Chapter 486. Ready to Become the Very Monster He Was Trying to Summon

Chapter 486: 486. Ready to Become the Very Monster He Was Trying to Summon

The silence that descended upon the courtyard was not peaceful; it was a suffocating, pressurized thing, the kind of stillness that precedes a cataclysm.

Catherine had only just reached William, her fingers curling around his forearm with a desperate, grounding tenderness.

She tilted his arm toward the bruised gray light of the afternoon, searching for the source of the damage, but her breath hitched when she saw the thin, crimson scratch weeping through the fabric of his sleeve.

Before she could speak, a sound tore through the air from the direction of the great gate. It wasn’t the disciplined call of a soldier or the clean ring of steel.

It was something primal, the guttural, wet howl of a predator that had been backed into a corner and found itself utterly outmatched.

It was a sound stripped of all humanity, raw and furious, shattering the practiced composure that had defined Alden Delmore since the moment he first graced this palace with his silver-tongued lies.

William’s gaze snapped toward the entrance. His pulse hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird.

At the threshold of the courtyard, Alden stood frozen. His retreating soldiers filed past him like ghosts, their boots scraping against stone in a hollow rhythm, leaving him abandoned in the wake of their slaughter.

The prince was rigid, his spine coiled like a spring about to snap. One hand was pressed flat against the ancient stone archway, his knuckles white, his fingers clawing at the masonry as if he were trying to fuse himself to the palace itself to avoid collapsing.

His shoulders heaved with each ragged, desperate breath.

"This isn’t possible," Alden rasped.

The words lacked any of the honeyed warmth that had poisoned their council sessions for weeks.

Gone was the charming aristocrat; in his place stood a hollowed-out shell of a man, his eyes wide and bloodshot, darting frantically across the blood-slicked stones where his men had fallen.

"My father’s entire elite unit... the Iron Guard... they were untouchable."

A muscle in Alden’s jaw twitched violently as his gaze landed on the carnage: the twisted remains of armor, the severed limbs scattered like discarded dolls, and the arterial spray that painted the courtyard walls in macabre streaks of crimson. His breathing became shallow and erratic.

"One man..." Alden’s voice cracked, breaking into a high, hysterical register that betrayed the terror clawing at his throat. "One man shouldn’t be able to... to butcher them like livestock."

Alden turned.

William had watched that face for weeks—a masterpiece of deception. He had seen it wear masks of honeyed warmth during diplomatic dinners, flashes of amused condescension during council sessions, and the cold, razor-sharp arrogance of a prince who believed the world existed solely for his amusement.

But the expression staring back at him now was something else entirely. It was a grotesque distortion.

Alden’s jaw trembled with a violent, involuntary spasm; his hands had curled into fists so tight that the skin stretched translucent over bone, knuckles bleached white as marble.

The polished veneer hadn’t just cracked; it had imploded, leaving behind a raw, bleeding nerve of a man, desperate and unmoored.

"You forced me into this," Alden spat.

His voice was a fractured thing, oscillating between a whimper of terror and the feverish, manic resolve of a zealot. "I never wanted to unleash this."

"I tried to play your game, William... I tried to be the prince your pathetic little world expects."

"But you... you left me no other choice."

His fingers clawed at the collar of his embroidered coat, ripping at the fine silk as if it were choking him.

From beneath the fabric, he drew forth a medallion of tarnished, obsidian dark metal. It hung from a chain that looked less like jewelry and more like a restraint.

The symbols carved into its surface were alien, jagged, nonsensical runes that seemed to writhe when not looked at directly.

The moment Alden’s flesh made contact with the metal, the air in the courtyard died. The medallion began to pulse with a sickly, necrotic violet-black light, a glow that didn’t illuminate the surroundings but seemed to actively consume the gray afternoon light, swallowing the shadows whole.

A wave of primal, instinctive wrongness washed over every witness in the colonnade; it was the bone-deep nausea that comes when one realizes they are standing in the presence of something that should not exist.

Then came the corruption. Dark energy began to writhe up Alden’s arm like ink dropped into clear water, but instead of dispersing, it burrowed beneath his skin.

Thin, spiderweb-like veins of black light spread outward from his fist, pulsing in time with his ragged, wet gasps. His breathing became a series of broken stutters as the power flooded his system, a power that felt less like strength and more like a violation.

Near the edge of the gathering crowd, Albert’s complexion drained until he looked like a corpse carved from wax.

Even during the bloodbath inside the Hall of Accord, he had maintained some semblance of composure, but now he leaned toward Theron, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper that nevertheless cut through the charged air.

"That symbol," Albert breathed, his eyes wide with a dawning horror. "I’ve seen it once before..."

"In records so ancient and so blasphemous that the archive keepers burned the original manuscripts rather than let them be copied in full."

"They called it the Umbral Concord." He swallowed hard, his throat working convulsively. "The old accounts claim artifacts like that were never acquired through any civilized means."

"Delmore would never dare admit to his own people that he touched something so... obscene."

"Let alone to the world."

Theron’s jaw was set so tight it looked ready to shatter. His eyes remained locked on the violet corruption spreading up Alden’s arm, watching as the prince’s veins turned black and his skin began to blister from the inside out.

"Can it be stopped?" Theron demanded, his voice low and dangerous. "There has to be a countermeasure."

"I genuinely don’t know," Albert admitted, his voice cracking. "Nothing I’ve ever read described someone surviving long enough to find out what happens when the Concord claims its host."

William didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even seem to breathe. But beneath the surface of his controlled exterior, something was fracturing.

The sight of Alden, that perfumed, posturing puppet who had spent weeks playing at politics clutching some blasphemous relic to justify his cowardice, ignited something primal in William’s gut.

It wasn’t just anger; it was a cold, volcanic fury that threatened to incinerate his very soul. His blood felt like molten lead coursing through his veins, each heartbeat a hammer blow against his ribs.

’You coward,’ William thought, the words echoing in the hollow chambers of his mind like a death knell. ’You couldn’t face me with steel, so you crawl to the darkness to borrow its strength.’

’You’re not a prince. You’re a parasite.’

His grip tightened on whatever weapon he held, his knuckles cracking audibly in the sudden, unnatural silence of the courtyard. His vision began to tunnel, the edges of the world blurring into a haze of crimson as his adrenaline spiked to lethal levels.

Every detail of Alden’s transformation—the sickening violet glow, the way the Prince’s flesh seemed to reject the power coursing through it—fed the fire.

"Is that what you’ve become, Alden?" William’s voice came out low, dangerously quiet.

It wasn’t a question; it was a condemnation. "A man who hides behind cursed trinkets because he lacks the spine to stand on his own?"

A muscle jumped in William’s cheek. His teeth were gritted so hard he could taste the copper tang of blood where his gums pressed against them.

He felt a desperate, violent urge to close the distance between them, not to fight, but to tear that medallion from Alden’s throat with his bare hands and watch the corruption choke the life out of him.

The rage was so potent it felt physical, a pressure behind his eyes that made his vision pulse.

The courtyard, already stained with the blood of the Iron Guard, seemed to shrink around him, leaving only two figures: the corrupted prince and the man who was tired of playing by the rules of civilized warfare.

William’s stance shifted subtly, lowering his center of gravity, his entire body coiled like a predator sensing the exact moment to strike. He wasn’t just frustrated; he was ready to become the very monster Alden was trying to summon.