Chapter 44: The Ledger of Blood

The heavy iron-reinforced carriage of the Prim Sanguis clan didn’t roll into Bergis City under blowing trumpets or parade banners. It slid through the southern iron gates at dusk, slick with rain and guarded by twelve silent shadow operatives.

Through the tinted glass, Valerian observed the stark divide of his new domain.

To the east, the High Spires of the Golden District rose into the bruised purple clouds, glowing with expensive magical lanterns, marble balconies, and glittering feast halls.

Below them stretched the Low Slums—a sprawling labyrinth of rotting timber shanties, open sewage trenches, and thousands of hollow-eyed citizens shivering beneath battered wool coats in the cold rain.

"It smells like rotting fish and cheap perfume," Wren muttered from across the carriage. Her golden eyes burned with disgust as she stared through the rain-streaked window.

"They’ve routed fresh mountain water exclusively into private bathhouses while drainage pipes dump raw waste beside the lower orphanages."

"That is the divine beauty of unchecked corruption, my sweet little nightmare!" Nox giggled from the shadows, balancing a dark-chitin dagger on his pinky.

"It makes everyone soft and arrogant! Their necks are practically begging for a sharp edge! Boss, please tell me we get to paint those pretty marble spires red tonight!"

"No," Valerian said calmly.

His black-chitin staff rested across his knees, his crimson eyes hidden behind his dark silk blindfold.

"Brute force from the Citadel would only make them martyrs. Kill one corrupt leader and three more will buy their way into his position by morning. The corruption in Bergis isn’t an army. It’s a parasite that has replaced the host’s nervous system."

"Then what is your strategy?" Wren asked.

"You rejected Morrigan’s Executioner Guard. You have a little over five months before the Royal Imperial Academy opens, considering our travel through the southern passes and the week spent gathering intelligence."

Valerian’s lips curved into a cold smile.

"A city built on greed is not a fortress. It is a house of cards held together by debt, paranoia, and secret malice. We don’t need to strike them."

He tapped his staff twice against the carriage floor.

"We simply need to give them weapons to destroy each other."

WOOOSH.

Castor’s shadow detached from the carriage roof, pooling beside Valerian before forming the shape of the kneeling operative.

"My Lord."

"Execute Phase One."

Valerian’s voice became icy.

"Target the four largest merchant houses of the Golden Scale Guild and the three major crime syndicates ruling the lower district. Do not kill a single noble. Do not spill a single drop of blood with your own hands. The Sanguis family must remain absent from the slaughter."

"What are our directives?"

"Forgeries, leaks, and engineered betrayals."

Valerian lifted his teacup.

"Deliver a forged financial ledger bearing Guildmaster Vane’s seal to the Iron-Skull Syndicate. Make it appear that Vane has hired three thousand foreign mercenaries to wipe out the slum bosses before the imperial tax audit."

Nox’s eyes widened.

"Oh... that’s delicious."

"Then leak the syndicate’s trafficking records to the rival merchant houses. Include forged banking receipts showing Vane has been stealing their profits and secretly funding assassinations against his own guild partners."

"And the city watch?"

"Give the rank-and-file guards their captains’ payroll records. Let them see exactly how much silver their commanders have stolen while their own families starve."

Valerian’s smile sharpened.

"Then breach the Guild’s grain silos. Distribute ten thousand bags of flour into the slums beneath Vane’s personal crest. Include a message calling it a ’final bribe for silence.’"

Castor bowed.

"It shall be done before midnight."

His body dissolved into shadow.

Valerian took another sip of tea.

"Let the rot feed on itself."

---

By midnight, Bergis City had become a psychological slaughterhouse.

In Guildmaster Vane’s mansion, the merchant stared at a blood-stained letter left upon his silk pillow.

It contained detailed maps of his private vaults and claimed the Iron-Skull Syndicate planned to butcher his family at dawn.

Panicked, Vane hired two hundred blood-blade mercenaries.

"Kill them all!" he screamed. "Burn the lower district!"

Three miles away, the Iron-Skull leaders received their own forged documents.

They showed Vane’s mercenaries already marching toward their territory.

The syndicate mobilized more than three thousand armed thugs.

"They think they can slaughter us like dogs?!" their leader roared.

"We take the Golden District tonight!"

The match was struck.

The city erupted.

For the next forty-eight hours, Bergis tore itself apart.

Mercenaries and syndicate fighters collided in the middle district. Merchant guards turned on rival houses. The city watch mutinied after discovering their stolen wages.

Meanwhile, the starving population discovered the truth about the hoarded grain and missing children.

They stormed the Golden District with torches and iron bars.

By the second night, fires consumed the marble spires.

