There Will Be No Forgiveness

The glass was everywhere.

Shattered mirrors littered the halls, the dormitories, the ritual chambers. Even the scrying pools had cracked. It wasn't just Blackspire—it was the entire magical system. Every reflective surface that had ever dared to show Raizel his own face had broken in that instant.

And from the shards came the same voice, soft but sick with hunger:

"Now the blood begins to matter."

The students were still screaming when Raizel stepped over the wreckage, carrying Silas in his arms like a child pulled from fire.

His coat was soaked with Darius's blood.

No one stopped him.

No one dared.

The instructors watched from the upper gallery, frozen between loyalty and fear. Raizel had crossed a line—and not even the Academy's authority felt strong enough to pull him back.

Not after what he did.

Not after the peeling.

He brought Silas to the medical ward, ignored the trembling healers, and stood over his unconscious form for hours.

The boy's pulse was shallow. Eyes flickered behind lids. His lips moved, muttering in tongues long buried in history.

Raizel recognized one of them.

It was the same language the voice in the mirror spoke.

"You shouldn't have done it so soon."

Elyssia's voice cut through the silence like a scalpel.

Raizel didn't turn.

"He would've died."

"He was supposed to die. That was the test."

"Then the test is broken."

Now he turned.

His eyes were bloodshot, not from exhaustion—but from restraint. The kind that cracked ribs from the inside out.

"If the Empire wants war, they'll have it. But not on their terms."

Elyssia's expression didn't change. But her tone did.

"You think this is about pride? About some political game? They've been preparing for your rebellion longer than you've been alive, Raizel. That feast wasn't a provocation. It was a trap. You just sprung it."

He didn't flinch.

"Let them come."

"They already have."

That night, House Umbravell burned.

It started with a scream.

Then a hiss of corrupted magic ripping through the wards. Fire laced with void-energy spilled from every window, and the air turned to glass. Dozens died before they woke. The rest never made it out of their rooms.

Raizel watched it from the tower.

Emotionless.

Unmoving.

"Strike where they do not see," he whispered, repeating the house motto. "And when they look… erase them."

He descended the tower.

Not in haste.

In silence.

What he found in the ruins of House Umbravell wasn't soldiers.

It was Inquisitors.

Five of them. Clad in red ceremonial robes laced with cursed runes. Their faces hidden behind masks of ivory carved into grimacing angels. Imperial sanctioned witch-hunters—sent only when execution was guaranteed.

One of them stepped forward, holding an iron staff.

"Raizel Valthorr. You are hereby stripped of noble protections. Your blood is revoked. Your magic condemned."

Raizel didn't speak.

Didn't blink.

"Any last words before purification?"

He gave them none.

He answered with slaughter.

The first inquisitor raised a warding glyph.

It failed before it finished forming.

Raizel bent the symbols backward, forced the energy through the man's own veins, and watched as his body twisted inward—imploding like wet parchment. Blood sprayed in reverse, sucked into his mouth until he drowned on his own insides.

The second tried to run.

Raizel let him.

He took three steps before the ground opened beneath him, swallowing his legs. From the pit crawled something—a shadow with teeth and hands made of bone, whispering the same word again and again:

"Flesh."

The man didn't scream.

He just vanished.

The third inquisitor fought well.

He summoned blades of light, fire, ice, rage. Called down a holy storm, radiant and pure.

Raizel walked through it.

Not immune.

Superior.

He absorbed it like heat in a furnace, his veins glowing black and red. Then he raised a single hand, clenched it—and the man's spine shot out of his back like a snapped whip.

"Three," Raizel whispered. "Two more."

The last two stood together.

Foolish.

He cast no spell.

He spoke.

"Break."

Their bodies shattered like glass under a hammer.

When it ended, Raizel stood alone in the ashes.

Smoke danced around him.

Blood steamed off his skin.

He looked at the remaining students and faculty gathering in terrified clusters. No instructors moved. No guards responded.

The message was clear:

The throne had marked him.

And now…

He had marked it back.

The next day, the academy issued a statement:

"House Umbravell has been dissolved. Its heir, Raizel Valthorr, is missing. Suspected dead."

But everyone knew it was a lie.

A thin, coward's mask over a storm that was no longer hypothetical.

Because Raizel didn't run.

He left—through the front gates, dressed in black, with Elyssia at his side and Silas carried behind them in a coffin of ice.

He said nothing to the guards.

They didn't stop him.

That night, in the Empire's capital, a meeting of high lords was called.

The Emperor himself sat at the head of the table, flanked by robed archmages and sleepless seers.

"Blackspire has failed," the Chancellor said. "The Valthorr boy is no longer containable."

"Then we proceed," said the Emperor.

He opened a scroll sealed in crimson wax.

Inside: a single name.

"Elyssia."

He tapped the table once.

"Send the Hounds."

Meanwhile, far from Blackspire, Raizel stood before an ancient temple carved into the cliffside—forgotten by maps, erased from records.

Inside was his inheritance.

Not from Kael Valthorr.

From what came before him.

The entity that cracked the mirrors.

That whispered to his blood.

Elyssia watched him.

"If you go in," she said, "you'll come out someone else."

Raizel didn't look at her.

"Good."

He placed his palm to the door.

It opened—not with noise, but with memory.

And within…

The walls bled.

The altar pulsed.

And a voice said:

"Welcome home, Raizel. Now… take what was stolen from you."