House of Blood

The grand obsidian slab of the Tablet of Judgment hovered in the sky above the Imperial Academy’s outer plaza, its glowing runes burning with a violent, violet light as the final hours of the trial bled away.

Across the wide amphitheater, tens of thousands of spectators, high-born patricians, and disqualified examinees watched the shifting numbers in tense, breathless silence.

The air was thick with the scent of roasted meat, spiced wine, and the underlying rot of blood clinging to the clothes of wounded students pulled from the forest floor.

At the very summit of the board, bathed in a brilliant, blood-red halo, a name sat enthroned in absolute dominance.

[Rank 1: Mirain Sec Sangius — 8,950 Points]

A massive gulf of points separated her from the rest of the field.

Below her name, the rankings fluctuated in a chaotic frenzy:

[Rank 2: Solene von Sol — 6,400 Points]

[Rank 3: Julian von Vane — 4,100 Points]

[Rank 4: Valen — 3,950 Points]

"Look at that margin..." a middle-aged noble in silver velvet muttered, adjusting his monocle as he stared at the top spot.

"Nearly three thousand points ahead of the Imperial Princess. The Sangius House... they haven’t produced a monster of this caliber in three generations."

"Is she even human?" another spectator whispered, shuddering as he looked at the sheer volume of high-tier beast cores required to yield such a score.

"They say no one in the Inner Wilds has even seen her face. Just a crimson shadow leaving drained, desiccated husks in her wake."

Down on the floor of the trial grounds, the desperation had reached a grotesque crescendo.

The forest was no longer a prove-your-worth exam; it was a charnel house.

The air reeked of damp earth, metallic iron, and the sharp ozone of overtaxed mana cores.

In a clearing drenched in gray fog, Julian of House Vane leaned heavily against his ornate wind-spear, his polished breastplate dented and smeared with dark beast fat.

His chest heaved, his blonde hair damp with sweat and filth.

"How?!" Julian roared, slamming the butt of his spear into the mud.

He glared at his Slate of Marks with bloodshot eyes.

"How is she nearly at nine thousand?! We’ve been clearing Tier-4 ravines for six hours straight!"

A few paces away, Marcus of House Valerius sat on a mossy boulder, wrapping a tight tourniquet around his bleeding forearm.

"She isn’t just killing beasts, Julian," Marcus growled, his voice hollow with exhaustion.

"She’s hunting in the deep abyss—places where even the proctors’ scrying eyes can’t penetrate. She’s taking down things that shouldn’t be in a student trial."

Princess Solene stood at the edge of the cliff, her white-and-gold battle robes torn at the hem, stained with black soot.

She didn’t look at Julian or Marcus.

Her ice-blue eyes were fixed on the distant red haze hanging over the central mountain—the domain where Mirain Sec Sangius operated alone.

Solene’s slender fingers tightened around the hilt of her rapier.

She wasn’t angry; she was calculating.

The Sangius girl was a ghost, a myth made of blood and shadow.

But as Solene’s gaze drifted down to the fourth spot on her slate—to the name Valen—a cold, subtle shiver ran down her spine.

"The trial is ending," Solene murmured, her voice carrying over the wind.

"Save your breath, Julian. The true test isn’t who tops this slate today. It’s who survives when the gates open."

Miles away from the trial grounds, deep beneath the jagged basalt peaks of the Ironfang Ridge, the world was wet, dark, and suffocating.

It felt less like a cave and more like the inside of a living, dying throat.

Damp, heavy heat hung in the narrow stone corridors, carrying the nauseatingly sweet stench of rotting lotus blossoms, wet iron, and intestinal bile.

Water dripped from the ceiling in rhythmic, sickening taps—drop, plop, drop—echoing into a grand, subterranean chamber.

This was the domain of Xul’Gorgoth, the 9th Demon Lord.

The chamber looked like an unholy paradise.

Exotic, predatory flora grew wildly out of piles of shattered human bone.

Giant, fleshy orchids with writhing, tongue-like pistils dripped glowing, paralytic nectar onto the mossy floor.

Pale, translucent mushrooms the size of men pulsed with a sickly, bioluminescent violet light, illuminating a scene of absolute, methodical nightmare.

Along the perimeter of the stone hall, one hundred and fifty wooden racks had been driven into the damp ground.

Bound to those racks were the corpses of one hundred and fifty missing Academy students—scholars, young nobles, and commoner examinees who had vanished from the outer fringes over the past week.

They were completely stripped, their torsos hollowed out, their faces missing.

Hovering around the racks were dozens of tall, skinless undead constructs—ghastly creatures woven from pale bone and wet muscle, moving with a silent, eerie grace.

They held thin, obsidian scalpel-needles in their long fingers.

With terrifying, artisanal precision, the undead were flaying the peeled skins of the dead students, stretching the leather-like hides over their own raw, muscular frames.

Schlick. Snap. Sew.

A skinless construct pulled a young girl’s face over its own skull, stitching the edges behind its ears with thin, black sinew.

Once the skin was secured, the construct bent down, picked up a wet, bloody chunk of the girl’s harvested flesh from a copper basin, and forced it down its own throat.

As the flesh dissolved in the undead’s dark gut, a shudder ran through its stolen body.

The hollow, lifeless eyes of the corpse suddenly lit up with a spark of stolen light.

Its posture shifted.

Its voice box clicked, tuning itself.

