Chapter 58: Pride, Prejudice, & Premium Detergent

Cassius was suddenly plunging downward into the crushing, freezing depth of an endless ocean.

He was losing control. His consciousness frayed at the edges, turning into a dull, grey blur as he drifted toward the deepest part of the room. The smooth marble was gone. In its place spread an ancient, suffocating graveyard of pure coral reefs and thick, undulating sea-plants.

Massive, branching structures of pale white and deep blood-red coral rose from the dark bedrock below. Long, translucent tendrils of kelp coiled upward, waiting to catch his falling body and pin him to the floor forever.

He was about to touch that jagged ground, his mind slipping into absolute darkness.

Floating upward around his throat, billowing out like a dark cloud in the blue-black water, was the king’s doublet.

A dense, suffocating dark blue aura was bleeding directly out of the heavy threads, wrapping around his ribs like tight, restrictive bands. The aura didn’t expand into the water; it clung to the fabric, pulsing in perfect, rhythmic synchronization with the slow beat of his failing heart.The realization hit him with a sudden, icy spike of clarity.

The doublet.

He had made a fatal mistake by wearing it. This wasn’t just a garment; it was a crucial part of the King’s royal, sacred clothes. The entire scene had been a trap. By putting it on, he had given Vilucious an open conduit to bypass his defenses, making it effortless for the king to lock down his magic from the inside out.

The blue aura flared one last time, blindingly bright, and Cassius felt his eyes roll back as his shoulder blades brushed the first sharp layer of the reef.

The phantom brine burned the back of his nose, but the sudden spike of sheer, unadulterated humiliation burned worse.

Cassius had spent days cultivating the image of the untouchable shadow till now; the arrogant intruder who always stayed three steps ahead of the crown.

Now, the weight of his own stupidity was suffocating him. It wasn’t just panic tightening around his chest; it was a raw, bruising blow to his pride.

He had worn the doublet to mock Vilucious, to gloat, and instead, he had practically buckled the leash onto his own neck.

A heavy, sluggish wave of self-loathing hit him as the kelp brushed against his bare skin.

You idiot, he thought, a ragged, internal snarl directed entirely at himself. You absolute amateur.

He hated the cold, but more than that, he hated the vulnerability. He could feel the exact moment his usual mask of lazy composure shattered completely, replaced by the ugly, desperate terror of a trapped animal.

His heart hammered like a fist against a locked door, entirely out of sync with the rhythmic, mocking pulse of the king’s blue aura. As his knuckles grazed the first sharp edge of the coral reef, a final, bitter thought flared through the fading corners of his mind: he wasn’t just losing- he was being made a fool of.

The dark blue of the king’s aura flared one last time, a crushing weight that finally collapsed the remaining walls of Cassius’s defiance. The self-loathing, the sting of the coral, the terrifying white voids of Vilucious’s eyes- it all dissolved into a single, flatline frequency.

His eyelids slipped shut.

The tension drained from his jaw, his lips parting slightly as his consciousness splintered completely. Cassius went entirely limp, a piece of broken wreckage surrendered to the abyss. He began to sink, his body slipping past the jagged teeth of the white coral reef, tumbling slowly into the true, bottomless dark beneath the phantom bedrock.

The chamber, the king, and his own bruised pride vanished into pitch black.

He was gone.

But in the absolute stillness of his unconsciousness, the rules of Vilucious’s domain began to warp.

Deep within the floorless trench where Cassius fell, a sharp, metallic ping resonated through the void, like a crystal glass snapping under immense pressure. The heavy silence fractured.

A vibrant, sparkling light-blue fluid began to bleed into the dark water.

With a low, musical woosh that vibrated directly against his ribs, the fluid erupted. It wasn’t just magic; it felt alive, a luminous, effervescent current that rushed upward from the depths like a subterranean spring breaking through stone.

The fluid was entirely separate from the heavy brine of the king’s ocean, refusing to mix with the dense, cold weight surrounding it. It shimmered with thousands of tiny, diamond-like particles, emitting a soft, crackling fizz that cut through the murky shadows of the submerged bedroom.

The sparkling current swirled, forming a dense, protective cocoon around Cassius’s floating form. The moment the light-blue fluid touched his skin, the tight, suffocating bands of the king’s aura gave a distinct, high-pitched thrum before they began to fray and loosen against his chest.

With a sudden, gentle surge, the glowing water defied the crushing pressure of the domain. It caught Cassius’s weightless body, cushioning his spine, and began to steadily lift him upward, carrying him out of the dark graveyard of the reef and back toward the surface.

