CHAPTER 117: CHAPTER 116. THE END OF THE REIGN OF ERENGARD II

Hearing Vivianne’s words, Dietrich jolted violently, breath hitching, eyes widening with a terror he had never allowed himself to acknowledge. The word cleaved through the remnants of his arrogance and the fortress of self-righteous delusion he had built around himself. He tried to speak, but only wet gurgles escaped, the forbidden magic inside him devouring what little remained of his strength.

Before he could shape a plea, a threat, or a justification, Vivianne lifted her hand and placed it before his forehead. "With the power Chronos bestowed upon me," she whispered, "I will have you remember the memories of your past life."

The world shattered around Dietrich.

His scream tore through the throne hall, scraping the walls like claws. It’s not the cry of a man injured but of a soul dragged backward through every sin it ever committed. His body convulsed, contorting violently as the magic forced open doors to the memories of his past life, the one he had forgotten.

He saw Vivianne again, not the woman standing before him now, but the omega he had owned in his past life. Fragile. Terrified. Collared beneath his will.

She had been his wife, his omega, the one person he should have protected above all else, and he had chained her instead. His failure to claim her properly and his inability to bond with her completely had festered like rot. It had driven him into obsession, into paranoia, into the spiral that turned love into madness.

Memory after memory slammed into him like blades.

He saw himself selling her because he could not bear the truth that he can’t control her. He doesn’t want to admit that the emperor can’t make a proper bond. And so he did it as the tool to bargain.

He saw the nights he used her, the days he broke her, and the hours he ignored her trembling pleas. He saw other alphas touching her, laying hands on her while he looked away, convincing himself it was necessary, that it would fix what he couldn’t. Each vision carved through the remnants of his pride until nothing remained but horror.

The worst nightmare Dietrich had ever seen was now his own life replayed without delusion, without excuses, and without the shield of his ego.

"No... no, it couldn’t be. No. I—I loved her!" He choked, his voice cracking into something inhuman. "I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do those things!"

But the truth kept pouring in. Every cry she made. Every bruise he left. Every moment she begged for mercy, he refused to give it. The look in her eyes when he shattered her last piece of hope.

His scream echoed off the throne room walls, raw and jagged, a sound that came from the deepest pit of a collapsing soul. He clawed at the floor, at the stone, at himself, desperate to tear away the memories, desperate to find even one moment where he had been the man he believed himself to be.

There were none. The memories refused to stop.

Her shaking breaths. Her hollow gaze. Her final, broken silence when she realized escape was impossible.

Dietrich’s body writhed, half-destroyed from Roxanne’s assault, half-dissolving under the backlash of forbidden magic, but none of it compared to the agony of remembering what he had done. His heartbeat stuttered, his vision blurred, and still the images came, unrelenting, merciless.

"No—no, stop! STOP!" He wailed, twisting on the ground, tearing gouges into the stone. "I loved her—I LOVED HER!"

Vivianne didn’t stop; she watched him with a cold calm carved from years of suffering in her past life, years he now finally witnessed. Her power held him in place as the memories consumed him. There was no satisfaction in her face, no triumph.

Only truth.

Dietrich reached out to her with a trembling hand, not as an emperor, not as a beast, but as a man breaking under the weight of his own sins. "My... Vivianne..." he whispered, his voice collapsing. "Please... I didn’t... I wouldn’t..."

Vivianne stepped forward, her eyes colder than the moonlight. "I am hers," she said softly. "Vivianne de Borgia. Not Erengard. Not yours. Never yours."

The words hit him harder than any blow Roxanne had landed. His hand dropped, fingers scraping helplessly against the stone.

The pain intensified, ripping him open from the inside, showing him every moment she cried alone in dark corridors while he told himself she would adjust. Every moment she screamed in silence while he sought greater power. Every moment he claimed he was her alpha while failing to be anything but a tyrant who believed her suffering was a necessary sacrifice for his vision.

Dietrich choked on his own breath.

Dietrich saw Roxanne next, but not through his own eyes. Through Vivianne’s. He saw the way Vivianne looked at her: not with fear, not with resignation, but with a devotion so gentle and so absolute that it felt like a blade driven into his chest.

He saw Roxanne as the one who held her when she shook, the one who shielded her from every nightmare, and the one who cherished her without conditions. Roxanne, whose power didn’t crush Vivianne but sheltered her. Roxanne, who could bond with Vivianne fully, who could take her pheromones, hold them, answer them, and complete them.

Something he had never been able to do. And then the memories turned crueler.

He saw himself, Dietrich de Erengard, emperor, alpha, trying to claim Vivianne in their past life. Trying to mark her, to seal a bond he believed he deserved by right.

He remembered the frustration, the fury, and the disbelief when her body rejected him. When her pheromones repulsed him. When the bond would not form no matter how many times he forced the attempt.

Incomplete—that was what he had been. An alpha without the instinct, without the mana, without the spiritual strength to match her. An alpha fundamentally unworthy of the omega as powerful as Vivianne.

He had tried again and again to mark her—and every attempt failed, and every failure drove him deeper into madness. And instead of cherishing it, he turned into madness.

He saw that madness now with perfect clarity. The anger he took out on her. The chains he used when dominance failed. The way he broke her, piece by piece, because he could not bear to face the truth: that she was his wife in name only, never in bond, never in soul. That she was slipping away from him, terrified of him, hollowed out by his obsession.

He saw the moment she stopped looking at him with hope. The moment she stopped looking at him at all.

He screamed again, but the sound broke halfway, collapsing into a ragged sob. His hand, still half-stretched, fell limp against the ruined marble.

"Vivianne..." It isn’t a call. It’s a confession. A plea for forgiveness he knew he didn’t deserve. "No."

Vivianne didn’t waver. She let him drown in the memories and let him finally see the truth of what he had been.

Dietrich’s body crumpled forward, his forehead touching the stone not in respect nor submission, but because he no longer had the strength to hold himself upright.

The crimson veins of the forbidden magic burst along his skin. His flesh warped. Melted. The false form he’d sustained for so long cracked apart, exposing muscle, bone, and a soul corroded by centuries of corruption and denial.

His hands, those same hands that once held her in another life, reached again, shaking uncontrollably. Dietrich’s face twisted in the unbearable collapse of someone finally seeing the truth he had outrun for lifetimes.

His wolf howled inside him, then shattered. The magic keeping him alive snapped.

And Dietrich Erengard, emperor, devourer of souls, terror of the realm, knelt not from dominance, nor magic, nor command, but from the unbearable weight of his own failure.

His final breath rattled out, wet and broken. His body sagged forward, and the light in his eyes went out.

The throne room fell silent. The Emperor, Dietrich de Erengard, is dead.