Chapter 828: It’s All Your Fault
Darius knew that Cassius had completely missed the point of his question, but he didn’t have the strength to correct him.
"The truth is, I originally came here with the intention of tearing every single family member into pieces."
Cassius leaned forward, his expression becoming thoughtful.
"I thought it would be really funny when you woke up to see all your family members organs scattered here and there, their heads and legs in separate pieces."
He looked to his butler for validation. "Don’t you think so, Lucius?"
"Oh, absolutely, Young Master!" Lucius chimed in merrily from the side. "He would have been shocked completely out of his wits. He likely would have soiled his trousers on the spot."
"Exactly!" Cassius laughed, turning back to Darius. "But then...as I rode up to your estate, I noticed that massive, magnificent tree standing right out here in the front."
"And it immediately triggered a wave of nostalgia. It reminded me of a tree from my past called a banyan tree. Your tree looks remarkably like it, just on a slightly smaller scale."
"But there was one glaring flaw, Darius."
Cassius’s expression suddenly soured into a disappointed pout, and he leaned back in his chair, narrowing his eyes.
"A proper banyan tree has beautiful, long vines cascading down from its branches. This tree above us..."
He pointed a finger up toward the canopy.
" ...didn’t have any vines at all. And honestly? It disappointed me. I felt robbed of my nostalgia. It just looked so empty."
A dark, cruel smile twisted Cassius’s face.
"So, I struck upon a brilliant alternative. I realized I could simply manufacture my own vines. And those vines, of course..."
Cassius locked his eyes onto Darius’s with sadistic anticipation.
" ...would be your family."
A violent jolt of pure horror shot through Darius’s paralyzed frame.
Cassius chuckled, clearly enjoying the reaction.
"With that plan in mind, I went into your household, specifically the party you were having. At first, every single member of the family was shocked by my appearance."
"They started shouting at me, calling for the guards, trying to have me thrown out."
"But those faces completely changed when I started grabbing onto each individual family member and breaking their arms and legs."
"It was surprisingly satisfying." He chuckled cruelly. "The crunching sounds were quite...musical."
Hearing this, Darius’s eyes slowly tracked upward toward the floating corpses.
Only now did he notice the unnatural, jagged protrusions beneath the clothing of his kin—shattered bone structures pressing violently against, and in some cases piercing directly through, the blood-soaked flesh.
The realization hit him like a splash of cold water.
His family hadn’t just died; they had been subjected to agonizing, systematic crippling before their execution.
Cassius continued, taking a casual sip of his tea.
"They screamed and cried, but that didn’t stop me. They ran all over the place, trying to escape, but we hunted them down one by one."
"It was quite a sight, wasn’t it, Lucius?"
"It was magnificent, Young Master." Lucius agreed, a look of sadistic euphoria in his eyes as he took a deep breath of the bloody air.
"These were the great, untouchable Valheims! The high nobles who ruled over vast populations, the bloodline that even the imperial ministers in the capital feared to cross."
"To see them all reduced to cowering, broken beasts, weeping in the dirt and begging my young master for their lives, treating him like an absolute deity...hehe. It was a delicious sight."
Darius began to tremble violently, a cold sweat breaking out across his skin as the sheer sadism of the two men washed over him.
"After breaking the bones of every man, woman, and child present." Cassius went on. " I rounded them up right under this very tree. They were entirely piled up in the dirt, weeping, bleeding, pleading for me to let them go."
"But then, as I looked down at them, I noticed something that deeply offended me."
Cassius’s eyes narrowed, a flash of genuine disgust crossing his face.
"Even in that pathetic state, the arrogance in their eyes remained. Those disgusting, genetic purple eyes of the Valheim house."
"Even while begging, they looked at me with deep-seated resentment, a filthy sense of inherent superiority that seemed baked right into their bones."
Cassius chuckled, joined instantly by Lucius’s giggles.
"So...we decided to remove those eyes entirely."
Darius’s dizziness increased.
"Both Lucius and I took turns." Cassius gestured toward Lucius. "He went after some of them and I went after the other half. We slowly plucked every single one using spoons from your kitchens."
"Lucius here did a really good job!" He patted Lucious’s back. "He literally only took a couple of seconds to pull out each eye before moving on to the next. He was like a professional at play."
Lucius smiled modestly. "You flatter me, young master. It’s not that big of a deal. It was basically the same as scooping out a seed from fruit. When I thought about it that way, it became much easier."
"The only problem was the mess."
He frowned slightly, looking down at his suit.
"I got blood all over my suit. I should have brought my special suit for purposes like this."
His face brightened. "But it’s alright. I already had an extra pair with me, a suit and everything."
Cassius nodded approvingly. "Wow, you even prepared for that, huh?"
Lucius beamed. "Of course, Young Master! A butler—especially someone who serves you should always be prepared for everything!"
Darius was utterly baffled by the conversation.
They were talking as if they were discussing menial kitchen chores, when they were actually speaking of brutalizing his family, slowly digging out their eyes while they screamed and moaned in agony.
Cassius let out a deep sigh, placing his teacup down on the table.
"Well, from there, the conclusion writes itself, Darius. We lined them up, slipping thick nooses around their necks one by one."
"Lucius then pulled out that lovely, sharp little dagger I gifted him recently."
Lucius proudly whipped the weapon from his pocket, showing off the pristine, glittering blade like a prized toy.
"We then sliced their bellies wide open..."
Cassius continued, entirely indifferent to the fact that Darius’s face had gone completely green.
"We pulled out their innards, letting them dangle, before hoisting their bodies up into the branches to act as my missing vines."
"You really should have been there to witness it, Darius." He chuckled cruelly. "The symphonies of groaning, the weeping...it was theatrical."
