Rivers of the Night
Chapter 436: Cruel (2)

Chapter 436: Cruel (2)

Theron really wasn’t sure what was going on today. It felt like he was meeting one person from his past after another, as though it had been set up like this.

Something just felt… off about it all.

Real life didn’t often work like this, but at the same time, everyone that had appeared seemed to make sense.

Aeryn was Malaya’s brother and a Core Disciple of the Luminescent Moon Sect.

Thessa was related to the Firewings and Nightingales, not to mention was a Core Disciple of the Luminescent Moon Sect—it made sense that she would be there.

Sadie seemed to randomly appear as she pleased, but she had always done that… plus, she was a Nightingale anyway. It only made sense that she would be heavily involved in this matter, especially since it seemed as though Theron had chosen her home as the fighting ground for his own personal vendetta.

Sigil was a Thistle. For him to be here made maybe even more sense than any of the others. After all, Theron was about to likely unleash a slaughter against his clan.

But something was nagging at Theron, something that made him feel as though something bigger was going on, as though the master plan that had been controlled in the palm of his own hand had suddenly become very much not in his control any longer.

Theron closed his eyes, the odd feeling swirling as he dropped Aeryn to the ground.

The forest here was even thicker than it had been around the Luminescent Moon Sect, the air of Wood Mana dense. The Nightingale Empire was being submerged in more Wood Spirit Mana every day, and the benefits to the Thistles were as clear as day—though the best benefits would take decades to play out…

Decades that the Nightingales didn’t seem to be giving them any longer. Well, the Nightingales as per Theron’s schemes.

“I didn’t think you would show up,” Sigil said, his tone a bit sad. However, it didn’t seem to be for Theron’s case.

Theron’s eyes opened and then he began to walk forward. He didn’t have the time, patience, or care to have this conversation.

“You’ve done quite wrong by Malaya, you know. She really is a good woman. She’s tried so hard to make herself better in your absence. But you never even thought to look her way once she wasn’t useful as a pawn anymore.”

Theron still didn’t say anything, the distance between them having already shrunk by half. The gap in their strength wasn’t even something worth mentioning because it was such a massive chasm the words would be wasted.

Theron certainly knew that. And Sigil knew it just as much.

But much like Aeryn, he insisted on being here.

Why? Theron didn’t know.

Did he just have this much loyalty to his family? Had he grown to have feelings for Malaya? Was he angry that Theron’s appearance now made the small sliver of a chance he had to save her vanish?

Honestly, Theron didn’t really care what the real reason was. He was finding it easier and easier to be detached, the chilling path so strong within him that his heart hardly seemed to beat more than once or twice a minute anymore.

The heat in his blood had run cold, his skin had paled, and even his hair seemed to be growing closer and closer to shades of grey, slowly tending toward an icy white once again.

“Did you kill Uncle Burne?” Sigil suddenly asked.

However, the response he received was much the same.

Nothing at all.

Chi.

Sigil barely registered the movement. All he felt too many seconds later was the pain.

He fell to his knees, a dent in his stomach in the shape of a fist keeling him over. His inner organs were practically shredded beneath the blood, internal bleeding leaking out in patches of violet and black onto his skin.

His breath felt like it was squeezing out through a straw, his body shutting down as he hacked up a mouthful of blood.

“You… are crueler than… I thought you were…”

Theron didn’t even look back as he swiped out a hand toward the tree before him.

Lines of Water Mana dispersed in the air suddenly concentrated into vibrating threads.

Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi. Chi.

BANG!

The forest seemed to suddenly explode, trees for dozens of meters leveled until there was nothing but a flat plain ahead.

In that instant, a protective formation and illusion that had held strong was shredded to pieces in a single instant of time. As the bits and pieces of chopped trees fell from the skies above, the scene ahead was laid out for Theron to see.

A long distance from him, a young woman was tied to a wooden pillar, her clothing torn and scant, her feet dangling above a high flame. It looked like she was being burnt at the stake for her crimes. As for what crimes she had committed?

Apparently being his wife was enough. But then again, was it a surprise? Apparently being his father, his mother, his little sister… those roles had been enough as well.

None of them had a choice. But all of them suffered just the same.

Malaya’s head hung as though she were staring at the flames that would be her demise, her skin hanging loosely from her bones as though she had lost all the fat and muscle her small frame had ever carried.

But then Theron realized that that wasn’t what she was looking at. There was a head there, set on a far smaller pike just at the edge of the flames. From time to time, an ember would catch onto faint wisps of what remained of its hair, burning it to ash.

Theron had seen that man before, burnt and almost unrecognizable as he was.

Patriarch Vermouth. Malaya’s father. He hardly had any interactions with the man, but he knew enough to know that Malaya cared quite a bit about him.

Theron’s gaze slowly turned away from Malaya and her father, landing on Dean Thistle. The man was staring back with a grin that seemed descended from madness.