Chapter 986. Just The Reaction I Liked To See When I was Tremor!

Chapter 986: 986. Just The Reaction I Liked To See When I was Tremor!

Aurelia felt the blood drain from her face. The memory of Iris, the hollowed-out, haunted look in the girl’s eyes weeks prior, flashed through her mind.

She had thought it was grief. She had thought the girl was simply mourning.

But now, looking at the cold calculation in Rex’s expression, the truth settled in her gut like molten lead.

The horror of it began to dawn on her. Theo’s mistakes weren’t just political blunders; they were debts owed to a monster.

And Rex wasn’t here to help her fix them; he was here to collect.

The realization hit her with the force of a physical blow: Theo was telling the truth.

Everything the boy warned her about—every terrifying implication of Rex’s true nature—was real. And now, she had just volunteered to pay the bill.

The blood rushed to Aurelia’s face, not with shame but with a volcanic, white-hot rage that threatened to consume her entire being. Her hands trembled against the velvet cushions, her nails digging so deep into the fabric that the sound of tearing silk punctuated her breathing.

"You absolute... depraved animal," she spat, the words dripping with venom.

Her voice wasn’t loud, but it carried the lethal edge of a blade. "I knew you were ruthless..."

"I knew you were manipulative. But this? This level of shamelessness is beyond anything I imagined."

She stood up abruptly, the crimson silk of her robe swirling around her ankles like blood. "You have no dignity, Rex... None at all!"

"You’ve turned this household into your personal hunting ground..."

"You fuck Diana in the west wing while the servants pass by her door, and you fuck Iris in the servants’ quarters without the slightest concern that someone might hear her screams!"

"You don’t care about honor, you don’t care about propriety; you simply take what you want because you know no one has the spine to stop you."

Rex didn’t flinch. Instead, he leaned back further, crossing one leg over the other with infuriating nonchalance.

"Propriety is the cage that weak men build to feel safe from men like me, Aurelia..."

"Why should I pretend to care about the opinions of people who are already beneath me?"

"Because there are standards!" she screamed, her composure finally shattering. "There are boundaries that separate a man from a monster!"

Rex’s lips curled into a smile that didn’t reach his cold, dead eyes. "Oh, you think you know my history here?"

"You think you understand the depth of my... appetites within these walls?" He paused, letting the firelight catch the cruel amusement dancing in his pupils. "You talk about shame as if it were something I’ve ever possessed."

"Even your mother, Elaris... she was the first one I claimed in this very house. And she enjoyed every moment of the surrender."

The world seemed to stop. For a heartbeat, there was no sound, no crackle of fire, no distant wind.

Then, something inside Aurelia snapped. The mention of her mother, a woman she had revered, a woman who had been a symbol of grace and authority, was the final desecration.

"You bastard!" she shrieked.

Her body moved before her mind could process the impulse. She launched herself across the space between them, her fist cocked back, fueled by decades of pent-up fury and the raw wound of his insult.

It was a punch aimed to shatter bone, a strike meant to crack that smug, arrogant skull open.

But she never connected.

Halfway through the arc of her swing, Aurelia felt an invisible wall slam into her fist. Her knuckles stopped millimeters from Rex’s nose, frozen in midair as if pressed against solid diamond.

She grunted with effort, muscles straining until they burned, her shoulder joint screaming under the unnatural pressure, but her arm would not budge.

Then, the horror deepened.

"What--" The word died in her throat.

A cold, crushing sensation wrapped around her torso like iron bands. She tried to recoil, to stumble backward, but her legs refused to respond.

Her entire body became rigid, locked in place by an unseen force that felt like it was holding every individual muscle fiber hostage. She was suspended in mid-motion, a statue of rage and terror, unable to move even an inch.

Rex hadn’t even stood up. He remained seated, one hand still casually resting on his knee, while his other hand hovered slightly off the armrest.

A faint, violet distortion in the air, the telltale sign of his telekinetic grip, shimmered around her.

"Don’t exhaust yourself, Aurelia," Rex said quietly, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Anger is a wasteful emotion when you have no power to back it up."

