Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 57: Snowfalls

Shhh—shhh—shhh—

The brittle crunch of snow underfoot was a drumbeat of his own frailty. Anton Vasiliev, once a king whose roar shook the eastern snow plains, now moved through the pines in rage. Each lungful of frigid air was a knife, each step a monumental act of will over a body that screamed to lie down and become part of the winter.

His two shadows flanked him, Gregor, a mountain of striped muscle now hunched with concern, and Thalia, her lean form a silent blade cutting their path. Their breath plumed in the moonlight, the only sign of their panic. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

But Anton himself had none. His anger was a core of black ice at the center of his being. Cold. Absolute.

Even weak, he had never been more dangerous.

They stumbled into a clearing, the moon casting the world in bone-white and ink-black. Anton paused, leaning heavily on Gregor, his frame wracked with a soundless cough. The silence of the chase was worse than any sound. Clearly the silence of a predator toying with its meal.

"My Lord," Thalia whispered, ears swiveling, claws unsheathed. "They’re close."

Anton lifted his head. His eyes, sunken and fever-bright, held no fear. Only a vast, glacial contempt. To be brought to this... the humiliation... made him want to laugh.

A branch snapped at the treeline.

They turned. A silhouette emerged from the dark, backlit by the moon. Broad-shouldered, crowned with the distinct, proud lines of a Weretiger’s helm. It stood, watching from the shadows.

Anton’s lips peeled back from teeth grown too long for his gaunt face. Not a snarl. A smile.

"Arzhen," he breathed into the killing cold.

The silhouette at the treeline solidified, the moonlight etching the arrogant lines of a young king in waiting. The man sneered, the expression visible even across the distance. "Father."

Thalia and Gregor shifted instantly, becoming a living barricade of muscle and bared fang between their failing lord and his heir. Their hatred pulsed against the winter night. From the shadows behind Arzhen, more pairs of eyes ignited. Cold, loyal amber stars, pinning the trio in place.

"Prince, what is the meaning of this?!" Thalia’s roar shredded the silent frost. "This is your own father! Your own Lord! You make him run through the night, exposed to the elements, to hunt him like some stag for the spit?!"

"Now, who told you to run?" Arzhen’s voice drifted to them, lilting, chuckling, mocking. "You could have stayed warm in your bed. I would have offered a far more... dignified alternative than this tragic end."

He took a step forward. "Now, Father," he called, extending a hand where moonlight glinted off unsheathed claws. "Come to me. Help the Vasilievs win this coming battle. Your sacrifice will be recorded in history. The valiant Lord, struck down in a cowardly attack by our enemies."

"You will make it look that way regardless!" Gregor’s growl was the sound of grinding stone.

"Gregor, Thalia," Arzhen sighed. "You are both great advisors. I’ve always liked you. Truly. Now, do us all a favor. Hand Father over."

"Did you send our people to attack the Delanivis, Arzhen?" Anton’s voice cut through, heavy.

Arzhen’s gaze finally settled fully on his father. On the pathetic, shrunken frame draped in furs too large for him. A strange dislocation struck the prince. This hunched, brittle figure... this was the mountain he had spent his life both scaling and resenting? This was the source of every withheld approval, every critical glance? He was so... small. So weak.

"I didn’t. I am being honest, Father," Arzhen answered. Then he shrugged. "But I might as well have done it." A smile touched his lips. "Did you forget how the white wolves marched west to seize Uncle’s territory the moment the news of his death spread? They are jackals."

"And you were about to do the same, you little fucker," Anton hissed.

Arzhen laughed, the sound echoing unnaturally in the still woods. "Why not? It’s Uncle’s territory! Who else should have it if not us, the Vasilievs?"

Anton was silent for several heartbeats, the only sound the ragged whistle of his own breath. "Who else?" he finally echoed, a sneer twisting his pallid face. "His good son, of course. Rinne."

Arzhen’s face contorted. Rinne? That mongrel?

