Chapter 492. Panic Burns Through Stolen Power Faster Than Anything Else

Chapter 492: 492. Panic Burns Through Stolen Power Faster Than Anything Else

Alden heard them. The words pierced through the haze of pain more effectively than any blade.

He let out a sound that started as a ragged, furious laugh but cracked halfway through, dissolving into something wet and pathetic—a sob that refused to fully form.

"You think you understand what this power costs?" Alden shrieked, the violet light in his eyes flaring with a sickly intensity. "You think you understand anything about what my family has sacrificed for generations to hold onto something like this?!"

"To hold onto this destiny?!"

"I think," William said, his voice cutting through Alden’s hysteria like a scalpel.

He began to circle, his boots grinding slowly against the debris, maintaining the perfect geometric trap that kept Alden caged between himself and Kaela. "I think you’re a man wearing a crown you never actually earned, wielding a power you never actually built, standing in a courtyard getting beaten by the woman your own family tried to buy like livestock."

William stopped circling for a moment, his gaze cold and unblinking. "I think that’s the whole story, Alden."

"And I think everything else you’re telling yourself right now is just desperate, pathetic noise to keep from hearing how true that actually is."

For the first time since the confrontation began, the fury in Alden’s eyes flickered. It wasn’t anger that replaced it, but something far more primal: genuine, bone-deep terror.

The black veins beneath his skin began to stutter and spasm visibly, their movement no longer fluid but jerky, like dying insects. The medallion’s light dimmed another shade, its pulse growing weak and arrhythmic.

’He’s breaking,’ William thought, his muscles coiled and ready. ’The corruption has eaten through the host.’

’There’s nothing left but the shell.’

In a fit of pure, unthinking panic, Alden lashed out. His hands swept through the air in a wild, unfocused arc, releasing a burst of Umbral energy.

FWOOM.

The dark wave tore across the cobblestones, cracking them apart, but William sidestepped it with almost insulting nonchalance. He moved with the casual grace of someone stepping over a puddle, his expression one of profound boredom.

"Careful," William warned, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Panic burns through stolen power faster than anything else does."

"I’ve watched men make that exact mistake before, Alden... It never ends well for them."

"They burn out like candles in a hurricane."

But the warning came too late. The desperation of a cornered animal had taken hold.

Alden could feel the cold void inside his chest where the medallion’s power used to be. He felt hollow, his very essence being drained away by the artifact he thought would save him.

Sensing his own life force guttering out like a flame in a storm, Alden made his move. It wasn’t a tactical retreat; it was a graceless, panicked flight.

He threw himself backward with enough force to send his own blood spraying from his split lip. As he fell, he clawed at the fabric of reality itself, channeling every remaining spark of his corrupted mana into a single, desperate point.

SHHH RIKKKK.

A jagged, screaming tear opened in the air behind him, a crude, unstable portal pulsing with the same sickly violet light as the medallion. It looked less like a doorway and more like a wound in space, weeping shadows into the courtyard.

William’s blood ran cold. He understood immediately.

He knew exactly what that portal represented.

’If he gets through that...’ William’s mind raced. ’If he vanishes into the dark, all of this was for nothing.’

’Olivia’s evidence, the confessions from the Hall of Accord—they become worthless.’

’He’ll retreat into Delmore’s shadow, lick his wounds, and return with something far worse than this.’

"He’s trying to run!" Kaela screamed, her voice cracking with desperation.

She didn’t hesitate. She ignited every remaining reserve of strength in her legs and sprinted toward the widening tear.

Her boots hammered against the stone THUD THUD THUD as she pushed her body past its breaking point. But the distance was too great.

The physics of the moment were cruel; the gap between her outstretched hand and the shimmering violet edge of the portal was mathematically impossible to close.

"NO!" Kaela’s frustrated scream tore across the courtyard, raw and full of agony.

She watched in horror as Alden’s boot heel landed mere inches from the portal’s edge. He was already halfway through the threshold, the shadows beginning to swallow his legs as he prepared to vanish forever.

