Foul words left Aiden’s mouth like rocks dropped into a shallow pond — instant, brutal waves, everyone in the basement feeling the ripple push at their feet.
Conish’s hand tightened on a knife, then slackened. The head chef’s apron turned a shade paler. John, who’d been leaning against a crate with a rag in his hands, drew a breath that didn’t leave his lungs.
Even the soldiers — grown men who’d seen blood from battles and poorly-fired ovens — had the same blank look of disbelief.
The three were supposed to wait. They’d been told to wait: patient, watch, do nothing until the appointed signal. The plan hinged on restraint, on timing. The hourglass had been turned and the sand was meant to fall one measured grain at a time.
Instead, Aiden threw the hourglass at the world.
No one believed the story at first. No one believed a viscount would sully himself with a servant. That was the lie they all knew. But it wasn’t the content of what Aiden said that flayed them. It was the volume, the way the syllables detonated in the damp air, the way the words landed like nails hammered into bone. This was not the whisper they had planned. It was a howl.
A sound of rage split the space — Gail’s shout — and the sword came up.
"DIIIEEEEEEE!!"
Conish heard it first—the echo of rage.
Not words. Not movement. Rage. It cracked the air like a struck bell, rippling through the marble halls, crawling under the skin. The others heard it too. Even the soldiers flinched, hands twitching near hilts.
Then they saw it—steel sliding free from Gail’s scabbard.
The scrape was slow, cruel, deliberate. A predator showing its teeth. In that sliver of lamp light, the blade caught and burned white, the gleam spilling over Gail’s arm like molten judgement.
Conish’s chest tightened until breath became pain. The others—men who worked beside Aiden, promised with him—felt the same sick heat bloom in their guts. Their friend’s face was still twisted and broken from the earlier beating, an image they could not shake, but this... this was worse.
Something inside them snapped.
Patience was no longer virtue—it was betrayal.
The plan? To wait. To watch. To bide time until the perfect moment.
The reality? There was no more time. Not with death winding up in Gail’s shoulder.
"Hell with the plan," Conish spat under his breath.
They moved.
Boots slapped against the stone, urgent, reckless. Not towards safety—towards the monster in the room. Towards Gail. Soldiers noticed, heads snapping toward the sudden rush of movement.
Suspicion flooded their stances, but too late—the servants were already halfway across the space, shadows cutting through the lamplight.
Aiden watched it the blade come—not from fear, but from that dangerous state where fear was already burned away. His eyes widened, not with panic, but with clarity. The kind only comes when adrenaline shoves the world into slow motion and rage sharpens every edge of it. Gail’s insults still coiled in his mind, alive and venomous, feeding that storm.
His shoulders strained against the ropes binding him to the chair, the wood creaking under the force. He leaned forward, jaw set, voice breaking out like a war horn.
"COME ON!!!"
The shout cut through the chamber, raw and daring, a spark thrown into a powder keg. He was still bound, still bleeding, still technically powerless—but none of it mattered. The fire in him didn’t care about odds.
[Skill used: ’Hyper Focus’ — Link: Akidna]
His voice tore at the ceiling and drew eyes. He rose as far as the rope would let him. He didn’t stop for the embarrassment of being tied; he’d been humiliated before. He saw the sword descend in slow calculus — not because it had slowed, but because his mind had sped up.
Akidna’s skill — the way she trained the kitchen maids to press harder at the right moment — had linked to him like a stolen blessing. It tethered his pulse, narrowed his focus like a lens.
Hyper focus.
The world loosened at the edges. The torch fire blurred. Men moved like shadows. Gail’s blade, bright and final, cleaved the air in the space between them.
Aiden counted the beats.
One. The sweat ran down Gail’s temple.
Two. Gail’s jaw flexed; the vein thinned.
Three. The sword began to fall.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t plead. He had a different plan — a wild, naked thing that could have made him a corpse right there, or the seed of something uglier than victory.
At the last breath before strike, with the world a fraction of a whisper, Aiden shoved his forehead forward.
Bone cracked.
The sound was a single devastating note that shook through the basement’s stonework. Gail’s sword met the edge of a chair, missing the arteries in Aiden’s neck by an inch, and the chair’s solid frame bucked under the blow. The chair wrenched; the ropes shifted and bit into Aiden’s flesh. He felt the phantom ache.
Someone — Conish — shouted as the soldiers lunged. Rough hands pulled Gail back; a soldier’s fist caught his sword arm. Metal clanged to the floor with a hollow, accusing ring.
Gail staggered back, one hand to his nose. Blood ran warm through his fingers. He fumbled, furious and confused. "You — you dare!" he barked, each word a ragged pinprick of pain. "You fucking peasants— you dare defy me?"
You could hear everything in that question: the wounded pride, the interrupted violence, the fear turning perverse. He rifled the floor, found the fallen sword and lifted it again. Rage roared through him like a fever.
"I will kill you, peasant. I will kill you all here and now!" Gail screamed, and the second swing bit for Aiden’s throat.
The swing sliced open air and the world tilted toward the war of blades and shouts, but the new, sharper sound was the thunk of an arrow striking wood and bone.
"Aaaaaa!" Gail howled.
Shock peeled him open. The sword fell from his hand — again. This time, raw, hot metal skittered across stone, clanging like a bell of doom. He grabbed his wrist which bled dark red, eyes wide with shock.
"Enough!" a voice called — not the kitchen’s rough bellow or a soldier’s bark, but a voice carved from ice. From authority. From some depth of money and malice people rarely startled from.
Everyone turned.
At the threshold stood a woman like a storm caged into human form:
Lady Catherine, the viscountess.
Golden hair lay around her like a crown. Her gaze, blue and cold, split the room. She was not a woman you addressed unless you had the audacity of gods or the misfortune of being a monster.
She walked down the stairs as if descending into a sacrament. Seven knights in polished armor lined behind her, not soldiers, but the kind of steel that belonged to banners and processed orders.
Two of them bore the same rank as Gail; the others were one step down. They were a wall of authority that changed the temperature of the basement by degrees.
"What is this, Gail?" Her voice was a blade wrapped in velvet. "What atrocity are you conceiving here?"
Gail’s excuse came out thin as thread. "Lady Catherine... th... this—"
"Enough!" she snapped, and when she said it, the room obeyed. Chains of whisper and fear tightened. The men Gail had command over faltered.
"You have been given leniency. You have been given rights and more power than you know how to carry. And you use it like this?" She stepped among them, each footfall measured, and her knights moved like a day’s tide to surround all who stood.
Men were cuffed by hands they had never thought to fear. Soldiers who had once called Gail brother suddenly took orders from Lady Catherine without question.
Conish and the head chef were wrenched aside, but not hurt; the viscountess’s order was to stop the bleeding of blood and chaos, not to spill more.
Gail fell to his knees the way desperate men do when their pantomime of power cracks. He muttered, "I... I didn’t—this servant—" Meaningless syllables exhaled into stone.
"Enough," Catherine said slower this time, a dangerous calm. Her eyes burned into him. "You will explain yourself, soon.....but Not Here, not now...."