Ascension Of The Villain-Chapter 293: Justice That Was Denied

The room was dimly lit, the ground littered with strange symbols drawn in chalk, now smudged and soaked in red. And at the center... was a body.

Twisted. Mangled. Wrong.

Limbs at unnatural angles. The jaw was broken open—too wide—locked in a scream that hadn't been heard. One eye was missing. The chest was torn, not cut, as if something had exploded from within. Bones jutted through where flesh should've held them back. Blood pooled beneath, staining the stone floor dark and thick like syrup. It wasn't just death—it was desecration.

Two figures stood over it.

The first—Emperor Edgar, scowling, blood specks drying on his jaw. "What the hell did they even bring us? Is that pathetic thing supposed to be a mage?"

The other—a cloaked figure, crouched and inspecting the corpse. A hand pressed against the ruined chest cavity. "I was told it's a mage intern. He was probably poorly trained and hadn't learn to stabilize his own mana core."

Edgar clicked his tongue. "These low-tier mages are useless. They break before we get any proper results. And this one? He didn't even make it past the first day."

"A pity," the cloaked one replied. It was a woman—her voice sharp, sarcastic. "You need someone with endurance. Like... an S-tier. One of those could last you a year."

Edgar scoffed. "And how the hell do you expect to capture and bend them to our wills? To begin with, there are only a handful of them."

A chuckle. "With my abilities, nothing's impossible. But undoubtedly, it'd be better to get someone younger. Young people are vulnerable and easy to mold. All we need is the right young vessel like that—someone with dense mana and good control of it."

She stopped mid-sentence.

Then—

"Wait." Her head turned, her jade-green eyes narrowing. "Who's there—?"

Her jade eyes stared directly at the door.

Her face, once hidden, was now perfectly clear. Blood was splattered across her cheeks. Her lips twisted into a snarl.

But she was too late.

The memory flinched—jerked—ripped backward as Xandres bolted, the vision dissolving into panic and darkness.

The globe flickered violently and turned off, vanishing into Vyan's palm.

Silence.

You could hear the collective intake of breath across the hall. Even the distant crowd outside in the capital plaza—visible through Clyde's projection—had gone silent.

"To think that even our empress was in on it too," someone muttered with disappointment.

That's right.

The woman who was conspiring such despicable things with the emperor was his own wife.

Jade.

Vyan looked up at the sea of shocked faces and said, "There. That is your revered emperor and empress. The man and woman you praised, feared, and followed." His voice turned ice-cold. "Your emperor is a phony. Always has been. A coward who leeches off the strength of others because he can't even muster a simple telekinesis without help."

His gaze swept the grand hall with quiet fury. "You doubted Her Imperial Majesty, Althea, because she didn't inherit his so-called purification magic?" He gave a derisive laugh. "Well, how would she inherit it when her father has nothing to pass on? It was a miracle that Prince Easton got it somehow. But at least Her Imperial Majesty has power that's hers. She doesn't need to enslave souls to stand tall and heal injured souls."

Althea met his eyes and he could see that she was looking at him with gratitude for taking a stand for her biggest insecurity. It has always eaten away at her for not being born with the ability to do purification magic, even though she was the firstborn child. She was always blamed for being the first to break the cycle of purification magic, especially because Easton, who was born after her, was blessed with it and none of the other siblings got it.

Vyan's voice dropped to a solemn whisper, heard by every soul in that room and every citizen watching outside. "Now the truth is out. And I'm sure that you all realize by now that the man who was supposed to be your leader and protector had never once thought of you as more than a speck of dust. All of us—every person in Haynes—were insignificant to him."

The globe had vanished, but the echoes of its truth still rang through the air like a tolling bell. There was no covering this up. No palace wall was thick enough, no golden curtain heavy enough to hide what had been revealed under the clear, unrelenting light of justice.

The emperor's legacy lay bare for all to see.

Then the silence shattered.

"What—what in the Goddess's name did we just see?!"

"No… no, that can't be real!"

"They… they used one of us? A child?! That was a child!"

"That… that was my… my son."

"How could they?!"

Dozens of voices rose at once, swelling like an angry tide. Nobles leapt to their feet, their faces contorted with disbelief, horror, and betrayal. The murmurs became an uproar, the grand marble hall echoing with cries of outrage.

