Supreme Hunter of Beautiful Souls-Chapter 216: The Elf Queen, Ashamed

Kael stood silently for a moment before the Queen, still kneeling, pale and wounded. His golden eyes, though dimmed by pain, retained a stubborn gleam of authority—or perhaps wounded pride.

The dust of destruction still hung in the air, thick and heavy as smoke from an ancient sacrifice. Shards of the ancestral seal crackled around them like dying embers. Exelia and Liora watched in silence, their weapons lowered but their eyes tense and ready.

Kael crouched slowly, his movements careful, as if he did not want to frighten her. He reached out one hand and touched her face lightly. It was a surprisingly tender gesture, coming from someone who had just struck down an entire caste of war mages with pure disdain.

His eyes scanned the Queen's body—the veins throbbing in her temples, the subtle tremor in her fingers, the imperceptible stiffness in her legs. He didn't need to ask. But he did anyway.

"You can't walk, can you?"

She hesitated, pride battling reality. For a moment, Kael thought she would lie. But finally, she shook her head, a gesture as minimal as it was humiliating for someone like her.

Without another word, he lifted her into his arms.

It was a fluid, natural movement—but for Aelirenne, it was like a stab to her dignity. Her shoulders tensed, her face lost even more color, and her hands, trembling, reflexively tried to push him away. Not with force—just enough to show that she still had some will to resist.

"Stop..." she whispered, almost inaudibly, her voice choked with shame. "Don't do this..."

"You'll hurt yourself more if you resist," Kael replied firmly but without harshness.

She looked away. Her fingers clenched tightly against the fabric of his tunic, and her breathing quickened not from pain but from humiliation.

Aelirenne was the Queen of the Elves, mistress of a proud and severe people. Never in her entire life had she been carried—let alone by an outsider, especially an unknown and chaotic man who proclaimed himself the next Witch King.

"This is unworthy..." she muttered through clenched teeth.

Kael did not respond. He simply walked on, his steps firm and sure.

The two high elves kneeling in the background watched everything with wide eyes, but neither dared even to cough. They knew that something had changed—profoundly, irrevocably. The balance of power in the world had taken a step toward the abyss.

And now, Aelirenne, even though she was ashamed, could do nothing but accept it.

Kael turned slowly, as if each step he took reorganized the forces of the world around him.

Across the hall, the Queen's royal guards lay scattered like pieces in a brutal game. Some knelt, others were bound by arcane shackles against the bloodstained marble walls. Their weapons—guard swords, ancestral spears, shields bearing the royal crest—lay on the floor or floated overhead, trapped in magical containment fields.

Despite this, none of them had truly surrendered. Even bleeding, even without weapons, their eyes were steady. They did not beg. They did not scream. They simply waited—like bent blades, waiting for the right heat to become unbreakable.

Kael watched in silence for a brief moment. The Queen's face still rested against his shoulder, her body light and trembling. Aelirenne said nothing, but he could feel the tension in her muscles — she hated this fragility, hated being carried, but also... knew she couldn't stop it.

Kael snapped the fingers of his free hand.

The sound was sharp. Clear. Final.

As if obeying an order far older than their own will, the royal guards' weapons trembled. First just a whisper of metal scraping against stone... then a subtle roar, a magical hum growing like a tribal call.

Swords leapt from the ground. Shields snapped, breaking the runes that held them in place. Spears, ceremonial daggers, broken bows—all began to float, spinning in the air as if dancing around an invisible gravitational center.

Kael raised his hand slightly and twirled his fingers like a conductor summoning the final symphony.

The weapons flew, shooting like comets of metal and light toward their owners. None missed. Each found its hand, its owner, its purpose. A soft, unmistakable thud—the sound of swords being wielded firmly, of shields rising once more with honor.

Kael spoke, and his voice rang across the room like a decree carved in stone.

"Protect the Queen. Kill anyone who dares to touch her."

For a moment, time seemed to hold its breath.

The guards rose slowly, some still unsteady, but with a renewed flame burning in their eyes. They had lost a battle—but not the cause. And now, the very force they had sworn to protect had returned to guide them.

But the tension was not over yet.

One of the surviving high elves—ceremonial robes torn, blood trickling from a wound on his forehead—stepped forward. His face, though stained with dust and wounded arrogance, still bore the ancestral pride of millennia.

"Who... who do you think you are to give orders in this place?" he spat, his voice sharp, trembling more with anger than fear. "Put the Queen down. Now."

He raised his spear. Straight. Deadly. Pointed directly at Kael's chest.

The hall fell into an abysmal silence.

Kael did not react immediately. He just stared at the elf—and then closed his eyes.