Valerian watched from the balcony of the Governor’s Manor, calmly sipping tea as the city burned below.

Nox hung upside down from the stone archway, laughing hysterically.

"Look at them! They’re tearing each other’s throats out! And we didn’t even draw a blade! Boss, you’re a master of misery!"

Wren stood beside the railing, watching another merchant estate collapse into flames.

"It’s horrifying," she whispered. "They’re destroying their own city because they can’t trust anyone."

"They aren’t destroying it," Valerian replied.

He took another sip.

"They’re burning away the rot."

"And when the fires burn out?"

"They will discover that the only hand offering food, law, and order in the ashes..."

His smile was cold.

"...is mine."

---

By the morning of the third day, the violence had finally collapsed into deathly silence.

The Golden Scale Guild was gone.

The crime syndicates had been shattered.

Valerian walked through the central plaza surrounded by thousands of battered citizens and exhausted city guards.

At the center of the square, bound in iron chains, knelt Viscount Vane.

"You monster!" Vane coughed, staring at Valerian.

"You leaked those documents! You manipulated everyone! You destroyed this city!"

"I destroyed nothing."

Valerian adjusted his blindfold.

"I handed you a mirror. You built this city on blood, starvation, and stolen lives. I merely allowed your own rot to consume itself."

The crowd erupted in cheers.

"What are you going to do with us?" Vane begged. "Execute us?"

"Execution is a mercy for men who grew fat on human suffering."

Valerian turned toward Castor.

"Strip the surviving nobility and guild members of their land titles, vaults, and merchant charters. Reallocate eighty percent of their seized assets into the city treasury."

Castor bowed.

"And the remaining nobles?"

"Lifetime hard labor in the southern obsidian quarries."

Valerian’s voice remained indifferent.

"Let them build the foundations of the city they spent thirty years destroying."

The crowd roared.

Wren watched the citizens cheer.

"You gave them justice without making the Citadel look like a bloodthirsty tyrant."

"Justice is merely a byproduct of ruthless administration."

Valerian turned toward the dark entrance beneath the central bank.

"Now we find the real parasites."

---

Two weeks passed.

Bergis City began to change.

The corrupt guilds were abolished and replaced by a public trade council overseen by Valerian’s shadow operatives.

The worst slum districts were cleared, and construction began on clean stone housing funded by the seized fortunes of the nobility.

The city watch received their stolen wages, underwent restructuring, and returned to the streets under strict discipline.

The poor were no longer starving.

The corrupt elite were no longer untouchable.

In less than twenty days, the worst territory under the House of Blood had been purged and stabilized—not magically rebuilt overnight, but placed firmly on the path toward genuine reconstruction.

Yet beneath the newly paved streets, Valerian discovered something far more disturbing.

Inside his private sanctuary, a wooden table was covered with artifacts recovered from the underground vaults.

Nox leaned against the wall, tossing an obsidian rune-stone into the air.

"We found these beneath the Guildmaster’s vault, Boss. Apparently our dear Viscount wasn’t just hoarding gold. He was buying protection from something much worse."

Wren stepped toward a charred piece of parchment covered in crimson demonic script.

Her golden eyes narrowed.

"This is a ritual ledger."

She traced one of the symbols.

"The magic signature belongs to one of the Ten Demon Lords."

Castor emerged from the shadows and placed a leather map onto the table.

"Lord Valerian, our search beneath the lower district revealed an abandoned sacrificial chamber. The riots severed the trafficking network so quickly that the cultists fled before completing their ritual."

Valerian leaned over the map.

The Third Demonic Altar had been beneath Bergis all along.

But the parchment revealed something worse.

Carved into its center was the crest of the Third Demon Lord—a bleeding eye surrounded by three black suns.

Below it were fragments of a continent-spanning ritual and coded names of collaborators spread across three provinces.

Two belonged to noble houses within the Imperial Capital.

Most disturbing of all was a faint spatial resonance map.

At least one other Demonic Altar was already fully active somewhere in the northern territories.

"They’re embedded everywhere," Wren whispered.

"Ministers. Generals. High merchants..."

Her expression hardened.

"They aren’t invading from outside. They’ve already bought half of human society."

Nox’s grin widened.

"How wonderfully terrifying."

Valerian remained silent.

His fingers tightened around his black-chitin staff.

Bergis had been a single infected wound.

Now he had discovered the infection was spreading throughout the entire continent.

And somewhere in the north, another altar was already active.

Valerian turned toward the window.

"We have a little over four months before the Royal Imperial Academy opens."

His voice became cold.

"Prepare the dossiers."

He tapped his staff against the floor.

"After Bergis..."

A faint smile touched his lips.

"...we hunt the rest."