Chương 292: 61. Severed Ties 3

I'd been waiting for this part from the start. Because as long as a person is still trying to justify themselves, you know some small part of them is still running the calculation: maybe I can survive this. But the moment they abandon argument for insults—the moment they turn to personal attacks and start cutting into the people standing beside you—that means they've already given up on dying with any dignity at all. And if that's how it is, I don't need to save any dignity for him either.

Boris had clearly decided that since the pot was already cracked, he might as well smash it to pieces. He piled on immediately, and whatever sourness he'd been sitting on for years came pouring out all at once, like someone had just kicked the lid off a sewer grate.

"Isn't that the truth."

"A piece of trash who got thrown out of the house, surviving on nothing but blind luck, comes crawling back and actually thinks he's the Marquis of the Border now?"

"And that female thief of yours—" His gaze cut sideways, sweeping directly over Jessi, his smile turning ugly.

"Who knows what gutter you dragged that wild woman out of. Probably keeping you so thoroughly bewitched with that body and a bit of fox-charm that you can't tell north from south anymore." Jessi blinked, caught off guard for a moment. Then the expression on her face completed a very deliberate journey—from I'm mildly entertained to Oh. Alright then. You've decided you've lived long enough today. She crossed her arms a little tighter, and smiled. It was a brilliantly radiant smile.

Radiant the way a freshly honed kitchen knife looks right before it starts turning a fish into sashimi.

"My, my," she said, unhurried.

"Here I was assuming the young masters of House Rosa at least understood the basics of noble etiquette. Turns out your tongues have been dragging somewhere beneath the sewer line this whole time."

"As for me bewitching him with my body..." She tilted her head toward me and scoffed.

"If I were actually running that particular con, this man would've been sold off for drinking money years ago. You certainly wouldn't be standing here right now, getting a front-row seat to your family's decomposition documentary." Alvira had been silent the entire time. Until Rosalind finally spoke. She didn't lose control the way her brothers had. If anything, she went colder—a deliberately cultivated, superior sort of chill.

"You really haven't changed at all."

"What you bring home is either strays of unknown origin, or things that can't even verify their own bloodline." When her gaze landed on Alvira, the contempt and disgust in it were barely concealed.

"Since when does House Rosa's reception hall permit a non-human to stand here and listen in on family matters?" Tap. That wasn't the sound of a slap. It was the base of Alvira's staff meeting the floor. Not hard. But the temperature in the entire hall seemed to drop by several degrees in that single instant. She was always cold.

But the cold radiating from her now was like the surface of a frozen lake on a winter night—no noise, no drama, but one glance told you: take one more step forward, and there's nothing beneath you but dead water. Alvira raised her eyes. Her voice came out so flat it was almost hollow.

"Say that again." Something flickered, almost imperceptibly, across Rosalind's expression. She probably hadn't expected Alvira's reaction to skip past humiliation entirely and go straight to calmly assessing how to process you as raw material. Boris, apparently deciding the room wasn't lively enough yet, laughed.

"What, this thing actually understands human speech?" Right. At this point, even I wanted to applaud. Achieving this level of stupidity took genuine commitment. Not every noble could manage it. I was about to speak when Alvira raised her staff a fraction. The motion was small. The light gathering at its tip was not. Jessi actually took half a step back, wearing an expression that said, quite plainly: I'm not stopping this. Whoever wants to die first, be my guest. It was at this point that Olivia finally spoke.

Her voice wasn't loud. It was ice-cold.

"The manners of House Rosa are truly... illuminating." Both Chris and Boris glanced at her, on pure reflex. The name Eisenberg still carried weight. They were willing to take shots at me, at Jessi, at Alvira—but they didn't quite dare point their knives directly at Olivia von Eisenberg. So, quite naturally, all that venom curved back around toward me.

"You're only good for hiding behind women," Chris sneered.

"Leaning on the Eisenberg name, leaning on this collection of who-knows-whats—""Enough." I spoke. Not loudly. But the light at the tip of Alvira's staff went still. Jessi stopped smiling. The entire reception hall felt as though my one word had closed a fist around its throat. I glanced at Alvira first.

"Not yet." She held my gaze, that cold light still hovering at her staff's tip. Two breaths passed before she slowly let it dim.

"... I'm giving you this one."

