CHAPTER 106: CHAPTER 105. DIETRICH’S SACRIFICES

Erengard Royal Throne

The report hit the throne room like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples affected the surrounding area more intensely than expected. At the Eisenwald border, the empire swallowed ten thousand of its finest. Not defeated. Not routed. Erased.

Dietrich’s fingers tightened around the golden goblet in his hand. His jaw clenched, and for a moment his expression was blank, as if the numbers meant nothing.

Then the rage struck.

He hurled the goblet, wine and metal crashing against the marble pillar beside the throne. Red splashed across the white stone, staining it like blood. The aides nearest to him flinched, though none dared to step back. Even breathing too loudly could be taken as defiance.

"They were the elite! The best of my knights!" Dietrich roared. His voice echoed through the high chamber. "They were trained for border sieges, not some petty noble skirmish! How could they fall so easily?"

No one answered.

The silence stoked his fury further. "If you incompetent fools had listened to me and sent fifty thousand," Dietrich snarled, pointing a shaking finger at his advisors, "Eisenwald would have been crushed. Gerhard would be kneeling at my feet. His land, his power, all of it would be mine!"

The nearest aide swallowed, visibly trembling. "Your Highness, if we had sent fifty thousand, the capital defenses would have collapsed. The city cannot be left without protection."

"You don’t know that!" Dietrich roared again, his voice cracking with strain. His eyes were bloodshot, sleepless, and wild.

The second aide dared to step forward, though his movements were cautious. "Pardon my insolence, Your Highness... but the capital is already in danger."

Dietrich froze.

"A thousand Borgia knights have been seen at the capital border," the aide continued, each word careful and measured. "They are accompanied by fifteen thousand Wyndham cavalry. More banners rally to them each day. Nobles are shifting allegiance. The old houses, the minor lords, even merchant guilds, and the mercenaries. They have chosen to stand behind the Grand Duke."

The words burned like acid.

"Say what you mean," Dietrich hissed.

The aide hesitated. He then bowed his head. "This is no border dispute. This... is a rebellion."

The chamber fell into a heavy, suffocating silence. Dietrich’s breath came slow and ragged, feeling like he’s slowly losing control over everything. "What did I do wrong?"

He’s not just losing his elite royal knights but also losing his empire. And somewhere in the back of his mind, a single name rose like poison. Vivianne.

The omega who lived in his memory like a wound that refused to close, a bruise under the skin that never faded, had become an obsession that hollowed him from the inside. He didn’t remember the first moment he desired her.

He only remembered the burning afterward. The knowledge that something delicate, rare, and trembling had crossed his path, and instinct had whispered to him that she should have been his.

He first saw her when they were still young, though he had already been nearing manhood while she was just barely stepping into the shape of her future. She was small, quiet, and dressed in an unassuming dress that suggested she understood her low place in the world. An illegitimate daughter of a count, discarded more than raised, one who should have blended into any crowd and disappeared like smoke.

Yet she didn’t.

Her eyes were what caught him first. That soft, pale violet shade, like twilight seen through frost. They were too gentle for court, yet too sharp to be harmless.

Those eyes felt familiar in a way that scraped along the inside of his ribs, as if he had known her in another life, or should have. There was something in that gaze—someone tender trying to survive in a world that had no room for tenderness.

And it made him furious. It felt like fate dangling something precious just out of his reach. Even then, the thought formed in him, heavy and inevitable: "I should take her."

Do not love her. Do not cherish her. Not even truly want her.

But own her. Have her kneel for him, look only at him, and rely only on him. To crush the softness in her until she could no longer look at anyone else that way.

She had looked pitiful in those days, fragile enough to be swept away by a single winter wind. And yet, beneath that frailty was a beauty that unsettled something inside him, a beauty that didn’t ask for attention but was impossible to ignore. Beauty is like a secret.

He used to laugh at the sight of her. At her hesitation. At the way she tried to shrink herself so she wouldn’t be noticed. He had thought it meant she was weak. Something pliable. Something to be shaped, bent, torn apart, and rebuilt into a creature that fits in the palm of his hand.

He imagined it would be easy. But time is a cruel storyteller.

Vivianne slipped through his fingers, like sunlight escaping under a door.

Now her name is spoken in every city, every tavern, and every noble hall, as if she were a flame and the world were made of dry wood. The most beautiful omega ever to live in the empire was the Grand Duchess of Borgia. And worse than anything else, she’s no longer alone.

She was claimed and marked, soul bonded. By an alpha stronger than Dietrich.

The very idea clawed at his chest. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t affection. It was a hunger built from pride, obsession, and the unbearable knowledge that something had been taken away from him.

