Free Web NovelThe final defense before the palace's main gate had been torn to shreds by blood and fire.
In the rainy night, the stone steps were slick; the corpses of downed bodyguards lay every which way.
Only the last squad of bodyguards still tried to form a line against that blood-stained sword, as Second Prince Kalian advanced step by step.
Their captain, covered in wounds and with shattered armor, raised his great hammer and roared, "Your Highness! We've lost! Spare Fourth Prince Rhein's life, I beg you!"
Kalian gave no answer.
He simply lifted his gaze; the look in his eyes was that of a beast crawling from a pile of corpses—hollow, yet exuding marrow-freezing cold.
The captain's heart chilled, but he still gritted his teeth and swung the hammer to meet him.
Clinging to a final shred of hope, he roared and brought the massive hammer down.
‘Hah—!' The hammer fell like thunder.
Yet Kalian did not dodge.
He met the lethal blow head-on with battle aura; in the next instant, his heavy sword traced a merciless arc.
‘Puh—!'
The captain's head soared skyward, tumbling to land upon the steps.
Kalian kicked the headless corpse aside, his voice rasping like sandpaper on iron: ‘Where's Rhein? I'll flay him alive.'
‘Boom!!'
The great doors of Yuchen Hall were smashed to splinters.
Outside, two figures stood in stark contrast.
Duke Remont sat astride a tall warhorse, armor gleaming, his cloak not even dust-stained.
He moved aside, looking more like an elegant sightseer than a participant in a capital coup.
On the other side, Kalian was drenched in blood, armor broken, still dripping from his hands.
He stepped into Yuchen Hall over a carpet of corpses, a fiend back from hell.
Across the vast hall lay scattered sheepskin scrolls, gilt-sealed decrees, half-stamped orders—the New Charter, Appropriation Edicts, Troop Transfer Mandates... policies Rhein had rehearsed and refined for years before becoming Regent, the cornerstone of his dream to reshape imperial order.
Now they were shattered dreams, ground to nothing by blood and iron.
Several civil officials had pissed themselves, cowering beneath tables and trembling, afraid even to breathe.
Rhein stood alone before the Dragon Throne.
He still wore the pure-white Regent's robe, yet amid the reek of blood it looked grotesque—like a choirboy who had wandered into a slaughterhouse.
As Kalian approached, Rhein did not draw his sword.
Instead he snatched up contracts, ledgers, files from the floor and hurled them at Kalian's face.
‘Stay back!!' he screamed. ‘If I die, you're traitors! Imperial law will judge you! The bureaucracy will strike! The whole realm will collapse!'
Like a drowning man clutching driftwood, he tried to build a last barricade of law and interest, the very things he had always believed in.
But before blood and battle aura, those words were pitifully faint.
Remont spurred his horse forward; the hoofbeats echoed through Yuchen Hall.
He looked down at Rhein as one might regard a pathetic clown.
‘Your Highness,' Remont said flatly, ‘you are still too naïve.
The tongues of clerks, before absolute power, aren't worth a fart.'
He bent, picked up the New Imperial Charter stamped with the empire's seal. fгeewebnovёl.com
With a casual flick of his sword, the thick Charter was sliced in half.
‘As for the law...'
Remont let the sheepskin fall beside Rhein's feet.
‘This is waste paper.'
Second Prince Kalian wasted no more words.
He flung aside his notched greatsword and, like a cornered beast, charged up the steps.
At that moment his world narrowed to blocks of red and black.
Rhein's perpetually composed face was now twisted.
That contrast sent a savage thrill surging through Kalian's chest.
So the brother who had driven him to the brink was, in the face of terror, no different from anyone else.
‘Thud!'
Rhein's back struck the cold stone base of the Dragon Throne with a dull impact.
As he tried to rise, Kalian's iron arm clamped around his throat.
Rhein's hands clawed frantically, nails screeching across vambraces without so much as a spark.
His legs kicked in mid-air, boot-soles slapping the marble like a drowning man grasping at emptiness.
Kalian watched the struggle; the taut string within him finally snapped—the agony of the severed-arm ambush,
the numb stares of old comrades when supplies were cut at the border,
the legion commanders forced to their knees by auditors.
Kalian needed no proof; he had long known: ‘Rhein wants me dead.'