"P-please... don’t hurt me..." the construct whimpered, perfectly mimicking the voice and trembling mannerisms of the dead girl.

It raised a pale, stolen hand, inspecting its fingers with a sickening, vacant smile.

Sitting on a throne constructed from fused human spine-bones, Xul’Gorgoth leaned back, resting his chin on a massive, clawed hand.

The 9th Demon Lord was a towering, monstrous silhouette of obsidian plates, coiled crimson muscle, and four curling horns that grazed the vaulted stone ceiling.

His six eyes, burning like white-hot coals, tracked the movements of his flayed army with cold, lazy satisfaction.

"Flawless," Xul’Gorgoth rumbled.

His voice was a heavy, tectonic vibration that shook the damp ferns hanging from the walls, making the poisonous orchids weep their sweet nectar.

"The flesh provides the memory. The skin provides the shell. The Academy’s ward-stones will read them as nothing more than frightened children returning from the wild."

He stood up, his massive shadow stretching across the floor, stepping over a pile of discarded, gnawed ribs.

He walked toward a heavy, reinforced iron door at the back of the chamber, where the sickly sweet smell of blood gave way to the sharp, pungent stench of harsh chemicals, formaldehyde, and burnt mana.

Xul’Gorgoth pushed the iron door open, stepping into a dimly lit, damp laboratory.

The room was filled with copper pipes, bubbling glass retorts, and shelves stacked high with pickled organs preserved in glowing green fluid.

In the center of the room stood a massive, vertical glass cylinder—a tank ten feet tall, reinforced with thick iron bands.

Inside the tank, suspended in a thick, murky crimson fluid, hovered a human vessel.

It was an androgynous, unnaturally smooth body.

It had no hair, no scars, and no skin defects.

Its eyes were closed, its chest motionless, but its veins—visible through translucent skin—pulsed with a faint, black light.

Around the base of the tank lay mountain-like piles of drained, shriveled corpses—hundreds of failed test subjects, sloughed off like useless husks to feed the vat.

Standing before a wooden table covered in blood-stained surgical tools was a figure wrapped in a filthy, tattered leather apron.

The man wore an odd, terrifying mask—a brass plague-doctor mask with a long, curved beak, its glass eye-lenses painted with spiraling red runes that glowed faintly in the dark.

This was the Mad Doctor.

"Lord Xul’Gorgoth," the Doctor’s rasping voice sounded like dry leaves scraping over a tombstone.

He didn’t turn around; his skeletal hands were busy adjusting a brass valve that pumped dark, nutrient-dense sludge into the top of the glass tank.

"You tread heavily. You’ll disturb the stabilization cycle."

"Is the vessel ready?" Xul’Gorgoth demanded, stopping behind the thin man.

The Demon Lord’s massive heat scorched the cool air of the lab.

"My flayed legion is ready to breach the Academy’s lower gates under the cover of the exam’s conclusion. I require the anchor."

The Mad Doctor let out a dry, wheezing laugh that rattled inside his beak.

He tapped the thick glass of the tank with a long, metallic bone-scalpel.

Clink. Clink.

"It lives, my Lord. It breathes the sludge. It eats the life-force of the weaklings you brought me," the Doctor hissed, turning his masked face toward the giant demon.

The red spiraling lenses fixed on Xul’Gorgoth’s six burning eyes.

"Three hundred lives were poured into this glass jar. Three hundred souls boiled down to make a single, perfect, empty vessel capable of holding a Demon Lord’s true divinity in the mortal realm."

He paused, holding up a single, long glass syringe filled with a pale, cloudy liquid that was slowly curdling.

"However..." the Doctor rasped, his voice dropping to a sinister whisper. "...it lacks an edge. A core. The vessel is strong, yes, but it is like a sword made of untempered iron. It will shatter the moment your true aura inhabits it."

Xul’Gorgoth’s six eyes narrowed, a low, dangerous growl vibrating in his throat.

"What does it lack?"

"A catalyst," the Mad Doctor giggled, raising his hands, his blood-stained gloves trembling with insane excitement.

"A divine spark to weave the flesh together and make it indestructible! The vessel requires the royal blood of the Sanguis Primordial Bloodline. It needs the blood of a Sanguis."

The Doctor stepped closer to the tank, pressing his brass mask against the glass, gazing lovingly at the floating, pale body inside.

"Not just any diluted noble scum," the Doctor whispered, his breath fogging the glass.

"The purer the blood, the grander the masterpiece. A single drop of pure, unadulterated Sanguis essence, injected directly into the heart-core... and this vessel will become an unkillable god. The Academy’s barrier will not just fail; it will bow to him."

Xul’Gorgoth stared at the pale form suspended in the fluid.

Slowly, a dark, terrifying grin tore across his massive, horned face, revealing rows of jagged, yellow teeth.

"A Sanguis..." Xul’Gorgoth rumbled softly, his claws clicking together in the dark lab.

"The trial grounds are crawling with the blood of the high-born. And at the very top of their little leaderboard sits a girl who reeks of ancient crimson."

He turned back toward the iron door, his long tail sweeping across the stone floor, knocking over a tray of scalpel-needles.

"Finish the preparation, Doctor," Xul’Gorgoth commanded, his voice echoing through the damp, paradise-charnel house outside.

"My children will bring you your blood. And when the gates of the Academy open to celebrate their new prodigies... we will tear their sanctuary to the ground."

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