The world slowed. For William, the cacophony of the collapsing courtyard—the screams, the grinding stone, and the dying hiss of the portal faded into a dull, distant hum.

In that suspended moment, the decision crystallized. It wasn’t a choice born of strategy or duty; it was a choice born of primal necessity.

He reached inward. He bypassed the bone-deep exhaustion that had been gnawing at his marrow since the first skirmish with the imperial soldiers.

He pushed past the pain in his ribs and the fire in his lungs, diving deeper into the core of his being until he found it: the current. It wasn’t the familiar whisper of the wind or the cold bite of steel.

This was something warmer, something fiercer—a tether forged not in blood, but in the absolute, unshakable bonds he shared with two women who had seen his soul and chosen to stand beside it.

[Harem Boost: Active. Current multiplier: x2.]

The response was violent. A flood of molten golden light erupted from his sternum, surging through his circulatory system like liquid sun.

It wasn’t just energy; it was weight. His pulse slowed to a thunderous, deliberate rhythm, each heartbeat feeling like the strike of a war drum that shook his entire frame.

In that fractured instant of transcendence, his mind became a mosaic of memory. He saw Catherine, not the warrior, but the woman sitting across from him three mornings ago, her fingers curled around a warm cup of tea, her eyes steady, calm, and utterly certain of his survival.

Then came Lia, a flash of sun-drenched motion in a distant training yard, her hair plastered to her forehead with sweat as she laughed triumphantly after finally besting Commander Ardyn.

Neither of them was present in this hellscape, yet in that single golden heartbeat, their essence was more real than the stone beneath his feet.

They were his anchor.

They were his strength.

’Now.’

The word echoed in his skull as he exploded into motion.

William crossed the ruined courtyard in what felt like a single, impossible stride. The world blurred around him as Aetherion shifted mid-swing, the weapon’s form compressing, shedding every ounce of unnecessary mass to become a scalpel of pure momentum.

He wasn’t running; he was a projectile.

Alden, halfway swallowed by the violet maw of the portal, never even saw the flash of gold. His violet eyes were wide with the terror of the abyss, focused entirely on his escape.

CRACK SHHH.

William didn’t aim for the throat. He didn’t aim for the heart.

To kill Alden now would be to let the portal remain open, a wound that would bleed darkness into the world. Instead, he became a surgeon of violence.

His first strike was a lightning-fast slash aimed at Alden’s elbow.

KRAK.

The blade didn’t just cut flesh; it shattered the corrupted bone beneath, severing the neural pathways the medallion used to puppet the prince’s limbs. Alden let out a gurgling scream as his left arm went limp.

Without breaking stride, William pivoted on his heel, his boots sending sparks flying as they ground against the marble.

The second strike was a brutal, precise thrust aimed at the junction where Alden’s shoulder met his neck exactly where the black veins pulsed with the most obscene concentration of corrupted mana.

THWACK SQUELCH.

The steel bit deep, disrupting the flow of dark energy like a dam breaking. Alden’s body convulsed, his muscles seizing in a grotesque parody of life.

The third strike was a backhanded blow with the hilt of Aetherion, delivered with enough force to send a shockwave through Alden’s skull. The impact sent the medallion spinning from his weakening grip.

The artifact skittered across the stones with a metallic screech, its violet light sputtering like a candle caught in a gale.

"No... no, please." Alden’s voice was a broken whimper as he began to fall backward, gravity claiming him.

But William was faster. With a final, controlled flick of his wrist, he severed the last connection between the prince and his stolen power.

The jagged tear in reality shuddered violently RRRRIP as if the universe itself were rejecting the wound. With a sound like heavy silk tearing in half, the portal collapsed inward, folding into a single point of darkness before vanishing entirely.

Alden’s boot struck the stone inches from where the threshold had been. He collapsed into a heap of broken bones and fading corruption, gasping for air that no longer tasted of magic.

The courtyard fell into a deafening silence, broken only by the labored, ragged breathing of three broken souls.