Chapter 155: Generations of Rot

It was the truth, and the truth tasted like bile. Every word she vomited into the air was another nail driven into the rotting lid of his sanity. Matthias was done. He was tired of the masquerade, tired of holding back the filth that had been clawing at his insides for years.

​He collapsed into the velvet chair, his body moving with the stiff, graceless jerk of a marionette with cut strings. He didn’t bother looking at her—Talia didn’t deserve to be seen. He looked through her, as if she were nothing more than a stain on the wall.

​Then, he reached for the ring.

​As the cold metal slid past his knuckle, the last spark of human warmth in his eyes was snuffed out. Those emerald irises didn’t just darken; they were swallowed whole, dissolving into two lightless, obsidian pits—empty, hungry, and ancient.

​The fog didn’t just appear; it bled.

​A thick, greasy black mist seeped from the floorboards, coiling around the legs of the furniture like a nest of starving vipers. The temperature didn’t just drop; it died. The air turned into a jagged thing, thin and bitter, reeking of wet ash and the sour stench of a tomb that had been pried open.

​Finally. The rot was home.

​Talia’s mask of mockery shattered. Her breath hitched in a sharp, pathetic wheeze, and her fingers buried themselves into the silk sheets, clawing at them as if they could save her. Matthias’s presence was no longer a man’s; it was a gravitational collapse, a suffocating weight that pressed against her lungs, screaming of a void that didn’t just want her dead—it wanted her erased.

But the fear was short-lived, swallowed by the malice that ran through her veins. She let out a dry, mocking rasp of a laugh that cut through the oppressive silence like a jagged blade. “Justice,” she whispered, her voice a foul tremor of terror and triumph.

” god are fair after all. The curse has finally crawled back home.”

​Matthias didn’t argue. At that moment, even hatred felt like a luxury she didn’t deserve. It was sickening to look at her—to see his mother’s face, Eloise’s face, worn like a cheap mask by this creature. But he was trapped. He needed the key.

​”I’m going to be perfectly clear with you, Talia,” he said. His voice wasn’t human anymore; it was a hollow vibration echoing from the gut of the shadows. “I want an answer.”

​”An answer?” she mimicked, tilting her head like a predator. Her eyes were twin mirrors reflecting the black fog swallowing the room.

​”How do I stop it?” Matthias leaned in, the darkness clinging to his frame like a heavy shroud. “How do I kill this curse before it guts everything I have?”

​Talia threw her head back and erupted. It was a harsh, hysterical peal of laughter that sounded like glass grinding in a wound. “Stop it? Are you joking? You want to end a rot that has feasted on your blood for generations, Matthias? You really are out of your mind.”

She leaned in, her eyes narrowing into slits that dripped with a fresh, sharp malice. “Oh… wait. Don’t tell me. You tried to kill her, didn’t you?”

​Matthias went rigid. It was a glitch in his armor—a sudden, violent tightening of the jaw that gave her everything she wanted. In the corners of the room, the shadows didn’t just flicker; they snarled, reacting to the sudden spike of his guilt.

​”I knew it,” she hissed, her voice a foul blend of revulsion and pure, dark ecstasy. “So it’s true. You actually tried to slaughter that little silver-haired fox.”

​”If you don’t shut your mouth,” Matthias growled, the black fog coiling around his own throat like a tightening noose, “I will end you right here, Talia. I won’t hesitate.”

​She shrugged, the indifference on her face chillingly absolute. She sank back into the pillows, unmoved.

“You talk as if I give a damn. Look at me, Matthias. I’m a cripple rotting in a dead woman’s bed. I have no reason left to draw breath. At this point, death would be a promotion.”

​”You…”

​Matthias exhaled, a long, jagged sound—the noise of a man struggling to keep his demons on a short leash. He forced his trembling fingers to slide the ring back into place. He watched, hollowed out, as the darkness was forced back, retreating like a beaten dog into his veins.

“What do you want in return?” he rasped, his voice dropping to a low, lethal edge.

“Name your price. I know you have the key. I know you know how to break it. This rot only feeds on the men of this bloodline… so spill it. How did your father do it? Tell me what I have to do.”

​”A trade, then?” Talia mused, her voice humming with a rhythmic, sickening glee. “Well, actually—”

​The heavy oak door didn’t just open; it slammed against the wall with the crack of a gunshot. Emilia stood in the frame, a silhouette nerves. She was still in her training leathers, sweat and grime clinging to her skin like a second, filthier layer of armor. Since Leila’s wedding, she’d treated this estate like a carcass, refusing to touch anything her brothers had breathed on.

