Chapter 98: The Rusted Iron Gate: Faked Vision

Florianthum’s head remained low, her forehead hovering just an inch above the cold crystal floor, but her mind was a total, chaotic wreck.

Her face twisted into a deeply confused, fractured expression hidden entirely from his sight.

Grateful? The word felt heavy, grotesque, and totally wrong.

Her thoughts spun completely out of control, trying to process the weird, unhinged logic of his words while the raw terror kept a tight, suffocating grip on her throat.

She had no choice. In the cruel hierarchy of the Vampire System, survival meant swallowing the bile, burying the confusion, and playing the part of the broken pet.

With a ragged, shuddering breath, she forced her features to smoothen out into a mask of total submission.

She raised her upper body just enough to offer a stiff, polite bow of absolute agreement, her crimson-gloved hands flattening against the wet stone.

"Your... your mercy is a mountain I cannot climb, my sacred Lord," she murmured, her voice hollow, completely drained of the fire she had shown just moments ago.

"I am... profoundly grateful for your correction."

Vilucious didn’t blink.

He just sat back on his obsidian throne, the cold smirk staying perfectly fixed on his snowy face as he watched her totally yield to his whim.

He let out a dry, rattling chuckle that vibrated through the empty rafters of the hall.

Creak.

He shifted his weight, the heavy fabric of his royal robes scraping against the dark stone.

He leaned forward, his dark, slit-like eyes locking onto her shivering frame with a terrifying, predator-like focus.

The silence stretched until it felt like a physical weight pressing down on her skull.

"Since you are so profoundly grateful,"

Vilucious drawled, his voice dropping into that weirdly ordinary, casual tone that made her skin crawl, "and since that fine silk gown is completely ruined by my sacred vintage..."

He paused, a slow, malicious grin spreading across his pale face, revealing the sharp, glistening edge of his fangs.

"You shall accompany me to the grand bath. Tonight, we shall wash away this clumsy friction together."

The words dropped like a massive bomb, shattering whatever tiny illusion of safety Florianthum had left.

The blood instantly drained from her lips. Her eyes twitched violently, her breath completely catching in her throat as a suffocating, silent panic locked up her chest.

The words hit her like a physical blow, but her survival instinct snapped her mind into a sharp, icy focus.

Delaying meant death.

A single second of hesitation would breed suspicion, and suspicion under Vilucious’s gaze was a death sentence.

Her facial muscles twitched once, a microscopic glitch in her armor, before she violently forced her expression into a smooth, unreadable mask.

Without letting a single breath falter, Florianthum lowered her head in a swift, perfectly timed bow of absolute submission, her crimson gloves pressing flat against the wet crystal floor.

"It would be my greatest honor, my sacred Lord," she murmured, her voice steady, honeyed, and utterly devoid of the frantic terror thrashing inside her chest.

"To cleanse myself of this clumsy mistake in your presence is a favor I do not deserve."

She forced herself to rise immediately, not wanting the King to wait a single heartbeat for her response.

Her wet, heavy silk skirt gave a dull, wet slap against her legs as she stood, the freezing wine dripping onto her bare ankles.

Her knees shook violently, but she clamped her jaw tight, planting her boots firmly onto the stone to hide the tremors.

Vilucious’s eyes narrowed slightly, searching the blank lines of her pale face for any trace of the fire she had shown earlier.

He found nothing. Satisfied by her instant, robotic compliance, the slow, mocking smirk returned to his snowy lips.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He stood from the obsidian throne, his heavy leather boots clicking rhythmically against the dais as he stepped down toward her.

The sour, metallic smell of stale incense and cold blood washed over her as he drew closer, his massive, dark shadow completely swallowing her small frame.

"Good," Vilucious whispered, his hand reaching out to lazily brush a damp strand of hair away from her cheek, his skin feeling like a block of jungle ice against her flesh.

"A loyal lady should always know when to wash away her dirt."

He turned on his heel, the velvet of his robes giving a loud swish in the dead silence of the abandoned banquet hall, and began walking toward the heavy side doors that led to the royal bath chambers.

Florianthum fell into step exactly three paces behind him, her gaze locked strictly on the floor, her mind desperately trying to prepare for the nightmare that awaited her behind those doors.

