Chapter 826: Last Valheim Standing
Finally, Lucius turned down a corridor that led outside to the front of the estate. Darius frowned, confused.
"Where are we going? I thought we were going to the back garden or something? Not—"
Lucius didn’t answer. He just kept walking.
"Come along, Lord Darius. Not only is my Young Master waiting, but your family is waiting as well."
"You should hurry, if only for their sake."
That got Darius’s attention. He grabbed Lucius’s arm or tried to. The butler shifted slightly, and Darius’s hand closed on empty air.
"My family? You know where they are? Tell me! TELL ME WHERE THEY ARE!"
Lucius stopped walking. Slowly, with an almost theatrical grace, he turned to face Darius.
His expression was pleasant, but there was something dark in his eyes, something that made Darius take an involuntary step back.
"What do you mean, ’where are they,’ my lord?"
Lucius said, his voice soft.
"Your family is right before you. They’re hanging around the tree over there."
Darius blinked. "What? What do you mean?"
He looked at the tree again, scanning the ground for any sign of his family to see if they were having breakfast below the tree like they always did.
But there was nothing. Just empty grass and the strange hanging scarecrows.
"I don’t see them anywhere!" He said, his voice growing frantic. "Are you playing tricks on me?! Where is my family?!"
Lucius chuckled, a low, insidious sound that raised the hairs on Darius’s arms and finally said with mischief,
"No, my lord. I don’t mean they’re ’hanging’ around the tree like they’re relaxing. I’m telling you..."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"...they’re literally ’hanging’ on the tree over there.’
"Huh...?" Darius felt a horrible, cold sensation wash over him.
Seeing that he was still confused, Lucius excitedly pointed at the massive tree.
"Look, Lord Darius. Look right above you!"
"You can see your family looking straight back at you from where they’re hanging!"
Darius’s entire body went rigid. His back became drenched in cold sweat. His face drained of all color, becoming as pale as a ghost.
’No.’ He thought desperately. ’No, no, no. H-He’s joking. He has to be joking! This is some kind of sick prank!’
But when he looked at Lucius’s face, he saw nothing but dark anticipation—the expression of someone eagerly awaiting another’s reaction.
So, slowly, so slowly that it felt like an eternity, Darius turned his head.
And...his world shattered.
From a distance, the things hanging from the branches had looked like strange decorations, maybe scarecrows.
But up close, with his attention fully focused, the truth was undeniable.
They were people!
Hundreds of people!
Each one hanging from a thick noose tied around their necks, their bodies swaying gently in the morning breeze.
Their necks were bruised and blue from the strangulation, their faces frozen in expressions of unbearable agony.
But they hadn’t just been hung.
Their eyes had been violently gouged out!
Where their eyes should have been, there were only raw, hollow, bloody sockets that dripped crimson tears down their pale, dead cheeks.
Their bodies had also been completely stripped of all clothing, exposed to the elements in ultimate humiliation.
But worst of all...
....their lower abdomens had been sliced completely open from pelvis to sternum.
Their internal organs—their kidneys, livers, and stomachs had been torn out, leaving their abdominal cavities hollowed out like carved pumpkins.
Their long, gray-pink intestines had been pulled out and left to dangle.
Darius could see the intestines reaching all the way to the ground, swaying gently in the breeze.
Some of them were so long that they pooled on the grass beneath.
And Darius recognized every single face.
His mother was there, her slender body stripped naked and hanging without dignity. Her tongue was protruding from her mouth, swollen and purple.
Her empty eye sockets seemed to stare at nothing.
Beside her, his father. Alistair Valheim.
The patriarch, the man who had taught Darius that power was everything, that mercy was weakness.
His body looked even larger in death, his gut split open like a ripe fruit.
His and Genevieve’s intestines touched at the bottom, a grotesque parody of the hand-holding of lovers.
And it wasn’t just his parents.
Aunt Lydia. Uncle Marcus. Aunt Maribelle. Uncle Theron. All hanging. All mutilated. All staring with empty sockets.
His siblings. Tiffany, her perfect ringlets now matted with blood.
Damien, his arrogant sneer replaced by the slack jaw of death.
Setadia, Tally, Asmith—all the brothers and sisters, cousins, second cousins, distant relatives he barely knew but who shared the Valheim blood.
And the children. The little ones. Some as young as three or four, their small bodies subjected to the same mutilation.
Their intestines were shorter, but no less horrifying as they dangled like obscene party streamers.
At the very center of the tree, on the thickest branch, hung his grandmother.
Veronica Valheim. The matriarch. The woman whose word was law, whose approval Darius had spent his life seeking.
