Slowly but surely, the assassin’s body began to burn up. A few jagged, desperate screams escaped his throat, but soon enough they turned into muffled, wet gurgles as the crimson mana incinerated his lungs.
I sat there, watching the man who had intended to cripple me turn into glowing ashes, and then those ashes into nothingness.
I don’t know what had taken over me, but I didn’t care much for his suffering. After all, he was here to break me, if not kill me. In this world, pity was a luxury and I was in a spot where I couldn’t afford it.
They say an eye for an eye, but Elena’s logic was entirely different. Why settle for an eye for an eye when you can simply erase the person who looked at you wrong? It wasn’t about justice; it was about absolute removal.
However, the room felt far darker now. She could have simply broken his limbs and sent him back to Aries as a bloody warning, but she had chosen to scrub him from the face of the earth.
But why was she still standing there?
There was no movement from her. She remained rooted to the spot where the man had been, her head bowed and her hands still curled into trembling fists.
"E... Elena," I called out.
No response. The silence in the room was deafening. I got up from the bed, and began to walk toward her.
"What happened? Is something wrong?"
The way she refused to answer, her back still facing me like a wall of ice, was starting to creep me out. I reached out a hand, intending to touch her shoulder, but before my fingers could make contact, she snapped.
Without a single word or a backward glance, she bolted.
She didn’t spare me a look, didn’t offer a warning—she just left me standing alone in the wreckage of my room.
"Where are you going?" I instinctively shouted after her.
However she didn’t stop. The sound of her frantic footsteps receded within seconds.
Don’t tell me.
A cold realization sank into my gut. There was only one place she would go with that kind of momentum and that level of unchecked rage.
There is no way, right?
She wouldn’t actually go there. Not tonight. Not in this state of mind.
If she went there like this, she might end up killing him too. And if that happened, my life would become impossible to bear rather than just difficult.
Killing a member of the royal family in cold blood? The King wouldn’t care about assassin sent by Aries; he’d have both our heads on pikes before dawn.
I also ran after her, following her all the way to a certain someone’s room.
She reached the grand, ornate doors of Aries’ room and didn’t even slow down. She flicked her finger with a casual, terrifying elegance, and a ball of concentrated fire burst out.
The heavy oak doors didn’t just open; they were blown away, the wood splintered into a thousand flaming shards that hissed against the stone floor.
Thank God everyone’s rooms are located really far away from each other. Otherwise, there would have been a crowd and a battalion of guards right now. As it was, the only witnesses were the portraits on the walls, and they seemed to cower in their frames.
She stepped inside.
Aries was there, sitting by his fireplace with a glass in hand, looking like a man who was waiting for good news. He jumped to his feet, the glass shattering on the hearth as he stared at the flaming entrance.
"Elena? What the hell is—"
He didn’t get to finish. Elena crossed the distance in a heartbeat, her hand clamping onto his throat and slamming him back into his velvet armchair. The chair broke under the force, and I heard the sickening thud of his skull hitting the wood.
"Wait! Elena, stop!" I skidded into the room, gasping for air.
She didn’t even look at me. Her hand was glowing so brightly it was blinding, and the air around Aries began to distort from the sheer heat.
Aries clawed at her hand, his face turning a dark, mottled purple. "What... Are... You doing..." he managed to wheeze out.
Elena didn’t answer. The silence from her was more terrifying than any scream.
She suddenly yanked him upward by the throat, his feet dangling inches off the ground, before slamming him sideways.
His body collided with the stone wall of the fireplace with a bone-jarring crack. Aries slumped to the floor, coughing up blood, but Elena didn’t give him a second to breathe.
"Elena! Stop! Why?!" Aries wheezed, his eyes wide with a mix of agony and genuine confusion. "What did I do to you?!"
She stepped forward, her boots crunching on the glass shards of his fallen wine glass. Instead of a verbal reply, she drove her knee into his gut. The air left his lungs in a sharp whoosh.
Before he could collapse, she grabbed his hair and swung him like a ragdoll, launching him across the room. He smashed into a heavy mahogany wardrobe, the wood splintering under the impact of his weight.
"Answer me!" Aries screamed, his voice high-pitched and frantic. He scrambled to his knees, his regal pajamas torn and stained. "Is this about mother? The twins? Just tell me!"
Elena remained a mute. She reached him in a single stride and, instead of using her mana to vaporize him, she began to use her bare hands.
Thud.
A heavy punch to his jaw.
Crack.
A kick to his ribs that sent him sliding across the polished floor toward me.
"Rio?... Help me!" Aries scrambled toward my feet, reaching out a trembling hand. "She’s insane! Tell her to stop! Why is she doing this?!"
I looked down at him, then up at Elena. Her face was a mask of cold obsidian, her eyes glowing with that relentless crimson fire.
She didn’t look at me; she didn’t look at anything but her target. She grabbed his ankle and dragged him back toward the center of the room as if he were nothing more than a sack of grain.
That was a mistake... I should have stopped her earlier.
"Elena, please!" Aries sobbed, the pride of a Prince completely evaporated. "I’m your brother! Just tell me why! What did I do?!"
What could he ddo anyway. Elena was far stronger than him. And even if her tried to use his magic Elena might counter attack it. Aries was just a brick in front of a humongous rock.
She hauled him up and slammed him against the wall again, the stone cracking behind his head. She held him there, her hand vibrating with the sheer pressure of her suppressed mana.
Aries was weeping now, his face a mess of blood and swelling, staring into the silent void of her expression.
He begged. He pleaded. He asked ’why’ a dozen different ways. Acting completely oblivious to the thing he had done.
But Elena simply raised her fist again. The only sound in the room was the brutal impact of her strikes. She wasn’t interrogating him. She was erasing the arrogance from his soul, one silent blow at a time.