Chapter 240: After the Flash

What happened that night was not a simple explosion.

Beneath the entire royal estate granted to the Valentine Family for the event, a magic circle of absurd proportions had been prepared in advance.

It did not occupy a single room, a tower, or merely the foundations of the palace.

The matrix extended through the entire property, hidden among stones, gardens, underground corridors, and support structures, formed by thousands of connected runes that remained dormant until the exact moment of activation.

When they all lit up together, they produced something close to nuclear-class magic: a technique created not to strike one person, but to erase an entire region all at once.

Grace noticed first.

Her thermal sensitivity caught that microscopic change in temperature only an instant before full activation, and her scream crossed the hall.

"PROTECT YOURSELVES!"

Less than a second existed between the warning and the explosion.

For Victor, it was enough.

The moment his eyes identified the red circle forming beneath the palace, he stopped thinking.

There was no calculation, no choice, no time to decide who should be saved.

All the Primordial Blood inside his body responded at once, and Black Ice exploded in every direction.

The hall froze.

Not only the floor.

Columns, walls, ceiling, tables, and all the space around the guests were swallowed by successive layers of dark ice.

Victor did not try to stop the explosion.

He understood immediately that he did not have enough energy for that.

Instead, he created dozens of overlapping structures, freezing the space around the vampires who would not have enough strength to endure the impact directly.

The ice formed walls, domes, and cocoons while anchoring itself to the building’s foundations, turning the entire hall into an improvised fortress in a fraction of a second.

Then came the White Fire.

The flames appeared between the layers of ice as a second protection.

They were not directed toward the people, but outward, consuming the energy passing through the barriers.

The monstrous heat produced by the magic circle struck that white layer and began disappearing before it could reach the protected bodies.

Red flames were swallowed.

Mana was destroyed.

And part of the explosive force itself vanished whenever it came into contact with Victor’s fire.

Everything happened in such a short interval that most people inside the hall did not even understand that they had been protected.

Victor, however, felt every part of it.

His heart accelerated violently.

The Black Ice consumed absurd reserves.

The White Fire demanded even more.

He kept releasing energy even when his own body began to fail, expanding the protection to reach people he did not even know, locking ice around the weaker guests and reinforcing the areas that started to break.

After that, there was simply nothing left to give.

His consciousness disappeared.

At the final instant, before he fell, his own Black Ice responded to survival instinct and wrapped around his body.

Victor was frozen inside a thick layer of dark ice as the world around him exploded.

Eleonora tried to keep the palace from collapsing.

The moment she felt the foundations splitting apart, she spread her gravitational manipulation throughout the entire structure.

Towers beginning to fall were held suspended for fractions of a second.

Tons of stone stopped in midair.

Large sections of the ceiling seemed to defy gravity itself.

She tried to hold everything at once.

She failed.

There was something else inside that magic.

A barrier.

It was hidden within the explosive circle itself and possessed a very specific function:

to weaken vampires.

It did not drain energy in any noticeable way.

It caused no pain, produced no pressure, and did not directly interfere with blood.

It simply reduced, little by little, the amount of power a vampire could externalize while remaining inside its limits.

It was a technique so refined that no one noticed its existence before activation.

Not Serafall.

Not Chysis.

Not Anette.

Not Rakshasa.

Not even Vlad, who had remained invisible on the second floor throughout the entire event, watching the situation unfold around his own daughter.

By the time they understood what was happening, the magic had already done its work.

The palace fell.

When the explosion finally disappeared and the shock wave finished tearing through the Capital, what remained of the Valentine estate was a gigantic crater covered in fire, Black Ice, broken stones, and fragments of the former structures.

Rakshasa emerged practically unharmed.

So did Chysis.

Serafall tore through the rubble covering her and appeared without any significant injuries, while Anette simply forced her way through the stones, her blood still boiling with rage.

Others were not as fortunate.

There were broken bones, burns, cuts, and unconscious vampires scattered among the ruins.

Some guards had been partially crushed before they could escape.

Less prepared nobles were trapped beneath tons of stone.

Ordinary servants would have been vaporized by the initial temperature.

But the massacre that magic should have caused never happened.

Across the destroyed estate were enormous blocks of Black Ice.

And inside them were living people.

Victor had done it.

---

"Higher!"

Eleonora raised both hands.

An entire section of the ruins began to float.

Stones weighing dozens of tons slowly moved apart, exposing a mass of Black Ice trapped between two former walls.

Soldiers and healers immediately rushed toward the location while Eleonora held the debris suspended.

"There are eight in here!" someone shouted.

"Don’t break the ice carelessly!" another answered. "Melt it from the sides!"

A team began working.

Eleonora was covered in dust.

Part of her dress had been torn during the explosion, and dried blood marked her left arm, but she kept moving tons of rubble without stopping.

"Next!"

More stones rose.

Another ice structure appeared.

Three servants were frozen inside it, protected by a thin layer of White Fire still clinging to the outer surface like small, motionless flames.

Eleonora looked at it for a second.

"That boy is absurd..."