"He is a talented young pup," Anton continued, his voice dropping deliberately to a soft chill. "The kind who could defeat twenty of you, if only you were the same age. He is... far more worthy of a legacy than you will ever be, my son."

The last vestige of light bled from Arzhen’s expression. "See," he whispered. "This is how you’ve always been, my dear Father."

His form began to ripple, to swell and distort in the moonlight. Bones cracked and reformed, fur erupted, and the handsome prince was replaced by a monstrous, crouching tiger that dwarfed the hillock.

"The only thing you ever approved of me for," the beast’s voice rumbled, deeper now, full of a lifetime of bitterness, "was when I married a woman I didn’t even love."

Anton’s smile returned, a gentle mockery. "And she loved you only because you tricked her into it. Just as you tricked her into killing her. Isn’t that right?"

"CECILIA LOVED ME!" The roar shook snow from the branches. "AND ONLY ME, AS I RIPPED HER HEART APART!"

"No," Anton said. He shook his head, weary. "You have never been truly loved, son. Except by me." He met the tiger’s blazing eyes. "And I see now... I was wrong to love you this long."

Darkness.

Snow fell gently from the shattered sky. A king lay in rest, his blood a melting dark bloom against the pristine white.

It was cold.

A terrible, leaching cold that seeped past fur and flesh, into the marrow of what was left of him.

Was it this cold for her, too? When he left her to die? That good child... Cecilia. Poor, brilliant young woman...

His body was ruined. Even intact, he had been weak. Now, torn open, he was little more than a vessel for the winter to claim.

In the thickening dark, sounds reached him. The desperate, chaotic roars of his last loyalists. Grunts of effort, the slick tear of claws, the heavy thud of bodies meeting the frozen earth.

Stupid, stubborn children. You should have run.

"Don’t let her run!"

Ah. Thalia. Good girl. Run. Run fast.

"ROARR! GROWL—ROARRR!"

"Hahah! You can’t run, you bitch!"

"Murderer! You murder your own father—! AAAAHH!!!"

"ROARR!"

Silence, then.

Anton stared into the infinite grey above, the falling snowflakes like ash from a cold star. How could I have raised such a creature? How did the seed of my love grow into this twisted, hateful tree?

Where did it all go wrong?

Was it truly... Elara?

His mate. His queen. The love of his life.

The woman Arkai had warned him about for years.

’Her friends, Anton,’ he used to say. ’Fortunes rise as your principles sleep.’ He had called her a cancer. Anton had called him paranoid.

Had he been the fool all along?

Footsteps crunched toward him. He closed his eyes, letting the shallow rasp of his breath be his only sign of life.

"Do we leave them like this, my Lord?"

"We leave them just like this," his son’s voice replied, calm. "And ’find’ them in the morning. We will tell the world it was the Delanivis. Since they dared claim we attacked their lord, it is only fitting we return the... tragedy."

"It is a good excuse to finally take full control of the family. Killing two birds with one stone, my Lord."

"Hm." A sound of approval. "Erase our tracks. Let’s go."

The footsteps receded, swallowed by the forest and the falling snow.

So Arzhen had not ordered the initial attack on the Delanivis. The prince’s surprise had been genuine, in its way.

Then... who?

It didn’t matter now. Not to him. The identity of the true provocateur might never be that important to both sides. Whoever they were, they wanted war as badly as Arzhen did. They had simply thrown a single, well-aimed stone into water already churning, rippling, disturbed long ago.

And for Arzhen, the excuse, once handed to him, was more than enough.

I truly know nothing anymore.

Perhaps... that girl would know.

His clever daughter-in-law. Cecilia. The one who saw the patterns in the chaos, who predicted catastrophes. She would have pieced it together. She would have known the who and the why long before the claws ever flashed in the moonlight.

Soon.

I’ll see her again soon.

On the other side.

"Open your mouth, Father-in-law!"

See? He could already hear her voice, cutting through the haze.

"Please swallow! Quick!"

"Father!"