The Age of Martial Enlightenment.

Chapter Nine – Thorns of Betrayal

Rain danced lightly on the jade-tiled roofs of the Greenleaf Empire's capital. Mist curled like serpents between the pagoda spires, and lanterns flickered behind paper walls of silk and secrecy.

The Emerald Palace rose at the city's heart—a maze of elegance and danger, of assassins who wore crowns and emperors who whispered their decrees with poisoned tongues.

But tonight, it welcomed a guest.

They arrived on foot.

A slender figure draped in robes of deep green and silver, skin pale as moonlight, lips soft with plum tint. Hair flowed like oil-slick ink, neither cut nor coiled in a style typical of man or woman. And their eyes—amber, serpentine, and glinting with something ancient.

The palace guards glanced but did not halt them. 

The Empress waited.

She did not recline upon a throne but stood barefoot in her royal greenhouse, surrounded by exotic flora imported from forgotten lands. Roses of violet fire. Mushrooms that hummed. And, above all, vines with living thorns, twitching to her heartbeat.

She wore no crown—only a cloak of deep violet leaves and black thorns braided into her long braid of white-gold hair. Her eyes were sharp. Tired.

When the visitor entered, a moment of silence passed.

Then the Empress spoke.

"I had heard you died."

The figure smiled, delicate and dangerous.

" A serpent does not die. It molts."

They bowed with elegance unnatural for a warrior, and when they rose, the Empress studied the creature before her.

"The Serpent Lord is dead," she said.

"Correct," they replied. "I am the BloodVenom Martial King now."

The Empress motioned for the vines to part, and they slithered away as if afraid.

"You walk into my house, no longer bearing the same title you once carried as a Lord of the Black Lotus," she said, voice soft yet razor-thin. "Why should I not gut you here and mount your new face in my garden?"

The BloodVenom Martial King chuckled, voice smooth, ambiguous.

"Because we both know the petals are beginning to rot, and I'm stronger than you."

That gave her pause.

He walked among the flowers, brushing fingertips along their petals—none of them dared sting him.

"The Poison King is moving too openly. His techniques consume without discretion. Kingdoms fall, but roots do not spread in salted earth."

"You think he's losing control?" the Empress asked, intrigued.

"I think he believes he's already won."

Silence.

"I'm offering you alliance," he said, voice like honey poured into glass. "Not out of loyalty. I severed that coil. I offer you a path toward ascension."

The Empress narrowed her eyes.

" I don't need your help."

He stepped forward, closer than comfort allowed.

"You do. You need me, dear Empress. Because I have learned the final truth of Blood Refinement. And I know how to make a Martial King."

That silenced even the vines.

"What do you want in return?" she asked finally.

The BloodVenom Martial King's androgynous face split into a tranquil, predatory smile.

"Let me hunt my former brothers. Give me a seat at your table, and I will bring you their heads. One by one."

She walked past him, running fingers through his long black hair, weighing decision like a queen counting daggers.

"You may stay," she said. "But if you lie to me…"

The vines hissed.

"You'll become the mulch beneath my garden."

...…

The room was quiet.

No grand palace. No throne of skulls. No underground lair filled with chanting acolytes.

Just a dimly lit chamber in the upper floors of a modest stone manor, nestled somewhere in the borderlands between ruined kingdoms and desolate trade roads. On the desk sat a tea set of impeccable craftsmanship, untouched.

There was no sound in the chamber but the rhythm of blood. It pulsed through flesh. It hummed in bone. It whispered through the pearls.

Eleven of them, formally Twelve, each floating in a ring above the Poison Martial King's open palm—small, smooth spheres the color of dried clotted blood, semi-translucent with glints of dark essence flickering inside.

"So… the Thorn shelters the Serpent and betrays the Bloom."

The Poison Martial King's eyes narrowed, glowing faintly in the gloom of his sanctum. But it was not surprise that touched his face—only cold calculation.

Each blood pearl pulsed once.

Bloodborne Art: Crimson Echo Pearl

It had taken him decades to perfect.

A martial technique forged during his peak refinement of the 8th Pillar, when his blood had fused with Death itself. While others had refined their blood for purity, balance, or elemental resonance, he had turned his into a trap—a sentient venom that could nest in others unnoticed.

Once implanted—through a handshake, a graze, even a kiss of airborne mist—it would anchor itself to the host's marrow and lie dormant.

It didn't alter qi. It didn't bleed aura. It was the host's own blood, rewritten.

"What better assassin," he had once said, "than blood?"

The Crimson Echo Pearl allowed him to listen across countries. But with the right trigger, it could also combust into an execution curse, rupturing the heart or brain from the inside with a surge of venom-encoded essence.

He had placed one in all Twelve Assassin Lords years ago. As a precaution.

"Those two were always clever," he murmured. "especially Thorn, but betrayal is a different story."

He walked to the nearby shelf. Scrolls lined it, ancient and brittle, yet the poison that seeped from his presence had kept insects and mold at bay for centuries.

He retrieved two scrolls, one marked with a faded black serpent coiled around a lotus blossom. The other a vine of black thorns coiled around a lotus blossom.

He opened the scroll's.

The names of agents, resources, poisons distributed across the continent—all of it tied to the respective branches.

"We will erase the Thorn. Her past, her network, her name. Let the world remember her only as a traitor."

" Destroy the Greenleaf Empire."