Claimed by the vampire prince

Chapter 415: Chapter 415

That night, five demons stepped onto the grounds surrounding the heavily guarded assassin stronghold. The small group was led by Arius, who paused at the edge of the compound, his gaze sweeping over the defenses with a cruel, knowing smirk tugging at his lips. He was a demon who fed on fear and destruction, and tonight, he had come to indulge in both.

Arius was no longer a mercenary and he had been content to leave that part of his life behind in his past. He had made that clear to Ragnar when the offer was first presented. But the sum the prince had placed on the table had been persuasive. An amount that demanded not just success, but perfection. And Arius had always taken pride in one thing above all else, his thoroughness.

A payment like that did not allow for loose ends.

He had begun planning this assault over a week ago, the very moment Ragnar provided the location of the stronghold. Every guard rotation, every blind spot, every possible escape route, he had accounted for all of it.

The order had been simple. No assassin was to be spared.

The demons did not skulk forward like common thieves. They moved with something far more unnatural. They slipped into the darkness so seamlessly, and it swallowed their forms until they became indistinguishable from the night itself.

At first, the ambush was silent. There were no footsteps, no rustle of movement. The torches flicker violently, their flames sputtering. One by one, they went out, plunging the compound into suffocating darkness.

Exactly as intended. Darkness was where demons thrived.

And then the shadows began to move. Living. Thick, viscous strands of darkness peeled themselves from the ground, slithering up walls and coiling around pillars. They stretched like grasping fingers, creeping toward the guard posts with excited hunger.

The demons melted into them. One moment they stood at the edge of the compound, then they were gone. In the next breath, the shadows struck.

The darkness snapped upward, hooking around a guard’s ankle before he could even register what was happening. He was yanked off his feet, dragged screaming into a pool of ink that hadn’t existed a heartbeat before. The surface swallowed him whole, closing without a ripple.

Another guard turned, mouth opening to shout an alarm but the shadow behind him split open like a grotesque maw. Jagged teeth of pure void snapped shut, devouring him as well. His scream never made it past his lips. He was simply... gone.

Then Arius stepped out. Or rather, he emerged. His form bled out of a patch of darkness on the ground, rising slowly as he regained his form. His body seemed less solid than it should have been, liquid black shifting beneath an ever-changing surface. His eyes were worse, empty, pitch-black voids that reflected nothing, not even the faintest trace of light.

"Your existence ends here," he said as he approached a startled guard, his voice smooth and cold, that same cruel smile curling at his lips.

"I hold no quarrel with any of you," he continued, almost conversationally. "But you have inconvenienced my employer. And now, he wishes you all gone. A poor miscalculation on your part. Because what my employer wants... he gets."

After all, Arius was a businessman at heart and this was merely a transaction.

At his presence, the last remnants of light in the compound died. Torches went dark. Even the sky above seemed to vanish, swallowed by a rolling tide of darkness that choked out the stars.

The shadows did not stop there. They grew. They crawled over guards’ armor, seeping through gaps and curling beneath plates. They slipped into open mouths and nostrils, invading lungs, suffocating from within.

The other guards regained their wits and moved to draw their weapons, but their steel blades blackened and cracked, turning brittle in their owners’ hands before crumbling into useless fragments.

One guard lunged at Arius, letting out a desperate shout as he swung his weapon.

The blade passed through nothing.

For a moment, confusion flickered across the man’s face, until something moved behind him.

A shadow surged upward, wrapping around his arm like a serpent made of pure darkness. It tightened. Bone shattered with a sickening crack. frёewebηovel.cѳm

His scream was cut short as the shadow constricted further, crushing flesh and sinew alike until his arm hung uselessly, twisted into an unnatural angle.

Nearby, one of the other demons raised a single hand. The shadows responded instantly. They snapped together, converging into a writhing column that spiraled upward like a living storm. It twisted tighter and tighter, compressing into something dense and sharp. A spear forged from pure night.

With a flick of the demon’s wrist, it shot skyward. The air split with a deafening crack, like thunder tearing through the heavens. A rift opened above them.

From within it, darkness poured. Like liquid shadow spilling into the world, cascading downward in endless streams.

The ambush was no longer silent. It became a symphony of the slaughter unfolding. A chorus of destruction.

On the roof, a guard staggered, a wet cough tearing from his throat. He looked down and froze. His shadow was no longer beneath him. It was climbing. Black tendrils crawled up his legs like thorned vines, piercing through leather and flesh alike. Blood sprayed in violent arcs as the darkness burrowed deeper, shredding muscle and snapping bone with brutal efficiency.

He screamed. The sound cut off abruptly as the shadow surged upward, forcing its way into his mouth. His throat bulged grotesquely, swelling beyond its limits until it burst.

The spray of blood and fragments rained down onto the ground below. By then, the guards had already lost. Their bodies littered the ground in mangled heaps, the air thick with the metallic scent of blood and the suffocating weight of death.

Inside the stronghold, chaos had taken hold. The assassins had been alerted, scrambling to prepare for the attack gathering just beyond their doors. Blades were drawn, hands steady on their weapons, a testament to the intense training they all suffered through that none of them cowered in the face of ambush.

Their attackers were supposed to be trained killers, so the assassins expected men with steel weapons like theirs. Opponents they could see. Enemies they could fight. None of them were prepared for what came instead.

The shadows slipped inside. They seeped beneath doors, through cracks in the walls, pooling across the floor like spilled ink. They moved with intent, hungry and impatient.

One assassin tightened his grip on his swords, eyes fixed on the entrance as he waited for it to burst open. He never saw the floor beneath him shift. Darkness wrapped around his ankle and pulled. Bone snapped instantly.

He hit the ground hard, his scream tearing through the room as the shadow swallowed his leg whole. Flesh peeled away in wet strips, muscle unraveling as though being devoured piece by piece.

The exposed bone ground uselessly against nothing as he clawed at the floor in desperation. The shadows consumed him slowly, dragging him down until nothing remained.

All around them, the same horror unfolded. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

The assassins struck blindly, their blades cutting through nothing but air as the darkness twisted and recoiled, impossible to grasp, impossible to kill. The oppressive blackness choked their vision, stole their footing, invaded their senses.

All they had were the sounds.The screams. The wet tearing of flesh.

The sharp, unmistakable snap of bones breaking in the dark.