"They fed our children—our people—to fuel their power?"

"I saw the magic circles! Dark symbols, etched into the walls like some cursed ritual chamber—"

"That was witchcraft. There's no other word for it. The Empress… must be a witch."

"Witch or not, what she did is unforgivable! Her and that wretched tyrant deserve the worst death sentence imaginable!"

"Yes, yes! Burn them at the stake!"

"No! Drag them to the guillotine, in public! Let the people see that justice is not just spoken of, but delivered!"

"They should be stoned before that. They don't deserve such a quick death."

"Yes, they should be publicly humiliated and tortured before granting them mercy with death!"

"Exactly. They are monsters, no better than the beasts they once claimed to protect us from!"

"How could we have been so blind?! How did we not see it? All those missing mages, those families that never got answers—"

"Your Imperial Majesty!" cried the noblewoman whose son's mangled body was just shown in Xandres's memory. She turned toward the throne where Althea sat with stony silence, her fingers clenched on the armrests. "Give them the punishment they deserve! I demand justice!"

Another nobleman stepped forward, his voice trembling not with fear, but fury. "We trusted the imperial family to protect us, not sacrifice us! We will not accept silence. Not anymore!"

The anger in the hall was rising like a storm—raw, crackling, devastating.

And through it all, Vyan stood quiet at first.

But then he stepped forward, the firelight catching in his wine-red eyes. He faced Althea—no longer just his ally, but now the Empress of a broken and corrupted nation.

With a voice steady but thick with pain, he spoke.

"I, too, demand justice, Your Imperial Majesty."

The hall fell eerily quiet again.

He continued, every syllable a wound reopened. "For what was done to my family. For my parents, who were falsely accused and executed like criminals. For my brother, who was locked away and tortured for sixteen years. For the name of Ashstone, dragged through mud and mockery. For me, the collateral damage. I want justice."

He bowed his head—not as a noble, not as the Grand Duke—but as a son, a brother, and a victim.

And as the room echoed with their raw words, all eyes turned to Althea.

Their Empress.

Their last hope for reckoning.

Before Althea could rise to speak—before justice could be handed down—a sharp, chilling laugh pierced through the hall like a blade.

It came from her.

Jade.

The former Empress had been kneeling beside the emperor, two knights' blades pressed coldly against the pale skin of her neck. Her dark hair, once pristine, now hung in tangled strands over her face. But what shook the room wasn't her appearance.

It was her expression.

Her lips curled into a deranged grin, her jade-green eyes wide—blazing, unhinged. For as long as they had known her, Empress Jade had been the picture of elegant tyranny: calm, cold, calculating. But now... now she looked alive. Too alive. Like a mastermind whose mask was off—and who liked it better that way.

A sick thrill radiated off her in waves.

"You all…" she breathed, then let out another laugh, louder this time. "You fickle-minded traitors."

Gasps rippled through the chamber as the knights surrounding her and Edgar were flung back with a sickening thud, their armor scraping against marble as an invisible force pinned them to the far wall.

Jade rose slowly to her feet. Shadows curled around her like loyal pets—inky tendrils of pure malevolence. Her aura twisted, no longer something human. No longer something imperial. It was darkness, coiled and old, rising from the pit of a soul long corrupted.

Her voice echoed, distorted, layered with something that sounded too ancient to be mortal.

"You really believe you can turn on us? After everything we did for you? The security. The power. The stability. We built this empire to be stronger!"

She stepped forward.

"And just because of him—" her hand snapped toward Vyan, trembling with rage, "—just because that brat showed you a glimpse of a distorted truth—you dare cross us?"

Her laugh this time was jagged and cruel. ƒrēewebnoѵёl.cσm

"You think he's powerful? You think he's worthy? You think he will protect you? Well, let me burst your bubbles, even if he wanted to, he can't protect anybody," she spat, her voice now venom. "I'll show you who holds the reins. That brat is nothing compared to me. I can make him dance to my will—like a puppet."

Then it happened.

A vortex of swirling black energy shot from her outstretched hand, slicing through the air like a whip. Before anyone could react, the dark force struck Vyan square in the chest.

His body convulsed, and he dropped to his knees.