Chapter 607: Return Of ??? [Bonus - ]

Chapter 607: Return Of ??? [Bonus Chapter]

Over two hundred elite sentinels were petrified and pulverized in a single rolling breath of violence...

The terrace became a slaughterhouse of sound without a single drop of blood touching the stones, only an ocean of coarse lightless black sand that hissed as it consumed their cores, leaving nothing behind for the soil and nothing behind for the grave either.

Harper’s astral spirit couldn’t take it anymore.

’STOP IT!’ Harper screamed, curling her ghostly form into a fetal ball, clamping her translucent hands tightly over her eyes, weeping uncontrollably. ’PLEASE! STOP IT! I CAN’T WATCH THIS! I CAN’T LOOK AT IT ANYMORE!’

She closed her spiritual eyes, burying her face against her knees, trying desperately to block out the horrific wet snaps of breaking bone and the dry ringing of shattering glass.

Yet, even with her eyes shut tight, she could feel the feedback.

Every soul devoured by the black sand sent a faint icy tremor along the silver cord connecting her to the physical body...

Nitocris pulled the khopesh from the ground with a soft metallic scrape as the courtyard was dead.

Not a single soldier remained standing.

The two hundred and ninety-nine men, their captains, their armor, their weapons, all of it had been reduced to a thick knee-deep layer of black powder that blanketed the rose-quartz courtyard from wall to wall.

The grand arched doors leading into the domestic palace stood wide open and unprotected, leading into the opulent corridors of the imperial family.

Nitocris stepped over the threshold with Harper’s physical boots sinking soundlessly into the black sand.

"It is time, scabbard," Nitocris spoke softly into Harper’s mind. "Keep your eyes closed if you must but the debt must be balanced."

The next thirty minutes were a waking nightmare that burned itself permanently into the architecture of Harper’s soul...

Even with her astral eyes pressed shut, Harper could hear everything.

She could sense every room they entered, mapped out through the physical body’s heightened perception.

It was at this point that she wished that she could be unawakened...

CREAK!

They walked through gilded chambers of white marble and gold filigree.

They walked through private solariums scented with frankincense, through nursery pavilions decorated with spun-silk tapestries, through secluded bathhouses where clear spring water rippled over turquoise tiles.

And everywhere they walked, the screams followed.

SPLAT-CRACKLE!

"Who are you?! Guards! GUARDS—"

SHATTER!

It was Lady Samira, the second wife of the Vice President, caught in the middle of writing a letter at her ebony desk.

Her pen clattered to the floor as a spike of black sand erupted through her throat, turning her into black glass before she could finish drawing breath.

TAP-TAP-TAP!

The footsteps continued down the hallway as doors were kicked open.

Inside a grand bedchamber, three young women, royal concubines belonging to the late Crown Prince, draped in diaphanous yellow silk, huddled together in the corner of a massive feather bed, weeping hysterically, clutching each other as they stared at Harper’s approaching figure.

"Please..." one of them sobbed, her face pale, her hands clasped in frantic prayer. "We never held weapons! We never fought! We were only brought here from the eastern clans three months ago! Please have mercy!"

Nitocris stood in the doorway as Harper’s physical eyes were cold and dead.

"Your womb was bought to carry Nefertari’s blood," Nitocris stated simply. "That is your only crime and that is your execution sentence."

SHING-CRACK!

A wave of black sand rolled across the bed.

SHATTER!

Three piles of black dust collapsed into the silk sheets.

Harper’s spirit was thrashing inside the dark, sobbing until she thought her ethereal form would tear apart.

’Why?! They had nothing to do with what happened two thousand years ago! They didn’t even know her name! Why must you kill the innocent?!’

Harper was no supporter of random people but still... Wasn’t there a point where the murder was too much? The only sin everybody had here was the sin of being born.

Nitocris didn’t pause.

STEP! STEP! STEP!

She descended into the private nursery wing.

Two wet-nurses were huddled beneath a heavy mahogany wardrobe, their bodies trembling violently, shielding two infants wrapped in linen blankets with the youngest grandchildren of the Pharaoh-President, born barely six weeks prior.

The nurses looked up, their eyes wide with the terror of prey animals backed into a corner.

"Take us," one of the nurses begged, blood dripping from her lip where she had bitten it in fear. "Take our lives, lady but the children, they don’t even have teeth yet. They don’t know who their father was. Leave them..."

Nitocris stood over them as Harper’s physical right hand rose slowly into the air.

Inside the physical chest, Harper felt the microscopic agonizing hesitation... the barest fraction of a heartbeat where Nitocris’s internal mana stuttered, where the ancient warrior’s soul screamed in protest against the monstrous duty she had bound herself to perform.

’H-huh... my eyes...’

