The Alpha King's Nemesis-Chapter 104: Things Begin To Make Sense ()

Zariah felt her teeth shattering as she pushed off the wall of her cell, she adjusted her position to sit in a meditative posture and stirred her flame energy.

The familiar warmth coursed through her veins at great speed, driving away the bone chilling cold that gripped her, yet this was the third time in a single day she had needed to warm herself,

Zariah knew she could not keep this up for too long, her flame energy was already unstable and she had given out two magic traces,

An orb of Crimson Flame to Darren and her flame energy trace to Kristen, both of which had drained her flame core.

Zariah heaved a quiet sigh as she meditated, it had been seven days, exactly seven days and there was only three days left till the ten days she had given were up.

In these three days, the merman, Kristen would either live or die,

In these three days, Princess Eloneth would be found alive...or perhaps already dead.

In these three days, a great war would ravage the supernatural realm or perhaps everything would be restored to a temporary peace.

Each of these depended on if Zariah had played her cards correctly.

Zariah had planned everything carefully, but just like Askel had said, she could not help wondering if truly things would go her way this time or otherwise.

One could never really be certain of the outcome of things, Zariah had experienced enough across two lifetimes to know this,

And if there was one thing Zariah had learnt from her experiences, it was the fact that the one who would emerge the winner was the one who always had a contingency plan.

In the previous lifetime, the true enemy had been in the shadows, while Zariah and the Crimson Moon had been out in the open,

They had known of Zariah’s strengths and her weaknesses, they had known how to breach her walls and gain her trust, they had known everything while Zariah had known nothing of the danger headed her way,

And so Zariah had lost without a fight, infact, she had already lost right from the beginning, long before Caedmon infiltrated the Crimson Moon.

All along she had been an integral part of someone’s grand plan, while she had remained oblivious, living an easy and carefree life.

While the world was being turned upside down by unseen powers, the protectors of the realm continued living in their own little world.

Zariah had only now realized that nothing was a coincidence, the fact that they had tried to frame her only proved that someone had incited the battle between the Floral Domain and the Mers,

And someone somewhere would be reaping the benefits of it.

No matter how Zariah thought of it, Askel could not have played his hand, at least not yet...

If he had, he would not have prevented Lady Floraina from harming Prince Treyton or even come to the Sea Kingdom at all.

All of this only contradicted the purpose of the evildoer, so if Askel was yet to be recruited to the grand plan, then who played the mastermind at the present?

Just who was resourceful enough to capture the Fairy Princess and then pin it on the merfolk? 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The rogue king perharps? Or someone else in the shadows? How deep did this treachery stretch?

Whatever it was, whoever it was, Zariah would never let them off easily.

This time, the play field had been levelled, Zariah would never tolerate being outwitted again,

Be it the Alpha King, the Sea King, the Rogue King or the Fairy Queen, Zariah would let neither have their way so long as it altered the peace of the supernatural realm.

This time, Zariah would be the one sitting in the shadows and playing the cards of the supernatural realm till she unearthed the mystery of Crimson Moon’s massacre,

However in the mean time, Zariah would have to smoothen out the lesser troubles first and that began with the Sea Kingdom.

Zariah had come hoping to gain enlightenment and truly her risk had been worthwhile,

"In the 270th year of King Himan’s reign, news reached the Crimson Moon of a tragedy in the Sea Kingdom." Zariah began,

"The Tide Trident had disappeared from the Sea Palace and with it went King Himan’s greatest strength, command over the sea waves."

"In these trying times and with the great losses suffered from the long battle against the Floral Domain, the Sea Kingdom was left vulnerable and Lord Imain of the Northern Sea launched an attack."

"With an army of dark mermen at his command, he had laid low, forging evil ties and biding his time in the Sacred Sea Dome of the North..."

"And when the time was right, he attacked, and the goal...to usurp the rightful royal lineage of the Sea." Zariah murmured to herself as she slowly traced her finger over the ground,

Watching as the strange drawing from her dream was slowly formed, the very same she had seen appear on Kristen’s hand for only a moment.

Faced with the Sea King’s wrath, Zariah had decided to damn the consequences and had showed the drawing to the Sea King.

"The shadow mark..." The Sea King had called it, the marking of the guardians of the Sacred Sea Dome.

Zariah guessed these were the very words that had been revealed to Nile in the ancient wolven tongue when she had asked him to divine over the strange drawing.

The word ’engraved’ which could also mean mark, Nile had said.

And the second word...’shadow’

"The Sea Dome, a place where the last traces of darkness was sealed by the Crimson water wolves."

"The element seal had long been forged, but the darkness left effects on four out of the seven seas,"

"Although these effects were only the barest traces of darkness...they polluted everything in sight, making the sea inhabitable."

"It had taken a decade for the water wolves of Crimson Moon to purge the traces of darkness left behind and build the Sky Bubble to keep the merfolk safe."

"But the darkness as we know it is a force of nature and can never truly be destroyed, all these traces of darkness... where exactly had they been sealed?"

"An endless abyss, a place where no living soul ventured...I had never heard of it till now."

"And I would never have known of it’s existence for the ancient texts did not show... that aside from the element seal, there had been another..."

"Another place the darkness was imprisoned, right here in the Sea Kingdom." Zariah murmured to herself as her hands clenched up into fists.

’The Northern Seas are changing, I have done all I could...but the Sea Dome is weakening, I fear someone in the Sea Kingdom has tapped into the darkness. Zewin... what can I do?’

These were the words written in Siren tongue under the strange drawing, this was the message King Himan had sent to the Crimson Moon back in the previous lifetime.

The words Prince Treyton had translated for Zariah on orders of the Sea King and now, finally... things had begun to make sense.

The darkness returning to the supernatural realm had sourced from the Sea Dome, someone had let greed cloud their senses and was playing with fire.

And this someone was also directly connected to Caedmon, the Rogue King, the mastermind and perhaps to Alpha King Askel as well.

Everything seemed interconnected, everything was all part of a grand plan and the thought of it filled Zariah with rage.

"The war... it had served as a distraction in the previous lifetime,"

"The five mermen who had gone missing, they must have encountered something...seen or heard what they were not supposed to."

Zariah guessed they had been apprehended for sometime, but realizing the Sea King would not stop searching for the missing battle mers,

The mastermind had used the sleeping mist on them after clearing their memories, they had let them drift through the waves till they were found.

"But they had probably not expected that those who do not bear the shadow mark and goes within close proximity of the darkness would be tainted and loose their minds...they had tried to cover their tracks but had left even greater evidence behind."

However Zariah could see the mastermind had still had a contingency plan...

The war between the Floral Domain and the Sea Kingdom, the perfect distraction to prevent the Sea King from figuring out what was truly happening in the Northern Seas.

"And there had been no one to see through their plans because in the previous lifetime... Prince Treyton had died and neither I nor Askel ever came to the Sea Kingdom." Zariah thought aloud.

"What a malicious yet ingenious plan!" Zariah murmured.

"Who am I up against? And what does he want from the supernatural realm? And God’s Askel... just what is your part in all of this?" Zariah murmured to herself as she let her eyes flutter closed once again.