"Appreciated." Only then did I turn back to face the three of them. The fire that had been burning in my chest had, at this exact moment, gone completely still. That was strange, honestly. I'd assumed that if I ever actually heard them take it this far, I'd lose it entirely—flip the table, put a boot in someone's chest and drive them to their knees before I even thought about what came next. But I didn't. I just felt very clear.

Clear the way you feel when the last puzzle piece finally shows you exactly where it belongs. I understood, then, that the thing I'd been carrying in my chest this whole time hadn't been hesitation. It had been the last thread of refusal. Refusal to accept that things had truly rotted this far. Refusal to accept that I'd have to personally walk people who shared my surname to their own executions.

Refusal to accept that coming back to this place meant finding, instead of anything from the old days, nothing but these faces—faces willing to bite even the people trying to save them, the moment it was convenient. And now, they'd gone ahead and severed that last thread for me. Convenient. Saves me the trouble. I turned slowly toward Ignicia. She hadn't said a single word this whole time. She'd simply stood there. Boris had gone after Jessi. Rosalind had stabbed at Alvira.

Chris had circled Olivia, too cautious to touch her, and redirected everything at me. But when it came to Ignicia, all three of them had, with remarkable unanimity, chosen complete silence. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. I couldn't help it. I laughed. A real laugh—hard enough that even Jessi turned to look at me, probably wondering whether I'd finally snapped. I looked at the three of them.

"What happened?" I asked, still smiling.

"Weren't you all so eloquent a moment ago?"

"You had plenty to say to Jessi. Plenty to say to Alvira. You didn't dare touch Olivia, so you swung it back around to me instead. Quite the performance." I tilted my chin toward Ignicia, standing at my right rear.

"Go on, then."

"What about her?"

"You were on such a roll. Why the silence now?" The reception hall dropped into a very particular kind of stillness. Chris's face twitched. Boris's mouth moved—and then didn't. Rosalind simply committed to total silence. The whole scene was almost comedic. Thirty seconds ago, the three of them had been snapping like rabid dogs at anything within reach. Now, the moment Ignicia's name entered the conversation, they'd gone quieter than a monastery at midnight. Jessi finally lost the battle and burst out laughing.

"Yeah, go on," she said, arms crossed, positively glowing with schadenfreude.

"You were all so brave a minute ago." Ignicia herself only lifted an eyebrow slightly, without shifting her posture at all. But the sheer pressure radiating off her—the unspoken you had better actually say something—was enough to press a layer of frost into the carpet. Watching the scene in front of me, the last thread of hesitation inside me finally snapped clean. Enough. Truly enough. Not because of what they'd said about me. Honestly, I'd heard variations of it my entire life. Trash. Useless. A charity case.

A lost cause. Someone who couldn't survive a week outside the family. Words like that had long since become like winter wind to me—cold, yes, but stay out in it long enough and you simply learn to tuck your chin down and keep walking. But now, they'd gone after the people who had walked all this way with me. Biting the ones who'd saved my life. The ones who'd climbed the wall beside me. The ones who'd held the line for me.

People who were, by any honest measure, far more human than these three had ever managed to be. That wasn't anger talking anymore. That was their nature. And it was their verdict. I turned slowly to face the massive portrait above the fireplace. Akros Rosa, Marquis of the Border, still stared straight ahead—as if looking at this hall, and as if looking at me. I stared at the painting, silent for a few breaths, before I spoke.

"You really have dragged the Rosa name through every last inch of the mud." No shouting. No fist on the table. I just said it, flat. And that flatness was colder than any interrogation I'd run all morning.

"You abandoned the outer line. You abandoned the border troops. You doctored the ledgers. You passed the blame around like a hot coal."

"And even now, you still can't resist using the people I brought back with me as stepping stones for your own mouths."

"Wonderful." I turned back to face Chris, Boris, and Rosalind, letting each word drop separately.

"I had actually considered it. If even one of you could admit it—could kneel, could say, like an actual human being, 'Yes, I was wrong'—then maybe I could have let you die a little more cleanly." I paused.

"Looking at this now, that won't be necessary." Their expressions finally, genuinely changed. Boris most of all. It was probably only in this exact moment that he understood: I hadn't come back to argue with them. I'd come back to decide how they would die. Too late now. I raised my hand and pointed.

