Chapter 930: The Consequences of your Idiotic Actions.
The first sound was not an explosion.
It was a crack.
A single deep crack, coming from the castle’s magical foundations, as if the structure itself had understood that it no longer had permission to remain whole. Aelyra heard it from the floor, still surrounded by Albedo and Lithara, her body battered, her breathing uneven, and her dignity reduced to something too small to be recognized. For an instant, she thought it was only another barrier yielding before the external pressure.
Then the ceiling disappeared.
The entire upper section of the castle was torn away.
Not slowly destroyed.
Not broken by catapults, spells, or siege.
Torn away.
Towers, roofs, walkways, battlements, upper columns, ancient stained glass, and defensive runes were lifted all at once by an invisible and crushing force. The stone groaned like rotten wood before splitting into colossal blocks, hurled away by the impact of the aura descending from the skies. The throne hall, which until then had been an enclosed space of high walls, chandeliers, maritime tapestries, and blue stained glass, became a ruin open to the storm.
The rain entered immediately.
So did the wind.
And above the destroyed hall, the sky was full of dragons.
Aelyra slowly raised her face.
And went completely white.
First, there was him.
The black dragon.
Catastrophically large.
His silhouette covered an absurd portion of the sky, eclipsing clouds, towers, and even the irregular light of the lightning. The colossal body hovered above the castle like a living night, with dark scales reflecting white and golden tones along some edges, while his eyes shone with a coldness so intense they seemed to look directly into the soul of everything below. He was much larger than the palace. Much larger than any fortress Aelyra had ever commanded. Distance itself seemed incapable of diminishing his scale.
But he was not alone.
Behind him, a pink dragon cut through the clouds with elegant wings and a dense, beautiful, dangerous aura, like a storm masked in silk. Farther to the side, a white dragon wreathed in lightning advanced with electricity dancing over its scales, illuminating the sky in violent flashes. Two red dragons came soon after, both different in shape and intensity, one carrying flaming brutality and the other a more controlled pressure, almost military.
There was also a bluish ice dragon, whose wings left frozen crystals suspended in the air wherever it passed. A white-gold dragon with green markings moved with a strange majesty, ancient and silent, as if each beat of its wings displaced not only wind, but entire eras. A black dragon with red wings hovered lower, bringing a dark ferocity that made the castle stones vibrate. Beside them, there was a golden dragon half the size of Strax, still large enough to reduce armies to shadows, and a straw-colored dragon, pale and dry like old fields beneath a summer sun, but whose aura was as sharp as a blade buried in cracked earth.
Ten dragons.
Strax.
Beatrice.
Monica.
Samira.
Scarlett.
Cassandra.
Daniela.
Bellatrix.
Tiamat.
Ouroboros.
Ten living calamities hovering above what remained of Aelyra’s castle.
The Monarch of Stormy Tides forgot how to breathe.
Only then did she truly understand what she had provoked.
Not a man.
Not a leader.
Not a city.
She had provoked a family of monsters.
And that family had descended in full upon her territory.
The dragons began to fall from the skies.
One by one, they dove toward the open hall, but as they descended, their bodies shrank. Scales withdrew, wings contracted, tails disappeared, horns gave way to hair, and the colossal figures transformed into human forms before touching the destroyed floor. The descent was not violent. It was controlled. Elegant. Terrible. As if the destruction of the ceiling had been only a courtesy so they could enter without having to look for the door.
Strax landed first.
Aelyra froze when she saw him.
When she had met him in the Imperial Palace, he had been mocking, irritating, far too confident, and possessed of a mischievous gaze that seemed to laugh at everyone around him before he even opened his mouth. There had been sarcasm in his gestures, disregard in his posture, and a natural provocation in the way he smiled. Even when he humiliated her, even when he crushed her authority before everyone, there had still been something chaotic and almost amused in him.
Not now.
Now he looked like an enraged deity trying to pretend he still possessed human form.
His eyes were cold.
They did not shine with explosive rage.
They held no amusement.
Only a silent and completely lethal decision.
His body was rigid, as if every muscle existed only to prevent something much worse from escaping. His white hair was disheveled by the wind and the transformation, falling messily over his face. His expression was so devoid of mercy that Aelyra felt her own body tremble before he even said a word.
Behind him, the others assumed their human forms with the same naturalness. Beatrice landed elegantly, observing everything with cold eyes. Samira rolled her shoulders as if expecting a fight that might already have ended. Scarlett smiled without joy. Cassandra evaluated the broken runes. Daniela remained silent, but her aura was heavy. Bellatrix seemed far too satisfied with the destruction around them. Tiamat stared at Aelyra like someone looking at meat on a table. Ouroboros merely watched, still, ancient, and indecipherable.
Albedo and Lithara, who were already there, immediately seemed prouder than they had any right to be.
The first to speak was Monica.
She walked toward Aelyra with calm steps, her eyes moving over the fallen Monarch’s condition. There were marks of combat, blood, dust, splashes of water, and an expression of fury mixed with fear. Even so, by the standards of what could have happened in the hands of two irritated succubi, Aelyra was relatively whole.
