Chapter 126: A Sleepless Night
Whether tracking the ancient chronicles when the initial frameworks of high civilization were merely beginning to etch their lines across the world—such as the mythic eras of the Ancient Dragon Dynasty, the fallen Storm Dynasty of the cliffs, or the long-buried vaults of the Uld Dynasty—or parsing the contemporary epoch where the sovereign might of the Erdtree, the Lunar academy of the Full Moon, and the spires of the Ancient Dragon maintain a tense tripartite balance across the continent, the formal judicial trial of high-born nobles remains an exceptionally volatile, hyper-sensitive topic within the assemblies of any ruling house.
These powerful, multi-generational classes—who firmly control the core military, political, and financial lifelines of the state, their houses seamlessly bound together through an intricate, labyrinthine network of diplomatic marriages, secret alliances, structural partitions, and regional mergers—constitute the single most un-shakeable foundation backing the architecture of any empire. Consequently, even the most noble, world-shattering princes and divine demigods routinely discover it an arduous task to openly decree the extrajudicial liquidation of even a minor landed nobleman, to omit an entity like the Chief Court Perfumer, Rolo, whose name clutched an honorary viscountcy letters patent and whose private ledger compressed extensive, high-level connections across every administrative ministry.
But the precise variable that drove the final drop of hope straight out from Rolo's freezing soul was the reality proving that the sovereign who had just hand-delivered his death sentence defined one of the absolute few entities drawing breath across the entire expanse of the Golden Dynasty—barring the supreme scepters of their Majesties themselves—who possessed the absolute legal leverage to extinguish his life readouts without executing a single drop of formal court bureaucracy.
Unlike the three parallel demigod champions anchoring the quadrants of the aqueduct, this silver-haired Ancient Dragon Prince rose across the world as a living god personally consecrated by the manifestations of the Greater Will, while concurrently commanding the active, un-capped military backing of the contemporary Elden Lord. The sacred Sovereign Order Seal entrusted straight to his fingers by the scepter of His Majesty Lord Radagon authorized his gauntlet to summarily execute any landed aristocrat below the official rank of an Earl across the domestic territories of the Golden Dynasty, completely deleting the requirement to report the casualty to the high councils until after the iron had already cleared the bone.
In other words, from the exact microsecond the syllables "I sentence you to death" cleared Lucia's teeth, Rolo—despite his feet still occupying the domestic stone parameters of the empire—could already be calculated across the registers as nothing more than a walking corpse.
At that identical cross of data, more than twenty scrying crystal spheres scattered across the high stone rafters of the central District Sixteen tunnel captured the absolute totality of the confrontation through their magic circuits, instantaneously broadcasting the visual feed straight into the command halls of the Sovereign Capital Arena Association and the private salons of hundreds of watching peers.
Regarding the deep, high-friction feud dividing the ambitions of Duolis and Osarion, certain factions across the capital had historically operated as staunch, militant background supporters; alternative houses functioned as the hidden instigators behind the scenes, while the remainder existed merely as gloating, cynical bystanders celebrating the chaos. But at this precise watch of the winter moon, the entire collective body of the Leyndell nobility looked exactly like a flock of fat geese whose throats had been simultaneously, violently crushed within an iron fist—and not a single lord clutched the capacity to project a smile across his features.
Their minds were by no means blind to the reality proving that their Majesties' internal discontent regarding the un-bracketed corruption of the gladiator guilds had been accumulating a dangerous layer of structural voltage across recent seasons. Yet, the absolute majority of the high peers had found it an impossible sacrifice to cast out the gargantuan fortunes of gold runes generated by the public colosseum gates and the various high-yield commercial monopolies derived from their operations, choosing instead to revere those underground shadow wagers managed by contracted Night Fighters as the most efficient, state-sanctioned rule framework to settle their domestic disputes without mobilizing their private armies.
Concurrently, their strategy had permanently maintained a smug, un-fused confidence regarding the safety parameters of their own positions and courtly leverage, firmly simulating the delusion that so long as their maneuvers desisted from crossing certain inviolable, sacred boundaries of the faith, their lineages would mathematically never invite the true, apocalyptic wrath of Queen Marika and the Lord Consort Radagon.
Until the sudden, terrifying materialization of Lucia and Radahn across the scrying screens, the nobles had comfortably calculated the blueprint that the twin Accursed Princes, having been stripped of their formal dynastic titles and driven behind the grates since their cradles, lacked the leverage to introduce a significant threat to their layout. Their inner circles had simulated that even if Rolo's cognitive faculties had completely succumbed to the toxins of his aromatic, the alchemist would mathematically never display the mad stupidity required to butcher the direct descendants of the First King fronting the public scrying feeds. So long as Godfrey's tragic bloodlines remained securely bracketed beneath the control of our parameters, the absolute totality of the chessboard sat safely clutched within our fingers.
