I Am The Game's Villain

Chapter 820: Blood Wedding [5]

“Amael, that boy… yes, he certainly left a strange impression on me,” Beatrice said.

“That is far too weak a way to describe it,” Claudia replied sharply. “Since the moment he stepped into Sancta Vedelia, one disaster after another has struck our lands. Not a single House was spared from the trail of chaos that followed him.”

“You are not seriously about to place every bit of blame on him, are you?” Beatrice said with a raised brow. “If I remember correctly, he was there in my city fighting Behemoth alongside everyone else.”

“And my granddaughter died,” Claudia shot back.

“She gave her life for the one she loved. I do not think that part should trouble you so much,” Beatrice replied with a shrug.

Claudia let out a cold scoff. “I think it should trouble you, considering your wretched adopted son was one of the ones plotting all this from the shadows. And because of him, a monster who should have remained dead has returned very much alive.”

Alector’s expression hardened at that.

“It is still difficult to believe,” he muttered.

He didn’t know if he should be relieved or finding himself lucky that he wasn’t there to witness that.

Deborah Dolphis had been resurrected.

“Difficult to believe, yes,” Duncan said, “but it remains the truth. We have to prepare ourselves for whatever attempt she may make to finish what she began two hundred years ago.”

“We must prepare for many things, Duncan,” Alector replied. “And to do that, we need to move forward, strengthen ourselves, and think of Sancta Vedelia as a whole rather than clinging only to the interests of our own kingdoms. Lazarus is dead. You are the only Demigod left in Sancta Vedelia now. With Melfina gone and Beatrice still in this condition, the burden falls on you. You must set the example. You must lead.”

Duncan gave a small nod.

“I know. That was already my intention.”

What had happened with Lazarus Raven, and everything that had followed after, had shaken him far more deeply than he cared to admit. He understood well enough that the coming years would be decisive for Sancta Vedelia. If they wished to preserve their lands and protect what remained, they could no longer afford weakness, division, or complacency.

“It would be a fine beginning,” Beatrice said dryly, “if we first stopped being fools. Choosing Lazarus’s grandson as the Prophetess’s groom was a remarkable height of stupidity.”

“Perhaps,” Alector said, “but let us not forget that the Raven House remains one of the Great Houses of our lands, and that one of their ancestors once saved us from Behemoth and Deborah Dolphis. There was an urgent need to wash away the stain left by Lazarus’s crimes.”

“I agree with that much,” Beatrice replied, “but if that was the goal, would Victor not have been the better choice? He is the Apostle of Nihil, and now we know he also carries Olphean blood. His birth may have been… accidental, but he still possesses the blood of two Great Houses of Sancta Vedelia.”

“Perhaps,” Duncan said, “but that is something to consider only now, after the fact.”

Alector let out a quiet sigh.

“For once, let us at least learn from our mistakes and allow time to pass,” he said. “The poor girl has just lost her grandmother. Let us not start speaking of marriage again for another year or two.”

The others nodded, if only in temporary agreement.

A few minutes later, more important families began to arrive.

The Dolphian royal family came first: King Reiner, his Queen Doria, and their two children, Adrian and Amelia. Standing close beside Amelia was John Tarmias as well.

Reiner briefly acknowledged those already present with a nod, then murmured something to his wife before stepping away from his family and approaching the group alone.

“Reiner,” Duncan called.

“How fortunate,” Beatrice said at once, “that you were so perfectly late that night. Truly, what remarkable luck you do have.”

Reiner turned his gaze toward her with open displeasure.

“I was there in the end, and I helped. That is what matters,” he replied. “You, on the other hand, trapped in that ridiculous little body, were hardly of much use, I imagine.”

Beatrice’s eyes sharpened at once.

“How amusing to hear that from a man who was helpless while his own capital was being attacked,” she retorted. “You bear responsibility for what happened to my city. Or do I need to remind you how pathetically your Horn was stolen, boy?”

“I remember it perfectly well,” Reiner replied with a snort. “And remind me, at that time, who exactly was commanding Behemoth? Ah, yes. That marvelous adopted son of yours. You truly have an excellent eye for children.”

Watching the two of them, Alector, Duncan, and Claudia could only sigh.

Beatrice had always been like this with the younger generations. Even back when she had still stood as a Demigod in her full glory, she had been insufferably arrogant, forever pestering and provoking those who came after her, especially her first son’s generation which included Reiner.

