Chapter 1284. Settling My Debt And My Grudge... Death Is Going To Be A Mercy

Chapter 1284: 1284. Settling My Debt And My Grudge... Death Is Going To Be A Mercy

The silence that followed Rex’s mockery didn’t just stretch; it festered. It was a thick, poisonous thing that filled Helena’s lungs until she felt she might choke on it. In that suffocating quiet, her mind became a battlefield of conflicting memories, each one a blade twisting in her gut.

She could feel the entire foundation of her faith grinding against the reality before her eyes. She remembered Rex holding Lily’s hand during the plague years, whispering promises of safety.

She remembered him taking a poisoned blade meant for Elliot’s heart without flinching. She remembered him standing before the Goblin King, a lone bulwark against a hail of stone and steel, catching a boulder that should have reduced her to crimson paste.

She had trusted him with the sanctity of her home; she had shared wine with him across her own table, treating him as more than a friend as a brother.

And now, he sat there, drenched in the evidence of his betrayal, watching her unravel.

"Mother," Lily finally spoke.

Her voice was small and fragile as spun glass, breaking the dam of silence. She took a tentative, stumbling step forward, her bare feet leaving faint prints in the sticky residue on the marble.

Her hands lifted instinctively, as if she could somehow gather the shattered pieces of the room back together. "Mother, please... this is not what it looks like."

"DO NOT SPEAK TO ME!"

The shriek tore from Helena’s throat like something living and wounded. The sound was seismic; every window in the great hall hummed violently in its frames, some spiderwebbing from the sheer sonic force.

Lily flinched as if she had been physically struck, shrinking back toward the staircase, her eyes filling with fresh terror.

Helena’s voice suddenly dropped. The screaming stopped, replaced by something far more terrifying: a low, guttural tremor that vibrated with the force of a tectonic shift.

It was the sound of a soul that had been hollowed out, leaving only something ancient and vengeful behind.

"I left you whole," Helena whispered, though in the silence, it carried like thunder. "All of you... I fought through hell to return to you!"

"I left you in your own beds, behind your own walls, wrapped in the safety of your own family..."

"And I come back..." Her voice cracked, then hardened into steel. "...to find my daughters, my sister, and my mother, all of them reduced to this..."

"Used. Broken. Discarded. In my own house... With you."

"Helena." Valentina finally lifted her head. Her silver hair was matted, and her face was a mask of exhaustion and something that looked suspiciously like shame.

Her voice came out hoarse, scraped raw. "Stop. Please, stop..."

"You do not understand what transpired... You do not know what you are."

"BE QUIET, MOTHER!" Helena’s scream was wet with tears.

She shook her head violently, hot salt streaming down her flushed cheeks.

To Helena’s ears, Valentina’s words didn’t sound like truth; they sounded like the pathetic, flaccid excuses of a woman who had already been conquered, already surrendered her dignity to the man in the chair.

The more she heard, the more the fire in her chest roared, feeding on the fuel of her own betrayal.

Beside her, Leonidas took a slow, deliberate step forward. The floorboards beneath him didn’t just crack; they groaned under the impossible pressure of his magic.

His aura pressed down on the room like a titan’s hand pressing against a sheet of glass, threatening to shatter every living thing within its reach. His eyes were twin pits of murderous intent, fixed on Rex with a promise of annihilation.

"Let her," Rex said.

He said it quietly. The casualness of his tone was the ultimate insult.

He spoke to Valentina and Lily, to the broken women on the floor, but his eyes never left Helena’s. He hadn’t moved an inch from his throne of velvet and sin.

"Let her come," he challenged, his lips curling into that same maddening, amused smile. "A mother has every right to destroy what she believes is broken."

"I won’t stop her."

"In fact..." His eyes glinted with a sadistic hunger. "...I’d love to see what she’s capable of when she finally realizes that nothing she loved is left to save."

Rex didn’t flinch at the inferno dancing in Helena’s hands. Instead, he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, his posture the picture of predatory interest.

He watched the way the firelight played across her devastated features, savoring every twitch of her lips, every spasm of her grief.

"Look at that fire," he mused, his voice dripping with mock admiration. "So bright... So righteous... So utterly useless."

He let out another soft chuckle. "Do you think those flames can burn away what I’ve done?"

"Do you think you can cauterize the memory of how they screamed when I finally took them?"

"Because you can’t, Helena... Even if you kill me, even if you burn this entire house to ash, you will still smell them."

"You will still taste them on your own lips every time you close your eyes."

"I will peel the skin from your bones before I let you speak their names again!" Helena screamed, the magical pressure in the room spiking so violently that several nearby vases shattered into glittering dust.

"Oh, I’m sure you’ll try," Rex purred, his eyes narrowing as his true nature began to bleed through the mask of the charming friend. "But you’re playing at being a hero, Helena."

"You’re playing at being the protector... But look around you."

"The protection failed... The sanctity failed."

"The Starlight legacy didn’t fall to an enemy army or a dragon’s fire."

"It fell to me... On its knees... Begging for more."

He glanced sideways at Valentina, who flinched at his words, then back to Helena. "You think this was random?"

"You think I just stumbled into your home and decided to play with your toys?" His smile vanished, replaced by something cold, ancient, and utterly devoid of humanity. "We have unfinished business, Helena."

"Business that started long before you ever learned to wield that pathetic flame... And I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to settle the debt."

Leonidas let out a sound that was less a human cry and more the grinding of tectonic plates. "I will rend you apart, Rex..."

"I will make your death last for centuries!!!"

"Try it, little mage," Rex taunted, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "But before you get to me, I want you to understand something."

"I haven’t finished with this family... Not by a long shot."

His face twisted then. The mask of the bored aristocrat shattered completely, revealing the monster beneath.

His features contorted into something grotesque, his eyes widening with manic glee, his jaw stretching unnaturally. Then, with deliberate, obscene provocation, he ran his tongue slowly across his lips, licking away a stray drop of sweat before sticking it out at her in a childish, mocking gesture of pure contempt.

"I’m going to break you, Helena," he hissed, his voice carrying a promise of unimaginable cruelty. "I’m going to make sure you end up exactly like the rest of them."

"But I won’t be quick about it... I won’t give you the mercy of a quick death."

"I’m going to dismantle you piece by piece..."

"I’m going to break your bones and shatter your spirit, and then I’m going to make you watch as I claim what’s left of your precious Starlight bloodline..."

His aura began to shift from passive to something heavy, oily, and suffocating, clashing violently with Leonidas’s righteous pressure. The air between them began to spark with raw magical discharge.

"I’m going to make it so fucked up that even death will seem like a kindness you haven’t earned," he promised, his tongue curling back into his mouth as his eyes burned with a dark, unholy hunger.

"Now... come and try to stop me."