"Chris Rosa."

"Boris Rosa."

"Rosalind Rosa."

"Along with Albert Grayson, Marcus Fiedler, and Jurgen Hart—" I looked at all of them and let the words fall, one at a time.

"All of you are to be taken into custody."

"Separate cells."

"No collusion. No visits. No messages passed between you."

"From this moment on, everyone receives only the bare minimum of food and medical care. Anyone caught carrying so much as a single word on their behalf will be charged as an accomplice." The Yinglong Guard moved instantly. Chris finally dropped the firstborn act and stepped forward.

"Cedric—you wouldn't dare—""I would." I cut him off cleanly.

"Not only would I. Today, I'm already being generous." Boris had gone bone-white, as if he'd only just remembered that begging might actually work better than defiance—but his throat worked uselessly, and nothing came out. Rosalind simply closed her eyes. When she opened them again, that immaculate composure had finally cracked—one single, hairline fracture. Just one. She still didn't beg. Backbone? Maybe. Just the kind that shows up far too late, and picks exactly the wrong moment to matter.

As the Yinglong Guard led them out, one after another, the reception hall finally fell quiet. Not a peaceful quiet—the specific stillness that settles over a room right after a storm has torn through it, leaving wreckage everywhere, and yet nothing moves at all. I stood where I was and didn't move either. Not until the last set of footsteps faded beyond the door did Jessi finally let out a slow breath.

"Wow." She stared at the doorway, her voice, for once, missing its usual bounce.

"That family dinner turned out even harder to stomach than I expected."

"You actually had expectations for a banquet at House Rosa's reception hall?" I replied, exhaustion bleeding into my voice.

"Your standards for life might be dangerously low."

"I at least thought there'd be wine first."

"Unfortunately, today's menu was confessions only." Jessi's mouth twitched, caught somewhere between a laugh and something that didn't quite make it there. Alvira set her staff back against the floor. The chill from earlier hadn't fully dissipated. She glanced at me.

"If you hadn't stopped me, I'd have frozen the loudest mouth first."

"I know."

"You stopped me because you wanted to handle it yourself?"

"No." I rubbed my temples.

"Because I didn't want this hall's records to include an entry reading 'non-human loses control, injures someone on the premises.' Today's already chaotic enough." Alvira was quiet for two breaths before answering, simply:"At least you're still thinking clearly." Olivia stood on the far side of the long table, one hand still resting on the ledgers. She looked at me, her voice lower than usual.

"You did the right thing." At a moment like this, that kind of statement doesn't really comfort anyone. Because I already knew I'd done the right thing. The problem was never whether it was right. The problem was that right could still feel this disgusting. I glanced at her.

"If you follow that up with 'but there's still a great deal left to do,' I might feel compelled to send this whole table into custody along with the rest of them." Olivia went quiet for a beat. Then, very rarely, the corner of her mouth moved.

"Then I'll save that for another day."... Genuinely touching. The nobility were finally learning to read a room. Ignicia, who hadn't moved this entire time, finally took a step closer. She didn't ask whether I was all right. She didn't say anything like "you did well today"—the kind of phrase that would have given me chills for entirely the wrong reason. She simply stopped beside me, glanced once at the portrait above the fireplace, then looked back at me.

"Still standing?"

"Theoretically."

"Theoretically?"

"Meaning my legs haven't given out, my brain's still turning over, and my soul has formally filed a request for sick leave." Jessi let out an actual snort of laughter this time. Alvira exhaled quietly too, as if whatever she'd been holding down had finally found somewhere to go. Ignicia didn't laugh. She only said, flatly:"Then that's enough." Very her. No warmth to speak of. But sufficient. We stood in the reception hall a while longer, none of us in a hurry to fill the silence.

The tension from earlier seemed to have used up every bit of oxygen in the room, leaving behind nothing but the specific, hollow fatigue that settles in afterward—spreading slowly beneath the firelight, across the carpet, along the length of the table, under the old portrait. Eventually, Olivia was the one who moved first, gathering up the ledgers.

"I'll have copies made, and add another layer of security to the holding cells."

"Mm."

"Will you be reviewing this batch tonight?" I looked at the stack and felt my eyes petition for a formal divorce from all of it.