Harper saw it through their shared connection... It was a memory of Nitocris two thousand years ago, kneeling in the ruins of a burning village during the First Rift, pulling a crying orphan from the rubble and cradling it against her armor, whispering that she would protect them all.

And now, here she stood.

TWITCH!

Harper’s physical cheek spasmed violently as a single hot tear rolled down Harper’s right cheek, dripping off her jawline and hitting the polished floor with a soft pat.

"Forgive me," Nitocris whispered through Harper’s lips, her voice breaking into a ragged broken gasp. "May the wheel of rebirth grant you a kinder mother in the next life..."

SHRUNK!

Black sand enveloped the wardrobe... unfortunately, there would be no next life.

SHATTER!

The room fell into suffocating silence.

By the time the thirty minutes had concluded, the entire interior of the White Citadel’s domestic wing was devoid of living breath.

Over seventy members of the extended bloodline, consorts, concubines, royal cousins, scions of the cadet branches, and every infant carrying the genetic markers of Nefertari Al-Mansur, had been mercilessly erased.

Along with them lay the remnants of over five hundred personal retainers, eunuchs, and elite palace guards who had thrown themselves into the corridors in futile attempts to halt the purple-haired demon.

Nitocris walked out into the grand central rotunda beneath the main dome of the citadel.

Her charcoal suit was pristine, not because she had avoided violence, but because the black sand consumed everything cleanly, leaving no blood to stain her fabric.

"Hah..."

Nitocris stopped before the colossal seventy-foot double doors of the Treasury as she leaned her forehead against the cool carved star-iron panel, taking a long deep shuddering breath.

Her physical shoulders slumped with the terrifying posture of the ancient conqueror melting away, leaving behind the exhausted broken silhouette of a woman whose soul had been ground to dust.

"It is done..." Nitocris breathed softly, her voice trembling in the empty hall.

Harper’s astral form slowly unfolded, hovering beside the physical body with her ghostly eyes hollow and red with unshed tears.

"Is it?" Harper asked, her voice cracking with raw bitter exhaustion. "Did you get your revenge? Are you happy now?"

Nitocris let out a dry hollow laugh that carried zero mirth.

"Happy?" Nitocris murmured, turning Harper’s head toward the empty corridor. "There is no happiness in butchering children, scabbard... There is only balance. Truly, there may be distant drops of Nefertari’s blood scattered across the continents, perhaps a bastard child born to a merchant in the northern reaches, a displaced descendant living in the eastern isles but the throne is broken. The direct line that sat upon my people’s necks, it’s extinguished..."

She pushed the massive treasury doors open with a casual shove of Harper’s single right hand.

CREEEEEAK!

The gates swung wide, revealing a cavern of breathtaking obscene wealth.

Mountains of refined celestial gold bullion rose fifty feet into the air; chests of uncut diamond-quartz and star-sapphires spilled across the floor; racks of ancient enchanted weaponry, scrolls of classified cultivation methods, and crates of high-density spirit cards lined the walls as far as the eye could see.

It was the accumulated imperial hoard of eight centuries of dynastic rule as well as hundreds of billions of credits in raw unrefined capital.

Nitocris pointed Harper’s hand toward the glittering hoard.

"Take it," Nitocris said softly. "Open your Lord Inventory, Harper... Take as much as your spatial rings can hold. Take the gold, take the gems, take the weapons... You will need them in the world to come."

Harper’s astral spirit blinked, staring at the vast sea of gold with completely numb detachment.

"I don’t want their blood money."

She loved money as much as the next person but this... She was not emotionless.

"Do not be foolish," Nitocris chided gently as Harper’s physical lips curled into a sad tired smile. "Gold has no memory... It doesn’t care whose hands minted it so take it, scabbard. It is my final gift to you as your ancestor."

Nitocris walked to the center of the rotunda, beneath the massive glass skylight that looked up toward the burning desert sun.

’What a day... I am ready to die now...’

She slowly knelt down, Harper’s knees resting upon the cold lapis lazuli tiles as she extended her right palm, pressing it flat against the foundational stone of the citadel.

VVVVVVRRRRR!

A massive intricate magic circle, spanning over three hundred paces in diameter, began to slowly bleed outward from beneath Harper’s palm...

It was carved in the ancient runes of the First Dominion.

The runes glowed with an ominous pulsing crimson-black light, sinking deep into the structural load-bearing pillars of the palace, intertwining with the bedrock itself.

"What are you doing...?" Harper asked with a sudden prickle of anxiety piercing through her exhaustion.

"I am preparing the pyre," Nitocris explained softly,

Harper’s physical eyes half-closed as she poured her lingering soul-force into the array. "This citadel was built upon a lie... It was raised upon the bones of my loyal people, defiled by my sister’s greed. It doesn’t deserve to stand under the sun so once I depart, this spell will violently destabilize the underground mana aquifers beneath the foundations... The entire mountain, the palace, the spires, the walls, all of it will collapse into the void, buried under four thousand feet of black sand."

