The old man's voice—gravelly with age, corroded by authority, and cracking under the strain of desperation—cut through the suffocating quiet of the decaying study.
"...and come home."
His tone wavered. He knew he had no true command over me anymore, but he tried to wear the mask anyway. His next words were delivered like an edict from a throne he no longer deserved to sit on.
"Sit at that desk you're in front of, and go back to living as I, Grayan."
I didn't blink. I simply stared at him, letting the silence between us harden to stone. He wasn't asking me to return—he was begging me to retreat. To erase everything I'd built and everything I'd destroyed. To place a flimsy patch over the rotting corpse of a legacy he'd let die long before I ever laid a hand on it.
"Were you also involved in this scheme concocted by Prime Minister Mayther Rufer and Victor?" I asked, keeping my voice flat and blade-sharp. "To make me this preposterous offer?"
He exhaled heavily, lines deepening around his exhausted eyes.
"Whatever Victor gets up to, I swear, I only stand by and watch. That being said, now that the timing is right, I'm simply making my move to get what I want."
Of course. He always waited until someone else spilled the blood, then stepped forward to claim the battlefield.
"When I asked you if you thought you could last a year after leaving this family behind," he continued, "you said this."
The memory flickered between us—my rage, molten and newly carved; his disappointment, theatrical and manipulative; the suffocating halls I had escaped from. Even now, the words still burned hot on my tongue.
"You think I won't be able to do it? Sit back and watch. You'll see whether this is mere obstinacy or it's the culmination of everything I've truly felt about this wretched family."
He latched onto that memory like a drowning man grasping a floating shard of wood.
"That it was the culmination of everything you've truly felt about this family."
He leaned forward, his voice taking on the pleading cadence of someone who finally realized they'd lost the war.
"Fine, you win. Seeing what an utter mess you've made of the House of Grayan, I now understand how furious you are with me. So stop this nonsense and come home."
But fury had never been the fuel—truth had. The truth of this family's rot. The truth of what they had molded in me. The truth of what I had become when I severed their chains.
"Don't you think you've done more than enough to ruin this family?" he demanded, finally letting his resentment creep through the cracks.
I let out a sound that wasn't quite a laugh—more a hollow exhale cut with disbelief.
"You must be aware the House of Grayan is beyond saving now. Do you really think my coming home will change the fact that this family has already hit rock bottom?"
He swallowed, defeated. Then he reached for the last relic of power he possessed.
"I set aside some funds long ago in case of an emergency. It's clean money, laundered back when you and Victor were very young."
He tapped a thick dossier with trembling fingers.
"As I hid it away in Artiazen, I'm the only one who knows about the existence and location of that money. It wouldn't be enough to entirely resolve the crisis you've landed this family in, but we can avoid the worst."
Ah. A bribe.
Not surprising—bribery was the only love language the House of Grayan ever understood.
He's kept this money hidden from Victor all this time?
The thought slipped through my mind, cool and clinical.
So even after handing the title of successor to him… he never truly trusted him. Not once.
The old man continued, voice roughening as he laid bare the comparison he'd never dared to speak aloud when we were children.
"Since Victor has become the target of many," he said, "after the failure of the new business venture on which he staked everything the Grayan family had… as soon as he gets his hands on this money, he'll use it to save his skin by paying off some of his astronomical debts…"
The implication hung there between us like a guillotine blade.
Victor was weak. Predictable.
And he knew it.
"But in your hands," he went on, with a reverence that felt obscene, "the money could be used to rebuild this family's legacy. Since you're the one who caused this crisis in the first place, you must know better than anybody how to fix it."
He approached me, dragging himself forward with his cane, his old bones shaking with the weight of forced sincerity.
His next words were an admission so twisted it bordered on madness.
"I, to be frank…"
He swallowed.
"…seeing the way you wielded another family's authority to meticulously destroy the House of Grayan and its businesses… made me anxious and infuriated by your betrayal… but it also pleased me."
His laugh was brittle, a dry rattle from a dying man whose pride was somehow the last organ still functioning.