However, zero strategists across the metropolis had wove an equation predicting that inside a mere three-kilometer stretch of an ancient limestone drainage culvert, two sovereign demigods would materialize to seal one flank of the brickwork while two parallel sovereigns locked down the absolute rear!
Lucia's physical presence within this forbidden sector, balanced by his formal public pronouncement of Rolo's heretical guilt fronting the eyes of the aggregated peerage, signified that the petty, lawless games their houses had been executing beneath the noses of the divine Majesties for decades had finally hit their terminal checkpoint down the timeline.
Across this watch, a common Court Perfumer who could do nothing more than shiver while awaiting his immediate liquidation had entirely ceased to matter across the board. What truly demanded the absolute focus of the ministries was the reality proving that at this grand round table, which compressed more than half of the ancient conservative elders and modern cabinet ministers of Royal Capital Leyndell, an Empyrean commanding the absolute capacity to forcefully overturn the table had just aggressively done so before their eyes!
Inside the central command lobby of the Arena Association, President Loshil displayed absolute zero traces of sudden panic or bureaucratic rage. This weathered old Earl, whose hands had personally directed the structural evolution of the Leyndell gladiator rings for over thirty winters, simply stood entirely frozen behind his marble balustrade, his rough, calloused fingers unconsciously, rhythmically tracing the polished gold-leaf armrests of his high master chair. His once rigid, mountain-like shoulders and heavy spine visibly slumped downward across the span of a few ticks of the clock, looking as broken, empty, and thoroughly defeated as a withered, decaying cedar tree rotting in the deep woods.
Concurrently, within the inner sanctuary of Marquis Osarion's ancestral manor house, the fine porcelain teacup clutched within the fingers of the legendary commander—a warlord celebrated across the border legions for his immense physical strength—slipped entirely from his grasp, shattering into millions of jagged white shards across the polished marble floor tiles. Large, heavy beads of cold sweat rolled continuously down the chiseled, handsome contours of his face, and his massive, armor-honed torso began to tremble with an uncontrollable, erratic vibration.
His internal strategy did not harbor a basic fear targeting the young age of the silver-haired Ancient Dragon Prince; rather, his spirit registered an absolute dread tracking something infinitely deeper, older, and more apocalyptic across the foundations of the state.
As the contemporary ruling patriarch commanding the ancient lineage of the Ofnir clan, his memory clutched a profoundly deep connection regarding his family's historical service under the banners of the First King. Godfrey's era knew the un-veiled parameters of the royal nursery, and his intellect was beautifully, terrifyingly aware that the twin Accursed Princes dwelling within the subterranean silt were nominally recorded as "Omens" across the public liturgies, yet within the absolute basements of the First King's heart and the sovereign memory of Her Majesty Queen Marika, their genetic status and dynastic sanctity scored not a single drop lesser than the divine position occupied by the Golden Prince Godwyn himself.
Rolo's clandestine, high-casualty hunting of common Omen outcasts born to the lower gutters and his minor skirmishes against the two hidden princes had historically been bracketed within the acceptable boundaries of shadow court friction. But on this night, the mad dog had been caught red-handed by the Empyrean Lucia during a direct, high-fatality confrontation targeting the person of Lord Morgott—and his life record had been formally, publicly accused of attempting the assassination of a Demigod of the Blood Royal!
If these catastrophic words had cleared the throat of a rival Duke across the senate house, his own pen could have effortlessly refuted the charges without batting an eye; after all, it constituted an everyday occurrence for high-born nobles to sling treasonous mud at each other across the tables, and their Majesties would never authorize a serious imperial decree over common parliamentary theater—but across this watch, the judge executing the decree defined a living god.
Under the un-bending laws dictating the contemporary Golden Order system, at a graphic scene where a Court Perfumer and the sovereign brothers of the Omen Line were actively exchanging steel, zero mortal souls drawing breath across the Land of the Erdtree possessed the legal leverage to question the divine judgment of an Empyrean!
If this bottleneck continued to expand its parameters down the calendar, losing his long-sought command seat as the Guardian of the North scored as a laughably minor issue across his board. If his name was formally labeled across the imperial rolls as the legal master commanding Rolo's leash, branding his house as the primary mastermind orchestrating the systematic murder of a royal demigod, then the entire collective branches of the Ofnir Family would mathematically lack a sufficient census of heads to satisfy the executioner's block!