It was no sudden murder; it began the moment his military authority was hollowed out, his coffers dried, bureaucrats pressed—step by step, Rhein drove him toward death.
Today, vengeance was at last fulfilled; tears cut through the blood on Kalian's cheeks.
Rhein's face turned a ghastly dark purple, eyes bloodshot, still bewildered.
It made no sense.
Why had money lost its power? Why had civility fallen to brute force?
‘Why?' rasped from his throat as his final whisper.
Crack.
The crisp, grating sound of a larynx shattering.
Rhein's eyes lost focus; the blueprints for remaking the empire collapsed along with his life.
His body, an empty husk, slumped before the Dragon Throne.
The empire's ‘civilization faction' died at the foot of the symbol of imperial power.
‘Aaaargh!'
Kalian released his grip; the roar echoed beneath Yuchen Hall's dome, shaking the souls of officials cowering behind pillars.
Below the steps, Remont stood in silence.
Watching Kalian's trembling, near-breaking back, he adjusted his cuff and revealed a faint, chilling smile.
It was the satisfaction of a ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) craftsman inspecting a blade he had forged himself.
Moments ago, Kalian had been merely a down-and-out prince.
Now, having publicly murdered his own brother—the empire's Regent—he had burned every bridge.
That meant he could at last be molded into the emperor Remont desired.
Remont mounted the steps, boot-heels ringing steady and measured upon cold stone.
Reaching Kalian's side, he gently clasped the prince's shaking shoulder, soothing a child in a nightmare: ‘Well done, Your Majesty.'
...Once, Triumph Avenue had blazed with lights that never dimmed; now only the wind howled through broken walls.
Seven days ago, flowers lined the street as nobles decked the avenue to welcome Fourth Prince Rhein's ascension as Regent, turning it into the beating heart of the empire.
Seven days later, rows of gallows stood upon that same broad thoroughfare, their beams groaning in the night rain like a dirge for the old order.
The mud, trampled by hooves, mingled blood, reek of wine, and soot into a nauseating stench.
The flames of the noble quarter danced, reflected in the puddles like twisted tongues of fire against the night sky.
Before these gallows Duke Simmons was dragged forward.
He no longer bore the glory of seven days ago.
His prison rags were caked with mud; through the tears his gaunt, withered knees showed. His wig had fallen off in the hauling, revealing thinning, grizzled hair.
Rain had washed his face slick, yet it could not rinse away the bewilderment and terror in his eyes.
This patriarch of the Eight Great Families now looked like an old fish hauled ashore—gasping, drying, dying.
'I... I am an Elector... I have immunity... immunity...' Simmons muttered over and over, as though reciting a protective spell, but with every cry his voice grew weaker.
It was as if he himself realized those titles could not save him in the imperial capital.
The executioner stepped before him, raised his voice, and proclaimed to the surrounding knights: 'Simmons Grand, of the Eight Great Families, traitor to the old empire, who forsook military duty and aided the rebels—by martial law, hang.'
'I... I am a loyal minister! I have always supported the crown—'
Before he could finish, a sack was pulled over his head, swallowing his voice completely.
The noose was tightened.
The captain raised his hand and swung it down: 'Drop.'
The plank was yanked away; Simmons' body lurched downward, a strangled crack echoing from his throat.
His legs twitched a few times, jarring the gallows so it swayed gently, like a withered branch in the wind.
Soon his struggles ceased entirely.
The rain kept falling, unable to wash the blood from the Avenue of Triumph.
The once-illustrious remains of the Eight Great Families now swung in wind and rain, the first offerings upon the capital's new map.
Besides Simmons, several former high officials of the empire were strung together in a line.
Kalen, tutor to Rhein, the mastermind behind every step of his seizure of power.
Mace, head of the Censorate, author of the New Charter.
Treasury Minister Beryl, the very man who cut off grain to the Second Prince's knights.
Dozens of civil officers, all once the core of that elite circle.
Now their necks were bound by the selfsame rope.
Their faces smeared with gray slurry, eyes hollow, they were shoved like livestock to kneel beneath the gallows.
Night wind lifted the sacks; raindrops struck their cheeks, yet not one of them uttered a sound.
The curtain fell faster than anyone had expected.
