CHAPTER 475: CHAPTER 475: YOU SEE? HE’S STILL TALKING

The air in the village felt tight enough to snap.

The invading men still stood frozen—muscles trembling, eyes wide, sweat sliding in nervous lines down their temples. Zyran looked like he was hosting a tea party in the middle of a battlefield, humming softly as he examined his nails.

Kian stood a few feet away, half-in the shade, half-in the fading light. His blue eyes were cold, blank, unreadable—like the king of predators deciding who was worth killing first.

Everyone else held their breath.

Everyone except—

"They came looking for Isabella!"

Kian’s head snapped toward Ophelia.

Ophelia stood there, tiny, wide-eyed, clutching her hands together like she’d just interrupted a classroom. Her voice was soft but carried across the entire village because Ophelia didn’t know how to whisper at the right time.

"And she’s not around," she continued, completely unaware that her mouth was sprinting ahead of her brain. "So Zyran is teaching them a lesson! They’re bad guys, really bad guys—terrible actually—one of them pushed a woman when he came in and didn’t even apologize, and another one stepped on our woven basket! He didn’t even pick it up! It took three days to weave! And—and—and I think one of them was looking around like he wanted to steal things! And another one kept smiling weirdly, like he wanted to do... bad things to Isabella when he found her. You know, creepy bad things. The way his eyes were moving? Mmm-mmm!"

Valen closed his eyes like a man begging the heavens to silence her.

"And so Zyran said..."

Valen, standing right behind her, dragged his hands down his face slowly, so painfully slowly, like a father who just realized his child was about to ruin international diplomacy.

"Ophelia," he whispered, gently taking her arm.

But she kept going.

"...And then they said they wanted Isabella because their king wants her, which is really stupid because Isabella would never go with them anyway, she would burn down their whole village, plus she’s not even here, and I told them that too but they didn’t listen and—"

Valen literally slapped a hand over her mouth.

"Enough," he murmured, smiling like the gentlest exhausted man alive as he tugged her away. "This isn’t for your soft heart."

"But—I wanna see—!"

"No," he repeated, covering her eyes with his palm as he dragged her off. "Absolutely not. This is adult business. And by adult business, I mean madness."

Ophelia sagged dramatically, pouting hard enough to form a new crater in the earth. "But... but it was finally getting good..."

Her soft little voice carried anyway, echoing through the tense clearing.

Zyran pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. "That, Kian, right there—that is why I love her. She’s such a cutie."

Kian didn’t react.

He didn’t blink.

He didn’t even breathe differently.

He simply turned his head very slowly toward Zyran with the exact expression of a lion trying to understand why a peacock was tap-dancing in front of him.

Zyran grinned even wider.

Then he turned back to the frozen invaders, gesturing at them with the casualness of someone inviting neighbors over for dinner.

"You heard her, right?" Zyran said cheerfully. "These men came looking for my goddess. Wanted to take her by force. By force, can you imagine? If she were here, she’d be so scared—"

Kian’s brow twitched.

Just a fraction.

Because if there was one thing everyone agreed on, it was this: the day Isabella was "scared" was the day the world split open in shock.

Isabella, who once threw a flaming pot at a man for interrupting her lunch?

Isabella, who argued with Kian like she was built from pure audacity?

Isabella, who Zyran repeatedly said he would die for?

Scared?

Kian wanted to say, please be serious for once in your life, but Kian did not waste oxygen.

The chief invader, still frozen chest-deep in Zyran’s spell, coughed out a desperate breath.

"Let us go," he barked. "If our king finds out, he will come for your village. You love your people, do you not? You do not want war. Let. Us. Go."

His eyes locked onto Kian’s.

He expected fear. He expected panic. He expected some kind of reaction.

What he got... was nothing.

Kian’s face remained expressionless—flat, cold, dead calm—as if he were staring at a tree stump that had started speaking. He didn’t even shift his stance. The big cat energy radiating off him practically suffocated the clearing.

Zyran made a soft, amused sound. "You see? He’s still talking."

And Kian?

Kian simply rolled his shoulders once, turned away, and said in that glacier-carved voice of his:

"When you’re done, clean this mess." He said his cold gaze sweeping past the bloody dead bodies once more.

He didn’t even wait for an answer.

He didn’t ask who would be dead or alive.

He didn’t ask how long Zyran planned to play with them.

He just turned and walked off, the faint swish of his linen hunting-skirt brushing against his legs as if even the dust wasn’t worthy of clinging to him. He left the chaos behind him without a second glance—like the entire scene wasn’t worth a single heartbeat of his time.

The villagers parted for him, bowing their heads.

Not just out of respect—out of instinct.

Predators were treated like storms.

Zyran watched him go with a fond little blink.

"Ahh... our cold, mysterious Lion King," he murmured, sounding like an auntie admiring someone else’s child.

Cyrus closed his eyes tiredly.

He didn’t even have the energy to glare anymore. Watching Zyran do... whatever Zyran was doing felt like a full-time job he was never paid for. And now that Kian had walked away, the situation somehow felt even more chaotic—as if Kian’s exit had given Zyran permission to be worse.

A dangerous, unhinged sparkle lit up Zyran’s eyes.

He turned back to the frozen soldiers with a smile so soft and sweet it made several villagers silently pray.

"Now," Zyran said, clasping his hands like he was about to give a sermon, "where was I? Ah, yes—my life story."

The invading men looked like they wanted to die.

Quickly.

Painlessly.

Immediately.

But Zyran was not done.

Not even close.