Something he believed was his, by right. He could still remember her scent. The soft sound of her voice. The fire in her stare when she tried to stand her ground before him.

And she was out there, shielded by an alpha the continent itself bowed to.

He needed to erase that image. Replace it with her kneeling. Her head lowered. Her scent was buried under his. "Where," Dietrich growled, "is the Empress Consort?"

The question snapped the aides to attention; one of them stepped forward. His voice is quiet and steady, though the faint tremor beneath it betrayed his fear. "She’s in the East Palace, Your Highness. She hasn’t left her chambers since you locked her in her palace."

Dietrich’s jaw clenched until the bone stood sharp beneath his skin. His Empress Consort.

The woman who sat beside him in ceremonies, draped in silks, trained to smile for portraits and poets who called her his beloved. A polished emblem of stability, the thread that bound two great bloodlines together, Lisellote de Erengard.

She had taken Vivianne’s title but never her place. The entire palace knew it. Whispers slithered through the corridors: the emperor’s heart belonged to a ghost, a woman who had never been his to claim.

Lisellote had always known.

She’s quiet and patient, coming from the legitimate lineage of a count’s blood. The oldest noble blood in the empire, Liselotte had entered the marriage with clear eyes and colder resolve.

She didn’t love him, but she served the crown with purpose, standing at his side not because she was claimed, but because she chose duty. Because her family put her onto it, and Dietrich despised her for it.

Every breath she took is a reminder that loyalty could be given freely, that devotion need not be forced. That Vivianne had chosen another. But today, there would be no more reminders.

"Prepare the royal guard for mobilization," Dietrich ordered. "Send word throughout the city. The citizens may choose to stand and fight for their empire or flee and never return. If they abandon their duty, they abandon their homeland."

His voice rose, loud enough for the entire corridor to hear. "And those who run will be treated as traitors."

A ripple of dread passed through the room. No one dared protest. No one even looked up. "Yes, Your Highness." The other aide, Johan de Langride, bowed deeply, already moving, cloak sweeping behind him as he left to deliver the command.

The hall emptied in hurried footsteps. Servants rushed. Messengers sprinted. Bells began to ring, echoing across the capital. The war is coming, and the emperor expects everyone will step forward.

Dietrich turned, his boots striking the polished marble as he strode toward the Empress Consort’s palace. The remaining aide followed closely, heart pounding.

Outside, the sky over the capital was a bruised gray. Clouds gathered low, heavy with the promise of a storm.

Today, Liselotte isn’t his wife anymore; she’s the key, the sacrifice.

His boots struck the palace stones like a slowing heartbeat as he moved through the corridors. His guards followed in grim silence; the air hung thick with incense and the promise of a storm.

The Covenant of the Crimson Veil is Erengard’s most notorious secret at Dietrich’s hands. A power buried deep beneath the Dietrich’s lies and the empire’s coins, one that didn’t come freely. The price is blood. Not just blood, but bonded blood. Life is tied to the throne.

An omega’s life, in return for a fixed amount of power for the alpha who does the ritual.

Dietrich has been making those sacrifices; few omegas have died in his hands. To make him stronger, give him raw alpha strength. To call upon the veiled horror beneath the death. To twist fate itself.

And Dietrich had convinced himself there’s no other path. He needs to make a royal sacrifice tonight.

The reports echoed in his skull, stating: "Ten thousand knights have been lost." The Eisenwald front collapsed. Wyndham’s banners are advancing. The Borgia Crest is rising like a storm."

Roxanne de Borgia, the strongest alpha he has ever met. Most dignified, his own cousin.

And Vivianne, standing at her side, a dawn just beyond his grasp. If he could not defeat the monster at his gates, he would become a greater one.

The doors to the Empress Consort’s chambers loomed before him. The remaining guards stepped aside, their eyes cast down, but they trembled in fear. They knew the stories, the old prayers whispered behind locked doors.

Dietrich’s hand settled on the handle, steady as a condemned man walking to the gallows. "This must happen for the empire’s glory." He muttered to himself.

"Lisellote." He murmured her name, not with affection, but with the hollow reverence of a man who had dressed cruelty in necessity.

Then he pushed open the door—

Silence answered him. Not the hush of a tranquil room, but the hollow quiet of absence. The kind of quiet that echoed. The kind that mocked.

The Silvaris Palace, once warm with lantern light and perfume, now felt cold. Curtains billowed softly from open windows. A tea set rested on a tray, untouched long enough that the steam had died. The bed was neatly made. Pillows fluffed. There was no tearing of the cloth. No overturned chair. Nothing to suggest struggle.

No empress consort in Silvaris Palace.

"No," he whispered.