House of Blood

The rain fell in heavy, relentless sheets, hammering against the dark oak carriage like the sound of a war drum.

Outside, the dense pine forest had fallen into an unnatural, suffocating silence.

The local beasts had long fled, and even the horses had ceased their anxious stomping, steam rising off their coats in thick plumes as they stood paralyzed in sheer terror.

A metallic, sharp pressure slammed down from the ancient canopy above, thick with the stench of raw killing intent.

" WARNING: HIGH-TIER MANA FIELD DETECTED "

" ENTITY: MEDEIS SOUL-CARVED ASSASSIN SQUAD "

" TARGET COUNT: 12 COMBATANTS, 1 ELITE SHADOW MAGE "

Inside the plush interior of the transport, nobody panicked.

Vespera’s hand didn’t rush to the haft of her massive battle scythe resting against her knee.

Caelum didn’t even bother to uncross his tree-trunk arms, his massive frame casually leaning against the leather backrest.

Alexis merely pushed his thin gold spectacles up the bridge of his nose, his red eyes narrowing into sharp, analytical slits as he parsed the magical signature warping the air outside.

To the six eldest siblings of the Prim Sanguis bloodline, an ambush of this scale wasn’t a life-threatening crisis.

It was merely a minor inconvenience on the journey home.

"Twelve of them," Alexis murmured softly, his voice cutting through the steady patter of the rain on the roof.

"Four on the left ridge, four on the right, three encircling our rear wheels. The leader is perched thirty feet above us in the branches of the ancient oak."

"Medeis trash," Caelum grunted, a feral, bloodthirsty grin spreading across his rugged face.

"Can I tear them apart, Sister? It’ll take me three seconds to clean the woods."

"No," Vespera said coldly.

She turned her gaze to me, her terrifying demeanor instantly softening as her fingers reached out to gently adjust the black silk blindfold tied over my eyes.

Her touch was warm, careful, and filled with a fierce protection that belied her reputation as the continent’s most feared warrior.

"Valerian just survived the Crucible," she said in a hushed, protective tone.

"His soul-core is still stabilizing after absorbing the ancient blood. We don’t unleash raw blood-aura near him while his veins are this sensitive."

She looked out the rain-slicked carriage window, her voice dropping into a register of razor-sharp glass.

"Aura. Rook. Clear the path. Leave one alive for interrogation."

"Understood, Lady Vespera," Aura’s clear voice echoed from outside, her golden-amber eyes igniting with a sharp, lethal light beneath her soaked hood.

I leaned my back comfortably against the soft velvet cushion, resting my hands in my lap like a quiet, frail child.

Beneath the black silk, my crimson-tinted vision cut straight through the solid wooden walls of the transport, mapping out every heartbeat and mana thread in the surrounding forest with terrifying clarity.

’Look at them,’ Wren’s voice purred lazily in my head, her spirit form invisible to the world.

’They actually brought soul-carved daggers to attack the Prim core family. Garren is getting sloppy, partner.’

’Garren didn’t send them just to kill us,’ I thought back, analyzing the swirling silver mana flows outside.

’He sent them to confirm whether I survived the Crucible. If I die, he covers his tracks. If my siblings protect me, he confirms to the clan council that I’m still helpless, useless trash.’

’So what’s the play, kid?’ Wren chuckled softly.

’The leader in the tree isn’t targeting my siblings,’ I noted, watching the hidden mage above condense his shadow mana.

’He’s aiming straight for the carriage floorboards from below.’

Outside, the assassin leader raised his hand, his soul-carved arm runes glowing with a sickly, pale-blue light.

"Kill the trash! Spare no one!"

SHING!

Eight masked figures descended from the branches like falling specters, their daggers humming with paralyzing soul-poison.

Aura moved like a flash of bronze lightning.

Her shortsword cleared its scabbard with a high-pitched ring, intercepting three assassins in midair with fluid, vicious precision.

In three micro-movements, she shattered their anti-mana chestplates, sending them crashing lifelessly into the deep mud.

Simultaneously, Rook moved with a ghost-like, terrifying grace.

The elderly butler stepped directly into the path of two charging shadow mages, his white-gloved hands remaining casually buried in his coat pockets.

THUMP!

THUMP!

With two lightning-fast, invisible palm strikes to their sternums, Rook collapsed their lungs instantly, sending a dense pulse of internal force straight through their spine.

The two mages crumpled without making a sound.

The battle outside was a total slaughter.

Inside the carriage, however, my newly awakened dragon senses picked up a tiny, almost imperceptible shift in space directly beneath us.

Slivers of shadow.

The leader in the tree had used his subordinates as live bait to unleash the Medeis family’s secret art:

Shadow-Diving Step.

A long, pitch-black blade formed from condensed soul-mana began to emerge silently through the oak floorboards right between my boots, aimed straight for my heart.

" WARNING: POINT-BLANK SOUL-BLADE DETECTED "

" TARGET: VALERIAN PRIM SANGUIS "

If I called out to Vespera right now, she would obliterate the entire bottom of the carriage to save me, exposing my ignited dragon blood to the Medeis scrying link attached to the blade.

Instead, I channeled a microscopic droplet of my Stage 1 Dragon-Vein Ignition down into my right heel.

To my siblings, I was merely sitting quietly, a blind, helpless ten-year-old child with his hands folded neatly in my lap.

Just as the black soul-blade pierced through the last inch of wood, I stomped my foot down.

STOMP.

A dense, concentrated spike of ignited blood-mana—heated to over a thousand degrees—shot straight down through the floorboards like an armor-piercing round.

CRACK!

Beneath the carriage chassis, the assassin leader’s eyes bulged in absolute, unimaginable horror.

The moment his shadow-mana touched my boot, the intense heat of the Prim dragon blood traveled backward up his shadow-thread like liquid napalm.

The ignited force crushed his lungs and shattered his soul-core before a single scream could escape his throat.

He slumped face-first into the mud under the spinning wheels, dead instantly.

" ENEMY ELITE ELIMINATED "

" SOUL-MANA DEVOUR COMPLETE "

’Sneaky, kid,’ Wren giggled inside my head, devouring the stray mana threads.

’A foot-stomp execution while sitting right next to your overprotective sister.’

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