A ragged, desperate gasp tore out of Cassius’s throat as his lungs slammed back into reality.

He bolted upright, his chest heaving violently with a wet, ragged cough as if he were purging the phantom brine of an entire ocean. The crushing weight of the deep sea was gone, replaced by the sharp, immediate sting of real air.

His heart hammered erratically, a frantic, messy thud-thud-thud that had nothing to do with the king’s suffocating pulse.

"Shh, stay down. Don’t move yet."

The voice was soft, frantic, and incredibly close.

Cassius’s eyelids fluttered, heavy as lead. His vision was a blurred, watery smear of pale colors before the shapes slowly locked into focus. The high, shadowed canopy of the royal bed towered above him.

The white marble floor was solid beneath them. The water had vanished completely.

Directly above him, framing the dim light of the chamber, was Florianthum.

She was kneeling over him, her hazel eyes wide with a raw, trembling panic that she was trying desperately to hide.

Her hands were shaking. In her grip, she held a soft, light-blue cloth, making a soft, rhythmic pat-pat-pat against his forehead, his cheeks, and his throat, soaking up the cold sweat that clung to his skin like sea spray.

She worked with an urgent intensity, the fabric rustling softly as she tried to dry him up.

Cassius’s pitch-black gaze did not return. Instead, as his eyelids slipped fully open, they revealed his normal, dark grey human eyes- dulled, stripped of their arrogant ink, and entirely exposed.

"Florian..." His voice was nothing more than a dry, broken murmur, scraping raw against the back of his throat with a weak croak. He tried to swallow, but his mouth tasted like iron and ash.

"...The hell... did he do?" Florianthum talking slowly with a desperate rage.

"Don’t talk, Floriant-" he whispered, a sharp, frightened hush escaping his lips.

A sudden, sharp realization cracked through the fog in Cassius’s brain. The voice wasn’t gentle. It was entirely too deep, pitched in a nasal, deadpan drone that he recognized instantly.

His dark grey eyes snapped fully open, the soft, cinematic focus instantly shattering into cold, hard clarity.

It wasn’t Florianthum kneeling over him.

It was Fukuro.

The human cleaner and his so called clerk stood hunched over him in his drab, oversized uniform, his face a mask of absolute, unbothered boredom.

He was the one holding the light-blue cloth, aggressively slap-slap-slapping it against Cassius’s cheeks with the exact same enthusiasm a man might use to wipe down a grease-stained tavern table.

"Oh, yes, open those beautiful eyes, my sleeping birdy," Fukuro droned, his voice dripping with a flat, agonizing sarcasm as he delivered another brisk smack of the wet rag to Cassius’s nose.

"Did you honestly think Madam Florianthum was holding you? Please. A delicate lady like her wouldn’t touch a drowned rat like you without a pair of heavy silver tongs."

He let out a dry, hacking snicker, leaning back slightly on his heels.

"Besides, she’s currently with the Lord trying not to faint from his presence, and I’m the one stuck doing the actual heavy lifting...You’re welcome, by the way."

Cassius froze, his entire body locking up in pure, unadulterated disgust. His head wasn’t resting in a warm, comforting lap, he was propped up against a stack of discarded, dusty ledger books Fukuro had apparently shoved under his skull to keep his head off the floor.

"You-" Cassius choked out, his dark grey eyes widening in sheer horror as he scrambled backward on his elbows, his bare feet scraping wildly against the marble with a frantic screeech.

"What the hell are you doing here? Get that disgusting rag away from my face!"

"It’s a specialized cleaning cloth, actually," Fukuro corrected smoothly, completely unfazed as he wrung the blue rag out over a wooden bucket with a wet, heavy splat.

"And if my premium detergent hadn’t washed away the king’s magic, you’d still be playing mermaid at the bottom of a phantom reef."

"De- DETERGENT?!" Cassius said aloud, with all his might.

Fukuro wrung out the rag with a wet splat.

"Honestly, Mr. Banana Leaf Bird, You wear his clothes to look cool, you get choked out by a jacket weighing doublet, and I have to scrub the floors. We’re partners, not a babysitting service."

Cassius’s eyes widened, his chest heaving as he scrambled backward, there was no trace of King’s doublet on his body, as his top was completely bare now.

His bare heels dug into the white marble with a harsh skrrrch, desperate to put distance between himself and that dripping rag.

He hauled himself up into a ragged sit, his spine slamming hard against the base of a cracked pillar.

"Tell me the truth, you jerk," Cassius hissed, his voice cracking with a raw, breathless edge.