Ssssshhhk---

The blue fire of the flambeau hissed quietly against the damp, freezing air of the underground passage, casting long, erratic cerulean shadows across the uneven dirt walls.

Kerwon moved forward into the deep, suffocating dark of the tunnel.

His boots hit the packed earth with a soft, muffled thud, the sound completely regular, matching the heavy, mechanical stride of the single general militant walking a precise pace ahead of him.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The soldier’s boots struck the loose stone fragments with that same rigid, unbothered precision.

Under the ghostly blue glow, the back of the militant’s neck looked stiff and gray, his uniform completely spotless despite the wet jungle grime waiting just outside the pit.

Suddenly, Kerwon’s pace slowed.

His boots skidded slightly on a patch of slick clay, but his upper body remained eerily still, maintaining that blank, empty stare that had terrified the guards at the rim.

To anyone watching, his eyes still looked entirely hollow, fixed in the terrifying, unblinking tunnel-vision state that his abilities supposedly forced upon him.

He stopped.

The general militant didn’t pause.

The robotic creature kept moving right ahead, his heavy posture perfectly upright, his head completely unmoving as his mechanical stride carried him deeper into the dark.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The soldier’s footsteps began to distance themselves, the sound echoing hollowly off the damp, curved ceiling.

The second the militant’s back was turned and a safe distance away, the vacant look in Kerwon’s eyes instantly vanished.

The blankness evaporated, replaced by a sharp, calculating heat. He didn’t have tunnel vision.

He had never had it. It was a lie- a carefully maintained act to keep the high-ranking vamps and his own unyielding father from realizing exactly how much he was actually tracking.

With a swift, silent movement, Kerwon tilted the blue-fired flambeau toward the left wall of the tunnel.

The cerulean flames licked close to the rock, illuminating a thick vein of dark, crumbling shale packed tightly between layers of wet, compression-hardened granite.

He reached out his free hand, his fingers running over the rough, moss-slick surface.

His nails dug directly into a hairline fracture in the stone, pulling away a small, gritty chunk of the rock quality.

He squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, feeling the moisture content, testing the brittle friction of the earth.

The site hadn’t just broken open from the inside; the structural integrity of the entire tunnel line was failing, shifting under a pressure that shouldn’t exist yet.

Ahead, the general militant was still walking, his distant silhouette a stiff black shape cutting through the fading blue light, entirely unaware that the Governor behind him was seeing absolutely everything.

Drip.

A cold droplet of water fell from the roof, hitting the stone floor with a tiny, sharp splash that rang out through the narrow passage.

Up ahead, the general militant abruptly stopped.

He didn’t look around.

He didn’t adjust his posture.

His heavy leather boots just locked into the dirt, his mechanical frame instantly freezing in place right in front of a massive, heavily reinforced iron door built directly into the raw rock wall.

The metal was dark, pitted with rust from the underground moisture, and covered in thick, unreadable sigils that seemed to swallow the faint blue light of the flambeau.

The soldier just stood there, his blank face staring directly into the dead iron, completely unmoving.

Kerwon’s eyes narrowed. He moved forward, his boots making a deliberate, heavy crunch on the loose gravel to re-establish his rhythm.

As he reached the soldier’s side, the cerulean flames of the torch licked across the rusted iron surface, casting long, jerking blue ghosts against the dark seals.

The air right in front of the door felt thick and static, smelling sharply of old brass and dry rot.

Kerwon didn’t look at the militant, but his tone dropped into a cold, authoritative rasp that brooked absolutely no argument.

"In the name of Lord Vilucious, I want you to go back and lead the militants for now,"

Kerwon ordered, his voice echoing flatly off the damp stone walls.

The general militant didn’t blink.

For a fraction of a second, the robotic frame remained entirely rigid.

Then, with a slow, grinding click from inside his leather armor, the soldier turned on his heel.

His head remained perfectly level, his eyes completely empty under the moonlight filtering from far above, as he began his mechanical march back toward the tunnel entrance.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The faked blankness of his gaze was entirely gone now, replaced by a tense, deeply confused expression that pulled his brow down hard.

His jaw tightened so much that a small muscle twitched violently along his cheek.

Why was a door here? This deep in the containment site, there should have been nothing but raw excavation and structural support pillars.