The tension in the ballroom was thick enough to choke on.

Leo stood with Tempest still raised, black lightning crackling along the blade, his white hair catching the chandelier light. The severed limbs of Marius’s companions lay scattered across the marble floor, blood pooling around them, and Marius himself was crumpled at Leo’s feet — broken, bleeding, barely conscious.

The nobles pressed against the walls, their faces pale, their breaths shallow, their eyes fixed on the white-haired young man who had just turned a duel into a massacre.

The knight’s sword was still pressed against Leo’s blade, holding it in place. The knight who had intervened, the one with the scar across his face, was trembling, his grip faltering under the weight of Leo’s killing intent.

"You have made your point, Leo von Celestial," the Emperor said, his voice quiet but carrying across the silent ballroom. "Lower your sword."

Leo did not lower his sword. He met the Emperor’s gaze without flinching, without a single trace of the deference that was expected of him. His ocean-blue eyes were cold, and there was something in them that made even the Emperor pause.

"Are you sure you want me to do that?" Leo asked, his voice soft. "Isn’t this a duel to the death? Both parties agreed to it. Hell, I wasn’t even the one who proposed it. That fool over there did." He jerked his head toward Marius’s crumpled form. "So why are you interfering now?"

The nobles gasped. No one spoke to the Emperor like that. No one.

But Leo did not stop.

"Did your love for him suddenly awaken?" Leo’s lips curled into a sharp, mocking smile. "Is that it? You let your son manipulate the crowd, you let him give that fool permission to challenge me, and now that things aren’t going your way, you want to step in and play the hero?"

Lucius’s smile had vanished. His face was pale, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

The Emperor’s jaw tightened. "You forget your place, boy."

"I forget nothing." Leo’s voice was flat, cold. "I know exactly where I stand. But the question is, do you?"

The Emperor was silent for a long moment. The weight of his gaze pressed down on Leo, and the nobles held their breath, waiting for the explosion.

Then Aldric sighed.

"I am the Emperor of the Human Domain," he said, his voice quiet but firm. "And even a fool like that belongs to my domain. As their ruler, I care for their lives. That is my duty. That is my burden." He looked down at Marius, then back at Leo. "Spare him."

Leo tilted his head. "And why would I do that?"

"Because I am asking you to." The Emperor paused. "And because I will trade his life for something you want."

A slow, dark smile spread across Leo’s face. It was not a nice smile. It was cold and sharp and full of something that made the nobles shift uncomfortably.

"Anything?" Leo asked, his voice soft, almost gentle.

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed. "Within reason."

Leo raised his hand and pointed across the ballroom, directly at Princess Cordelia, who was standing beside Amelia, her face pale, her eyes wide.

"I want her kiss," Leo said.

The ballroom erupted.

Gasps. Shouts. Whispers that rose into a roar of outrage and disbelief. Cordelia’s face went white, then red. Amelia’s hand tightened on her arm. Lucius’s expression shifted from pale to furious.

The Emperor’s face darkened. "You dare—"

"I dare." Leo’s voice cut through the chaos, cold and sharp. "Wasn’t this whole mess started because of her? That drunken fool over there challenged me because of her. He wanted to play the hero and defend her honor. He wanted to impress her."

He spread his arms wide, his smile widening. "So let it be finished. Last time, I wasn’t able to kiss her. Today, I will."

The Emperor’s aura exploded.

It was not visible, not to the naked eye, but everyone in the ballroom felt it.

A pressure, heavy and suffocating, pressing down on their shoulders, their chests, their lungs. The nobles gasped, some falling to their knees, others clutching at their throats as if the air had been stolen from their lungs.

Leo felt it too. His knees buckled, and his grip on Tempest tightened.

Fuck, he thought, his mind racing. This old bastard is strong. How much pressure is he going to put on me?

The Emperor’s voice was cold, dangerous. "I can mind your insolence, boy. But you need to remember, I am still the Emperor of this nation. I am still a Sovereign. And you are standing in my palace, at my daughter’s birthday celebration, threatening to defile her."

The pressure increased.

Leo’s knees hit the marble floor.

But he did not bow. He did not lower his head. He looked up at the Emperor, his ocean-blue eyes blazing with defiance, blood dripping from his nose and the corners of his lips.

