The Primeval Era-Chapter 155: Who Decided?! I

<The Law of the Ratel: On Vengeance Unending>

When an enemy has spilled the blood of your kin, there is only one response the Lands of Stone will respect.

You must butcher them worse than they did your people.

This is not cruelty nor savagery. This is the musing of survival carved into every stone and written in every dried bloodstain across this ancient world. If they killed ten of yours, you kill one hundred of theirs. If they burned your village, you erase their lineage from memory. If they touched your family, you ensure their family watches before joining them in the earth.

The Ratel understands this truth.

That small beast of black and white, whose body seems too compact for the fury it contains, has never once in all the ages of the Lands of Stone allowed an offense to go unanswered. When serpents strike at its young, it hunts the serpent’s entire nest. When larger predators wound it, it follows their scent for days, for weeks, for however long vengeance requires. It does not forgive. It does not forget. It does not stop.

The great cats have learned to avoid it. The serpents flee at its approach. Even beasts ten times its size will abandon kills rather than face that relentless fury.

Because the Ratel knows what soft-hearted fools refuse to accept. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Forgiveness in the Lands of Stone is not virtue. It is invitation. It tells your enemies that the cost of harming you is nothing, that your kin’s blood can be spilled without consequence, that you are prey wearing the mask of predator.

When you meet an enemy that has killed your kin, smash them into the Lands of Stone until nothing remains. Grind their bones into the soil. Let their screams echo so far that others hear and remember. Make the earth drink so deeply of their blood that the stain persists for generations.

Then, and only then, walk away.

Not because you are satisfied. Satisfaction is not the purpose.

Walk away because there is nothing left to destroy.

---

Damian gazed upon Sir Alex and the entire army stretched out behind him.

He stood alone before thousands.

One figure wrapped in simple Dross garments facing ranks of crimson-armored Warriors mounted on beasts bred for slaughter. One young man whose cultivation should have made him insignificant confronting Vessel Completion Imperators and Seventh Circle monsters and a Half-Step Eighth Circle predator whose power pressed against the very air.

He observed all of them without any sense of fear.

His eyes moved across the assembled forces with calm assessment. The Velociraptors with their crimson-runed flesh. The Warriors atop them with their gleaming armor. The Imperators floating nearby with hands near weapons. Sir Alex upon the ground before him, those star-filled pupils still processing what they were seeing.

Damian looked at that shocked and arrogant expression.

He saw the recognition settling into features that had probably smiled while his family burned.

And he felt his rage building even more.

Why?

The question screamed inside his mind with fury that made his clouds darken overhead.

Why did this fucker and all others like him get to live while his father and mother were killed? Why did traitors breathe air and eat food and enjoy the pleasures of existence while Emperor and Empress Vakochev lay cold in unmarked graves? Why did the murderers prosper while the innocent rotted?

He looked at Sir Alex, truly looked at him, and he did not see anything so supremely special.

Yes, the man’s cultivation was immense. Yes, his Physique radiated power that would make lesser beings tremble. Yes, he commanded armies and held authority and wielded influence that spanned territories.

But he was still just a man.

A man who had knelt before Damian’s father and sworn oaths of eternal loyalty. A man who had broken those oaths for profit or ambition or whatever pathetic motivation drove snakes to betray those who trusted them. A man whose existence was an insult to the memories of everyone who had died during the empire’s fall.

Sir Alex and others who betrayed his father now lived in the Lands of Stone while his family forever had their eyes closed.

Who decided this?

Who wrote the laws saying that traitors should thrive while the loyal perished? Who established the order declaring that murderers could walk freely while their victims turned to dust? Who permitted this fundamental injustice to stand unchallenged across eight years of hiding and surviving and pretending to be something less than what he was?

The rage on him was palpable.

His fists clenched at his sides, knuckles whitening beneath skin that seemed to glow with contained fury. The grass around his feet bent away from him as if sensing pressure that would crush anything too close. The air grew thick with Mana responding to emotions he barely contained.

But his face remained cold.

His posture remained imperial.

He looked at Captain Alex with an imperious gaze that belonged to thrones and council chambers, to audiences with supplicants and judgments upon the unworthy. He remembered all the lessons his Ama, his mother, had given him on how a Ruler should stand and act and observe.

Keep your spine straight, little flame. Let them see mountains in your bearing.

Never let anger touch your face until you are ready to let it touch your blade.

Observe before you speak. Let silence do the work that words cannot.

He saw how the gaze of Captain Alex changed.

Shock gave way to incredulity. Incredulity shifted into caution. Those star-filled pupils began scanning the garden around them, searching the vegetation and the distant trees and the clouds above as if expecting something else to emerge. The traitor was looking for threats. He was looking for whoever must be protecting this impossible prince who should have died eight years ago.

The Physique Awakening and Vessel Completion Warriors around him also looked at Damian with expressions ranging from confusion to dawning recognition. Some of them had served in the Vakochev Empire. Some of them remembered the Young Lugal whose face had been known throughout the realm. Others were picking up context clues from the conversation, exchanging glances with their peers as if seeking confirmation that they were understanding correctly.

A heavy silence fell across the garden.

Even the Velociraptors seemed to sense something significant occurring, their crimson-hazed eyes fixed on the confrontation playing out before them.

Sir Alex looked at Damian with calculation poorly concealed behind careful words.

"Young Lugal."

His voice emerged measured, controlled, false.

"It has been more than eight summers since you disappeared. Since that disastrous day filled with calamity."

A smile crossed those eerily beautiful features, warmth that touched nothing beyond the surface.

"Lugal Vakochev, this old man is supremely happy to see you!"

...!