Chapter 176: What the Traitors Were Really Fighting For.
The house of Verdantwings were a gruesome sight. Their garments was shattered, and their limbs were twisted at unnatural angles. Morgant had used his precision arts to systematically disable them, ensuring every bone was broken enough to prevent escape, but not enough to grant them the mercy of death.
"I made sure they stayed awake."
Morgant whispered, leaning over the trembling House Leader.
"It would be such a shame if they slept through their own execution, wouldn’t it?"
The Verdantwing Leader, the Councilor, his face bruised and leaking blood, looked up at Drakovitch with a mixture of terror and lingering spite. He tried to spit, but only a dry wheeze escaped his throat.
"You... you’re a monster, Morgant!"
Then his gaze hardened as it shifted to the throne.
"No... not just you. Your king as well."
A bitter, broken breath escaped him.
"You’re both monsters... puppeteers who twisted this kingdom to your will."
Drakovitch didn’t move from his throne. He looked down at the fifteen traitors as if they were insects caught in a web.
"Monster? Of course I am. And proud of it. I am a monster by your standards... because I chose to become one so that you... could remain human."
He leaned back slightly, the light of the high windows glinting off his silver eyes.
"You call yourselves rebels, but what did your ’rebellion’ truly accomplish? A few petty defiance acts? A little chaos? Nothing. All your conspiracies, all your secret plots with that... Giant... what did they achieve?"
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in.
"Nothing. Only the innocent died. Only those who gave their lives for this kingdom—your own families, warriors who trusted in honor—fell because of your pride and your lies."
Percieval stepped forward, the polished black steel of his sword catching the sunlight.
"Give the word, Sire. The Silverspines deserve the heads of these cowards to decorate their empty barracks."
Morgant, ever the calculating observer, snapped his fan open with a faint, musical click. "Now, now, Percieval. Let them speak first. Let them justify their ’sin’ while they can still feel the fire in their marrow."
The House Leader of the Verdantwings straightened, bloodied and broken but not cowed. His voice cracked, yet carried a raw, burning fury.
"This... this should have ended long ago! The era of the Dragonborn should have died with the Demigod War!"
His eyes burned now, fury pushing past the pain.
"You call it salvation... but all you’ve done is chain this kingdom to a corpse of an age that should have been buried!"
He coughed, blood spilling from his lips, yet still he forced the words out.
"We wanted freedom—from the cycle, from the breeding, from being nothing more than fodder for your ’divine blood’!"
He lurched forward, his voice rising in a desperate, final sermon.
"Before you, there were no Dragonborns! No ’white blooded’ elites who feel superior or demand to be seen as gods! We were normal. We lived, we ate, and we were happy. But since the day your kind rose, this kingdom has not seen a moment of true peace."
Luavier, the young warrior, looked up with tears mixing with the blood on his face.
"He’s right," he croaked. "The Great Houses... we became nothing but a supply of bodies. We were sacrificed in your internal Dragonborn wars, then slaughtered in the Demigod war... and now?"
The Leader’s voice turned into a shriek of accusation.
"And now, Drakovitch, you force the mass production of white blood! You are turning us into a factory for your soldiers! We are not people to you anymore—we are just flesh to be drained for your next conquest!"
The House Leader’s voice broke into a jagged sob, his fingers digging into the floor until his nails bled.
"And my daughter..." he wailed, the sound echoing off the high vaulted ceiling. "She was a person! She had a name! But you took her... you turned her into one of your ’Mothers.’ A number. A womb. A slave to your lineage! You stripped away her humanity until she was nothing but a factory for your white blooded soldiers!"
Luavier’s head snapped up, his eyes swimming with a fresh, agonizing wave of tears. The mention of the Mothers struck a nerve that ran deeper than any wound on his body.
"It was my mother too," Luavier croaked, his voice trembling with a mix of fury and heartbreak. "After my father died in your Demigod War, I thought she would hold me. I thought we would grieve together. But instead, she looked at me with those cold, hollow eyes and told me... she told me it was an honor. That her life and mine were meant to be used for the Dragonborn. She felt no remorse! No pain! Just a terrifying, vacant devotion!"
He slumped forward, his forehead hitting the cold stone.
"You broke her, Drakovitch! When you ordered the Dragonborn Restoration, she didn’t see it as a horror... she saw it as another mission. Another task for her flesh to complete for your ’glory.’ That is wrong! A mother should love her son more than she loves her King’s cause!"
A weak laugh escaped him, hollow and broken.
"You call us traitors... but we were the only ones who dared to say it should have ended..."
Behind him, the other young warriors, those who had been dragged in by Morgant, began to break. The sound of their weeping wasn’t the proud cry of soldiers; it was the mourning of sons.
"My sister..." one sobbed, his face pressed against the cold stone. "She was the best rider in the Verdantwings... and now she sits in the Grand Nursery. All her life, she dreamed of the sky, of flying free—and now... she’s just waiting for the next white-blooded child in her womb."
"My aunt," another cried, voice cracking. "She doesn’t even recognize me anymore. She only speaks of the ’Restoration.’ She’s not a woman now... she’s just a vessel."
The air in the throne room grew thick with the collective grief of a generation whose matriarchs had been converted into biological infrastructure.