Rise Of The Villain : In a World Ruled By Anomalies

Chapter 163 - 162 : Eye for an Eye

Hearing Arthur’s name, Lucas became even more confused.

"But, Sister, she insulted our family," Lucas snapped, his cheek still stinging from Jessica’s slap. "You saw what she did—"

"Shut up."

Jessica didn’t even look at him when she spoke.

Her cold gaze remained locked on the sky, on the old man floating there like a distant judge above the ruins.

"You old bastard," Jessica called out, her voice cutting through the smoke. "Do you have any idea what just happened because of you?"

Her words carried across the broken estate, clear even over the low crackle of distant fires.

A moment later, two more figures appeared at the edge of the battlefield, running over collapsed walls and broken stone.

Adrian.

Sylvia.

Adrian’s usual composure was gone. His eyes swept frantically across the carnage until they found Yuna, broken and barely conscious in the crater. His heart lurched.

"She’s safe, right?" Adrian demanded, stumbling down the slope. "Nothing happened to her, right?!"

He rounded on the surviving guards, on Jessica, on anyone close enough to hear.

"Give her a damn potion now!" he shouted.

Yuna blinked up at the blurred shapes around her, confusion dulling the edges of her pain. She could not quite follow the chaos of voices anymore; each shout seemed to come from somewhere very far away. She vaguely wondered why everyone suddenly sounded panicked.

Her eyelids felt heavy.

She let them close.

Sylvia, meanwhile, was trembling with something far uglier than fear.

Guilt.

Rage.

She grabbed Adrian by the collar and dragged him closer until they were almost nose to nose.

"See what happened?!" Sylvia screamed, tears streaking down her cheeks. "How are you going to fix this now?!"

Her voice cracked on the last word.

"He played you back! Are you happy?!"

Adrian clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw hurt.

"I didn’t know he would go this far!" he yelled back, his voice raw. "I didn’t—"

Sylvia’s hands shook.

For a moment, she looked like she might hit him, but then the fight drained out of her. She simply kept crying, her fingers still knotted in his clothes as though they were the only things keeping her standing.

Lucas watched all of this, his confusion growing with every passing second.

"What happened?" he asked, looking from Sylvia to Jessica to Agnus. "Why do you all look so worried?"

Jessica turned toward him.

PAH!

Her hand whipped across his face again, snapping his head to the side.

"Sister-!" Lucas shouted, his eyes wide.

She ignored him.

Instead, she reached into her spatial ring and pulled out a small, disk-shaped device. She pressed her thumb against a rune on its surface.

A holographic image sprang to life above them.

They all froze.

In the image, a golden-haired girl lay on the ground.

Her face was barely recognizable beneath the swelling and blood. Bruises overlapped one another, purple on top of red, red on top of blue. It looked as though someone had beaten her face again and again long after it had already broken. Several of her teeth were missing, her lips split, and one eye was swollen nearly shut.

She looked half-conscious at best.

Beside her stood a black-haired boy with crimson eyes.

Arthur.

He looked calm.

That calm was worse than rage.

"How does she look?" Arthur’s recorded voice asked. "Isn’t she still beautiful?"

In the image, he bent down and picked Arina up by her arm. Her body flinched, a small noise of pain escaping her bruised lips.

"Don’t blame me, Arina," Arthur said. "Blame your dear father and mother."

The projection zoomed in on his face as he stared directly into the recording device.

"They hurt my family," Arthur said. "So I’m doing the same."

Sylvia’s hand flew to her mouth. A strangled sound escaped her.

Adrian’s eyes widened, his pupils shaking. For a second, he looked less like the head of a great bloodline and more like a man who had just seen a nightmare step off the page.

Even Agnus’s expression changed.

Lucas stared at the image, his breathing growing shallow.

"Is that... Arina?" he whispered, almost in disbelief.

Jessica’s jaw clenched so hard that a vein pulsed at her temple.

"You pushed him too far," she said, each word like a hammer striking stone. "All of you. And this... is the price."

Agnus’s aura erupted.

Killing intent poured out of him like a tidal wave, thick and suffocating. The air itself trembled; even the clouds overhead seemed to twist and warp as if trying to flee.

People dropped.

The surviving guards and servants collapsed where they stood, their eyes rolling back into their heads. Weaker awakened fell to their knees, clutching at their throats as if the air had turned to molten lead.

Lucas swallowed, his heart pounding in his ears.

"Grandpa... what’s happening...?"

None of them had time to answer.

Because at that moment, space itself groaned.

Right where Agnus’s gaze was fixed, reality rippled. A tear formed in the air, its edges glowing crimson and black, swirling like liquid shadow. Wind roared toward it, pulling dust, loose stones, and shattered roof tiles into its orbit.

A portal opened.

From its depths, two figures stepped out as though walking through a doorway.

A black-haired boy with crimson eyes.

And a woman with crimson hair flowing down her back, her presence cold and steady at his side.

Arthur did not spare a single glance for Agnus floating above, for Lucas still reeling, or for Adrian and Sylvia frozen in horror.

He walked past them.

Past the hundreds of corpses.

Past the cracked stones.

Past the shattered symbol of a family that had thrown him away.

Straight toward the crater where Yuna lay.

His boots splashed through blood pooled at the bottom as he stepped down. Yuna’s eyes flickered open for a moment, then slid closed again as he knelt beside her.

Arthur slid one arm beneath her shoulders and another beneath her knees, lifting her gently into his arms. Pink hair fell across his chest, stained crimson. Her head rested against him as though it belonged there.

He turned back to face them all.

Grandfather.

Father.

Mother.

Siblings.

Bystanders.

His gaze was like a sharpened blade.

"Remember this," Arthur said, his voice flat and cold enough to freeze the air. "You are the ones who started all of this."

No one answered.

Because in that moment, surrounded by the ruins of their own making, every member of the Imperius family felt the same thing crawling up from the depths of their spine.

For the first time, they were truly afraid of the boy they had cast out.