Chapter 271: Your King Has Failed You

Perhaps the message Max received should have brought him relief. Rosalia was alive, and for a moment, he stared at those words as though reading them again might finally allow him to breathe. Yet the longer he looked, the more desperately he wondered what had happened for her to survive.

Somebody as protected as Rosalia should never have been within reach of the enemy. There would have been people standing before her, shielding her with everything they possessed, and others pulling her away the moment danger approached. Max knew them well enough to understand that they would never have left her exposed while they still had the strength to protect her.

Something must have happened to them first.

He could not see Blackspire or hear the people within it, but his thoughts filled the silence with things he wished he could refuse to imagine. He pictured the crowded streets beneath the crystal towers, the families who had arrived with almost nothing, and the hands that had worked beside one another to turn unfamiliar land into a home. Now he imagined those same people searching the horizon while the enemy closed around them.

“Imperial Court…”

Max drove his fist into the frozen ground, grinding his teeth until pain spread through his jaw. Blood gathered beneath his knuckles, but he barely noticed it as he stared at the golden ice surrounding him.

His void heart should have dulled his empathy, sparing him from feeling every imagined death as though somebody were tearing a piece from his chest. However, his new mana heart had brought those feelings back, and now he could scarcely endure them. Every face he remembered carried another memory with it, another reason somebody in Blackspire had wanted to live.

Even his void heart answered that pain with anger. The two beat together, connected by a thread that tightened with every thought of his people, feeding a hatred he could no longer contain.

He wanted the blood of everyone responsible. He imagined drowning the Imperial Court in an ocean of it, dragging its commanders through the streets they had emptied and forcing them to look at every body left behind. He wanted them to understand what they had taken from him before he took everything from them.

Yet when he lifted his head, the golden ice was still there.

Max pushed himself upright and approached the wall where his earlier outburst had left the deepest cracks. Void gathered around his fingers as he pressed them against the damaged surface, forcing his remaining power into the narrow fractures. A faint grinding reached him from within the ice, and he leaned closer, searching for the slightest movement.

“Break…” he whispered. “Just break.”

The fracture lengthened beneath his hand, but the wall held. He tried to force more magic through it, drawing upon strength his body could barely provide, until his knees buckled and his fingers slipped from the opening.

Max caught himself against the ice, leaving a bloody smear as he sank beneath it. His wings dragged across the frozen ground, too heavy for him to pull closer, and the effort to gather another attack left him coughing blood onto his chest.

He remained there until he could breathe again, staring at the crack above his hand. It had widened just enough for him to notice, and so little that he wanted to scream.

He had raised enormous walls around Blackspire. He had gathered those people beneath his protection, knowing that the Imperial Court would hate him for it, and he had allowed himself to believe that he could deal with whatever followed. Now they were facing an army while their king struggled to make an opening barely wide enough for his fingers.

“I’m coming,” he said, though nobody within the prison could answer him.

The words broke in his throat. He did not know whether anyone would still be waiting when he arrived, and that uncertainty dragged tears from his eyes. Max pressed his forehead against the cold surface, trying to remember the distance he still had to cross, only to lose himself in the thought of how much could happen before he reached them.

“Please… hold on.”

His fist struck the wall, weaker than before, while Rosalia’s message remained before his eyes and told him nothing about the others.

“Is this life… this world… supposed to be a reward? An opportunity? Or is it a curse for who I am, some hell made just to torture me?” His bloodied hand slid down the ice. “Heh… The system, that damn Creator, this magic… fuck all of it. The stronger I get, the closer I come to the life I want, the more everything seems to go to shit.”

The message finally vanished. Max stared at the empty space it left behind, wishing there had been something else, even one more name he could cling to.

“I’m not coming… Who am I kidding? I can’t even get out of that bastard’s trap.”

His laughter scraped through his wounded throat, low and bitter, before fading into the silence around him. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of his own hands any longer.

“I’m sorry. All of you, I’m sorry. Your king has failed you.”

Pathetic. Giving up just like that? What are you, a crybaby? A kitten getting its tail stepped on? Grow some balls and get up, you pathetic loser.

The voice returned before his apology had fully left his lips. It sounded less cold than before, almost enjoying itself, and its mockery made his shoulders stiffen.

Get up already. Devour. Destroy. Be yourself. I’ve told you before, that’s the only way for you to become the strongest, to keep everything under your control. Being soft and clinging to hope… that’s for the weak. And you are so weak, Max.

Max slowly lifted his head toward his fractured reflection. A wicked smile stretched across the face staring back at him, its eyes burning black, even as his own lips tightened with disgust.

“Shut up…”

Void gathered around his fist, releasing small shockwaves across the frozen ground. He brought his hand against the damaged wall again, and darkness crept into the fractures beneath his knuckles. This time, he held it there, forcing the power along the cracks instead of releasing it against the whole prison.

The reflection continued smiling as thin black lines spread through its face.

Then stand. Fucking pussy.

“Shut up!”

Max forced himself upward and drove his fist into the fractured surface, pouring everything he could gather into that single point. The ice split beneath his knuckles. Cracks tore through the wall and climbed into the ceiling as the void already lodged within them forced them farther apart.

A deafening crash swallowed his shout, and the prison burst around him.

Golden fragments scattered outward, only to disappear into the darkness spreading from his body. His magic swallowed the broken ice before it could fall, consuming the power within it and feeding mana back into his exhausted limbs. Max staggered as the pressure surrounding him vanished, then caught his footing, his ruined hand still clenched at his side.

The strength returning to him was enough to keep him standing. His wounds still hurt, and beyond the shattered prison lay the distance he had not yet crossed.

“I am not anybody’s toy to toss around,” Max said through clenched teeth, staring into the space where his reflection had been. “So get the fuck out of my head. You, the system, and that damned Creator… all of you.”