CHAPTER 19: CHAPTER 17 : THE RUINS OF VASTHERA

Time passed.

And Lin had no idea how long it had been since the White Queen led him into the throne room. His body was unconscious, and her voice continued to echo in his mind.

Then he opened his eyes to a dark and cold royal chamber. Its walls were carved from ice.

His gaze fell on the figure standing before him.

And there she was—the Great Serpent Queen, the beast that devoured his friends and led him here.

She glided forward, her steps causing faint vibrations on the floor, making the walls crack under her aura. Every step she took planted fear in Lin, terror invading his body, numbing his fingers, and making his heart pound in unbearable disarray.

He tried to step back, but the cold beneath his feet engulfed him, and his back collided with the icy wall. There was no escape.

Her delicate hand reached out like a demonic shadow and rested on his shoulder. It felt soft, like a wriggling snake, yet hard enough to make his knees weaken. He collapsed onto the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

She leaned in close, her eyes glowing red with a dead light, and slowly, she began to transform.

Her skin sloughed away, revealing smooth, scaly flesh. Her spine stretched, curved, and arched until she was a great white snake long enough to swallow the entire room.

She encircled him, as if she were playing with her favorite toy.

Then she plunged her ivory fangs into his neck like a lover.

Venom poured into his body.

Aaaaaah!!!

Lin screamed, but the queen paid him no mind.

The venom entered his veins, cold and merciless. Each drop carried a tiny heartbeat, thudding against his blood, slowing his movements, freezing his body, and numbing his senses until they began to disappear.

Then her voice came cold like a snake:

“Ssss... Your delicious blood pulses with mana. I’m simply dying for our wedding night.”

She smiled—a stifled smile, as if she had found her happiness, her lust. Then she added with sarcastic sweetness:

“Ssss... , you’re still too weak. You would not survive me. Otherwise... I would have begun without hesitation.”

Lin struggled to fight back. He shouted in his head, begged his arms not to betray him—but his body would not respond. He didn’t realize he was nothing more than prey trapped in the jaws of its predator.

With each pulse of the venom came a word of endless profanity. Limb by limb, his body grew numb. Then his voice failed him. He wished he could do anything—fight back, curse, howl—but all that came out was a broken, pitiful resistance.

His body collapsed to the floor.

The queen reverted to her human form—her curly white locks, her regal cloak, and her merciless eyes.

She grabbed the lapel of his torn white coat and pressed her lips to his ear:

“I’ve preserved your body, my love. We still have to go to Vasthera... to initiate your awakening as the heir and as my husband.”

Then she lifted his paralyzed body and left the room.

Lin couldn’t see clearly.

As they journeyed, the path to Vasthera was uninterrupted—rotting forms abandoned, lost in the gray mist that shrouded the earth.

Lin forced his sight to focus, only to see crumbled stones beneath their feet.

In the distance, the gate ruins looked like a fallen temple, silent and ringed with a black aura that rooted a terrible feeling inside him.

Etched upon it was the sculpture of a massive black serpent.

His instincts told him that he should not enter that place.

The queen walked to it, placed her hands on the gate, closed her eyes, and began to sing a hymn in some forgotten language. Her words were unknown, making Lin have a bad feeling.

Then... the gate opened, sending a gust of air over Lin and the queen.

Darkness expanded inside, fissures of silvery-blue light filtering through its ancient stones. The gate breathed... as if something buried within had awakened.

She shoved Lin’s body like a corpse child into a stagnant pool of water—the Pool of Ruin.

Her gaze turned icy cold, her words a curse:

“The Gates of Ruin, my dear husband, will not open for thirty days.”

Good luck.

She shut it on him and left the darkness to consume him.

Lin lay in the cold blue water, unable to move a single muscle.

Only silence remained in the broken darkness. He tried to move, knowing if he stayed still something terrible would happen.

And then... the statues’ red eyes glowed.

From hidden pipes, black liquid seeped in—slow, thick, full of darkness and heat.

It turned the blue water black.

This was no ordinary poison.

It was an ancient venom preserved for ages, designed to kill and melt

anything.

It streamed in from every direction—through his skin, eyes, ears, and even the pores of his bones. Every drop struck like invisible lightning.

The queen’s venom still seethed in him, buried deep in his marrow, struggling. But this... this was stronger, older, and more painful.

It overcame, overwhelmed, and engulfed.

And with that, in an instant, Lin regained control of his body. But it wasn’t a victory.

He began to devour it.