And Reiner, unfortunately, had always been one of her favorite targets.

“I see you have made it official already,” Claudia said at last, shifting the subject as her gaze fell upon John.

Reiner bringing John along with his family and allowing him to remain so close to Amelia could hardly be accidental. He must have known perfectly well how the others would interpret it. In a gathering like this, nothing escaped notice, and certainly not a gesture as bold as that one.

“I have,” Reiner replied with a nod. “As much as that boy irritates me, he has saved my daughter more times than I care to count. He was also there protecting my Kingdom during the Utopian War.”

“He is still a criminal from Celesta,” Beatrice said with a faintly mischievous smile. “Does that not trouble you?”

Reiner hardly seemed moved.

“I made my decision based on what I have seen from him with my own eyes over this past year,” he said. “I do not particularly care what Celesta has labeled him as. And unless my memory fails me, I do not recall him murdering anyone there either. He was simply sent here alongside that other boy.”

“And that alone should already say enough,” Claudia replied coldly. “I only hope you will not come to regret it later. He was close to that evil boy, the one who wore Alea’s son’s face and deceived everyone.”

Reiner gave a short laugh, though there was little amusement in it.

“I have to admire your dedication to hating him,” he said. “You opposed his coming to Sancta Vedelia from the very beginning, and now that he is dead, you are still exhausting yourself over him.”

“I am reflecting on my own mistakes,” Claudia shot back. “The Prophecy changed when he arrived, and I thought perhaps he would change with it. I was foolish enough to believe that. Until the very end I warned him to leave, and only now do I understand why he refused every single time. He already knew what was coming. He knew what waited for him at the end, and he accepted it willingly. He helped cause the deaths of thousands without hesitation, and then he died himself. Tell me, do any of you truly feel pity for that boy? Kleines did the right thing. My only resentment is that he did not do it sooner. We might have spared ourselves a great many deaths.”

“Now you are defending Kleines?” Beatrice retorted at once. “I will never trust a man who faked his own death and then attacked his own wife at Edenis Raphiel.”

“Truthfully, I agree with Beatrice on that point,” Reiner said.

Alector, however, frowned slightly.

“It is more complicated than that,” he said. “It was Waylen Falkrona who took his Kleines’s body away. What happened after that remains unclear, and then, years later, he returned alive and real.”

“That old man did something,” Reiner said darkly. “That much is obvious. But he certainly has no intention of explaining how he managed to bring his son back into the living world.”

“The Falkrona House has always been secretive,” Alector replied. “Private to an absurd degree. They are one of the Sovereign Houses. You cannot expect them to cooperate easily, let alone reveal compromising truths about their own bloodline. Even Kleines himself said very little about how he managed to return alive.”

“Then perhaps he should begin by telling us what exactly he was doing all this time,” Beatrice said, folding her arms. “He was working with that corrupted organization, kidnapping and torturing children, including your own granddaughter, Alector.”

At that, Alector’s expression darkened at once.

“Yes,” he said after a brief pause. “But from what little I have heard, he claims he was never truly working for them. Only cooperating with them to get his son back. Otherwise, he finds their practices just as revolting as we do.”

“What I find revolting,” Beatrice replied coldly, “is faking your death, abandoning your wife and children to grief, and then returning years later only to abduct your own wife.”

Duncan let out a tired breath and shook his head.

“That… is something only he will be able to answer for.”

“At the very least,” Claudia added with little softness in her voice, “he did one good thing for us by getting rid of that boy cursed by the Gods.”

“Let us not insult the dead on a day of mourning.”

The voice that cut through their exchange belonged to Namys, who had just arrived with Aerinwyn, Dentiel, and Cylien.

There was a visible sadness on her face, one deeper than simple ceremonial grief.

“We have all lost too much,” she said quietly. “And among the dead is Melfina. This is not a day for quarreling and insults.”

At that, an awkward silence fell over them.

She was right, of course.

This was meant to be a day of mourning.

But the anger and bitterness that had built up over the course of the last year were hardly things that could simply be buried beneath white clothing and solemn expressions. Too much had happened. Too much had been lost. Every family standing in that hall carried wounds of its own, and none of those wounds had begun to heal.

Beatrice had nearly lost both her son and her granddaughter, while her grandson was now rotting in prison after trying to kill them.