She looked up at Harper’s floating soul, her green eyes filled with a soft quiet warmth that looked impossibly tender.

"I am engraving every spell, every sand-weaving technique, and every combat formula I possess directly into the spiritual meridians of your soul like I said," Nitocris told her. "It is nearly complete. The moment my consciousness dissolves, the knowledge will lock permanently into your mind and you will have roughly five minutes to flee this place before the collapse triggers."

"Five minutes...?" Harper’s breath hitched.

"You have the sand-meld," Nitocris assured her. "With the formulas I have gifted you, you can slip through the outer walls as fluid dust... You will easily escape before the stone falls. I have caused you enough terror today, Harper Whitmore so I will not allow you to die in my grave."

Nitocris closed Harper’s physical eyes, resting her forehead against her own knuckles with a deep peaceful stillness settling over her features.

"You know..." Nitocris whispered into the quiet rotunda, her voice carrying a fragile nostalgic warmth. "In all my centuries of war, during the First Rift, and throughout the long dark years I spent sleeping within the cold steel of that khopesh, I never truly had anyone I could call a proper friend..."

Harper’s astral form floated motionless in the air, listening in silence.

"A Per-aa must always be an icon," the ancient woman murmured. "A statue of bronze and gold... You cannot show fear to your soldiers... You cannot show doubt to your ministers... But these past few days, sitting on your bedside table, listening to you complain about everything, listening to you laugh about silly mortal garments, hearing you speak about the world beyond the dunes..."

A soft genuine smile curved Harper’s physical lips.

"...and hearing you talk about that boy. Silas Graves, was it?"

Harper’s ghostly form stiffened with a sudden fierce blush spreading across her translucent cheeks despite the horror of the day.

"He truly is an exceptionally lucky young man," Nitocris chuckled softly with her voice light and fond. "To have a woman who looks upon him with such fierce uncompromising devotion... I would have loved to meet him, you know. To sit across a table, share a cup of spiced wine, and test whether his steel was truly worthy of holding your heart but my time here was long overdue. The dead have no place among the living."

She raised Harper’s physical head, looking directly into Harper’s ghostly violet eyes with her expression pure and unburdened.

"Thank you, Harper," Nitocris whispered, her voice trembling with profound sincerity. "For the sweets... For the stories... For allowing me to balance my debts under the sun. In the end, I truly thought of you as my frien—"

CLACK!

The sound was microscopic but it made Nitocris abruptly freeze.

Harper’s physical body remained knelt on the tiles with her right hand pressed to the floor, but the black mana radiating from the magic circle instantly calcified in mid-air, hanging suspended like frozen red lightning.

Floating beside her, Harper’s astral spirit tried to drift forward, and found herself utterly paralyzed as the air in the rotunda didn’t move.

The dust motes floating through the sunbeams stopped dead in their tracks.

The distant flags atop the palace spires ceased their fluttering.

Even the distant roar of the city outside vanished, replaced by an unnatural void of complete deprivation of senses.

’What is this?!’ Harper screamed in the silent prison of her mind. ’Why can’t I move?!’

Nitocris’s green pupils contracted to needle-points.

Inside Harper’s physical chest, the heart stopped beating though this was not from damage, but because time itself had been forcibly arrested.

STEP!

The sound of a single deliberate footstep echoed through the frozen rotunda.

STEP! STEP!

From the empty air five paces in front of the kneeling body, a thick billowing shroud of golden iridescent mist began to bleed into reality.

The mist didn’t disperse at all... it swirled violently, coalescing into the towering translucent figure of a man hovering three feet above the lapis floor.

He was large, draped in magnificent ancient ceremonial robes of beaten gold and deep azure silk that seemed to constantly shift and ripple like liquid sunlight.

His skin was flawless, radiating a blinding divine bronze sheen, his long golden hair crowned with an ornate imperial diadem depicting an undulating winged serpent.

His face was impossibly handsome, yet etched with an expression of utterly nauseating vanity.

A wide condescending amused grin stretched across his golden lips.

"Hoho~" the entity chuckled, his voice echoing through the frozen space like the ringing of a thousand silver bells.

He tapped his chin with a manicured glowing finger, his golden eyes sweeping over the slaughtered domestic wing with exaggerated delight.

"Well, well, well!" the figure proclaimed, his voice dripping with grandiose self-mythologizing arrogance. "Look at what my adorable, impatient little splinter has managed to accomplish in my absence! Truly, what a magnificent little bloodbath! You always were such an efficient little butcher, weren’t you, my dear?"