The plan was a serpent of impossible complexity, its scales forged from deceit and its fangs dipped in sovereign blood. For two days, Nyx and I honed its every detail, turning our inn room into a crucible where strategies were forged and discarded in the silent, flashing calculus of psionic debate. The army in the capital was now a living entity, its ten thousand hearts beating with a single, zealous purpose. The logistical engines hummed day and night, and my spies told me they would be ready to march in three days, even faster than our initial estimates. The serpent was coiling to strike.

"The time for planning is over," I said, looking at the finalized map on our table, now covered in our own cryptic runes and timetables. "They march in three days. The assault on the King has to happen tomorrow night."

"The contingencies are in place," Nyx affirmed, her composure as serene as a frozen lake. "Rexxar is on standby in the Veiled Path, ready to deploy to the Sylvandell portal. Should we fail to neutralize the King and the army begins its march, Rexxar's orders are to create a strategic chokepoint in the mountain passes and hold them. He cannot defeat ten thousand trained T4 soldiers, but he can become an unbreachable wall for a crucial period, buying our allies time to evacuate to the Cradle."

"And Jeeves?"

"He will coordinate the defense, running combat projections and guiding their movements," she replied. "But my lord… this contingency is an act of last resort. It would reveal Rexxar's existence and expose a lot of our true power. It is a costly failure state."

"Which is why we cannot fail," I stated, the gravity of the decision pressing down on me. "I've studied the palace schematics, your reports on the guards' routines, the King's personality profile... but it's all theory. I'm fighting a Tier 5 Sanctum Lord in his own seat of power. I'm not going in blind, the repercussions could be massive." A cold knot of uncertainty tightened in my gut. A single unknown factor, one hidden artifact, one secret ability, could shatter our perfect plan. "I'm using the Glimpse, and if need be, we can stall for another cooldown if our calculations were incomplete."

Nyx nodded. "A sound tactical decision."

"Be ready," I told her, my voice low. "For me, the next few hours will happen in an instant. For you, it will be just that. But when I come out of this, I might look… unwell. The psychic backlash from seeing a future this violent against an Equal, and much more complex than usual will be significant. And we'll need to move immediately."

"I will be here," she said, a simple, unshakeable promise.

I settled onto the floor, the world outside — the distant clang of hammers, the rumble of a thousand marching feet — fading away. I closed my eyes and plunged into the river of time.

The world did not fade. It shattered, then reformed with impossible, crystalline clarity. The grimy floor of the inn was gone, replaced by the cool, polished obsidian of a grand throne room. The air was heavy with the scent of burning incense and old, arrogant power. This was the heart of the serpent.

King Thalanil sat upon his throne, a magnificent thing carved from a single, massive emerald, its surface swirling with captured light. He wasn't in his ceremonial armor now, but in fine, silken robes of green and gold. His long, silver hair was unbraided, and his handsome, regal face was a mask of simmering anxiety. He fidgeted, his fingers drumming a restless tattoo on the arm of his throne. He was a tyrant in his prime, yet he radiated the fear of a cornered animal. My presence in his kingdom was a cancer in his mind, the fulfillment of a prophecy he couldn't escape.

Positioned around the throne room with geometric precision were his guards. Ten elite soldiers in black and green armor stood in pairs by the colossal archways — his high Tier 4 hounds. And standing at the base of the throne's dais, four figures stood like statues carved from jade and steel. They were taller, their armor more ornate, their auras burning with the controlled, intense power of peak Tier 4 warriors. The Royal Guard. The King's personal shield and executioners. Their aura signatures confirming that they couldn't be left alive, I grimly thought to myself.

In the Glimpse, there was no need for subterfuge. There was only the test. I dropped my [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] and let my presence, my full, unadulterated Tier 5 power, fill the room like a physical shockwave.

Fourteen heads snapped towards the center of the room where I now stood. The ten elite guards instantly drew their weapons, forming a defensive ring. The four Royal Guards didn't move, but their hands went to their hilts, their auras flaring into combat readiness.

King Thalanil shot to his feet, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and furious disbelief. "You!" he hissed, his voice trembling with a rage born of fear. "You are real! How did you get in here? Sneaking into my own Sanctum!"

"Your Hearth is built on the bones of a thousand conquests," I replied, my voice calm and even. "And your paranoia has driven you to wage a war on innocents. I'm here to offer you a peaceful end to your reign."

A crazed, barking laugh escaped his lips. "Peaceful? You, an invader, a foreign blight, speak to me of peace? I am doing what is necessary! I am forging this continent into a spear, a single, unbreakable will to face the true threat that is coming! The Kyorians will return, and when they do, they will find no squabbling clans, but a unified empire under a King strong enough to defy them! My family's rule is Aethelgard's salvation!"

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He was a true believer in his own tyranny. "Kill him!" he shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at me. "I want his heart in a crystal by morning!"

The ten Tier 4 elites charged.

I didn't move from my spot. [Ember's Leap].

Reality stuttered. I appeared behind the first pair of guards, a blade of Ashen Soulfire already in my hand. It slid through the gaps in their armor, not cutting, but unmaking. They dissolved into swirling ash before they even hit the floor. Before the second pair could even turn, I was among them, my movements a series of instantaneous, untraceable displacements. It wasn't a fight. It was a harvest. In less than five seconds, ten elite warriors were reduced to ten drifting piles of gray dust.

The four Royal Guards were a different story. They moved as one, a seamless unit of deadly force. Two were warriors, their greatswords glowing with green energy. One was an archer, an arrow of pure light already nocked on her bow. The last was a mage, his hands already weaving a complex spell of spatial lockdown.

