Awakening Domination System: But I'm a Slave?-Chapter 314: Flee [1]

Time became fluid.

Alaric couldn’t tell if he’d been watching for days or weeks or months. The fortress preparations stretched on in what felt like endless repetition, walls reinforced, formations layered, defensive positions perfected.

Then suddenly everything changed.

The army appeared on the horizon.

Malachai’s coalition.

Twenty-three houses. Thousands of soldiers. All organized in formations.

And at their head.

Malachai Drakenmoor stood alone, fifty meters ahead of his assembled forces. His midnight black robes billowed in wind that affected nothing else. His blood-red eyes blazed, casting crimson light across the ground before him.

The power radiating from him was visible. Actual distortions in reality itself, like heat haze made malevolent, warping space around his form.

His voice carried across the distance, existing everywhere simultaneously...

"Here I come, Primordials!"

The word was mocking. Reducing thousands of years of accumulated power and prestige to outdated irrelevance.

The battle began.

Not gradually. Not with preliminaries or posturing or negotiation.

Just violence.

Malachai raised one hand, and the coalition forces charged. Thousands of vampires moving as one coordinated mass, their battle cries merging into single deafening roar.

The Drakenfell fortress responded immediately.

The defensive formations activated. Walls of crystallized essence erupted along the perimeter. Reality-bending traps triggered, redirecting the first wave’s momentum, sending vampires careening into each other or into prepared killing zones.

House Eternal’s essence bombs detonated—

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The coalition’s first wave shattered against the defenses, hundreds dying in the opening moments, their bodies torn apart by forces they couldn’t counter.

But Malachai just smiled.

And sent the second wave. Then the third. Then the fourth.

Bodies piled up. The approach to the fortress became a charnel ground painted in blood and ash. But for every coalition vampire that fell, three more pressed forward.

Inside the fortress, Thaddeus Crimsonveil moved through the chaos with apparent purpose.

His eyes scanned constantly, tracking movements, identifying positions. He’d positioned himself near the eastern wall, one of the secondary defensive lines, important but not critical.

Serana Nightveil occupied a similar position on the opposite side, she maintained a defensive formation with others from her adopted house.

To anyone watching, they were doing their duty. Fighting. Contributing to the defense.

But no one noticed the way Thaddeus’s formations were slightly misaligned. The way his essence channeling was efficient but not optimal. The subtle inefficiencies that wouldn’t be obvious until the pressure intensified.

No one noticed Serana’s shadows forming escape routes rather than purely defensive structures.

They waited.

Watching for their moment.

The coalition’s fifth wave broke through the outer perimeter, flooding into the outer courtyards where close combat turned everything into brutal, desperate carnage.

Erebus Drakenfell stood atop the central tower, his dying-star eyes blazing as he coordinated the defense. His essence constructs formed and reformed, adapting to the changing battlefield, crushing coalition forces that penetrated too deeply.

Valeria Bloodmoon had abandoned her position entirely. She’d charged into the enemy forces, her crimson hair streaming behind her as she tore through coalition vampires with savage, uncontrolled fury.

Looking for him. Looking for Malachai.

But finding only his soldiers.

Dying one cut at a time as overwhelming numbers wore her down through sheer attrition.

Cassius Dreadmourne maintained his death essence zones with grim precision, holding the northern approach despite wave after wave of attacks.

The Ancient Houses were holding.

Then Malachai entered the battle personally.

He didn’t run. Didn’t charge. Just walked through the carnage with casual grace, his blood-red eyes fixed on the central tower where Erebus coordinated.

Coalition vampires gave him space instinctively.

A warrior tried to intercept him.

"Foolish."

Malachai’s hand moved almost lazily.

And the vampire exploded, every cell simultaneously rupturing from overwhelming essence pressure focused through Malachai’s will.

He kept walking.

Three more defenders tried. Three more explosions of blood and meat.

He reached the base of the central tower and looked up at Erebus.

"Come down," his voice carried clearly despite the chaos. "Let’s end this personally."

Erebus’s dying-star eyes met his from above.

Then the Ancient House patriarch descended, landing with enough force to crack the stone courtyard.

They faced each other across thirty meters of blood-soaked ground.

"Last chance," Malachai offered. "Bend knee. Acknowledge the new order. Your house can survive as vassal."

"I would rather end," Erebus replied, his voice carrying absolute conviction, "than bow to ambitious filth."

Malachai’s smile widened.

"So be it."

In the chaos of that moment, as every eye turned toward the clash between Malachai and Erebus, Thaddeus and Serana moved.

Thaddeus abandoned his position on the eastern wall, slipping through gaps in the defensive formations he’d deliberately left weak. Serana did the same on her side, her shadows concealing her withdrawal.

They found each other near the fortress’s rear section, a secondary exit that led to maintenance tunnels carved into the mountain itself.

Their eyes met briefly. No words needed.

And ran.

Not looking back. Not hesitating. Not allowing themselves to consider what they were abandoning, who they were betraying, what this meant.

Just survival. Pure, cold, pragmatic survival.

Behind them, the sounds of battle intensified, essence detonations, screams, the crack-boom of power clashing against power.

They didn’t look back.

Through the tunnels. Down carved passages. Deeper into the mountain, away from the fortress, away from the war, away from everything.

They emerged into a cave system perhaps half a mile from the fortress, natural formations that provided shelter, concealment, escape.

And waiting there, were vampires.

Maybe forty of them. A mix from both their houses, those who’d been quietly informed of the plan, who’d chosen survival over glory, who’d agreed to flee rather than die for outdated pride.

But notably absent—

Thaddeus’s wife. His children. His direct bloodline.

They’d refused. Chosen to stay. To fight. To die with honor rather than live with shame.

Thaddeus’s eyes scanned the assembled vampires. Saw who was here. Understood who was not.

His expression flickered, grief, guilt, something else, then smoothed into cold neutrality. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

"Let’s go," he said simply.

No speeches. No justification. No acknowledgment of what they’d just done.

He turned and led them deeper into the cave system, into passages that would take them miles away, into tunnels that would hide them while the fortress above burned.

Behind them, distant and growing fainter.

The sounds of Drakenfell’s fall.