For a second, it seemed like he was just taking a deep breath.

But the world changed.

The air around him vibrated, as if reality itself was bending in response to his contained anger. A subtle wind rose, even though there were no open windows. The torches on the walls flickered. The shadows shifted direction.

Kael opened his eyes.

And every weapon in the room—every single one—began to vibrate.

Not just the guards' weapons.

The swords of the dead priests, the daggers of the conjurers, the broken spears of the traitors... even the metal banners that decorated the corners of the hall—everything with a point, a blade, a edge—were torn from the floor as if summoned by an ancient god.

And then they rose.

In a second, the inner sky of the hall was filled with gleaming metal. The weapons spun slowly, orbiting Kael in impossible patterns, like moons dancing around a core of pure intent. Silver swords, golden spears, fragments of solidified mana—all floated around him as if the universe had chosen a new center.

He smiled.

But it was not a human smile. It was something colder. Something... eternal.

Kael tilted his face slightly toward the elf, the Queen still in his arms.

"Are you trying to die, man?" His voice was low. Almost lazy.

But each word was a blade embedded in flesh.

"Because I am..." he took a step forward, and all the weapons turned with him, following his movement, "the fucking next Witch King."

The elf froze.

The tip of his spear, which had been steady a moment ago, now trembled.

Kael continued to stare at him, his eyes fixed, as if looking through him — as if he had already decided the end of that story. The weapons around them whispered. Some spun faster. Others were already beginning to tilt their tips toward the elf's chest.

Exelia held back a laugh. Liora, on the other hand, just crossed her arms, her eyes wide.

"He warned you," she murmured.

The elf finally took a step back. But it was too late. The weapons stopped spinning.

And all at once, they pointed at him.

Kael gave one last warning, his voice firm as molten steel: freeweɓnovel-cøm

"If you raise that spear again... there won't even be bones left to bury."

The elf lowered his weapon.

Slowly. Humiliatingly.

Kael nodded, satisfied, and turned, still holding the Queen in his arms.

Kael walked silently, the weight of the Queen in his arms seemingly requiring no effort. Each step echoed through the devastated hall, as if the floor itself were paying attention. Aelirenne said nothing. But her gaze, despite the pain and shame, did not abandon the haughtiness of one born to command — even now, carried by a stranger, wounded, before her subjects.

The path to the throne was short. But every meter traveled seemed to widen an invisible chasm between what the kingdom had been... and what it was about to become.

The royal guards instinctively made way. None of them dared to stop him. None even thought to question him.

Aelirenne's throne, raised by three steps carved from obsidian and covered with enchanted silver leaves, stood ahead like a sacred relic. A wounded relic. Its back was chipped from explosions, and pieces of the ceremonial tapestry still smoldered with greenish embers.

Kael climbed the steps slowly. And then, with a gentleness almost impossible to reconcile with everything he had shown so far, he settled her into the throne.

He didn't drop her. He didn't throw her. He placed her.

As if placing something fragile—not out of weakness, but out of respect.

Aelirenne's fingers clenched tightly on the arms of the throne, and she took a deep breath as she felt her body sink into the backrest. There was shame there, yes. But there was also relief. A relief she would never admit—and which Kael, politely, did not comment on either.

He took a step back, his eyes fixed on her.

Aelirenne tried to compose herself. She straightened her back with effort, despite the pain. She adjusted her posture. It was clear how much it cost her to maintain her dignity intact.

Kael crossed his arms, still standing before her, and said in a low but clear voice:

"Don't push yourself too hard. Your magic is depleted, and your body... is nearly broken. You will need time."

The Queen lifted her face. Her golden eyes met his—now not in defiance, but in a kind of silent recognition. She took a deep breath, as if about to reply... but did not.

"I am the Queen of the Elves," she murmured, more to herself than to him.

"And I never said otherwise," Kael replied, without irony. "But even the stars need silence before they can shine again."

The words hung in the air for a moment. Exelia, in the background, exchanged a glance with Liora. Neither dared to interrupt.

Aelirenne rested her hand on the back of the throne, as if anchoring herself in the present.

"You shouldn't be here," she said finally, her voice firmer but without its usual rigidity. "Not in my kingdom. Not in my history."

Kael tilted his head slightly, a half-smile appearing on his lips.

"And yet... here I am."

For a moment, only the crackling of embers in the corners of the hall filled the silence.

"Why did you save me?" she asked softly, her eyes asking not for compassion, "only truth."

Kael watched her for a moment, and when he replied, his voice was surprisingly honest:

"Because someone has to break this fucking cycle. And it looks like it's me."

Visit freewe𝑏nove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺 for the 𝑏est n𝘰vel reading experience