She hung like a broken puppet, her withered body exposed to the world, her dignity stripped as completely as her clothes.
Her guts formed the longest rope of all, reaching almost to the roots of the tree.
And the position of her body was such that her head was tilted, the empty sockets pointed directly at where Darius stood.
It was as if, even in death, she was watching him. Judging him.
Look at what you’ve done!
Look at what your arrogance has brought upon us!
This is your fault!
Darius’s mind shattered into a million pieces.
He collapsed to his knees, unable to process what he was seeing.
"...ah....ahhh...haaan....ah-hhh...."
The smell of rotting flesh and spilled viscera filled his nostrils, making him gag. He could taste the death in the air.
His entire family. His entire bloodline.
Everyone he had ever known, ever loved, ever taken for granted—they were all gone!
Wiped out in a single night!
And he knew exactly who had done it.
Lucius approached him, a look of mild irritation on his face.
"Lord Darius? Hello? Can you answer me?"
He waved a gloved hand in front of Darius’s face. No response.
Lucius sighed.
"Come on, get up already. My Young Master is waiting!" He pouted slightly. "If I make him wait, he’ll get quite upset, and I won’t get the head pats I always get."
He gave Darius a none-too-gentle kick in the ribs. Then another. Still no response.
Finally, Lucius sighed in resignation.
"Fine. I’ll help you up. But you’re making this very difficult, you know."
He maneuvered himself behind Darius, wrapping his arms around the larger man’s torso. With a grunt of effort, he hauled Darius to his feet.
The Valheim heir stood, but he was a puppet with cut strings—limbs loose, head lolling, eyes vacant.
Lucius made a face of distaste.
"Ugh. You’re getting drool on my gloves."
He pulled a fresh pair of white gloves from his pocket, put them on, then grabbed Darius by the sleeve, careful not to touch his skin.
"Come along. We don’t have all day."
He began to drag Darius through the garden underneath the tree, while Darius moved like a sleepwalker.
As they stepped right underneath the corpses, the smell hit them!
It was a thick, sweet, cloying stench—the smell of death, of opened bowels, of blood baking in the sun.
It was layered with the sharper scent of urine and the coppery tang of fresh blood. Flies buzzed in a deafening cloud, their drone filling the air.
Darius didn’t react. He was beyond reaction.
Lucius led him toward the trunk of the tree, picking his way carefully to avoid the intestines that trailed across the ground like obscene roots.
But Darius, in his catatonic state, couldn’t even move to avoid the grisly remains.
Slush! Splash! Gush!
The guts of his relatives brushed against his face, his hands, his clothes.
Sometimes it was his aunt who had taught him to dance at his first ball.
Sometimes it was his uncle who had taught him to ride a horse.
One particularly long coil brushed against his face—cool, slippery, smelling of decay.
It was his brother’s. Zachary, the second son, the one who had been better at everything, the one Darius had both admired and hated.
Now his guts were smeared across Darius’s cheek.
Still, Darius didn’t react.
But it wasn’t just family members that hung there.
Maids hung there—women who had willingly participated in the family’s cruelties, who had looked the other way when children were hurt.
Beatrice, the head maid, also hung naked, along with Kevin, their wrinkled bodies a testament to a lifetime of service to evil.
Officials also hung there—bureaucrats who had smoothed over the Valheims’ crimes, judges who had dismissed cases, tax collectors who had extorted peasants on the family’s behalf.
And Viktor—the soldier who had offered his spear to Genevieve yesterday so the children could finish off the dying girl hung with the rest.
His enthusiasm for cruelty was gone, replaced by the slack emptiness of death.
The entire Valheim empire, built on centuries of blood, arrogance, and sadistic torment, had been utterly and completely erased in a single night.
And at the center of this blood-soaked theater, sitting calmly at a small, elegant white table set with a porcelain tea set, was Cassius.
He looked completely relaxed, one leg crossed over the other, a cup of tea held delicately in his hands like a man enjoying a pleasant morning in his garden.
"Ah, Darius." Cassius said, his voice smooth and welcoming. "So glad you could join me. I was beginning to think you’d never come down."
"But really...it’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?"
He gestured at the hundreds of bodies hanging from the tree,
"The birds are singing. The sun is shining. And I finally got a good night’s sleep for the first time in days."
He took a sip of his tea.
"Oh, and look at that." He added, pointing up at the tree. "Your family is here as well. They’re all hanging around, waiting to say hello."
He smiled.
"So tell me, Darius. How does it feel to be the last Valheim standing?"
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