Supreme Spouse System.

Chapter 461: When Honor Burns

When Honor Burns

Leon’s lips twitched faintly — not quite a smile, but its ghost. It was half-appreciation, half-dare. "Good to hear," he whispered, "from the man they all call Vellore’s First Wall."

The title seemed to strike something deep in Aden. His breath faltered, and his hand tightened instinctively on the hilt of his sword before loosening again. "And you..." he said, almost in awe, "you’re the first warrior who’s ever made me kneel." His voice dropped, low and reverent, carrying the weight of a lifetime of battles lost and won.

Leon moved closer. The rhythmic crunch of his boots resounded over the devastated earth, through the settling smoke and dust. Broken stone littered the ground in pieces beneath them, still warm from their struggle’s heat. He halted a few feet off, his shadow casting across Aden.

"Then recall that when you rebuild," Leon said softly, his voice firm but not ungentle. There was power in it — not gloating, but centering. "You don’t have to die here."

The words hung there in the air like the distant echo of thunder — heavy, final, and full of unspoken meaning.

Aden’s eyes flashed with a maelstrom of emotions — pride, pain, sorrow, a reluctant respect he barely allowed himself to speak. He swallowed hard, each motion heavy with exhaustion and raw emotion. "No," he whispered at last, voice cracked, with the burden of a man who’d been through fire too many times to be afraid of it any longer. "I don’t rebuild. Men like me don’t begin again... we finish.

The air itself grew tight, electric with the threat of devastation. There was a spasm of violet energy that burst out from around Aden’s body, warping the dust, bending the heat, drawing the warmth from the air. Fires that had clung tenaciously to splintered wood spat and died, leaving the field cold and still.

Leon’s golden illumination faltered, a shadow falling across the sharp planes of his face. His jaw clenched, eyes narrowing as he stood firm against the tide of power. "Don’t do it," he growled, low and unyielding, with a burden that seemed to moor the madness around them.

The two fighters stood there, suspended in that tenuous moment, the world holding its breath to determine what would be chosen — destruction, or the faint hope of restraint that still existed between them.

Aden’s eyes burned purple, the color darkening to black at the periphery. "You don’t understand," he repeated, his voice unnervingly calm. "If I can’t prevail. I’ll ensure that nothing here survives to achieve victory."

The words hung in the night like a knife. Beneath them the moonlight fell thin and uncaring over trampled banners and overturned wagons. Men who had marched to fight stood stockstill, the breath caught from their lungs in one, collective gasp. Even the wind was silent as if not daring to wake whatever Aden was about to shatter.

Leon studied him closely, each muscle strained tight, like a drawn wire. Aden’s face was a distant, eerie calm—an acceptance that chilled his eyes. Not madness, but a soldier’s determination that had strayed into darker territory. Leon could trace the lines of memory around Aden’s mouth, the way his thumb drummed the hilt of his sword as if recalling someone he’d let die.

"You’re going to detonate your own soul."

The accusation was simple, clinical. Leon did not shout it. He let the words fall into the empty space between them and measured the reaction. Aden’s jaw tightened, but the purple remained, bruising outward from his pupils like ink in water.

"I’d rather burn out than kneel before a boy." Aden smiled faintly — sad, almost nostalgic. "That’s what old soldiers do."

This smile was an old wound revived with new significance. Leon felt the burden of years in it—the funerals, the oaths, the faces he couldn’t shake. It scorched Leon’s throat. He wanted to rip the sword from Aden’s grip and send it crashing to the floor; he wanted to shatter the resolve that had petrified into this last, awful decision.

You’ll ruin it all. Your men, your home, your city. You call yourself their protector?

Leon’s voice was deep, but it was sharp. He walked the line of debris between them with the deliberation of habit, feeling where Aden’s power touched the earth. Ground beneath the knight had already started to shift; hairline cracks crept outward like a living thing. The sky leaned into the peril, stars creeping back as if to conceal themselves.

Aden laughed. It was a small, broken thing, the sound someone would make laughing at an old hurt. "I lost it anyway."

There was no triumph in that sentence—only an admission of defeat. For an instant, Leon heard hundreds of names behind it. The lives Aden vowed to protect, the towers and alleys he’d vowed to gods he’d protect, all concentrated in one bitter sound. Leon felt the reality of it burn—he knew the shame. He knew the price that shame would exact if Aden persisted.

Leon balled his hand into a fist, his aura flashing once — golden, rimmed with violet darkness. Light around him responded like a shield being drawn up, warm and keen. He felt the artifact hiding under his skin, a buzzing, thrumming presence that offered protection for a moment, maybe two. That mathematics was harsh and instant: he might live. Vellore would not.

"You think this is how honor works? You think death makes you right?"

His query cut like a challenge. Leon’s words weren’t for Aden alone; they were for the specters assembled at their shoulders—men who’d perished for pride, for purpose, for the hopeless delusion that destruction might purify the past. Aden’s armor deflected the light and flung it back in purple sheens, waves of energy slithering over the metal joints, the rumble like approaching thunder.

The body of the knight trembled, violet lightning crawling over his armor like so many arcs of smoke, cracks of power ripping open the earth beneath. Stone cracked and dust burst up in thin veils. The air itself shrieked around Aden’s sword, begun to sing a voice of its own, a high, wailing note that sent shivers over Leon’s arms.

Leon’s head spun. If Aden exploded, the whole fortress would be destroyed. He could probably survive it, perhaps — the divine artifact implanted inside him could protect his body for an instant. But all the Vellore soldiers would perish.

Images flashed—