I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 821: Ren’s Revenge

The sound was shockingly delicate. It carried none of the thunderous violence of a magical detonation, nor the grinding scrape of metal meeting stone.

It was the soft, wet whisper of an impossibly sharp edge slipping through silk.

From the deep shadow cast by the high-backed granite chair, a slender, silver-blue blade of ancient steel punched directly through the two-foot-thick stone backrest.

The strike possessed no kinetic drag.

It did not crack the granite; it did not splinter the reinforced wood; it completely ignored the six layers of high-grade warding runes stitched into the velvet lining of Sariel’s noble attire.

The blade bypassed physical resistance entirely, folding the space between the exterior stone and the interior of the Councilor’s ribcage.

The tip of the katana erupted four inches out from the dead center of Sariel’s sternum.

Sariel’s entire body snapped rigid.

His breath choked in his throat with a sharp, wet gasp.

His eyes bulged, the dark pupils dilating until the golden irises were almost entirely eclipsed.

He looked down at his chest in total, uncomprehending shock.

Protruding through the pristine white silk of his tunic was a blade so clean, so flawless, that not a single speck of blood clung to its edge.

Then the pain hit.

It was not heat.

It was not cold.

It was the absolute, agonizing sensation of his internal mana channels being severed simultaneously by a blade that cut not just flesh, but the metaphysical pathways connecting his soul to his body.

“Ghk… k-khh…”

Dark arterial blood bubbled past Sariel’s lips.

It coated his teeth, spilled over his chin, and dripped in heavy, dark crimson drops onto the official Council documents spread across his desk.

The wind he had been condensing in his chest collapsed inward, scattering into chaotic, painful sparks that burned his own lungs from the inside out.

From the darkness directly behind the high-backed chair, a figure stepped smoothly out of the gloom.

He did not walk around the chair; he manifested from the shadows, stepping forward until his silver-blue shoulder armor lightly brushed the granite backrest.

His left hand rested casually on the lacquered scabbard at his hip, while his right held the hilt of the katana with a loose, effortless grip that carried the precision of a master surgeon.

Ren Ryzard.

The Sovereign-rank entity of the fallen Prosperity Kingdoms leaned down.

His pale, impossibly sharp face came to rest inches from Sariel’s ear.

Ren’s deep, steadfast blue eyes were flat, carrying the tranquil, terrifying stillness of an ocean trench.

Ren tilted his head slightly, his voice emerging as a low, intimate whisper that bypassed the chamber entirely, vibrating directly against Sariel’s auditory nerve.

“It is so good to see you again, Sariel,” Ren murmured softly.

The voice was polite.

It was refined.

It carried the smooth, melodic cadence of an old friend greeting an acquaintance in a grand ballroom.

Yet to Sariel, those syllables felt like iron spikes being driven directly into his skull.

Three hundred years.

Three centuries had passed since the Prosperity Kingdoms had burned to ash.

Three centuries since Sariel, a young, rising, ambitious noble hungry for continental dominion, had joined a secret cabal of kings, councilors, and arch-mages to orchestrate the great betrayal.

They had feared Ren Ryzard.

They had feared the Sovereign of the Lost Sun whose blade could cut the sky itself.

They had trapped him, poisoned his vanguard, broken the oaths of seven sovereign realms, and cast him into the eternal torment of the Tartarus Spire, believing that no creature, mortal or immortal, could ever climb out of that abyssal prison.

“Y-you…” Sariel wheezed, his fingers twitching frantically against the blood-slick marble of his desk. “R-Ren… Ryzard… You… you are… dead…”

“A common misconception,” Ren replied, his tone remaining entirely level, his breath cool against Sariel’s blood-spattered ear. “The Spire is vast, but it does not keep men who have debts left to collect on the surface. And you, Sariel… you owe me three centuries of interest.”

Ren twisted the hilt of the katana a fraction of a millimeter.

CRACK.

A horrific, muffled crunch resonated within Sariel’s chest as the spatial edge severed three more mana nodes.

Sariel let out a strangled, ragged scream, his legs kicking violently beneath the desk, his hands clawing at his own throat as fresh waves of blood poured from his mouth.

“Tell me,” Ren whispered, his voice dipping lower, carrying a dark, inexorable gravity. “Where are the others?”

Sariel’s vision was beginning to tunnel. Dark gray spots danced across his eyes, the blood loss starving his brain while the spatial energy radiating from the blade steadily dismantled his life force.

Yet, deep within his dying core, the stubborn, arrogant pride of a pureblood noble flared with desperate defiance.

“I… I will tell you… nothing,” Sariel choked out, his voice a wet, raspy rattle. A bloody, defiant sneer managed to contort his lips as he glared down at the blade in his chest. “You… you think you can… torture a Nyctelios? My cabal… is beyond you, ghost… They sit on thrones… you cannot touch… in realms… you cannot reach…”

“Warren sat on a throne,” Ren noted with clinical, unbothered calm. “He died weeping for his life after I severed his limbs one by one. Mira was obliterated by a technique Sarin created. Jack killed her with one strike, and Magnus watched it all happen and did nothing.”

Ren leaned closer, his blue eyes locking onto the side of Sariel’s trembling face.

“With you, Sariel, that makes three of the seven who signed the decree of betrayal against me,” Ren said softly.

“The count continues. Give me the remaining names, their strongholds, and the seals they hide behind. Give them to me now, and I will grant you the mercy of a clean bisection.

Refuse… and I will make sure to hunt down every single creature that shares your bloodline. I will eradicate every branch of House Nyctelios until your name is completely wiped from the historical records of this continent.”

A sickening, gurgling chuckle escaped Sariel’s throat, dark blood spraying across the Council ledger beneath him.

“F-fool…” Sariel spat, his bloody teeth gleaming in the dim light. “You… you threaten my house? My bloodline… is eternal… My sons… my daughters… my cousins… they are scattered across fifty estates in four separate kingdoms… protected by blood-wards that require royal blood to bypass… You cannot kill… what you cannot find… ghost…”

Ren did not blink.

He did not frown.

He let out a quiet, almost imperceptible sigh through his nose, looking at the dying noble with a gaze of profound, flat pity.

“You speak as though they are still breathing,” Ren whispered.

Sariel’s rattling breath hitched. “W-what…?”

“One day ago, while you were flaunting around with those tramps…”

Ren said, his voice dropping into a chilling, rhythmic delivery, “Five hundred white-armored soldiers entered the Nyctelios ancestral estate in the northern valleys. They sealed the perimeter. They disabled the blood-wards from the inside out using blood from your own family.”

Ren leaned in so close his lips nearly brushed the shell of Sariel’s ear.

“Your eldest son was cleaved in two while he reached for his staff,” Ren murmured. “Your three daughters were made into slaves for my pleasure. Your cousins, your uncles, your grandchildren…

Not a single one survived the night. Their bodies were burned to ash. You are not a patriarch protecting a lineage, Sariel. You are the very last Nyctelios drawing breath on this world.”

The defiance in Sariel’s eyes did not merely crack; it shattered into absolute, irrecoverable dust.