"At one point, I thought of you as a failure with wasted potential…"
His hand hovered above my head in a ghost of a forgotten gesture from a forgotten time.
"…but in the end, you were the perfect son I wanted."
A perfect son.
Perfect in cruelty.
Perfect in destruction.
Perfect in the very traits he had cultivated through neglect and harshness.
"The way you revived the embers of a dying match and grew it into a wildfire," he said, eyes burning, "and your ability to crush anyone you wanted gone underfoot… was, to me, proof. Proof that I'd made the right choice. Proof that you're the only one who deserves to be my successor. At last, I've regained a successor worthy of inheriting everything I have…"
His approval felt like poison.
Toxic.
Suffocating.
Everything I had ever wanted as a child—delivered now as an aftertaste to the ruin of his own legacy.
"You want the perfect son to clean up the perfect son's mess," I said quietly, each word carved with precision. "The money is meaningless. I have no interest in avoiding the worst."
I stepped closer, letting the question fall with all the weight of my intent.
"I want to know the location of that money, not to save Grayan, but for myself."
My eyes locked onto his.
"And what, exactly, is the price you demand for this final, desperate information?"
---
A cold amusement unfurled in my chest as I watched the old man bask in the ruins around him like a monarch admiring the ashes of his own monarchy.
"At last, I've regained a successor worthy of inheriting everything I have…"
His voice swelled, trembling with a grotesque pride.
"…and the mighty House of Grayan will welcome its new master."
His smile widened—stretched thin, almost splitting across his face—an expression far too triumphant, far too hopeful for a man standing on the fractured bones of his own legacy.
"What could possibly be more joyous and hopeful than this?" he asked, with the feverish sincerity of a fanatic.
I stared at him, blank and unblinking.
Then a single, derisive syllable escaped me.
"…HAH."
The laugh hit him like a slap.
"Has the utter sense of defeat made you go senile?" I asked, my tone slicing through the air.
His pupils trembled.
"Oh, don't delude yourself," I said, stepping toward him. "I abandoned the Grayan name long ago. That name might have been a source of honor and pride to you, but to me… it has only ever been a disgrace."
I leaned in, letting my voice drop into the space between us like a blade sliding into soft flesh.
"A brand I wanted removed."
His confidence faltered. For a moment, he seemed small. Frail. A tyrant whose kingdom no longer existed in the real world—only in his mind.
"I haven't the faintest desire to succeed that wicked name," I told him, "or become your hope for the future."
I stepped back and smoothed the dust from my coat, as though brushing off his delusions.
"All right," I said evenly. "Since you beat me, I will happily pay the price for my defeat."
His eyes sharpened—finally hearing the language he understood.
"The money is meaningless. I have no interest in avoiding the worst. I want to know the location of that money, not to save Grayan, but for myself. And what, exactly, is the price you demand for this final, desperate information?"
The old man's gaze flickered with reborn hunger.
He clutched the serpentine head of his cane—its fanged mouth gleaming as if approving of the deal to come.
"That price," he rasped, leaning in with startling lucidity, "is one that will make you more willing to reach a compromise with me."
He paused, savoring the moment.
Then the words that followed smashed into me like an iron weight dropped into my chest.
"I'll take care of Victor for you."
A cold crack shot through my spine.
The room tilted—just slightly—before settling back into place.
My eyes widened.
Not in fear.
Not in moral recoil.
But in sheer, stunned disbelief at the monstrous simplicity of the man in front of me.
"You'll go as far as to kill your own child?" I asked, my voice eerily level.
"Are you serious?"
The old man smiled.
A thin, chilling crescent.
The same smile he wore when he called me his "perfect son."
"He lost to you yet again over the new business venture in Artiazen," he said, waving a hand as if brushing aside a failed servant. "A single, worthy successor is all this family needs. And now I have him."
Victor wasn't a son to him—he was a liability.
A defective heir to be removed.
A sickening revulsion twisted my insides into knots.
The same feeling I'd felt years ago—the moment I realized this man was incapable of love, or empathy, or anything resembling human emotion.
He spoke again, oblivious to the storm clawing its way through my mind.
