Chapter 1313: Swallowed in Silence & Hanging Sword of Revenge

Marcus’s gaze returned to the empty chair and his mood improved immediately.

’Perhaps Phei had interfered; perhaps something inside Anarctica had gone catastrophically wrong.’ Perhaps Danton had finally encountered one of those ancient monsters powerful men occasionally discovered after becoming arrogant enough to believe nothing stronger remained nearby.

Marcus did not particularly care which explanation proved true.

He merely wanted Danton to return wearing failure.

"I’ve been thinking," Marcus said.

Elliot closed his eyes briefly. "That rarely improves my mornings."

"What color do you think humiliation would look like on Danton?"

The Lord looked at Marcus.

Marcus ignored him with admirable courage for approximately one heartbeat before continuing. "I’ve never seen it on him. I think it might suit him."

Elliot stared at his son as though deciding whether throwing the glass at him would make the morning better.

Marcus smiled. "Imagine it. He walks through those doors, no Coffer, his beautiful plan destroyed, perhaps somebody punched that smile off his face. He might even become tolerable."

"You are enjoying this far too much for someone whose family’s treasury is also missing."

"Father, difficult times require small pleasures."

The Lord finally spoke: "Enough."

The single word stripped the amusement from the room.

Marcus’s smile faded while Elliot turned toward the six-winged figure.

The Lord had been patient for most of the ten days. Danton was powerful, experienced and more difficult to kill than Marcus’s imagination preferred, and delays did happen whenever plans involved ancient treasures, World Transcendents and places like Anactica.

That patience was ending.

"Danton does not disappear without cause," the Lord said, his gaze resting upon the sunlight beyond the windows. "Nor do eleven World Transcendents vanish with him without leaving consequence behind."

Marcus set his glass down.

Elliot’s attention sharpened.

The Lord looked back toward them. "Something happened there."

Neither man answered because that much had become impossible to deny.

Across the island, the Maxtons were already far beyond denial.

Harold Maxton stood at the head of a long table staring down at ruined Chained orbs.

They had not been removed; that had been his decision.

Every shattered piece remained exactly where it had been placed after the servants collected them, fragments of dark crystal spread across black wood beneath the morning light. Some had split cleanly in half. Others had burst apart so violently that only jagged pieces remained, their inner glow extinguished.

Grandpa Maxton sat several places away, unusually silent.

Around them were the members of the family trusted with enough knowledge to understand what those broken objects meant, and nobody had touched the refreshments brought in nearly an hour earlier.

Harold placed both hands against the table: "Check them again."

One of the men across from him hesitated. "Patriarch, we already..."

"I said check them."

The man swallowed whatever he had intended to say and reached toward the nearest broken orb; essence entered the dead crystal.

Nothing answered, so he tried another.

Then a third.

Harold watched every attempt despite already knowing what would happen.

The orbs had existed to confirm that the Chained remained beneath Maxton’s control. As long as the restraints endured, the crystals responded. Their simultaneous destruction meant those bindings had suffered something catastrophic.

The family had spent ten days trying to decide which explanation frightened them less.

Either the Chained were dead, or they had somehow become free.

Harold had reached the point where he sincerely hoped Danton had killed every last one of them.

A dead World Transcendent was a tragedy they could survive.

A free one was a future problem with centuries of grievance and enough strength to make revenge exceptionally thorough.

The man examining the crystals finally pulled his hand away. "There is still nothing."

Harold’s fingers tightened against the table. "Nothing from any of them?"

"No."

Grandpa Maxton looked toward the shattered orbs. "Then stop asking the boy to tell you what you already know."

Harold’s head turned sharply. "And what exactly do I know?"

"That they are beyond our chains."

A silence settled around the table. Harold hated the wording immediately.

Beyond their chains could mean corpses but it could also mean something far worse.

One of the women seated farther down shifted uneasily. "If they’re alive..."

Nobody needed her to finish.

The thought had been living inside the Maxton estate for ten days already.

If any of those World Transcendents survived free of their restraints, they had every reason to return and kill every last of Maxtons.

And every day they failed to do so made the fear worse.

The estate had changed beneath that expectation without Harold ever issuing a grand order.

Family members who once wandered between wings alone had developed a strange preference for remaining nearer one another. Weapons appeared at meals where nobody had carried them before. Conversations paused whenever someone unfamiliar approached the estate too quickly, and servants had learned that entering rooms unexpectedly was an excellent way to discover how rapidly cultivators could turn toward a door.

Harold himself had become worse than anyone.

Two nights ago, a bird struck one of his windows while he slept. He awakened sitting upright with murder already in his eyes, only to find a miserable little creature fluttering drunkenly away from the glass.

He had spent several seconds staring after it before lying back down.

Sleep did not return.

Looking at the broken orbs again, Harold felt the same prickling unease crawl beneath his skin.

"Ten days," he muttered.

Grandpa Maxton heard him. "I know."

"No, you don’t, father." Harold straightened. "Every morning we wake up without an attack and everyone starts telling themselves perhaps they’re dead. Then night comes and suddenly every shadow beyond the estate looks like a World Transcendent deciding whether to enter through the gate or simply remove the wall."

Nobody laughed.

Harold’s voice sharpened. "If they survived, where are they?"

That was the problem.

If the Chained had escaped and immediately attacked, at least the Maxtons would know what they were facing. Silence allowed imagination to supply possibilities far more unpleasant than certainty.

Perhaps the survivors were wounded and recovering. Perhaps they were gathering strength. Perhaps they had gone looking for allies, or maybe they had decided that revenge deserved preparation after everything the Maxtons had done to them.

A furious World Transcendent was terrifying.

A patient one was worse.

One narrow comfort remained.

The protections placed around the most sensitive Heavenchild and Maxton plans should have stripped those memories from any Chained who escaped their control. Details surrounding the Destined Day, the Coffer and several deeper arrangements had never been left unprotected inside enslaved minds.

Harold had reminded himself of that many times.

It never helped for long.

A World Transcendent did not need to remember the entire conspiracy to remember whose family had placed chains around its throat.

Grandpa Maxton leaned back slightly and studied Harold. "Danton would know."

Harold laughed once, though there was no amusement in it. "Then perhaps Danton should return and tell us."

The room became quiet again.

That was the part Harold could no longer reconcile.

If the eleven Chained had died, Danton should have returned with the explanation. If their bindings failed and some escaped, Danton should have warned the families before retaliation became possible. If the Coffer had been stolen, Danton should have come back furious enough to shake half the island while deciding whom to kill first.

And if everything had gone according to plan, the Progenitor would have returned days ago with the treasury and enough smugness to poison an entire banquet.

Instead there was nothing.

Harold looked toward the eleven shattered orbs again.

No Danton, Coffer, Chained or explanation where either was.

Ten days after, the Maxtons possessed only broken crystals and increasingly imaginative nightmares.

Across Hell’s Paradise Island, the Heavenchilds still had enough confidence left to turn uncertainty into irritation. Marcus could sit beneath the morning sun and entertain himself with fantasies of Danton finally learning the taste of failure, while Elliot continued meeting other Legacy Family leaders with the same controlled expression he had worn before the alliance began loosening beneath him.

The Maxtons had already crossed beyond that comfort.

For them, every additional day of silence felt less like relief and more like another day granted before something arrived.

And beneath all the questions surrounding the Chained and their possible revenge was the larger mystery neither family could answer.

What had happened in Anarctica?

Where was Danton?

Who had the Coffer?

More importantly, if Danton had truly failed, what could possibly have happened there that left a Progenitor, eleven World Transcendents and the greatest collective treasury of the Legacy Families swallowed by ten days of complete silence?