"But do you want to know what the absolute funniest part of the night was?"
Cassius leaned entirely across the table, his face inches from Darius’s.
"Come on. Guess." He reached out, tapping Darius’s trembling shoulder repeatedly. "Tell me what was so funny."
"What...?" Darius whispered, his voice cracked and hollow, a thread of pure dread winding through his throat. "What could possibly be funny?"
Cassius’s face distorts into an insidious, demonic grin.
"The entire time they were being mutilated...they were screaming your name."
Darius’s pupils shrunk into pinpoints.
"They were shrieking for you, Darius."
Cassius whispered maliciously, poking him hard in the chest.
"Wailing into the night, saying: ’I know it was you! You brought this ruin upon us!’ They begged for you to come out and save them."
"Your mother, your father, your beautiful sisters...every single one of them blamed you with their dying breaths."
"But do you know what you were doing while they were being hollowed out beneath your window?"
Cassius lets out a sharp, mocking laugh.
"You were sleeping! Like a sweet, innocent little newborn. We didn’t even have to drug your wine! You were just entirely exhausted, dead to the world."
Lucius added, "I thought for sure that you would wake up after hearing the screaming and witnessing your family being hung up."
"But you didn’t wake up at all."
"It was a rather strange sight. So we just let you sleep all the way until morning."
He looked at Darius with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
"You should thank the Young Master for that. He didn’t disturb your sleep at all. Instead, he waited all the way until morning to show you the little gift he had created."
Cassius and Lucius laughed together, their shared amusement echoing through the deathly quiet garden.
—
As the two monsters laughed together, Darius’s mind completely imploded.
The fog of sleep fully cleared, and a horrific memory unlocked: last night, in the dead of night, he had heard faint, muffled noises.
He remembered turning over in his plush bed, vaguely annoyed by what he assumed were his estate knights being rowdy, gossiping, or drinking late.
He had simply pulled the heavy blankets over his ears, ignored the distant cries of his dying family, and drifted right back to sleep.
The realization that he had actively ignored his family’s final pleas for salvation hit him with the force of an avalanche.
His stomach violently rebelled.
Unable to contain the pure, physical revulsion, Darius leaned over the elegant tea table and vomited violently—bleh, bleh, bleh—splattering bile and fluid directly across the pristine spread.
Cassius recoiled in disgust, pulling his chair back.
"What the hell, Darius! Where is that noble composure now? You’ve completely ruined the tea and snacks!"
He looked at Lucius with deep sympathy.
"Lucius went through the trouble of preparing those wonderful sandwiches, and we didn’t even get to try one. All that effort, wasted."
Lucius looked dejected, staring mournfully at the defiled pastries, far more offended by the ruined catering than the field of slaughtered nobles surrounding them.
—
When Darius was finally done vomiting, he looked even more pale than before, as if he was one step away from death.
He weakly looked at Cassius and asked the question again, this time with more clarity.
"Why?" He whispered. "Why did you kill my family?"
"W-What reason could you possibly have for making them die such a gruesome death?"
Cassius stared at him as if Darius had muttered the stupidest sentence in human history.
"Well, isn’t it obvious, Darius?"
He then rose, walked around the table, and bent down, pressing his lips directly against Darius’s ear.
"I told you last night. I was going to make your family hang above you instead."
"And...I did exactly that."
He pulled back, returning to his seat with a casual shrug.
"You openly declared your desire to pull my family beneath yours, to abuse them and amuse yourself with their suffering."
"I simply inverted your grand design and executed it first."
He spread his hands in a gesture of innocence.
"I care nothing for your laws or your noble etiquette, Darius. But what I do know is that a real man keeps his word."
"I made a promise, and I kept it. That’s all."
Darius was utterly paralyzed by the sheer, absurd disproportion of the retaliation.
"But...it was just a maid!" He cried out, his voice cracking into a desperate, broken shriek.
"Just a collection of common women! Is there truly a sane reason to butcher an entire ancient house over a few peasants?!"
Cassius leaned back in his chair, idly playing with his teacup.
"First of all, they weren’t just any women, Darius. They were my loved ones. And even if they weren’t—even if they were simply maids of my household—I still wouldn’t have let you off."
His voice grew cold, his gaze deadly. "Anyone who comes after my family will pay the price for it. And in return, it’s your family that paid the price."
Lucius quickly added, " Not to mention, my Young Master has been eyeing your family for quite some time."
"One of his wife’s grandmothers lives not too far from here, and we’ve been trying to cooperate with you in purchasing that land. But you haven’t been responding at all."
He looked at Darius with disdain.
"We also knew exactly how you were treating your own commoners, the corruption running through your estate. We’ve been thinking of dealing with you for quite a while."
Cassius nodded.
"But unfortunately, due to circumstances on my end, I hadn’t done anything yet. And maybe—just maybe—if you had kept to yourself and stayed in your territory, I would have stayed in mine."
He shrugged.
"But you just had to cross the line. Instead of simply enjoying the festival, you had to make a scene."
"And because of your monumental stupidity, your entire house was put to the sword. This is entirely your fault."
Darius’s eyes trembled. "...My fault?"
Cassius smiled, a cold, cruel expression. "Yes, your fault, Darius. All your fault."
He pointed at one of the corpses. "It’s your fault your grandmother died."
He pointed at another. "It’s your fault your father died."
He pointed at another. "It’s your fault your mother died."
He gestured around at all the bodies.
"Your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins—every single one of them died..."
He tapped his Darrius’s forehead.
"...because of you."
The last bit of consciousness that Darius had shattered into a million pieces.
He was left there, staring in a daze, his body trembling uncontrollably.
Until finally, tears started streaming down his face.
Comments