Rivers of the Night - Chapter 342

Chapter 342: Broken
Aetherion’s eyes opened wide, his body keeling over. He could almost feel the sword slipping into the slightest of angled cracks between his lungs and heart.

The realization chilled him to his very core, his head slowly turning to face the side profile of Theron’s face… and yet, the young man wasn’t even looking at him. He was already scanning the rest of the battlefield as though the life and death of Aetherion didn’t matter in the slightest.

The Crown Prince who had once stood on a building, lofty and powerful from above, looking down as though the world and Theron himself owed him something, was being treated as though he was little more than air.

And the worst part was that Aetherion knew Theron wasn’t sparing him out of fear, he wasn’t sparing him because of Sadie—despite how much his little sister griped about this very same young man—he wasn’t even sparing him because he was tired…

He was sparing him because he was a useful pawn, a small gear that was useful enough to keep alive for the time being.

Rage built up in Aetherion’s chest, and he almost snapped.

It was in that instant that Theron’s gaze flickered and turned right to him. Those pale blue eyes, carrying the depths and reflections of the moon above—Theron looked at him as though he was looking right through him.

Theron was waiting, observing, trying to see if his speculations were correct—that there truly was more to the Nightingales than what met the eye.

The moment Aetherion saw this, the fear he had of Theron took root in its deepest place. He felt his heart almost collapse, and something within him cracked.

He felt it at that moment—his true insignificance in the face of it all, just how worthless he was.

The Nightingales really did have secrets the world couldn’t fathom, but right this moment… Aetherion was actually too scared to bring them out.

What if it wasn’t enough? What if Theron toyed with him just the same? What if he not only exposed his Clan before they were ready, but also got himself killed when he would have otherwise been spared?

He wasn’t looking at Theron like he was a normal young man anymore, nor was he the little boy that they had casually decided to leave to his own devices.

He wanted nothing more than to run, but he simply didn’t… have the strength… to do that…

Aetherion’s body went limp, and he collapsed.

Theron frowned, kicking Aetherion away before the fool ended up killing himself. Without Aetherion keeping his body upright, if Theron left his blade there, he would just be bisecting himself.

Honestly, Theron didn’t really know what was wrong with Aetherion. He had no idea that the depths of his soul had been marked by the Tribulation not just once but twice over.

Ironically enough, facing him now almost felt like they were staring into the abyss of the Tribulations they had had to cross when they first became Gold Mancers, and that pain was not only making them weaker, it was also affecting something deep within themselves this world simply didn’t have a word for…

The Dao Heart.

Theron rarely found himself not understanding something, and he found this matter to be particularly intriguing. Unfortunately, he had no ability to investigate.

He looked up, expecting that the two other Crown Princes would take this opportunity to attack, but after watching their own attacks be so easily nullified, and then what they assumed was the “death” of Aetherion, their legs didn’t seem to be working properly anymore.

Marcel, the strongest of them at least on paper, still couldn’t believe that Theron had managed to use the water on the ground to counter his earthquake ability. It just didn’t even make any logical sense.

The more Marcel thought about it, the more fear he actually felt. It was such an expert use of vibrational principles that he couldn’t even fathom it all.

Using Water Mana to divert Earth Mana from shaking the ground and building up waves… just, how…

To the side, Morelle was even more shaken. He had more experience with Vibrational Laws than Marcel did by a large margin because it was the principle most of the Sangun’s best techniques were based off of. They didn’t have a main Mancy Path in their Empires—at least not one that was easily slotted into one of the four—and instead they had many different sorts of Mancers that all applied Sound Mana to their Paths in their own unique ways.

What Theron had done to him just now was something he had seen many times when he was first training with that spell. It was a mistake he had made several times over initially due to his own incorrect castings, and then it was a mistake that was induced by a special training field of clashing vibrations he was privy to using as a Crown Prince.

Theron had essentially taken something a specially curated field of formations could do… and distilled it into a single flash of his gaze. Morelle didn’t even know if he had sensed Mana take shape in the air—it was simply a level of Control he couldn’t even begin to grasp.

The two just stood there, supposedly in good position to block Theron’s path of escape, and yet neither dared to take even a single step forward.

The irony was that the army to Theron’s back was likewise the same—forming a line of defenses and hoping their Crown Princes would be able to take on the rest of the burden for them.

It was a standoff that was abruptly ended by the simplest of things…

A single step on Theron’s part.

And then another.

Then another.

He moved forward, walking past the princes as Aetherion’s blood dripped down the length of his blade, slicking away not due to rain, but instead due to the sharp smoothness of the blade’s body.

Like that, Theron simply walked away.