"Kneel," the Emperor commanded.

Leo’s body screamed in protest. His bones ached. His muscles burned. The pressure was crushing, suffocating, and every instinct in his body screamed at him to obey, to submit, to survive.

But he did not.

Fuck this bastard, Leo thought, his vision blurring, his blood dripping onto the marble. How much is he going to push? How much does he expect me to take? 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

He looked up at the Emperor, and despite the pressure, despite the blood, despite the crushing weight of a Sovereign’s aura, he spoke.

"If you get this angry because of what I said about your daughter, because you love your family," Leo said, his voice strained but steady, "then you should understand why I am angry. I also love my family. That bastard dared to put his eyes on my sister. He dared to threaten her. He dared to say he would—"

He paused, his jaw tightening.

"So don’t stand there and act like you have the moral high ground. You don’t. You let your son manipulate this duel. You let that fool challenge me. You expected me to die." His smile was bloody, sharp, defiant. "And now that I didn’t, you want to play the hero?"

The Emperor’s face was red. His hands were shaking with rage.

"The Four Great Houses," Leo continued, his voice growing stronger despite the pressure, "and the Royal Family made an alliance to hold this Empire together. We are bound by that alliance — nothing more."

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed.

"If House Celestial separates from the Empire tomorrow," Leo said, blood dripping from his lips, "no one would stop us. We hold enough power, influence, and resources to become an independent kingdom. And you know that."

The nobles whispered. The Emperor’s jaw tightened.

"You may be my father’s friend. He may follow the rules and bow to you because that’s the man he is. But I am not my father." Leo’s voice was cold, steady. "I am a Celestial. And Celestials would rather die than bow."

He pushed against the pressure — not rising, not yet, but not falling either.

"So stop acting like you are our king. You are not. And you know that if even one of the Great Houses separated from the Empire, your influence would crumble."

Leo’s smile was bloody, sharp, defiant. "And mind you, House Celestial was the first family to vote for your line to become kings. Without us, your lineage is just another noble house with delusions of grandeur."

The Emperor’s face was red. His hands were shaking with rage. The pressure in the room intensified, and more nobles fell to their knees, gasping for air.

"Kneel before your Emperor," Aldric growled.

"...No."

Before the Emperor could respond, a voice cut through the tension, deep, amused, and utterly without fear.

"My, my. What a commotion."

Grand Duke Orion Ashford stepped forward, his steel-red eyes gleaming with amusement. His simple dark coat was unremarkable, but his presence was anything but. He walked past the nobles as if they were furniture, and they parted before him like water.

He stopped between Leo and the Emperor, looking at both of them with an expression that was almost bored.

"Why don’t we stop this?" Orion said, his voice calm. "Surely we don’t want to ruin such a joyous event. It’s a birthday celebration, after all. There’s cake."

No one laughed.

Orion turned to the Emperor, his voice dropping slightly. "Aldric, if you kill him here, you’ll have to bear the wrath of that crazy old man. And you know logic doesn’t apply to his head. If he hears that you tried to kill his only grandson, he’ll find any excuse to declare war and attack."

The Emperor’s eye twitched.

Everyone knew who Orion was talking about — Zephyr von Celestial, the Lightning Sovereign, one of the strongest Sovereigns alive. A madman. A crazy old man who had once punched a mountain because it was in his way.

Orion smiled. "And you know how crazy he is."

The Emperor was silent.

Orion turned to Leo. "Young man, you’ve made your point. Lower your sword."

Leo did not move. "No. I don’t stop until I kill him."

Orion’s eyes narrowed. He looked at Leo, and something flickered across his face. Recognition, maybe. Or amusement.

"You remind me of your grandfather," Orion said. "The same fire. The same stubbornness. The same refusal to back down." He paused. "But unlike him, you don’t have the power to back up your words. Not yet."

Leo’s jaw tightened because he knew that fact. He knew that if he pushed a little more, he would die.

Orion stepped closer, and Leo felt it — not pressure, not aura, but something else. A weight. A presence. The old man’s steel-red eyes seemed to see through him, past the white hair and the cold eyes and the blood on his face, down to something deeper.