"I can't pass down my family or the last of my hidden funds to someone like that," he said, tapping his cane against the floor, punctuating each word like a judge passing sentence.
"If his life is the price I must pay to return you to that seat… I've already done the math."
The math.
That one word landed like a dead weight in my stomach.
The math of murder.
The calculus of patricide.
The arithmetic of legacy.
QUEASY.
The nausea coiled up my throat, suffocating.
It felt like being trapped within the belly of something cold and ancient—something reptilian—smothered in its digestive darkness as its muscles tightened around me.
A curse.
That was what it felt like.
To share blood with such a creature.
The old man droned on, oblivious to the horror spreading behind my stoic mask.
"And I'll persuade the Prime Minister. Since the House of Grayan got him to where he is now, if you become the next head of this family…"
His tone became smooth, almost reassuring.
"He will never do anything to harm you or your wife again."
My stomach clenched.
Even my wife's safety was now a bargaining chip.
"Besides," he added casually, "the man isn't cut out for such an important position. He's helpless when it comes to Victor—and he knows it."
Piece by piece, he assembled the offer.
Power.
Protection.
Control of the nation's highest seat.
And on top of it all—
"…You'll be rid of your brother, who's always been a thorn in your side," he said gently, as if offering a gift. "Without getting any blood on your hands."
He offered the last piece with a flourish:
"…and save your wrongfully imprisoned wife."
Silence.
A vast, suffocating silence.
The old man's voice dripped with victorious delight.
"What do you think? I imagine it's a difficult offer to refuse."
He had no idea—not a shred—of what burned behind my unmoving expression.
I finally spoke.
"My only regret is…"
My voice was soft, almost contemplative.
"…that I won't get to see the look on Victor's face when he discovers this truth."
My words drifted outward, a thin ribbon of sound filled with layered meaning.
The old man heard only submission.
Acceptance.
Agreement.
He didn't understand.
He didn't see the trap forming in the shadows behind my calm.
He didn't realize what I truly meant when I spoke of "truth."
I watched the old man's face brighten at my cryptic response—that expression would be quite something to see.
He mistook the bile in my voice as greed.
He mistook my contempt as agreement.
He mistook everything—as he always had.
"My only regret is… that I won't get to see the look on Victor's face when he discovers this truth."
Those words poisoned him with satisfaction.
He thought he had me.
He thought the price was settled.
I turned on my heel with a sharp, echoing STRIDE, the marble floor ringing with my disgust. The air behind me felt stale, tainted by his twisted logic. I wanted distance—anything to shut out that serpentine voice.
Startled, he called after me, his tone cracking from emperor to panicked tyrant.
"I. I'm not done."
I paused mid-step, my back still toward him.
My voice was ice, brittle and cutting:
"I don't care how you balanced the scales on your end. Good luck trying to fight your way out of this. I stand by my answer."
That was it.
He'd received my answer—
his family's destruction,
his heir returned as a blade,
and the illusion that I'd stepped willingly into his legacy of cruelty.
The deal he offered was soaked in poison:
Money.
Victor's death.
My wife's freedom.
Three rotten fruits on a single branch.
But the last one—her freedom—was a lure sharp enough to draw blood.
He surged forward in a sudden, frantic burst of movement—far quicker than a man his age should manage. His fingers clamped down on my shoulder, frail yet vice-like, fueled by desperation rather than strength.
His breath was hot, feverish, brushing my ear as he leaned in.
"I haven't told you about the biggest price I'm willing to pay," he whispered, voice trembling with the weight of his final gambit. "Now comes the most important part—the offer you'll find truly tempting."
Then came the words.
The unthinkable words.
"I'll place my own life on the scales as well."
I froze mid-breath.
Mid-thought.
Mid-sentence.
The world narrowed to a pin-drop.
He—
he—
was offering his life.
The ultimate sacrifice from a man who had spent decades clinging to control so fiercely it had deformed the very shape of our family.
He was putting himself on the chopping block, not out of remorse—never that—but as a final, grotesque tribute to the Grayan legacy.
He thought his death could buy his redemption.