I felt the mage's spell begin to take hold, the familiar sensation of space growing rigid. But he was too slow. My evolved Leap wasn't so easily contained. I was already moving, appearing directly in front of the archer just as she loosed her shot. I caught the arrow of light, the holy energy hissing against my Soulfire-wreathed hand, and drove my other fist into her chest. She crumpled.

The two warriors were on me instantly, their enchanted blades screaming through the air. I parried one, the force of the blow shuddering up my arm, and Leaped away from the other. This was a real fight. They were peak Tier 4s, seasoned veterans who had likely fought beside their King for decades. I was faster, but their coordination was impeccable.

It was then that the King played his trump card. "You are strong, invader," he sneered, his fear now replaced by a chilling confidence. "But you do not understand the nature of true kingship! A King does not just command his subjects. He owns them! [King's Tithe: Final Offering]!"

A ghastly, green light erupted from his body. Runic circles flared to life beneath the feet of his three remaining Royal Guards. They screamed — not in pain, but in a horrific, ecstatic agony as their very life force, their soul, their decades of training and power were violently ripped from their bodies. Shrieking wisps of green soul-stuff, the raw Essence of their beings, streamed through the air and were absorbed into the King.

Their bodies, now empty husks, crumbled to dust. King Thalanil roared, his own power exploding upwards. His Mid-Tier 5 aura surged, rocketing to the peak, and then, impossibly, beyond. A thin, terrifying veneer of Tier 6 power, raw and unstable, coated him like a shroud. He had sacrificed his most loyal servants to fuel his own temporary apotheosis. It was a Soul Ability of the darkest kind, a parasite king feeding on the souls of his own sworn protectors.

Before I could react to this horrific transformation, he moved. He was a blur, faster than I could track. A fist wreathed in the green, stolen energy of his men slammed into my chest, and I was sent flying across the throne room, crashing into the obsidian wall with enough force to crack it. Pain, white-hot and absolute, exploded in my torso, as my [Phoenix Rebirth] began mending.

I pushed myself off the wall, gasping for air, a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth. But the threat wasn't over. As Thalanil stalked towards me, a second, serpentine form coalesced from the shadows behind him. It was a great, emerald-scaled serpent, its body made of pure, solidified warding-magic, its eyes burning with a cold, malevolent intelligence. A hidden Anima.

The Veridian Ward-Serpent, his Anima, hissed and dove towards me, its movements blurring as it wove a cage of solid green energy around me, attempting to lock me down completely. Thalanil's power was overwhelming. This was not the man I had assessed. This was a monster wearing his face. I was outmatched. My Glimpse was showing me my own defeat, a brutal end where he leeched my own power after beating me into submission, overwhelming my Domain and forcing me to run out of mana.

As the vision played out, as the Ward-Serpent's cage tightened and the King's empowered fists rained down upon me, my hyper-aware mind, processing thousands of possibilities a second, noticed it. A flaw. A vulnerability in his perfection.

When he had sacrificed his Royal Guard, I saw him hesitate for a fraction of a second, a flicker of what looked like regret — or perhaps concentration — crossing his face. And now, as I looked at him, preparing to absorb my Essence, I noticed a faint tremor in his hands, a subtle instability in his overwhelmingly powerful aura. The stolen power was a roaring inferno, but it was burning through a fuel tank that had holes in it. It was temporary. And there was a cost. To sacrifice another, it seemed there's a certain process, it wasn't instant, like my Domain. And most of his soldiers were out on the front, not in the Sanctum, if he had the capability to sacrifice them. This limited his resources.

In the final moments of my Glimpse-death, as his hand closed around my throat, I saw it. His sacrifice of the Tier 4 guard had a cooldown, but not one of time, it needed for the user to consolidate and focus that energy. A small, but exploitable window. He couldn't just spam his sacrifice. There was a buffer, a moment he was vulnerable, after each offering. And he seemed to have used it on his four most powerful followers. That meant... the first targets I killed.

The world snapped back into reality. I was on the floor of the inn, gasping, a searing psychic pain lancing through my skull. My nose was bleeding freely. The vision of his extracting my life force had been too real, the experience of my own death too visceral.

"My lord!" Nyx was at my side instantly, her cool hand on my shoulder.

"I saw it," I rasped, pushing myself up, my mind already alight with a new, colder, and far more ruthless plan. The old strategy was a clean, surgical strike. This new one would be a bloodbath. "I lost. He has an Anima, and a Soul Ability that lets him sacrifice his own guard to empower himself. The Glimpse showed me… he is far more formidable than our estimations."

"Then we must enact the contingency plan," Nyx stated, her face grim. "Rexxar will hold the line."

"No," I said, a dangerous, predatory light entering my eyes. I looked at Nyx, the pain of the vision replaced with the chilling certainty of a predator who has finally found its prey's weak spot. "I didn't just see how I lost. I saw how I can win."

I took a shaky breath, my gaze locking with hers. "His power comes from sacrifice. But he can only sacrifice the loyal guards within his immediate vicinity, and the ritual has a startup cost, a moment of channeling. In the Glimpse, I toyed with his vanguard. In reality... I won't give him the chance to make an offering."

My voice dropped to an ice-cold whisper. "The moment we enter that room, there will be no duel. No banter. In the first three seconds of the fight, every single guard in that throne room dies. I will annihilate his fuel source before he can even light the match. And then we will fight."

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