Patches of his blood ignited, as if the poison were burning his brain. His ribs exploded with fire. His veins blazed—then froze ice-cold. Every cell screamed in agony.

The venom surged through him, making him convulse and melting his body from the inside out.

He writhed in the pool of poison.

The more he writhed, the worse the pain became.

Lin sank deeper into the Pool of Ruin. The venom chewed through his veins, but suddenly the water shifted.

Faces appeared all around him. Dozens. Hundreds. Men with crowns of bone and gold. Their eyes glowed a cold, piercing blue, their hair as black as midnight. Each had a golden snake-shaped ring threaded through one ear, and their mouths twisted into endless, silent screams. The stench of decay and burnt metal filled the water, curling into Lin’s nose.

The Kings before him. All dead. All broken. They moved through the black water like shadows, their rotten hands reaching for him, each touch burning like molten iron...

One face pushed close, jaw cracked, teeth missing.

“– We ruled... and we died here,” the king spat, his voice bubbling through the water.

Another came, his crown shattered, flesh torn from his skull. He gripped Lin’s shoulder with a rotten hand, burning his skin like fire.

“– You’ll end the same.”

Lin tried to pull away, but his body wouldn’t move.

The dead kings pressed tighter. Their arms reached through the black water, clutching his chest, his throat, his arms. Each touch burned like hot iron.

“– Scream.”

“– Choke.”

“– Rot with us.”

Their words hammered his skull until his ears rang. Lin’s lungs locked up, his chest crushing as if rocks pinned him down. He tried to open his mouth, but only blood spilled out.

A king with half a face leaned in, whispering straight into his ear:

“ Every heir ruled. Every heir fought. None escaped the curse.”

The venom inside him pulsed harder. His bones cracked, muscles tore, his skin split open in long, thin lines.

The kings circled him faster, their broken voices rising into a chant.

“– Join us. Join us. Join us.”

The pool shook. The water forced itself down his throat, filling his stomach, his lungs, until every breath turned into knives.

Lin clawed at his neck, desperate to breathe, but the kings only laughed. Their screams filled his skull, their hands dragged him deeper.

He couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t think.

The last thing he felt was his ribs snapping from the pressure, his body bending the way no human body should.

Then everything went black.

Time lost its edge. Lin couldn’t tell day from night or a minute from an hour. Days blurred into gray clusters slipping from his grasp, each moment identical to the last. His mind decayed under the strain of silence and solitude until he felt like a prisoner stranded in a bubble of time, where nothing moved—except agony.

His hair began to change—its blackness growing darker, like a mourning veil.

His fingers twitched first.

Then his eyelids flickered.

Then bubbles burst from his chest, as if his lungs were on fire.

And then... he moved.

But the body that sat up was not the same.

His skin was scarred by venom.

Lin tried to stand, to climb from the pool, but dizziness clung to him.

Once out, he looked at the pool.

The water had turned blue again—as if his body had absorbed all the poison.

From its depths, a body surfaced.

His skin was peeling off, layer by layer, as if shedding an exhausted shell.

He was transforming like a snake, shedding its scales to reveal a form more pristine, colder, and stranger.

His skin turned whiter.

The first thing that struck him was his eyes—pale as moonlight. His hair, long and smooth, framed a face that had become beautiful, almost inhuman.

His six-pack muscles were strong, his body became more flexible.

He carried the beauty of a fallen angel.

He blinked his eyes, then slapped himself to focus. He needed to escape.

But he was so entranced by his own transformation that he almost forgot the disaster surrounding him.

Lin began to walk, searching for a door, a hole—anything to escape. It was his only priority.

But as he focused on that goal, something stirred.

A colossal creature rose from the ruins’ depths.

A black serpent—immeasurable in size, uncountable in weight.

It glided across the surface of the water without a ripple.

Its eyes burned blue, like twin moons lighting at night.

Lin turned, feeling something wrong.

His instinct was right. He stared into death itself.

A glance was enough to destroy the soul.

It was despair given form—devouring Lin’s last trace of hope and crushing every thought of escape.

Escape? The idea itself was laughable before such a monster.

Revenge. Kill. Escape.

All of it shattered in his mind, broken by the scene before him.

His knee hit the ground.

Despair had dragged him down.

The serpent thrust out its long tongue and coiled its massive body around Lin.

It squeezed hard, crushing the last remnants of his humanity.

Then it bit.

Lin screamed.

A scream that filled the ruins, breaking the silence as if his soul had been torn from his body.

The serpent wasn’t only biting him.

It was trying to enter him.