---
The air thickened, dense enough to choke on.
The old man shifted his grip on his cane, his posture reassembling itself into a picture of tragic resolve.
"I'll place my own life on the scales as well," he repeated, slower this time, savoring the solemnity.
His speech bubble—dark crimson in the dim greenish hue of the room—felt like spilled blood staining the air.
I didn't move.
I only watched him.
"Since I'm the person you resent the most, if I die…"
He allowed the pause to bloom, heavy and poisonous.
"You'll be able to let go of that anger and find peace, as your nature allows."
Peace.
The word tasted like ash coming from his mouth.
He noticed my expression—my disgust sharpened into a blade.
"No need to look at me with such disgust," he muttered, more wounded than offended. Then he gathered himself, pushing through the shadow clinging to his voice.
"But rather than seeing this family fall to ruin in Victor's hands, I see more hope in staking my life on you… and ending it."
He touched the cuff of his sleeve—an old man's gesture, frail, trembling, and yet somehow full of ironclad conviction.
"I've already got one foot in the grave," he confessed, the truth hollowing his voice. "I don't mind sacrificing my life for the House of Grayan."
Finally, I spoke.
Soft.
Dangerous.
"How can you be so sure that I'll keep this family alive after you and Victor die?"
My voice slithered through the tension like a threat.
"I could turn around and immediately annihilate this family."
He gave a faint, tired smile—an expression cracked by age and arrogance.
"You might change your mind once those you resent are gone," he murmured, clinging to a hope built on delusion.
"Although my methods were sure, and quick, you were never a fan of them…"
His tone gentled, conceding authority.
"So if you don't like my ways, you may do as you please."
He bowed his head—
an emperor kneeling before his own executioner.
"Run this family however you like," he said.
"Just keep the family legacy alive."
He lifted his gaze one last time, searching my unreadable expression with aging eyes that begged for a future he no longer had the strength to build.
"There. I've now given you everything. Make your choice."
A sound escaped me—
a low, sharp SCOFF,
a bitter exhale caught between contempt and amusement.
I turned my head away, the refusal subtle but absolute.
SHAKE.
That was where the choice lay.
On the edge of my breath.
Hanging in the silence between us.
A silence sharp enough to cut.
---
I remained in the library long after the old man's cane-tap faded from the hallway. The stillness that followed felt unnatural, like the entire estate was holding its breath—waiting to see what I would become.
The sunlight filtering through the tall, leaded windows painted fractured patterns across the floor, dust drifting lazily in the sharp beams. Everything here—every shelf, every polished surface, every relic of Grayan's rotten legacy—felt like it was suffocating me with its expectations.
His last words clung to my skull like a curse:
"...you don't have much time."
A bitter scoff escaped me.
I was sick—bone‑deep sick—of this family and its ceaseless cycle of manipulation, bloodshed, and sanctimonious self-preservation. Sick of being told who I was, what I must become, and how inevitable my corruption was.
The silence rang, heavy and accusatory.
He truly believed I would cave. That I would one day walk back to him, ready to kill my way into the throne he had carved out of our collective suffering. That beneath my restraint lay a monster eager to inherit the Grayan name in its purest, blood-soaked form.
He was wrong.
But even in rejection, his offer clung to me like poison.
I looked toward the broad, dark-wood desk—massive, oppressive, carved with symbols of power older than my own father. A grotesque monument to every unspeakable decision made in the Grayan name.
A phantom image flashed—the old man standing triumphant behind it, monocle gleaming, convinced he had molded me into the perfect successor.
At last, I've regained a successor worthy of inheriting everything I have...
And the mighty House of Grayan will welcome its new master.
His imagined voice was thick with pride, with delusion.
I could almost see him smile.
But beneath that smile lay the truth:
His hope was carved out of death.
A whisper—one that wasn't his—brushed the back of my mind, cold as a blade's edge.
And this time won't be any different, Eiser.
A voice I might have claimed as my own, once.
A shadow of the man I feared I could become.
I crushed the thought instantly.
No.
I wouldn't be like my brother.
I wouldn't be like him.
