Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 698: Kaiden’s Promise

A gust swept through the air.

Kaiden remained positioned with his back facing his siblings, legs dangling over a basin brimming with lifeless monsters, and silence greeted his inquiry.

An extended silence lingered.

Suddenly, Kaiden's stance altered.

The change was faint. His spine aligned straighter, shoulders eased, and the atmosphere atop the ridge transformed, unrelated to the breeze.

His mana aura unfurled.

It emanated from him akin to warmth rising from scorched rocks under the sun, gradual and thick, bearing a heaviness beyond rank ratings or rank evaluations. The furious, suffocating mana mark that the online post had depicted in vivid outrage expanded from his form and bore down on the trio positioned behind him, making the ridge feel burdensome.

As he addressed them once more, his tone bore the sharpness of that force.

"Times have changed."

The twins each retreated a step.

"I have a family now. People who looked at me when I had nothing and decided I was worth their time. People who fight beside me, bleed for me, and love me for exactly who I am." His tone grew firmer. "And I cherish every single one of them."

The mana aura surged, and the rock under his hands fractured, with two slender cracks extending from his palms' locations. He continued facing away.

"So here’s what I need you to understand."

The phrases emerged deliberately. Every word was chosen with the accuracy of someone seeking total clarity.

"You can mock me. Call me whatever you want. Go home and tell father that his embarrassment of a son is still a stain on the Ashborn name. I don’t care. I stopped caring about your approval when I packed my bags for that dorm, and I’m not starting again."

A brief halt.

"But if any of you touch my girls."

The mana aura lost its subtlety. It weighed upon Selena and the twins like the atmosphere prior to a storm's roar, thick enough to demand strain for each breath.

"If you go near them. If you use father’s name to threaten them. If you lift a single finger against the people I love."

He allowed the quiet to amplify it.

"I will end your lives myself, with my own two hands."

Following those words, the mana aura intensified, embedded itself into the rock like a rage restrained for ages, and the ridge creaked under its force.

No one uttered a word.

Cassian and Calix positioned themselves three meters from their elder brother, gazing at his rear.

The outline perched at the cliff's brink exuded a terror that raised the hairs on their skin and caused their mana to recoil instinctively, much like a fire withdrawing from an overpowering gust. The intensity emanating from his frame was compact and shadowy. It resembled not human mana, but proximity to a beast that prowled in lightless domains.

Their brother's rear appeared unchanged. Wide shoulders, casual bearing, legs swaying above a plunge that ought to have daunted him.

Yet the entity assuming his form seemed capable of slaying them without a glance back, and the most alarming aspect was their conviction that it would.

Selena's voice shattered the quiet, steady without falter.

"Are you done?"

Kaiden offered no reply.

"Kill us." She permitted the phrase to linger, then sliced through it. "You. A level fifty-something who needed six others to fight a mid-tier monster wave. You’re going to kill us." The disdain in her tone was precise. "Cassian and Calix are higher-leveled than you’ll ever be, and they’re the youngest fighters in father’s inner circle. I outclass you in every measurable category that exists. You sit on a ridge and make threats you can’t follow up on. You think that makes you dangerous?"

A breeze traversed the ridge.

Kaiden stayed silent.

"You’ve always overvalued yourself," Selena stated, her anger now iced over. "That was your problem before you awakened, and it’s your problem now. You were the boy who couldn’t keep up, and now you’re the man who thinks having some power and money makes him our equal." She breathed out. "It doesn’t. You’re nothing in comparison to the power and wealth New Dawn wields."

Kaiden observed the basin. The golden glow had almost vanished.

He had voiced his stance. No further words were needed, and nothing from Selena could compel him to retract any part.

"Let’s go," Selena commanded. "He’s no longer reasonable."

The twins hesitated at first. They lingered in the dimming glow with their brother's mana aura still bearing down on their torsos, and since the pronouncement, neither had spoken, nor had either averted their gaze from his form.

"Now."

They pivoted and trailed their sister off the ridge. Their steps were firm and swift, the cadence of those departing under orders.

The sounds of their footfalls diminished until the mountain engulfed them.

Kaiden perched solitary on the outcrop.

The sun dipped low. The basin lay still. The breeze brought only chill currents and a subtle trace of a skirmish fading into the past.

During the entire exchange, his siblings had never glimpsed Kaiden’s expression.

But had they, the view would have frozen them.

It was serene.

His gaze locked on the distant line. No quiver in his chin, no strain near his lips, no lingering sentiment from the address he had just given. The openness he had revealed, echoes of shared meals and shining gazes and wardrobe hooks, all had vanished. Stored, locked, sorted into whatever space he reserved for such matters once their role ended.

What persisted was the Paragon of Sin, offspring of the Shadow Monarch.

The identical poise. The identical utter, resolute preparedness to inflict harm on those he had once cherished growing up, and experience no remorse thereafter, if they ever erred by providing cause.

Vespera Ashborn had departed her manor with darkness seeping from her flesh and warnings blaring behind her, without a backward glance.

Her offspring perched on a ridge above a basin of remains at his feet, and he refrained from looking back as well.

The heavens grew dim.