"Marshal the heavy carriage arrays this microsecond! My person demands an immediate transit to clear the gates of the Eternal Palace to stand before their Majesties!" he ordered his master steward, his face entirely drained of color as his voice emerged a raspy whisper.
There manifested absolute zero strategic requirement to waste a single drop of his focus monitoring the outcome of this wretched arena bet any longer; safeguarding his own life readout and preserving the survival of his immediate family branches constituted the absolute, top-tier priority governing his board.
The master retainer hurriedly accepted the executive command, turning on his heel to sprint through the oak doors, only to re-materialize within the chamber brief minutes later, his tunic completely drenched in a cold sweat as his arm guided the form of an elite knight bearing the heraldry of the Ofnir vanguard. Before the Marquis could unleash a volcanic torrent of queries, the warrior executed a deep, disciplined military bow, his baritone steady. "Your Excellency, my name defines Ram, personal shield-guard serving the office of Viscount Rowens. The Viscount commanded my boots to hand-deliver an immediate, classified brief targeting your station—"
"Arrest your advance!" Osarion's expression violently shifted the exact watch his ears processed the name of his sibling. He immediately threw his arm through the air to dismiss every housemaid, scribe, and auxiliary guard occupying the perimeter, waiting until strictly the three core actors remained enclosed behind the locked cedar panels before signaling the outrider to un-roll the data.
Following the tragic death of his third brother, Hectov, across the bloody siege lines of Kaelen, Osarion's second brother, Rowens—who actively executed the supreme duties of the Municipal Overseer of Leyndell—had mutated into his single, unconditionally trusted political anchor within the inner cabinets of the court. Most particularly across an apocalyptic bottleneck of this gravity, Rowens, whose scepter commanded the primary civic guards of the metropolis, was recorded as infinitely more informed regarding the hidden movements of the crown than Osarion himself, who operated merely as the deputy commander of the Northern Legion.
"Throughout the execution of the midnight security patrols across the inner rings, the Viscount's scouts isolated a massive, synchronized movement of high-tier imperial knights simultaneously clearing the garrisons of the Golden Temple and the Ancient Dragon Temple. The census logs their numbers at no fewer than one thousand heavy lances. Our personal communications runner, whom the Viscount dispatched to query the nature of the deployment, was ruthlessly driven clear of the column on the explicit grounds that the vanguard was executing an absolute, classified crown directive. However, analyzing the vector driving their iron hooves... their terminal target grid centers directly over the outer walls of Duke Duolis's ancestral capital manor."
"The Duke's manor house?!" Osarion's eyeballs violently dilated, his fingers gripping his sword belt. "Are you mathematically certain your outriders have not mis-mapped the heraldry of the destination?"
"The exact watch the Viscount commanded my boots to sprint to your gate, the imperial knights had already aggressively crossed the Caldwell Bridge, initiating their sub-phase deployments to split their columns into a total tactical encirclement spanning a ten-mile radius surrounding the Duke's estate," Knight Ram reported steady. "Milord... surely a heavy deployment numbering a thousand imperial lances would not clear the inner keeps past midnight strictly to chase a common pack of street thieves across the Upper District?"
Across the span of a single second, un-counted thousands of strategic possibilities and terrifying outcomes flashed with explosive velocity through Osarion's cognitive engines. Yet, evaluating the immediate layout of the board, regardless of which specific direction the domestic turmoil chose to develop its momentum down the timeline, at least his own name and the absolute survival of the Ofnir Family did not score as the primary, front-line targets conformed to receive the impact of the crown's hammer.
He stood entirely paralyzed across a long watch of the room, his breath escaping his chest in heavy rattles, before his consciousness finally re-mastered its focus, his baritone dropping. "Suspend the carriage deployments targeting the Golden Temple for the current watch. Sir Ram... my office commands your muscle to execute multiple high-velocity runs back and forth across the municipal districts tonight. The exact microsecond any novel intelligence node clears your second master's lips, hand-deliver the data straight to my ear."
The knight executed a crisp military salute, clearing the threshold within a tick of the clock, leaving the old house butler—who had personally managed the Marquis's comfort for over a decade—to step softly into the light, his voice a low whisper. "My Lord... does our vanguard require the execution of alternative defensive preparations to safeguard the estate?"
"Our strategy will simply maintain a stationary posture to observe how the pieces fall down the line," Osarion sighed heavily, his massive frame collapsing back into his seat. "In the final accounting, our house wove zero instructions to instigate those heretical, drug-crazed actions executing under Rolo's cleaver. Absolute zero mortal minds across this capital possess the capability to decode what specific calculus those two hidden princes are harboring within their chests across this night. Let our shields remain locked behind our walls... we must desist from taking a single step that might worsen the friction."
"Understood, milord."