As nooses tightened in unison, beneath the plane trees lining the Avenue of Triumph there were no longer festive lanterns.
In their place, corpses dangled from the boughs.
Placards hung on their chests: 'Parasites of the Ministry of Finance.' 'Traitors of the Censorate.' 'Lapdogs of Rhein.'
When the night wind rose, dozens of bodies swayed gently, the wooden signs clacking together with a hollow rattle.
Commoners who watched kept their distance, faces numb; they neither pleaded for the dead nor dared speak.
They had already understood: the new master was crueler than the old...
High windows of Yuchen Hall still shed rainwater, long rivulets sliding down the glass.
The steady drumming of the storm on the eaves was muffled and relentless, as though the entire capital held its breath for tonight's tempest.
Second Prince Kalian sat upon the Dragon Throne.
He wore no imperial robes of ceremony, no gold-thread embroidery, no crown—only a pitch-black marshal's uniform, shoulder-guards still flecked with half-dried blood.
He refused the title of Regent, refused every honorific the bureaucrats proffered.
Kalian merely lifted his chin and spoke two icy words: 'Write—Emperor.'
The officials' knees buckled in unison; none dared question.
Upon the steps at the hall's entrance lay the shattered helm of the Eighth Legion's commander, its gash dark with dried blood.
A guardsman knelt, voice trembling: 'Your Highness... the Eighth Legion... annihilated to the last man.'
Kalian was silent a moment; his metal prosthetic rasped along the throne's armrest with a grating screech.
'They followed the wrong man,' he said softly. 'Yet they were paragons of knighthood.'
He raised his hand: 'Bury them with full honors.'
Within Yuchen Hall no one dared object.
It had been Rhein's most loyal legion, yet it received honors higher than any turncoat.
On the other side of the hall two legion commanders knelt, faces brimming with expectation and fawning humility.
They had made their choice during the siege: to defect.
Now they believed they had chosen the winning side.
'Your Majesty!' both cried in unison, knocking their foreheads to the floor. 'We pledge our lives in service! Let us sweep the realm for you!'
Kalian looked down at them, his gaze devoid of warmth.
A soft laugh escaped him; the sound made every hair in the hall stand on end.
'Fifth Legion—deserted the field. Eighteenth Legion—cowards afraid of death.'
He tapped the armrest: 'Execute the decimation.'
A deathly hush fell.
Every tenth man would be slain on the spot; the rest enrolled in the penal battalion, to charge first in the coming battle.
The two commanders collapsed, their faces paler than corpses.
Kalian regarded them from above: 'This is your chance at redemption.'
With those words every speculator's heart clenched.
Lights in the Censorate building died in the stormy night; iron doors were smashed, and three hundred volumes of archives hurled into furnaces.
Kalian had no further need of the Censorate—only of military tribunals.
The treasury's gate-locks snapped; the great doors crashed down, shaking the cellars.
Knights hauled out chest after chest of gold, piling them onto wagons.
A bureaucrat wailed: 'That's the disaster-relief fund! The empire's reserve! You cannot—'
Kalian cut him off coldly: 'Take it to the camps—distribute every coin as reward.'
Through the torrential rain carts of gold trundled to the outlying camps, where knights ringed the chests with torches and cheered.
Then a new edict was flung from the throne, landing on the chill, wet flagstones with a crisp slap.
It was the Wartime Martial Governance Decree.
The instant the officials lifted their heads, every face turned deathly pale.
'These laws are abolished—effective now,' Kalian declared, voice low yet absolute.
One bureaucrat could not help crying out: 'Your Highness... that is the Imperial Codex...'
'The master you served last night is dead.'
At those words no one dared utter another sound.
The entire Yuchen Hall felt as though an unseen blade had flayed the hide of the old era.
The root of rule by bureaucracy was torn out; the institutional empire Rhein had so carefully built reduced to ash in a single night.
Kalian seated himself upon the Dragon Throne once more.
He closed his eyes, as though listening to the rain.
After tonight the empire would no longer need explanations.
It would no longer need laws—no longer need the fine, tangled clauses written by officials.
He opened his eyes slowly and spoke in a calm, deep voice: 'From this day forth, the empire is ruled by the army.' fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
No one in the hall dared breathe a word.
Thunder rolled in the distance, like the first funeral bell tolling for a new age.