Reiner had watched his own son reduced to a state of near-homage, and had come close to losing his granddaughter as well, after she had been used in what appeared to be part of Behemoth’s resurrection.

And Duncan and Claudia had already lost one precious granddaughter, while nearly losing the other.

The truth was that none of the great families had emerged untouched.

Some had lost children.

Some had lost heirs.

Some had lost whatever remained of their peace.

So even here, in a hall built for grief and remembrance, mourning could not remain pure for long.

***

“Rodolf.”

The moment Cylien saw him, she rushed straight toward him.

Rodolf did not hesitate either. Without caring in the slightest about the gazes around them, he opened his arms and held her tightly.

“You okay…?” Rodolf asked quietly.

Cylien shook her head against him.

“No…”

Her voice was small, and she clung to him harder.

Rodolf pulled back just enough to look at her, his own face dark with grief and pain.

“Damn it… this is really fucked up.”

“Why…” Cylien’s eyes glistened as she struggled to keep herself together. “Why is it always Nyr? He’s already lost so much…”

“Yeah,” Rodolf muttered bitterly, his fists tightening at his sides. “And this time because of his own father, on top of everything else. Damn it… I still can’t believe he’s really gone. That bastard…”

He was having as much trouble accepting it as Cylien was.

Maybe it was because the three of them had already escaped death once before. Maybe some foolish part of them had started believing that Nyr would always come back somehow, that he would slip through death’s fingers one more time just as impossibly as before.

But this time it felt different.

This time it felt real.

“I thought…” Cylien began, but her voice broke. Tears spilled from her eyes before she could stop them. “I thought everyone would reunite here…”

Rodolf immediately pulled her back into his arms and rested a hand against her back, patting her gently.

“Come on…”

A moment later Amelia joined them, wrapping her arms tightly around Cylien as well.

It truly was a dreadful day.

And the worst part of it was that they had been there to witness the horror with their own eyes. That memory would not leave them. It would remain with them long after the ceremony, long after the crowd dispersed, long after the mourning clothes were put away.

“How is he doing?” Cylien asked after a moment, meaning John.

Amelia glanced briefly toward him.

John stood apart from the others, isolated in his grief, as though the world around him had become something distant and muffled. Amelia let out a soft sigh before answering.

“Not well. Amael… I mean, he left John a letter. Since then, he’s been even worse. Upset, angry… exactly how you’d expect.”

“A letter?” Rodolf groaned. “That guy could’ve at least sent us one too.”

“No…” Cylien said softly, shaking her head. “I think it was better this way.”

Rodolf turned to her, frowning.

“What? Seriously?”

Cylien nodded, her gaze lingering on John’s devastated expression.

Was leaving a letter really a kindness in the end?

She did not know.

But she understood why Amael had done it.

After their last conversations, she had understood more than he probably realized. He had carried guilt over their deaths on Earth more deeply than he ever admitted. He blamed himself for dragging them into all of it, simply because he had been the Avatar of Wrath. That guilt had shaped everything afterward. It was why he had kept them such distance from the events of the Games, even after discovering who they really were, his old friends, reborn in another world. Rather than drawing them closer, he had tried to keep them away from the mess surrounding him.

After losing each other once, after dying on Earth and then somehow finding one another again in another world and in other forms, he had not wanted to destroy that miracle and that new life Yanis and Marlene obtained.

And remembering his last conversations with her, remembering the way he had smiled and said he was just happy they were together again, that they should simply enjoy the lives they had been given, made her chest ache so much she could hardly breathe.

Her eyes filled again.

“C—Cylien…” Amelia called, startled when she saw her breaking down once more, and quickly tightened her embrace around her.

Rodolf looked at the two of them and gritted his teeth, the pain in his own eyes growing harder to hide.

He had known it.

Deep down, he had known he was keeping things from them. He had seen it in the way he spoke, in the things he avoided, in how much more he seemed willing to share with John than with the rest of them. And Rodolf would be lying if he said he had wanted to be dragged into that cursed story any more than he already had been.

But Nyr was still his friend.

Of course he would have helped him.

Of course he would have stepped in if things became truly bad, especially when, sooner or later, the whole world would have been affected, including all of them.

The thought only made the bitterness rise higher in his chest.

Unable to bear it any longer, Rodolf turned and quietly walked away, a painful tightness lodged in his throat.

“Second chance, my ass…” He muttered bitterly as he left. “Damn it.”