Aurelia’s eyes bulged as she stared at him, her breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. The helplessness was absolute.

She was a prisoner in her own skin, caught between the man who had insulted her bloodline and the invisible power that now commanded her body.

"You... you monster," she choked out, though the words felt weak against the overwhelming pressure crushing her lungs.

"Monster is such a subjective term," Rex replied, rising slowly from the sofa.

He walked toward her until he was inches away, his breath warm against her frozen cheek. "I prefer ’collector. ’And tonight, Aurelia, I’ve come to collect on a debt that has been overdue for far too long."

Rex leaned in closer, his face inches from hers, his eyes reflecting the dying embers of the fire like twin pits of hellfire. The telekinetic grip tightened just enough to make her ribs ache, a reminder of how easily he could snap her spine if he so desired.

"You know," Rex whispered, his voice carrying a cruel intimacy that made her skin crawl, "your son was right about me."

"All along, little Theo saw the truth... He saw the predator beneath the suit, the wolf beneath the skin."

"He tried to warn you, but you were too busy playing queen to notice the kingdom was already rotting from the inside out."

Aurelia’s eyes burned with unshed tears of fury. "Theo is a child who sees shadows where there are none--"

"No," Rex cut her off, his smile widening. "Theo sees exactly what I am."

Then, the air around him began to vibrate with a different kind of energy. It wasn’t the invisible pressure of telekinesis, but something heavier, more primal.

The ground beneath them groaned. Dust motes began to swirl violently around Rex’s face as chunks of stone and debris rose from the floorboards, drawn to him by an irresistible force.

Aurelia watched in paralyzed horror as his Earthen Authority manifested. The stones didn’t just float; they fused, grinding together with a sound like breaking bones.

Dark, jagged granite swirled around his features, forming a grotesque, unmoving visage. When the dust settled, Rex’s face was gone, replaced by Tremor’s mask, a terrifying, ancient visage of cracked stone with glowing runes that pulsed like veins of magma.

He no longer looked human; he looked like an avatar of destruction itself.

The sight shattered what remained of Aurelia’s composure. The terror broke through the anger, unleashing a torrent of grief and accusation that she had held back for years.

"You think this frightens me?" she screamed, though her voice wavered with the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing. "You think this mask makes you a god?"

"All it does is confirm what everyone has whispered behind closed doors!"

"You didn’t just come here to collect debts, Rex... you came here to destroy everything we built!"

Her words came faster now, each one a desperate attempt to wound him. "You destroyed Aethelgard."

"You tore through our alliances like they were tissue paper..."

"You sowed chaos in our territories just to watch the fires burn from your balcony."

"You’ve bled this land dry, leaving nothing but ashes and broken promises in your wake!"

She choked on a sob of pure rage. "My grandmother... she warned us."

"Long before you arrived, she saw the darkness in the wind..."

"She accused you of being a plague, a walking catastrophe that would devour everything beautiful."

"She said you had no soul, only hunger. And God help me, she was right."

Rex, behind the stone mask, didn’t move. He didn’t flinch at her accusations.

He simply stood there, the glowing runes on the granite face pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

"It’s too late now, isn’t it?" Aurelia continued, her voice cracking as she realized the futility of her words. "The damage is done... and the blood is spilled."

"You’ve dismantled our legacy piece by piece, and you’re standing here laughing while you do it."

"You don’t want power, Rex... You don’t even want money."

"You just want to satisfy your own twisted desires... You want to see us crawl, and you... want to see us break."

She stared into the empty eye sockets of the stone mask, her own eyes wet with tears. "You do whatever you want, simply because you can."

"Because you enjoy watching the light go out in people’s eyes."

"You’re not a man, Rex... You’re just... a void."

A silence fell over the room, heavier than the stone mask itself. The fire had burned down to glowing coals, casting a sickly orange light across the scene.

Rex stepped forward, the stone mask grinding softly as he moved. The sheer presence of his power made the very air feel thick and unbreathable.

"A void?" Rex’s voice came through the mask, distorted and echoing as if spoken from the bottom of a canyon. "Perhaps."

"But even a void has needs, Aurelia... And tonight, I find myself very, very hungry."