “Do you feel it?”

The room went completely still.

“Feel… what?” Rowan demanded, though his voice lacked conviction, his breathing suddenly becoming rapid and shallow.

“The small scratch at the back of your throat,” Jack whispered, his voice carrying a dark, terrifying cadence that vibrated directly inside their minds.

“The little itch you can’t seem to scratch. The faint, burning heat spreads from your stomach into your chest. The sudden, heavy weight settling behind your eyes.”

Leandros’s eyes widened in sudden, absolute horror. His hand flew to his throat.

The ten-minute countdown had reached zero.

Across the semicircle, Sariel Nyctelios suddenly stiffened. His glass slipped from his fingers, shattering against the marble floor.

Beside him, Rowan Starling let out a wet, gurgling gasp.

His body convulsed suddenly.

Rowan’s hands flew to his throat as if his own fingers could physically tear away whatever was destroying him from the inside.

His mouth opened wide, and a choking, horrific sound emerged.

Not a scream, not a cry for help, but a wet, tearing noise as internal blood vessels began to burst simultaneously across his chest.

Rowan’s complexion became instantly flushed.

It was not a blush of embarrassment or physical exertion; it was the sickening, violent flush of internal hemorrhage.

The skin across his pale elven face transformed into a dark, purplish mask as blood leaked beneath the epidermis.

SNAP.

A sickening, wet crunch echoed from the desk beside Sariel. A Council member’s body arched backward so violently that his spine attempted to fold in half, his muscles contracting in uncontrollable, agonizing spasms as Loryn’s specialized poison flooded his nervous system.

Blood oozed from the corners of his eyes, running down his cheeks in thick, arterial rivulets.

The liquid was dark, almost black, flowing freely from ruptured vessels within his eye sockets. His mouth opened wider, and a torrent of thick, crimson blood poured from between his teeth, coating his chin and spilling over his pristine silk robes.

He collapsed forward onto his desk, dead within seconds.

The Council Chamber descended into an absolute, horrific nightmare.

Screams of pure terror erupted from the surviving nobles, but those screams quickly transformed into wet, drowning gurgles as the poison activated across the entire front row.

Fauna’s body convulsed with such violent snaps that the sound of her spine separating from her pelvis cracked like a whip across the marble hall.

Her hands clawed frantically at her own neck, her fingernails tearing deep, bloody furrows into her skin as she tried to physically dig out the burning agony in her throat.

Her back arched so severely that her ribs cracked under the pressure.

SPLURT.

Blood erupted from her mouth in a pressurized flood, washing her teeth out onto the marble floor like white pebbles.

The crimson liquid poured over her chin, mixing with the dark streams flowing from her eyes, creating a horrific mask of complete biological collapse before she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

To the right, another Councilor clawed at his own chest, his fingers tearing through his robes as his heart ruptured within his ribcage.

His body went rigid for a single, agonizing second, blood spurting from his nose and ears simultaneously, before something inside his chest broke irreparably. He slammed face-first into his desk, motionless.

The choking, tearing sounds filled the vast chamber.

The smell of iron and copper erupted instantly.

An overwhelming, omnipresent, inescapable stench of sudden mass mortality.

It wasn’t the smell of a clean blade or a magical strike; it was the sickening, heavy stench of eleven high-born bodies dying from the inside out, their internal organs dissolving into liquid gore.

Rivulets of dark arterial blood ran off the edge of the elevated Council desks, dripping onto the pristine white marble floor below.

The liquid was steaming, hot, pooling in the ancient cracks and imperfections of the stone, forming expanding crimson lakes that reflected the ambient light of the scrying mirrors.

Through the absolute horror, only four individuals remained untouched by the physical agony: King Maelor, Queen Morvana, Sariel Nyctelios, and Caspian Alyon.

Jack had specifically made sure to spare them from the fatal dose.

Leaving them conscious, unharmed, and paralyzed by the sheer, incomprehensible brutality unfolding before their eyes.

Caspian fell to his knees beside his desk, vomiting, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror as he stared at Rowan’s twitching, blood-drenched corpse inches from his face.

Sariel sat frozen in his chair, his aristocratic composure utterly destroyed, his hands shaking so violently he could barely breathe, his face pale as chalk as blood from the dying Councilors splattered across his boots.

Queen Morvana had risen from her throne. For the first time since Jack had entered the kingdom, her golden eyes carried genuine, unmitigated shock.

Her chest heaved, her hands gripping the arms of her throne so tightly the golden wood groaned under her power.

Beside her, King Maelor didn’t look away. His face was a mask of cold, terrifying discipline, but his knuckles were white as he watched the corrupt Council that had oppressed his son for decades drown in their own blood.

The violence of it was staggering.

The scale of it was incomprehensible.

The nobility that had ruled Caeloria for centuries had been reduced to twitching, bleeding meat on the floor of their own sacred hall.

Within less than two minutes, the screaming stopped.

The choking ceased.

The sound of rupturing organs faded into silence. The only noise remaining in the vast, grand chamber was the steady, rhythmic drip-drip-drip of crimson blood pooling on the marble floor, and the shallow, terrified breathing of the four survivors.

Jack Kaiser stood in the center of the blood-stained hall, his boots stepping casually over a stream of dark crimson blood without a single hint of hesitation.

He looked up at the royal dais, his dark eyes locking onto Queen Morvana, then shifting to Sariel and Caspian.

His expression was completely unchanged.

“The old Council has officially retired,” Jack said, his voice smooth, flat, and carrying the absolute authority of a ruler who had just rewritten the fate of a kingdom. “Now… let us discuss the new order.”