"Oh," Monica said, tilting her head slightly. "They did not hit her much. How considerate."
Albedo smiled as if she had received a medal.
Lithara placed one hand over her chest and gave a small theatrical bow.
"We did our best to follow the master’s instructions."
"It was difficult," Albedo added. "She moved too much."
Aelyra tried to push her body backward, but Monica was already in front of her.
The administrator of Asgard crouched with an almost irritating calm and held Aelyra’s chin between her fingers, forcing her to raise her face. There was no great force in the gesture at first. Only control. A dry, cold authority completely devoid of theatricality.
Aelyra stared into Monica’s eyes.
There was still hatred there.
So much hatred.
There was also fear.
But her pride was still trying to survive, like a flame trembling in the middle of a storm.
Monica observed that for a few seconds.
"What an aggressive look."
Aelyra tried to answer.
She could not.
Monica slammed her face into the floor.
The impact was brutal.
The stone beneath Aelyra’s head broke in a circle, opening a wide crater around her. The sound echoed through the destroyed hall with dry violence, and cracks spread across the rain-soaked floor. Aelyra let out a muffled sound of pain, her entire body trembling as part of the sea mana around her immediately failed.
Monica released her hair.
Then she stood.
She cleaned her hands with an expression of disgust, as if she had touched something too filthy to deserve prolonged contact. Any ordinary maid would have shown more emotion while dusting an old piece of furniture.
Albedo and Lithara exchanged glances.
Both looked extremely satisfied.
Monica turned to Strax.
"What are we going to do with her?"
The question fell over the hall like a blade.
Aelyra tried to raise her head.
She only partially succeeded.
Her face was dirty with blood, dust, and rainwater, but her eyes turned toward Strax with growing terror. For the first time, she seemed to understand that nothing in that place depended on her anymore. Not her troops. Not her titles. Not her castle. Not the Emperor. Not the sea. Everything had been reduced to silence before the will of the dragon she had decided to provoke.
Strax raised one hand.
Black Ice flowed from his fingers.
Not like an explosion.
Like chains.
They were born from the air, the ground, and the shadows at the same time, spreading in dark lines that moved like serpents around Aelyra. The Monarch of Stormy Tides widened her eyes and tried to roll away, but the chains were faster. They bound her wrists, ankles, arms, waist, neck, and even the mana around her body.
Aelyra screamed.
Her aura reacted immediately, trying to break the restraints with sea pressure. Water surged from the cracks in the floor, forming blades, spirals, and liquid claws, but the Black Ice touched all of it and erased the shape of the magic as if it froze not the water, but the intention behind it.
"Release me!"
Her voice came out desperate.
No one moved.
Kali, who was watching the scene a little farther back, smiled.
It was a simple smile.
Direct.
Extremely satisfied.
In the next instant, she disappeared.
Aelyra sensed the presence only when Kali appeared before her, already with her fist pulled back. There was no speech. No threat. No warning. The bronze-skinned woman simply punched her stomach with enough force to tear all the air from the Monarch’s lungs.
The impact folded Aelyra’s body against the chains.
Her eyes widened.
Her mouth opened without sound.
For an instant, she nearly fainted.
Nearly.
Kali held her chin before her head could fall.
"Do not sleep yet."
The resistance ended quickly.
Too quickly for someone who called herself a Monarch.
But perhaps it was inevitable. Aelyra was not facing an enemy. She was surrounded by creatures who, in that moment, treated her as something less than a tactical problem. Every attempt to gather mana was crushed by Strax’s chains. Every impulse of movement was blocked before it began. Every spark of pride was corroded by the presence of the ten dragons around her.
Strax slowly walked up to her.
The chains opened space for him to approach, but they did not loosen. On the contrary, they tightened a little more when he stopped before Aelyra.
She tried to raise her eyes.
She succeeded.
And regretted it immediately.
His gaze had no haste.
That was the worst part.
Strax did not look like someone about to kill her in a burst of rage. He looked like someone who had carefully decided that death was not enough. And before that, her fear became deeper than any wound.
He sighed.
The sound was low.
Tired.
Almost disappointed.
"You are not going to die today."
Aelyra should have felt relief.
She did not.
Because no fragment of his voice carried mercy.
Strax tilted his head slightly.
"You will have a fate worse than death."
The rain continued falling over the open hall, washing away part of the blood, dust, and debris. Above them, the sky remained dark, full of the trails left behind by ten dragons who had descended to collect a single debt.
Aelyra tried to speak.
She could not.
Strax turned to Monica, without fully taking his eyes off the prisoner.
"Prepare transport."
Monica nodded.
"To Asgard?"
"No."
The women around him fell silent.
Strax looked at Aelyra one last time before continuing.
"So everyone can see."
The Monarch of Stormy Tides felt her blood freeze.
Strax then walked away, leaving her bound in black chains, fallen on the floor of her own destroyed castle, surrounded by beings who no longer saw her as a queen, an enemy, or an equal.
Only as a consequence.
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