Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 418 - 412: Brace yourself

The teleportation burn did not fade right away.

It clung to Damian’s bones like an old fire, smoldering long after it had lost its light. He stepped onto the scorched marble of Donin’s former central command, now little more than rubble repurposed with the imperial seal. The room had been rebuilt in the way that only war-torn capitals could be: too quickly, too cleanly, and smelling of sanitizer and control.

Ash still clung to the window ledges. The ether in the walls hadn’t yet stabilized, pulsing faintly like a system relearning how to breathe. Outside, the banners of the Agaron resistance had been burned, stitched over with the imperial crest by the second night of occupation. Donin had fallen. Not with a cry, but with a series of quiet cuts, each one bearing the signature of someone who knew exactly where to break a kingdom.

And Damian had waited to come until the shard was gone.

Hadeon had sealed his fate months ago when he reached for something he couldn’t contain, when he ignored the embargoes, and when he clung to ghosts like Olivier and begged them to teach him to rule.

Now all that remained was a body no one dared touch and a report no one dared file.

Damian crossed the room without sound, the hem of his coat brushing soot where the fire hadn’t fully cleared. He stopped at the center, where the last of Hadeon’s ether had scorched a radial crack through the floor like a dead star imploding. The blackened streaks curled outward, too even to be from battle. This was no weapon.

This was possession gone wrong.

His golden eyes flicked once toward the control hub. The consoles were still dead. Fried from the inside out. The engineers had said they’d need to be rebuilt from the core interface wiring up. No residual ether. No backdoor access.

The shard had erased itself.

Damian’s hand flexed at his side, fingertips twitching slightly against the fabric of his glove. He knew what that meant. Gabriel would come back soon.

Gregoris appeared from the shadows that lingered in the corners of the room. His boots were soundless on the scorched stone, but his presence thudded through the space like a storm rolling in after the thunder had already passed. His uniform, usually pristine, was a wreck. Slashed along the hem, soaked through with blood in different shades, some of it dried to brittle flakes across his collar, the rest still wet enough to catch the light like oil.

Damian turned slightly, just enough to meet his second-in-command’s gaze.

"He’s coming back," the Emperor said quietly.

Gregoris nodded once, grimly. "The shard is gone. Olivier’s ether signature evaporated with it. What remains of Hadeon has been catalogued for record. The officers are—" He stopped, jaw twitching as he looked around the ruined command deck. "The ones still breathing are asking if they should prepare for burial rites or memory purge."

Damian didn’t answer immediately. He looked out the window again, toward the deepening dusk over Donin, where imperial flags now stood too tall on a city too broken.

"No rites," he said at last. "He lost the right to remembrance the moment he tried to hand over his soul."

Gregoris exhaled. His hand moved, almost without thinking, brushing blood from his sleeve. "The Council will want answers."

"They’ll get them." Damian’s tone sharpened. "But not today."

Gregoris stepped forward. "And Gabriel?"

A pause.

Then Damian’s voice dropped. Not cold, but too restrained to be anything less than personal. "He’ll wake in the hospital wing. The imperial staff was instructed hours ago."

"You felt the crack."

"I felt everything," Damian said, voice low, almost too steady. He didn’t glance up from the imperial signet ring, its surface faintly glowing under the runes he’d just carved in.

Gregoris stepped forward, boots scuffing quietly against polished stone still streaked from battle. "You’re really putting restraints on it?"

"He didn’t tell anyone," Damian murmured, thumb brushing the edge of the ring. "Not even me. He shattered the shard from within, burned through his ether reserves, and let himself be dragged into that cursed world. With our son barely a month old."

Gregoris let out a short breath, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. "So, the solution is magical handcuffs? Bold parenting."

"It’s protection," Damian said sharply. "He’s still recovering. His body’s healing, and his ether hasn’t stabilized. If he tries something like that again—"

"He won’t," Gregoris interrupted gently, and when Damian looked up, the general shrugged. "Not until the next time he thinks the world depends on him doing something insane."

Damian didn’t deny it. He simply closed his hand over the ring and let it seal with a soft pulse of gold. "The runes stay until I remove them. He’ll hate it. But I won’t let him burn out. Not now. Not when he’s holding more than just his own life in his hands."

Gregoris’s smirk returned, crooked and knowing. "He’ll try to bite you for it."

"Would you let Rafael do something like this?"

Gregoris’s smirk didn’t fade, but something in his eyes shifted, just slightly. A flicker of honesty beneath the sarcasm.

"No," he said, voice lower now. "I’d sedate him, cuff him to the bed, and threaten to shave his head if he even looked at a spellcore."

Damian snorted, the sound more breath than laugh. "So I’m being reasonable."

"You’re being romantic," Gregoris replied dryly. "Which is far more dangerous."

He stepped closer, gaze dropping briefly to the ring in Damian’s hand. The gold runes pulsed once more, quiet and firm, like the heartbeat of something ancient and watching.

"He’ll understand," Gregoris said after a pause. "Eventually. After he screams, throws something, and refuses to speak to you for two days."

"Three," Damian said, a touch of grim amusement curling at his lips. "Last time he was this angry, he quoted law at me in three languages and made Alexandra deliver his insults."

Gregoris gave a low whistle. "Gods help you if he calls in Irina."

Damian slipped the ring into his pocket, a glint of decision hardening in his eyes. "I can’t risk him. Not again. Not with the child barely a month old. I won’t lose either of them, not to Olivier’s rot, not to his own stubbornness."

Gregoris clapped a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Then brace yourself.