Then she continued.

Entire teams moved through the ruins.

Vampires with specialized perception searched for heartbeats, healers stabilized the wounded, and soldiers carried survivors toward an improvised area beyond the crater.

The death toll remained unbelievably low for destruction on that scale.

And everyone was beginning to understand why.

Not far away, Grace sat on a large stone.

A heavy blanket covered her shoulders, and a mug of warm blood rested between her hands.

Two healers had just examined her for the third time and finally concluded that, aside from mild exhaustion and several superficial cuts, she had no serious injuries.

Grace did not look relieved.

Her eyes remained fixed on the ruins.

She could still remember the heat.

First that tiny change.

Then everything.

"How did that happen so fast...?"

Chysis approached from behind.

The Marshal was also covered in dust, although she looked more irritated than injured.

She sat on the stone beside Grace and let out a long sigh.

"Because it was a very well-prepared trap."

Grace looked at her.

Chysis watched the rescue teams working.

"They didn’t improvise that today. Someone entered that place before, probably long before the event, installed every part of the circle, and waited for the right moment."

Her gaze hardened.

"And those werewolves were expendable. They sacrificed their own people just to keep our attention occupied while someone else stole the painting and prepared the escape."

Grace tightened her grip on the mug.

"They knew they would be captured?"

"Maybe not all of them. But someone knew it was possible and went ahead with the plan anyway."

"So those six..."

"And Blake."

Grace remained silent.

Chysis rested her arms over her legs.

"They were bait."

Grace looked at the crater again.

"That isn’t even the problem that worries me most."

Chysis turned her face slightly.

"The circle."

"Yes."

Grace drank a little of the warm blood.

"I felt the temperature rise before activation. It was very little. If my ability hadn’t changed, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed."

She frowned.

"That thing was spread across the entire estate. How does someone install magic that large without anyone sensing it?"

"With a great deal of competence."

Grace waited for more.

Chysis sighed again.

"It was the work of an exceptional witch."

"You’re sure?"

"Magic on that level, with a concealment system and an anti-blood barrier attached..."

Chysis looked toward the ruins.

"I can think of three witches capable of building something like that."

Grace became serious.

"Only three?"

"Besides the Queen of Witches."

That did not improve anything.

Grace remained silent for a few seconds, watching Eleonora raise another section of rubble.

Then she asked:

"How is Victor?"

Chysis took a little longer to answer.

"In a coma."

Grace’s fingers immediately tightened around the mug.

Chysis noticed.

"He’s stable."

Grace turned toward her.

"What happened?"

"Absolute exhaustion. He spent an amount of energy I didn’t even know he could release all at once."

Chysis leaned her back against a larger stone.

"Black Ice across practically the entire hall, White Fire over the main impact zones, and he still managed to freeze his own body before completely losing consciousness."

"Will he wake up?"

"He will."

Grace relaxed only slightly.

"When?"

"We don’t know."

Chysis looked toward a more distant area where several healers were working around a large block of Black Ice.

Victor had already been removed from there and taken to a secure facility, but part of the ice that had protected him remained scattered throughout the rubble.

"He needs to recover energy. His body is fine. The problem is that he emptied practically everything."

Grace lowered her eyes toward her mug.

"Fool."

Chysis looked at her.

Grace let out a short breath.

"A kind-hearted fool."

She watched several servants being pulled alive from another frozen structure.

"I never would have done that."

Chysis did not answer.

Grace continued:

"Not for all of them. Maybe for people close to me, but for vampires I don’t even know?"

She shook her head.

"There were enough strong people in that hall to defend themselves."

"Yes."

"Rakshasa was there. You were there. Serafall was there. Anette too."

"Yes."

Grace looked at Chysis.

"Even Vlad was there."

The Marshal’s expression hardened.

"He was."

Grace immediately noticed the irritation.

Chysis watched the rescue efforts for several seconds before speaking.

"He saw everything."

"And did nothing?"

"Not quickly enough."

The answer came cold.

"Maybe he believed the people present could defend themselves. Maybe he was prioritizing Anette. Maybe he noticed the barrier too late."

Chysis closed one hand.

"I don’t care."

Grace kept watching her.

"You’re angry."

"Very."

Chysis took a deep breath.

"My grandson had twenty years to learn how to live, and even so, his first reaction was to spend everything protecting a hall full of people."

Her voice became harder.

"Vlad is old enough to know better, and he stood there watching."

Grace looked back toward the ruins.

Fire still burned in several places.

Eleonora continued removing gigantic pieces of the structure while teams carried the wounded and searched for survivors trapped beneath the ice.

Grace held the mug with both hands.

"This won’t end here."

Chysis remained silent for several seconds.

Then she smiled without any humor.

"No."

She raised her eyes toward what remained of the Valentine estate.

"It definitely won’t."

The trap had worked.

The enemy had managed to enter, steal from, and attack the Valentine Family inside their own Capital.

But they had made one mistake.

There were too many survivors for it to be called a victory.

And now all of them knew the war had already begun.