Chapter 1283. Just What I Expected... Rage Coming Out From Them... Satisfying.

Chapter 1283: 1283. Just What I Expected... Rage Coming Out From Them... Satisfying.

Rex took another sip of tea. He did it slowly, deliberately, savoring the heat as if he were savoring the very air of the room.

When he finally set the cup down on the small marble table beside him, the porcelain made a gentle, almost polite click—a sound so domestic, so civilized, that it felt like a physical violation in that den of debauchery.

"Welcome back, Helena," he said.

His voice was terrifyingly calm, carrying the easy cadence of a man greeting an old friend after a pleasant holiday. A thin, easy smile curved his lips, one that didn’t reach his eyes, which remained cold and appraising.

"Oh, I see you brought your husband along as well... Leonidas, was it?"

He leaned back further into the velvet cushions, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of casual dominance. "You’ve timed your return perfectly."

"We were just about to have breakfast."

For one interminably long second, time itself seemed to congeal. Nobody in the hall breathed.

The only movement was the slow, lazy rise of steam from Rex’s tea and the shuddering breaths of the broken women scattered across the floor. The tension in the room stretched tighter and tighter, like a wire pulled to its breaking point, humming with a frequency that made the teeth ache.

Then the dam broke.

It didn’t just break; it exploded.

Helena’s face underwent a grotesque transformation. The deathly pallor vanished, replaced instantly by a deep, furious crimson that seemed to burn from within.

Her veins stood out along her neck and temples like cords of iron. Her mouth tore open, and what emerged was not a human sound but something primal—a scream so raw and devastating that it rattled the crystal chandeliers overhead and sent vibrations through the very foundation of the house.

Her daughters’ names, her sister’s name, and her mother’s name all collided in one single, agonized shriek that tore through her throat like broken glass.

Her eyes locked onto Rex’s across the hall. In those irises was a hurricane of unspeakable things: the jagged sting of betrayal, the nauseating heat of naked shame, and the apocalyptic fury of a mother who had just walked into her own sanctuary to find it desecrated by the very man she had trusted to protect it.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY FAMILY?!"

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THEM, YOU FILTHY ANIMAL?!" she shrieked, the words cracking on the edges of her rage.

The air around her hands ignited. Red flames roared up from her palms with such violent force that they hissed like angry serpents, casting dancing, hellish shadows across the walls.

The heat was instantaneous, searing the air.

Beside her, Leonidas rose from his knees, the vomit still staining his chin, but the grief was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous. He stepped forward with a sound in his throat that wasn’t human; it was a low, vibrating growl that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

His aura exploded outward like a shockwave. The full, crushing weight of the second strongest mage in Aethelgard flooded the hall, a physical pressure that made the air feel thick as water.

Under his boots, the marble tiles screamed and buckled, cracking in a spiderweb of white fractures that spread across the floor like ice breaking on a frozen lake. His eyes were fixed on Rex with a singular, murderous focus.

There was no hesitation, no hesitation of the soul, only the absolute certainty of execution.

Rex stayed exactly where he was. He didn’t flinch at the flames.

He didn’t recoil from the cracking stone. He simply sat there, the king of his own twisted domain, watching them with the amused patience of a god watching insects struggle in amber.

Rex did not stand. He did not raise a hand in defense, nor did he reach for a weapon.

He remained seated in the velvet armchair, one ankle crossed nonchalantly over his knee, watching the two most powerful mages in the city with the detached curiosity of a man observing ants trapped beneath a magnifying glass.

Even as Helena’s flames licked the ceiling and Leonidas’s aura threatened to bring the very rafters crashing down, Rex’s smile remained a faint, patient expression that never wavered, never flickered with fear.

Around him, the broken tableau remained frozen. Lily, Diana, Elizabeth, and Valentina stood scattered across the hall like discarded offerings.

No one dared to move; the air was so saturated with magical pressure and raw trauma that the simple act of taking a step felt like breaking a sacred taboo.

Inside Rex’s mind, there was no panic, only calculation. Cold, surgical, and absolute.

He was already counting. ’Three possible openings in Helena’s stance.’

’Two ways this fight ends.’

’One inevitable result.’

He wasn’t worried; he was bored. He had been waiting for this moment since Lustia’s face had faded from his mirror, since the last echo of his conquest had died down.

He was simply waiting for their rage to burn itself out, waiting for their anger to harden into something predictable, something he could twist and weaponize against them.

Helena stood paralyzed in the doorway, flames roaring in both hands, but her eyes were not on Rex.

They were moving with the frantic, desperate speed of a mother reading the damage to her own flesh and blood. Her gaze darted from face to face, cataloging the wreckage.

She saw Lily at the foot of the stairs, her dress buttons misaligned, her shoulders shaking with silent, hiccuping sobs that spoke of exhaustion beyond tears. She saw Diana, whose face burned with a humiliation so deep it seemed to radiate heat, staring at the marble as if she could disappear into the stone.

She saw Elizabeth, her calm, unshakable sister, whose only defense was a long, resigned exhale, the sound of someone who had already accepted their own desecration. And then she saw Valentina, her mother.

The pillar of their entire lineage. Valentina stood with her head bowed, silver hair cascading over bare shoulders like a funeral shroud, her eyes hollowed out by something that looked suspiciously like complicity.

Nothing in the room needed to be explained. A rumpled sleeve, a missing ribbon, a bare foot stepping into a puddle of dried fluid, and a shirt left unbuttoned at the throat.

Helena read every stain, every bruise, and every shamed glance in seconds. The conclusion she reached didn’t just hurt; it sat in her chest like a tombstone, heavy and irreversible.

"You look ridiculous," Rex said suddenly.

His voice cut through the magical tension like a rusted blade through silk. He broke into a low, genuine laugh, a sound that was warm, amused, and utterly devastating.

"Look at you two," he mocked, gesturing toward Helena’s flames and Leonidas’s cracking floor. "The great protectors of Aethelgard."

"The mighty mages... standing there with your tongues wagging and your hands glowing, acting as if you’re about to save something."

He leaned forward, his eyes glinting with malicious delight as he glanced at the naked, broken women. "But you’re too late, aren’t you?"

"You missed the best parts."

"You missed the screams, the begging, the way they all looked when they finally learned what it means to truly surrender."

His laughter grew louder, echoing off the high ceilings, bouncing off the walls where the stains of his conquest still glistened.

"Tell me, Helena, does it burn more?"

"The fire in your hands, or the knowledge that your precious little family has already been thoroughly... consumed?"