​She charged at Matthias, her boots hammering a violent rhythm onto the floorboards. “Get out! What the hell are you doing in here?”

​Matthias didn’t even blink. He turned his head with a slow, agonizing indifference.

“Watch your mouth, Emilia. This is my palace. I’ll walk wherever I well please.”

He caught the glint of tears in her eyes—pathetic, salt-stained things she was trying to incinerate with rage. Despite the screeching and the venom, the blood tie was still there, a raw, exposed nerve he was grinding his heel into.

“I told you to get out!” she shrieked, her voice splintering. “How dare you crawl in here after what that… that ’viper’ did?”

Matthias didn’t waste another breath. He moved to leave, his shoulder slamming into hers with a force that dismissed her entire existence.

“If you ever use that word for her again,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a razor against her throat, “my patience ends. You want to talk about vipers? The only real snake in this room is the woman who was ready to butcher her own daughter to feed a grudge.”

He stopped at the threshold, casting a final, freezing look back at the bed. Talia was just lying there, watching the wreckage with a twisted, oily satisfaction.

“Remember that, Emilia. Enjoy her company. You two deserve each other.”

Emilia stood frozen. Every word he’d spat was a jagged shard of a truth she’d been refusing to swallow. She looked at the woman in the bed—the creature that looked like her mother—and felt the floor drop away. In a house where everyone was bleeding out, she realized she had no one left to hold the bandages.

“Think about the offer, Talia.”

Talia said nothing. Her eyes were flat, unreadable, reflecting only the gray, dying light of a room that smelled like a wake.

“What offer?” Emilia demanded, her voice vibrating with a frantic, ugly suspicion.

“What the hell is he talking about?”

“Don’t worry, darling,” Talia whispered, that thin, oily smile sliding back onto her face. “Just a little secret between a mother and her son.”

Matthias didn’t stay for the fallout. He strode down the corridors. He reached the doors of his private study, but the heavy, suffocating silence of the estate was already gone, shattered by a familiar, frantic shouting from inside.

He didn’t knock. He shoved the doors open.

Olivia was there, perched in a chair with a regal, maddening composure that made his nerves grate. Her silver hair caught the light of the chandelier, shimmering like cold silk. She was staring down Kyle, who was pacing the floor like a caged, frantic beast, his face flushed with a useless, burning indignation.

“No! Absolutely not!” Kyle roared, his fist slamming onto the heavy desk with a dull thud. “I am not going back to that filthy, godforsaken hellhole!”

Olivia turned her head with agonizing slowness as Matthias stepped in. Her gaze was sharp, clinical—stripping him down to his bones before he’d even closed the door.

“So,” Matthias said, his voice a flat, dead thing. “You’re here.”

“As you can see,” Olivia replied, her tone heavy with a calm, lethal exhaustion. “And I am currently wasting my breath arguing with this fool.”

“She wants me to go back to the Imperial Palace!” Kyle erupted, lunging toward Matthias as if looking for a lifeline. “They literally tried to butcher my daughter, and she expects me to just walk back into their cage?”

“Shut up, Kyle,” Olivia snapped, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.

“Your childish tantrums are pathetic. You aren’t ’protecting’ a soul; you’re just a coward running away from his own name.”

“I am protecting my family!” Kyle snarled, stepping into her personal space, his voice splintering under the weight of his panic. “I will not go back there just to wake up and find that Empress’s hands around Ann’s throat again!”

Matthias watched them—the same pathetic cycle, the same jagged edges of a family that didn’t know whether to bleed for duty or for fear. He crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe, letting the silence stretch until it became a physical weight in the room. Then, he let out a dry, sharp throat-clear.

“What is it, Matthias?” Kyle groaned, his shoulders sagging.

“Shut up, Kyle,” Olivia cut in, her eyes never leaving Matthias’s face. “Let him speak. Tell me, Matthias, do you have a solution for this idiot, or are you just here to watch the show?”

“Go back to the palace,” Matthias said.

Kyle’s mouth flew open to protest, but Matthias raised a hand, his cold, obsidian gaze pinning him to the spot like a specimen.

“Let me finish,” Matthias continued, his voice dropping to a low, lethal hum. “You’re going back because the game just changed. We’ve just received word… the Empress has been dragged out. She’s been exiled to the Western Palace. Every power she clawed for, every privilege she held—stripped. Effective immediately.”

The room went deathly still. The air seemed to leave Kyle’s lungs, even Olivia’s mask of icy indifference cracked, revealing a raw, stunned disbelief beneath.

“What?” they breathed, the word barely a whisper in the sudden vacuum of the room.

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