Revenge: A Path of Destruction
Chapter 122: Echoes of a Broken Throne

Chapter 122: Echoes of a Broken Throne

Thutmose watched in silence as the blur of white fur and steel faded into the distance. The great tigress, Nyxara, carried its rider into the wind until a speck remained on the horizon. Yet Thutmose stood there, unmoving.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then twenty.

Still, he didn’t move.

The weight of everything settled onto him, heavy and suffocating. The battlefield stretched around him in a grotesque sprawl of death and devastation. Broken weapons. Shattered stone. Pools of blood that had long since soaked into the cracked, dead earth.

An hour passed.

And still he stood there.

His eyes remained fixed where Alex had disappeared, but his mind wandered. Slowly, his gaze dropped to the ground, taking in the scale of destruction.

The land was ruined.

Scarred beyond recognition, entire swaths of terrain upturned by clashes, melted by power, corrupted by the forbidden. Where once fertile soil had stretched, now only cracked earth and blackened craters remained. The mana was wrong here now—sick, distorted. This land wouldn’t birth life for decades, maybe centuries.

Thutmose finally turned his eyes to the corpses.

Dozens of them. Heads severed cleanly. All of them were once proud, now broken and silent. A shameful end for those who had spoken so loudly, so confidently.

He moved, slowly, toward the bodies.

One by one, he began collecting them.

His space ring opened with a shimmer of light as he gently, yet firmly, gathered the remains of his family. He said nothing—there were no words left to say. Not for them. Not anymore.

He paused when he reached Menkara’s body. The younger boy’s face was still contorted in surprise, perhaps fear, or disbelief. Thutmose didn’t linger. He moved him into the spatial storage with the same efficiency as the others.

Then he stopped again—this time in front of Khepri.

The headless body of the former Patrician lay sprawled in silence. There was no sign of his once immense, earth-bending power. No majestic presence remained—only death. Alex had taken the head, and Thutmose could sense its absence, like a void in the world. Yet, as he stared at what remained, Thutmose felt no grief, no sense of loss—only a dull, hollow ache in his chest.

This was the man he once revered. A towering figure in his childhood—a symbol of power, of vision, of what it meant to be strong.

But as he grew older and began to see through the illusions, the respect had begun to fade.

Now, there was none left.

"So this is all you amounted to..." he murmured.

He knelt and slid the body into his space ring.

Then stood again.

He turned and looked across the battlefield one more time. The sky above had turned dusky, casting long shadows across the wreckage. Smoke still drifted lazily in the air, and the stench of death clung to the wind.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

He hated this feeling—this helplessness. This powerlessness. He’d stood by while his entire family was cut down. He had survived, yes—but surviving was not living. It was not winning.

"I’m too weak," he whispered. "Too weak to stop it... too weak to matter."

He stared at his fists. Trembling.

"I need power. Real power. So I never... end up in this situation again."

From his space ring, he pulled out a sleek, mana-infused smartphone. It flickered to life with a hum, displaying his clan’s encrypted network. Now that the barriers were down, he could contact the outside again.

He sent a single message to the Geb Fortress:

"Send a retrieval team to the coordinates."

As the message went out, he exhaled—long, tired, and bitter.

He looked around one last time, the weight of what was to come already settling on his shoulders. The clan was shattered. The continent would soon be thrown into more chaos by Alex’s campaign. The clans who survived this would have questions. And he...

He had a mountain to rebuild—one stone at a time.

"So it begins," he muttered, as the winds picked up.

He didn’t know where the path would take him next, but he knew one thing with certainty.

He would never let himself be this powerless again.

----

The wind howled past them as Nyxara ran—her massive paws thundering against the earth, muscles rippling beneath her pristine white fur. Her eyes scanned the horizon, ears twitching at every distant sound, but her pace remained measured. She wasn’t running at full speed. She couldn’t—not with the weight she carried.

Alex sat slumped against her, his hand loosely gripping a tuft of fur between her shoulder blades. His head was lowered, his eyes half-lidded in exhaustion. His body, though trying to appear upright and in control, trembled faintly with each bump in the terrain.

"You can stop it now," Nyxara said, her voice soft in his mind, telepathic and warm.

Alex blinked, as if waking from a dream. "What’s that?"

"You can stop pretending to be okay," she replied, a faint growl of concern. "I know the wounds are worse than you let on. That strike you used against the elders... it burned through your reserves, didn’t it? You’re pushing yourself just to stay conscious. Just lie down. Leave the rest to me."

He didn’t answer at first.

But his silence told her enough.

The proud warrior—the avenger who had just crushed the strongest of the Earth Clan—was unraveling beneath the surface. His mana flow was unsteady, his breathing shallow. Every heartbeat was forced. The truth was clear: he had been showing off in front of Thutmose, holding onto pride, keeping his spine straight through sheer force of will. But now?

Now he was breaking.

"...Thanks, Nyxara," he whispered weakly, trying to smile, "you are the bes—"

Before he could finish, his body slumped forward completely.

He had passed out.

Nyxara’s ears twitched as she sensed the final drop in his consciousness. She didn’t slow. Instead, her expression hardened, and her massive body surged forward with new purpose. Mana flared around her in a gentle, protective cocoon, wrapping Alex like a shield, blocking the wind, numbing the pain, keeping his body secure.

"Just rest now, Alex," she whispered in her thoughts. "You’ve done more than enough."

Her paws crushed stones beneath her. She accelerated—trees blurring past, the air roaring louder.

"I’ll make sure the other clans understand what’s coming. I’ll make sure they feel it. You rest... and I’ll be your fury until you wake."

The tigress’s eyes gleamed with a sharp, unforgiving light as she bolted across the land.

A storm was coming—and she was the first flash of lightning.