I lifted my gaze to the shelves around me. The portraits of Grayan patriarchs—stern, self-righteous, monstrous in their sense of entitlement—seemed to glare down at me. Their oil-painted eyes gleamed darkly through the dust, as though waiting for me to accept my role as the next link in their chain of cruelty.
I stared them down, unblinking.
Everything you try to protect is bound to fall apart and die as long as I'm involved.
Let them fear that. Let them expect destruction.
But they would not understand the truth of my resolve—
Liberation looks like destruction to those made powerful by decay.
I stepped toward the vast desk, each footstep echoing through the cavernous room. The light glinted off the smooth marble surface. Laid neatly at the center, like ceremonial offerings, were the tools of authority:
A gold pen.
The elaborate family seal.
Legacies carved into objects, waiting for me to accept them.
I stopped before them. My reflection looked back at me in the polished marble—calm, determined, unyielding.
I will never compromise with that accursed family.
My hand reached forward, steady and firm, grasping the weighty Grayan seal. The cold metal pressed into my palm, ornate and hateful in its beauty.
CLICK.
The sound echoed like a verdict.
I will protect Serena my way.
My hands would remain clean of murder.
But clean hands did not mean inaction.
My resolve sharpened to a blade's edge.
I would save her.
I would dismantle the Grayan power that had imprisoned her.
And I would do it without becoming the monster they expected—
or the killer they wanted.
I would not play the patriarch's game.
I would build my own.
The younger man has refused the old man's offer but has committed to protecting Serena and dealing with the family his way.
The study was dim, a faint amber glow from a single desk lamp casting long, crooked shadows across walls lined with books and artifacts of a family whose power was built on manipulation and fear. The heavy, musty scent of old wood mingled with the faint metallic tang of money, a smell that always reminded me of the cost of loyalty in the Grayan world.
I had made my choice. My decision was irrevocable.
I would protect Serena.
I would dismantle the House of Grayan.
But I would not descend into the bloodlust the patriarch demanded.
I will never compromise with that accursed family.
The antique telephone sat on the desk, coiled cord glinting faintly in the lamp light. I reached for it deliberately, the weight of the receiver cool and substantial in my hand. CLICK. The sound of the dial tone filled the oppressive silence, a crisp, decisive mark of action.
Bringing the receiver to my ear, I felt the brass warm under my touch, a small comfort against the chill of the room. My suit jacket straightened itself across my shoulders, and my gaze sharpened. The air was thick with expectation, but I no longer walked the path the old man had carved for me. This was my move, my game.
"Yes, President Harold. It's me," I said, my voice low, firm, and authoritative, bridging the gap between the decaying isolation of Grayan and the ruthless, modern world I had built beyond its walls.
The conversation was brief, efficient, and transactional. Each word measured, each pause calculated. I did not ask for favors; I commanded them. The network I had nurtured outside the suffocating shadow of my family was a web of influence, wealth, and power waiting to be activated.
"I need your help," I stated, my tone leaving no room for negotiation. It was a call to arms, a summons to action. My eyes—striking blue, cold as winter ice—locked onto the room around me. The assistance I required was not for petty vendettas, nor for the Grayan tradition of internal rivalry. This was leverage the likes of which the old man could never comprehend: a force capable of reshaping markets, toppling dynasties, and dismantling the corrupt machinery of the family that had imprisoned my life and my wife.
The call ended quickly. I placed the receiver back on its cradle, the click echoing with finality. I exhaled slowly, letting the tension leave my shoulders.
On the desk lay the monocle I had seen the old man wear—a symbol of the House's oppressive control, now discarded, rendered irrelevant by my defiance. It was a relic of a world I refused to inherit.
[Chapter 117 End]
Story • Art: Ina
Tip: Due to an accident in his teens, Dustin Grayan has poor vision in one eye.
Summary of Events:
Dustin Grayan, the younger man, has officially refused the patriarch's offer to seize power through murder. He has decided to dismantle the family and save his wife by activating an external power source, calling upon a figure named President Harold for help, initiating his plan to protect Serena "his way."