Chapter 853: Do not kneel

Theo’s back arched violently off the permafrost, his mouth opening in a silent, wide-eyed scream of sheer, incomprehensible torment, his vocal cords paralyzed by the shock of cold iron and ice entering his core.

Rhys’s fingers clamped firmly around the warm, pulsing muscle within.

Without a single microsecond of hesitation, Rhys twisted his wrist ninety degrees, severing the primary arterial pathways, and ripped his hand backward with a single, violent, sovereign pull.

SPLATTER!

With a sickening, wet tear of ruptured muscle and bone, Rhys tore Theo Althalos’s beating heart completely free from his chest cavity.

Theo’s eyes went wide.

The cold cerulean light in his irises flickered violently, turned a dull, lifeless gray, and rolled backward into his skull.

His head fell limply against the frozen stone, his mouth hanging slack in a final, frozen exhalation, and the Senior Praetor of the Sovereign Vanguard ceased to exist, his battered corpse resting unmoving in the pool of his own cooling blood.

Rhys stood in the center of the ice cage, his hand covered in dark crimson blood, holding the steaming, blood-soaked heart of his former tormentor.

The heart gave two faint, fading pulses in his grip before settling quiet in his palm.

Rhys looked down at the trophy in his hand, took a slow, deep breath of the freezing air, and let the breath out in a thick, pale cloud.

He let the connection to Sylph recede gently.

The brilliant emerald glow within his hair faded, the yellow strands settling naturally back across his forehead.

The four colossal, gossamer fairy wings folded inward, dissolving into ribbons of harmless green mana that dispersed into the cold atmosphere, and the burning contractual runes along his skin dimmed into faint, dark lines beneath his flesh.

With a simple flick of Rhys’s left wrist, the towering ring of thirty-foot ice spikes dissolved into fine, powdery snow, clearing the path across the permafrost.

The silence across the half-league amphitheater was heavy and suffocating.

Over forty thousand demons, dread-rank minotaurs, shadow stalkers, and white-armored dark elves sat motionless in their stone tiers, their breath held in their chests, their weapons resting flat against their knees as they watched the young prince. Not a single creature growled; not a single blade shifted.

Rhys turned on his heel.

Holding the severed, dripping heart loosely in his right hand, Rhys began his long, measured walk across the frozen arena floor.

His iron-shod boots crunched rhythmically against the permafrost, the sound echoing clearly off the high obsidian walls as he crossed the expanse toward the base of the royal balcony.

He did not look at the fallen trophies of the high-floor beasts, nor did he look back at the corpse in the dirt.

Rhys ascended the wide, dark granite steps that led up to the highest tier of the colosseum.

With every step he climbed, the ten high-born Council members shrank further back into their ornate chairs.

Sylvea Starling sat with her eyes closed, her knuckles white as she dug her fingernails into the velvet of her skirts, her breath coming in rapid, terrified gasps.

Calix Meridan leaned away, his hand shaking so violently against his rapier that the steel guard rattled against the arm of his seat. Sable Malakor sat rigid as stone, her pale throat working as she stared at the dark crimson fluid dripping from Rhys’s fingers, her aristocratic pride utterly crushed beneath the weight of what she had witnessed.

Sirius Anake looked down at the blood on the granite stairs, his scarred brow furrowing, his eyes acknowledging with heavy finality that the military doctrine of the First Sun had just been executed alongside its greatest champion.

Beside the trembling nobles, King Maelor remained seated. The ancient monarch did not flinch, nor did he look away from the gore.

A great, quiet pride settled into his golden eyes as he watched his flesh and blood climb the staircase.

No longer a fragile, battered child begging for a scrap of legitimacy, but a hardened, ruthless man forged in the darkest crucible of the world.

Rhys reached the top of the platform.

He walked past the row of petrified Councilors, stopping three paces before the towering monolithic throne of dark basalt and petrified bone.

Jack Kaiser remained seated upon the throne, leaning casually to his right, his chin resting against his knuckles. Ren Ryzard stood to his right, his hands resting on his curved pommel with an approving smirk, while Loryn stood on the left, his skeletal fingers clutching the two potted God’s Blood Trees, his violet eye-flames dancing with manic satisfaction.

Rhys stopped.

He raised his bloody right arm, opening his fingers, and allowed the severed heart of Theo Althalos to drop onto the dark granite stone directly at the toe of Jack’s black boot.

THUD.

The wet, heavy sound echoed off the high back of the bone throne.

Rhys dropped to one knee, lowering his head, his breathing steady, his tone carrying the deep, unyielding respect of an apprentice addressing his master:

"The task is complete, Jack. Floor Thirteen has been claimed. The Vanguard’s champion has been executed."

Jack Kaiser did not glance down at the heart immediately.

He sat in silence for several long seconds, letting the cold mountain draft from the upper rifts swirl the hem of his dark coat.

Then, slowly, smoothly, Jack rose from the basalt throne.

He stood tall at the edge of the royal balcony, his hands casually resting in his coat pockets, his presence instantly commanding the entire half-league colosseum.

His heterochromic eyes swept across the forty thousand silent troops in the stands, then shifted down toward the ten Councilors who sat trembling before him like condemned prisoners awaiting the axe.

Jack’s posture carried no nervous tension, no petty arrogance, and no mortal vanity. He stood with the unyielding, immovable pride of an apex sovereign.

A man who looked upon kings, archmages, and primordial gods not as equals, but as lesser beings who existed entirely by his tolerance.

He felt no anger toward the trembling nobles, no hatred for their fallen dynasty. He felt only the vast, absolute pity of a lion looking down upon a nest of shivering sheep.

"The trial is over," Jack stated, his voice ringing with absolute, unbending authority that cut through the silence of the colosseum and resonated deep into the bedrock of Floor Thirteen.

"Prince Rhys has breached the depths, fulfilled every sacred condition, shattered your champion’s limbs, and taken his heart. He is the true, undisputed, and absolute heir to the Sun Throne of Caeloria. Rhys, you are the heir now, and as such, with my blessing, unlike the rest of the fools on the chairs, you do not need to kneel to me. And if you ever do it again, I will put you in your place. You are next to be King. You do not bow to me."

Jack took a single, slow step toward the ten lineage heads, his heterochromic gaze locking onto Sable Malakor, then shifting across Elowen and Sirius until every noble looked upon the void in his eyes.

Jack’s lips parted in a sharp, cold smirk of unadulterated disdain.

"I see why you cursed Vile Bloods for so long," Jack said, his voice dropping into a low, cutting cadence that penetrated straight into their skulls. "They can become much stronger than pure-bloods. You’re all weak."

The words fell like an iron hammer upon the court, sealing the ancient dynasty in stone and leaving the fate of Caeloria forever bound beneath the Soul Warden’s feet.