"Stand down, young man," Orion said quietly. "Live to fight another day."

Leo stared at him for a long moment. The pressure from the Emperor’s aura was still there, crushing him, but Leo’s defiance had not faded. His body was screaming, his blood was dripping, but his eyes were still cold.

Then, slowly, he lowered Tempest. The black lightning faded, and the blade slid back into its sheath.

The tension in the room eased slightly.

But Leo was not done.

"...I want compensation," Leo said, his voice cold. "For the damage he caused. For the insult to my family."

Orion raised an eyebrow. "Compensation?"

Leo looked at the Emperor, his voice flat. "Yes. I want something from your vault. The Tear of the Drowned King."

The nobles stirred, whispering. The Emperor’s face was unreadable.

"That earring?" Aldric said slowly. "It is worthless. Why would you want that?"

Leo, of course, knew it was worthless to everyone else.

But that was in the game. Here, he needed it. It didn’t have a huge effect, but it was enough for the current him.

The Tear of the Drowned King.

It was a small silver earring with a single dark blue gem, almost black, like the deepest part of the ocean at night. In the game, it was a rare drop from a water-aligned dungeon boss. Most players ignored it because its stats were water resistance and slow mana regeneration.

But he remembered a forum post from years ago.

A player discovered the earring’s hidden effect: it slowly filters emotional spikes through a cooling layer of mana before they reach the core. It does not stop anger, fear, or despair.

It just... slows them down.

The gem was originally a prison for a lesser water spirit that specialized in calming storms — emotional and literal.

The spirit was long dead, but its essence remained, woven into the crystal. When his flames started to rise because of his emotions, the earring would pulse once, send cold against his skin, and the hunger in his chest would hesitate.

Just for a second. But a second was enough.

The earring had two main functions.

First, the passive effect. When his emotions spiked, rage, despair, fear, hunger, the gem pulsed cold against his skin. That cold traveled up to his temple and spread through his mana channels like a wave of calm water. It did not erase the emotion. It just lowered the temperature.

A scream became a whisper. He would feel the flames, but the flames no longer controlled his hands.

Second, the active effect.

When he focused on the gem and pushed his will into it, the earring released a controlled burst of cold mana that wrapped around his core like a second skin. For the next few minutes, his black flames became harder to summon, they required conscious effort instead of instinct.

He could not lose control because control became the only way to use them.

The flames were still there, still hungry, but the earring forced him to reach for them deliberately instead of drowning in them.

But the trade-off was exhaustion.

His mind would feel wrung out, like he had just run a marathon while solving complex math problems. He could not rely on it in every fight.

.ut in moments when he felt the monster waking up, when the voice in his head started whispering about burning the world, he could clamp down on the hunger and stay human a little longer.

The Emperor had it in his vault. His grandmother wore it to quiet her temper during political negotiations. After she died, no one wanted it. It was too plain and weak. Everyone forgot about it.

But he knew what it really was.

"That is my business," Leo said aloud.

The Emperor’s eyes narrowed, but he gestured to a servant. The servant returned with a small velvet box. The Emperor took it, his fingers lingering on the lid.

The cost is exhaustion, Leo thought as he watched. My mind will feel wrung out. I cannot use it in every fight. But when I feel the monster waking up, I can clamp down on the hunger and stay human a little longer.

Aldric opened the box. Inside, resting on black silk, was a small silver earring with a dark blue gem. Almost black. Like the deepest part of the ocean at night.

"You are certain this is what you want?" the Emperor asked.

Leo did not hesitate. "Yes."

I am not asking for power, he thought as the box changed hands. I am asking for a leash for my own demons. My emotions.

He took the earring and fastened it to his left ear. The gem pulsed once, cold against his skin, and the faint, constant hum of the hunger in his chest dimmed.

Finally.

The Emperor leaned back, his expression sour. "It is yours. Now get out before I change my mind."

Leo smiled and nodded. "Good."

Then he turned and walked toward the door. He did not look back.

His boots echoed against the marble floor, and the nobles parted before him like water. The doors swung open, and he stepped through them into the corridor beyond.

The ballroom was silent. No one moved. No one spoke.

Orion watched the doors close and sighed. "...That boy is going to be a problem."