The Death-Chosen Daughter Chapter 13
Thanatos’s voice echoed through the grand council hall, every word slamming into the souls of the elves like a heavy hammer.
In the hall, the Elven King, highest ruler of the court, finally appeared. Stripped of all pride, he all but rolled off his throne to prostrate himself on the ground before the phantom of Death and me.
“Great Lord of the Underworld! Honored Emissary”
“This is entirely the selfish doing of the Vaelen family and my rebellious son! The royal family… The royal family would never dare disrespect the emissary!”
To appease the wrath of the Underworld and save the crumbling World Tree, the Elven King ruthlessly severed all ties.
“From this moment forth! House Vaelen is stripped of all noble titles! Stripped of all magic and assets!” the Elven King roared his commands. “Banish them to the mud zone of the lowest depths! For eternity, they are forbidden from setting foot in the upper levels!”
I looked coldly at the Elven King, so quick to sacrifice his own kin, and scoffed. “Do you think banishing a few fools will erase the sin of your son pouring a purification potion into my wounds?”
The Elven King shuddered. Cold sweat soaked his regal robes, and he didn’t dare utter half a word in defense.
None of the guards dared to hesitate.
With a few brutal magical chains, my father, the great noble who once ordered people around in the High Council, had his elven core violently drained, leaving him a broken man who could not even stand.
As for my mother, already suffering half the pain of Nyssa’s backlash, her well-preserved beauty decayed instantly without magic to sustain it.
Her once flawless skin rapidly wrinkled, her hair turned white and thin, and within a few minutes, she morphed into a monster uglier and older than a crone.
“No! My magic! My face-!” Mother shrieked wretchedly, clawing at her deeply lined face.
But her screams were quickly silenced by the guards. The family of three was dragged away like three dead pigs, mercilessly thrown out of the noble upper levels.
A few days later. In the Lower District, the rancid, muddy slums.
In dark corners that never saw the light of day, sludge and foul, stagnant water flowed freely.
Without the protection of magic, High Elves here were treated worse than feral dogs.
“You crazy old hag! Stay away from me! If you hadn’t indulged that animal Nyssa in the first place, I would still be a high and mighty elder!”
In a corner of the slums, Father slapped Mother, who had become unbearably hideous, into the mud. He cursed at her with bloodshot eyes.
Mother clutched her swollen cheek and lunged at him like a harpy, biting and tearing at him. “Now you’re blaming me?! Weren’t you the one who suggested treating Elowen as a blood bag to drain her magic?!”
Not far away, Nyssa, covered in festering sores, lay on a pile of foul-smelling straw. The shoulder wound pierced by Caelum’s longsword had become entirely infected, oozing pus and crawling with maggots since she had no magic to heal it. She let out weak moans. “Water… give me a sip of water…”
But her parents, who had once held her as their most precious treasure, now found her too disgusting to look at and ignored whether she lived or died.
As this filthy, pathetic farce played out, the sludge of the slums was pushed aside by an invisible force.
I stepped onto the bone staircase, slowly descending into the deepest part of the sewers.
Thanatos in his physical form was walking right beside me.
He held my hand.
That large, cold hand, forged from the pure power of the abyss, was now holding my fingertips with extreme care and tenderness.
He leaned in slightly. “Do you want me to handle this for you?”
I looked up at him and shook my head.
“This time, I want to do it myself.”
He didn’t say anything more; he only tightened his grip on my hand a little.
At this moment, the surrounding commoner elves all fell to their knees in reverence.
The Vaelen parents, fighting in the mud, stiffly turned their heads at the commotion. When they saw me, standing high above and flanked by a god, a twisted gleam of desperate longing erupted in their eyes.
“Elowen! My good daughter!”
They crawled out of the filth toward me, like two dogs begging for scraps.
“Look at us, we know we were wrong!” Father raised his head, weeping bitterly, trying to use the mask of a loving father that he was so accustomed to wearing to move me.
“You are the true pride of House Vaelen! You are the emissary! With just one word from you, we can return to the upper levels! Please, take us away!”
Mother nodded frantically, trying to grab the hem of my dress, but recoiled as the edges of the netherfire burned her hand. ” Mother knows she was wrong. Mother will only love you from now on, won’t she?”
I quietly watched these two faces, written entirely in greed and selfishness, feeling not even the slightest sliver of sorrow in my heart anymore.
A small, cold smile touched my lips.
I bent down slightly and, using the gentlest voice I could muster, looked into my father’s eyes.
“Do you remember what you said outside the main hall?”
Father froze.
I repeated his words to him, pronouncing each one with clarity. “You said, “The Seer’s words are never wrong. I am fated to lose one daughter.””
Cold sweat poured down my father’s face.
But I smiled.
“Now, the gods have granted your wish.” I stood up straight, turning my head mercilessly to look at Nyssa, who was clinging to life on the pile of straw.
Facing the empty air, I slowly curled my fingers into a fist.
“No… Sister, don’t!” Nyssa’s entire body arched violently in the filth, her limbs spasming uncontrollably.
Hateyes, which still retained a tiny shred of consciousness, suddenly widened to their limits, staring straight at me.
An incredibly thin black thread, formed from pure Underworld power, was silently drawn out from Nyssa’s chest.
The last trace of my shadow magic that sustained her was completely, utterly drained by me.
After convulsing, Nyssa vomited a massive mouthful of foul-smelling black fluid. Her magical pathways completely shattered, and the source of her magic dried up forever.
Standing beside me, Thanatos clicked his tongue softly.
“Her core is shattered, but her soul remains.”
“She still has several decades left to live.”
From this moment on, she could never use even the lowest-tier magic to ease her pain. She would be trapped in that totting, foul -smelling shell as an undying wretch, forced to endure the long lifespan of an eff in this swamp that never saw the sun.
“Ah… ah…” Nyssa stared with cloudy, bulging eyes, unable to make a coherent sound.
“Enjoy your family,” I said, leaving them with my final verdict as they collapsed in the muddy water.
Without a backward glance, I turned, took the hand of the god of Death, and walked toward the path leading into the depths of
the Underworld.
