SSS Talent: From Trash to Tyrant-Chapter 413: The Fall of the Thal’zar [XXVII]
The rain did not stop all at once. It faltered.
What had been a relentless downpour thinned into scattered streams, then into drifting droplets that slid from broken stone and tangled roots alike. Above the castle, the cloud cover had been carved open in a vast, clean division, as though the night itself had been cut and forced apart. Through that wound in the sky, the moon emerged, pale and steady, casting cold light over shattered battlements and the exposed interior where the roof no longer stood.
Everyone outside saw it.
Every soldier struggling against the remaining Void Creatures. Every heir scanning the perimeter. Every wounded warrior leaning against fractured walls.
They all lifted their gaze.
The sky had been split.
And they knew who had done it.
Beyond the outer walls, Elenara moved without pause. Roots surged continuously from the earth and stone alike, twisting through corridors, climbing walls, piercing through the last unstable rifts. She did not allow momentum to slip. Each opening in reality was either strangled by reinforced growth or encircled and crushed under converging layers of wood and mana. Void Creatures that attempted to emerge were impaled before their forms could fully stabilize, torn apart in mid-transition, their remains scattered across the courtyard in dark fragments.
Control.
Total and methodical.
Yet even as she maintained the perimeter, the sky above remained the greater statement.
Soldiers exchanged glances without speaking. Heirs understood without needing it explained. Among the heads of the Eight Great Houses, disparity existed. Not all crowns weighed the same. Not all pillars carried equal mass.
Valttair du Morgain was not merely another patriarch.
He stood closer to something foundational.
Among humans, only House Vaelion—keepers of the strongest mage lineage—could claim proximity to that tier. No other in the human bloodline rivaled it cleanly.
The cut in the heavens made that truth visible.
Kaedor had fallen.
Thal’zar was finished.
But the conflict was not yet concluded.
A new urgency replaced the chaos. The heirs of Thal’zar still lay somewhere within the castle, bedridden and infected by Icarus’ plague. Whoever secured them first would decide how the aftermath unfolded—whether as consolidation, leverage, or annihilation.
The battlefield outside stabilized under Elenara’s control.
Inside, the race had already begun.
The fractured corridors of the castle were nothing like the orderly halls they had once been. Stone had split along stress lines from the earlier detonations below, sections of ceiling sagged or collapsed entirely, and the air carried a faint metallic scent where plague and blood had mixed in confined space. Rifts flickered open and shut in unstable pockets near the inner structures, closer to where Valttair’s presence pressed hardest against reality.
Nym advanced at the front without hesitation, her steps measured but unhurried, blade held low as violet reflections from distant mana flashes skimmed across polished steel. Sylvar moved half a pace behind and to her right, guarding the blind angles without being asked. Behind them, soldiers from other houses followed with visible caution, aware that proximity to the Morgain heirs meant proximity to something far more dangerous than the rifts alone.
A distortion split open in the corridor ahead.
Void matter poured through.
The passage was narrow. There was no room for grand maneuvers.
Nym moved first.
[Morgain’s Dual Crest]
Two lines of mana carved the air in opposite arcs, crossing with controlled symmetry before colliding at the center. The contained explosion folded inward rather than outward, pressure snapping tight and then releasing in a compact detonation that mutilated the leading creatures mid-advance. Limbs separated cleanly. Torsos split. The corridor walls were scorched but intact.
Sylvar followed seamlessly, mirroring her angle with near-identical precision. His twin cuts traced their own intersecting symbol, the detonation overlapping hers by a heartbeat, clearing what she had left behind. Their timing required no signal.
They had trained together since childhood.
"Still overextending on the second arc," Sylvar said evenly as they stepped over disintegrating remains.
Nym did not look back. "And you still compensate by striking wider than necessary."
A faint breath that almost resembled amusement passed between them.
Same father. Same mother. Children of the Third wife. In a house built on rivalry and succession, that detail mattered. Political tension existed, of course; it always did within Morgain. Yet between the two of them, there was no pretense.