"Not tonight. If I keep reading, I'll start seeing the character for 'execute' written between every line." Jessi jumped in immediately.

"Wouldn't really change anything. That's pretty much today's theme already."

"Close your mouth."

"Yes, sir, Supreme Commander." She said close, but her expression made it clear she had at least two more jabs loaded and ready. Even she, though, seemed to sense that the exhaustion sitting on me right now wasn't the kind banter could fix. So she settled for a shrug and followed Alvira out. Olivia left with the ledgers shortly after. Ignicia gave me one last look.

"Don't stay too long."

"Is that concern I'm hearing?"

"It's a reminder. We still have things to deal with tomorrow."

"Your version of concern truly contains zero excess moisture."

"You already knew that." With that, she turned and left as well. Her crimson hair caught the firelight once before vanishing beyond the door. Once everyone had gone, the reception hall finally held only me. And the hearth. And the portrait. I stood there for a long while without moving. Everything I'd been holding down all day began, slowly, to rise—not an explosion, more like silt that had settled too long at the bottom of still water, finally drifting loose now that no one was left to see it.

I walked up to the fireplace and looked up at Akros Rosa, Marquis of the Border. The old man's portrait was still enormous. Large enough that, as a child, I'd always been convinced that if I did anything wrong anywhere in this hall, he could see it straight from inside the frame. I stared at him for a long time before speaking, quietly.

"You saw that, didn't you." The moment the words left my mouth, even I found them a little absurd. It was just a painting. The man had been dead for years. And yet, standing here now, some part of me still wanted, instinctively, to ask him—You saw that, right? You saw what your children did to this house, to that wall, to this name. I let out a small, dry laugh.

"You always used to say that anyone carrying the name Rosa should stand as if they were standing on the wall itself."

"Well. Look how that turned out."

"Some hide indoors, running the numbers. Some trade the lives outside the wall for the fire burning inside. And some, even while cursing everyone in reach, have nothing left standing firm except their own mouths." I set my hand against the stone ledge of the mantel and let out a slow breath.

"I thought I'd come back angrier than this."

"I thought I'd spend my time calculating old debts, figuring out how to make them swallow everything I'd been forced to swallow, teaching them exactly what it tastes like to be ground into the mud." The firelight jumped once along the edge of the frame. I watched that familiar, headache-inducing face, and let my voice drop further.

"But that's not what this is."

"I just feel... tired." The moment I said it, something in my chest gave a small, quiet tug. Right. Not satisfaction. Not the heat of overdue vengeance finally served. Not the relief people talk about after settling an old score. Just tired. The kind of tired you feel after carrying a sack you already knew was full of rot, hauling it a very long way, finally reaching the place it came from, opening it—and finding the inside worse than you'd imagined. Fouler. More hollowed out.

Crawling with more than you wanted to count. And worse still—the name written on that sack is your own. I closed my eyes.

"I don't want to kill them." I finally said it to the painting. Not to Ignicia. Not to Olivia. Not to anyone living. To this dead man.

"I genuinely don't."

"But I stood here today. I listened to them talk. I watched them go through those ledgers. And even at the very end, all they could do was bite at everyone around them, step on everyone beneath them, use the lives of the people outside this wall as stepping stones for their own comfort..." I opened my eyes and looked at the eyes in the portrait—eyes that would never move again.

"... And I knew. There's no other road left." A log cracked, sharp and small, inside the hearth. Like something had finally burned all the way down to its core. I smiled, faintly.

"If you were still alive, you'd probably call me useless first."

"Too slow to finally hold the blade straight. Took me this long."

"You might also call me too soft—soft enough to still want to leave a shred of dignity for trash like this." I paused, and the faint smile faded.

"But you're not here."

"So this ugly work still falls to me." The reception hall was very quiet. Only the fire. Only my own breathing. And the portrait, continuing on in its usual way—watching everything, saying nothing at all. I stood in front of the fireplace for a long time—long enough that the numbness in my feet finally sharpened into something distinct—before I finally stepped back.

"All right, then." I said it quietly, to the painting.

"Keep watching."

"Watch what your children made of the name Rosa."

"And watch me. See if I can clean up even a little of this mess, in the end." Then I turned and walked out of the reception hall. When the doors closed behind me, I didn't look back.