Sylvar shifted slightly, taking the forward angle when the corridor bent left, shielding Nym from a blind opening.
She did not thank him.
He did not expect it.
Another rift flickered to life behind them. Nym pivoted without hesitation, covering their rear while Sylvar cut down a creature that lunged too close to the soldiers. Their rhythm did not falter.
"I assume," Sylvar said quietly as they advanced deeper, "you intend to secure the Thal’zar heirs personally."
"Of course," Nym replied. "I do not share credit."
"Neither do I."
There was no hostility in the exchange. Only certainty.
They reached an isolated chamber set deeper into the inner structure, its doors partially warped but still standing. Mana residue clung to the threshold. The air felt heavier there, less chaotic and more... focused.
Sylvar placed a hand against the door and pushed it inward.
They expected to see rows of bedridden heirs.
They did not.
In the center of the chamber stood a single figure.
Alive.
Breathing.
Its skin was threaded with darkened veins that pulsed faintly beneath the surface. The air around it shimmered with subtle corruption, as if reality recoiled by fractions each time it inhaled.
The presence inside the room was not dormant illness.
It was active plague.
The infected figure did not remain upright for long. Its knees buckled as if its own body could no longer sustain the corruption surging through it, and it pitched forward without warning.
Sylvar moved on instinct.
He caught it before it struck the ground.
"Stay back," he said sharply to the soldiers behind them, but the warning came a heartbeat too late.
His hand had already made contact.
The reaction was immediate.
The dark veins pulsing beneath the infected figure’s skin flared brighter, then spread—threading across the point of contact like ink dispersing in water. The corruption leapt from corpse-warm flesh to living arm, racing beneath Sylvar’s skin in branching lines that climbed from wrist to forearm in seconds.
Nym saw it.
She did not move at first.
She watched.
If it was Icarus’ strain, then it was not simple disease. It was engineered contagion. Mana-borne. Adaptive. Designed to spread through contact and then inward, toward the core.
Sylvar’s jaw tightened as he felt it.
"Nym," he said, voice low. "Step back."
The veins were already crossing his elbow.
His pupils darkened at the edges, violet tint thinning into something clouded. The air around him shifted, faint distortion gathering as the plague began testing his mana circulation.
Behind them, the soldiers recoiled several steps. No one rushed forward. No one offered aid.
Morgain heirs were assets.
They were also risks.
Sylvar looked at her again.
He understood.
There was no plea in his expression. Only urgency.
"Do not hesitate," he said quietly. "If it reaches my core—"
The corruption surged again, faster this time, crawling across his collarbone and toward his throat.
Nym stepped forward.
Her face did not twist. Her breathing did not spike. The blade in her hand remained steady.
She chose her angle carefully.
[Morgain’s Verdict]
The cut was invisible.
One precise line.
It passed through his neck before sound could follow it.
Sylvar’s head tilted fractionally as the connection severed, his body collapsing before the infection could climb higher. He fell without struggle, blood striking stone in a clean arc.
The dark veins flickered once beneath his skin—
Then stilled.
Silence filled the chamber.
The infected figure he had caught lay twisted beside him, lifeless.
The soldiers stared at Nym as if expecting something else—rage, grief, hesitation.
She lowered her sword slowly.
"He was already lost," she said, voice level, each word placed with intent. "We do not gamble with Icarus’ plague." Her grip tightened around the hilt for a fraction longer than necessary before she released the tension.
Inside, the weight settled. But not now. There would be time later to measure it. Time to remember the training yard, the shared meals, the quiet understanding that existed between them in a house where trust was rare. Time to answer questions from their mother. Time to justify the decision before the inner council.
Now was not that time.
She stepped past the body without looking down again.
"Seal this chamber," she ordered. "Burn my brother’s body, We cannot let it spread, and whoever touches it directly will end up like him."
The soldiers moved at once.
On the fractured stone floor of a plague-stricken castle, the fifth heir of House Morgain lay still.
Eight remained.
