Titan King: Ascension of the Giant-Chapter 829: Was I Wrong?

The truth was, a patriarch with many children could not place a sliver of his will in each of them. The Merfolk King, Jaklas, had placed a spectral ward(phantom) upon his second son, Gulas, but Vorluk and Heket had been afforded no such protection.

King Jaklas’s tone had been one of cautious diplomacy. Aboard his flagship, Orion considered the invitation, then stepped into the air, landing softly atop the great whale’s head.

"I am Orion, King(Lord) of the Stoneheart Horde."

At the declaration of his name and title, the spectral image of Jaklas seemed to flicker with understanding. He did not speak, but instead opened his mouth and expelled a swirling globe of seawater. Within the vortex, the phantom of a mermaid pearl shimmered into existence. It was an image Orion knew intimately; it was the echo of the one he now carried.

Seeing it, Jaklas appeared to confirm his suspicions. He inhaled, drawing the misty globe and its spectral pearl back into himself.

"Archlord Orion, does this concern my daughter, Marina?" Jaklas’s projection was hazy, his motives impossible to read.

"Yes. And no," Orion’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. "Your sons ambushed my fleet. The one responsible has paid the price."

With Marina’s ’death’, his connection to the Tidefang Clan was severed. In that context, killing one prince was no different from killing two.

Jaklas did not respond immediately. After a long, thoughtful silence, he made his offer. "Orion. My daughter Marina is gone. There is nothing that can be done to bring her back. Heket’s death was deserved. Let us consider the matter closed."

Before Orion could answer, he continued. "Marina’s death involves another Archlord of the Tidefang Clan. If you cannot let this grievance go, then I invite you to the Silvercurrent Sea, where we may speak of it plainly."

Orion stared at the spectral king. He knew, as did Jaklas, that he could order the ancient whale to obliterate the will projection with a single thought. But Jaklas had spoken of the reason for Marina’s death. As the one who had benefited from her pearl, Orion knew he had no choice but to go.

"Very well."

The single word was enough. The shimmering shield around Gulas and Vorluk dissolved, and the king’s will receded into his son’s body. Orion raised a hand, and an unseen force seized the two Merfolk princes, pulling them from the water like landed fish and depositing them onto the deck of the warship.

"Vorluk," Orion said, his back to them, his voice a command. "Have your creatures lead the way. I am going to the Silvercurrent Sea."

Vorluk scrambled to his feet, opened his mouth, and emitted a low, subsonic pulse. In the depths below, the terrified Sea-folk scattered, fleeing for their lives. Only a lone Tidewyrm and a Hippocampus Drake remained, trembling in the water before the fleet, tasked with guiding them.

They swam with constant, terrified glances over their shoulders, praying the colossal undead whale behind them would not simply devour them.

"Now," Orion said, his voice dropping, his gaze finally turning to fix on Vorluk. "Tell me about Marina."

The tone was not a request. It was an order.

Vorluk stared, his mind reeling. He could not reconcile the being before him—this Archlord who commanded monsters from the abyss—with the giant king he had met before. Could a warrior truly leap from the peak of the Legendary tier to the heights of an Archlord so easily?

He saw Orion’s expression darken and took a deep, shuddering breath, forcing his terror down.

"I regret it," he began, his voice choked with a grief that was suddenly raw again. "If I had only stopped her... stopped her from going back to you, from giving you her pearl... she might still be alive." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

He had only understood the terrible truth of it the moment he learned the pearl was gone. His head bowed, his shoulders shaking with the force of his remorse. If he could turn back time, he would have done anything to stop her.

"Before she met you, Marina was betrothed to a prince from another branch of our clan," Vorluk said, his voice gaining a bitter edge as he recounted the tale. "If she had merely lost her virtue to you, it could have been forgiven. By our laws, she could have offered her pearl to her betrothed as penance. It would have been proof that her heart, at least, remained loyal."

He lifted his head, a ghost of a snarl on his lips. "But she didn’t just lose her pearl. She gave it to you. To the Tidefang, that was not an act of coercion, but an act of love. A willing betrayal of her vow."

He spat the words like venom. "It was a declaration that she had given her heart to another. Do you have any idea what that means? Can you imagine the insult?" He looked at Orion, his question both a condemnation and a broken query to himself.

Orion said nothing, his face a placid, unreadable mask.

"Of course you can’t," Vorluk whispered, answering his own question. "How could you? Her betrothed is a new Archlord. The most promising talent our people have produced in a thousand years. Marina broke a sacred pact and, in doing so, offered a profound insult to a being of his stature."

His voice began to tremble with a mixture of rage and helplessness, a fury at the unbending rules that had doomed his sister.

"For breaking her vows, for insulting an Archlord of the clan, the law demanded a blood price. She was to be made a living sacrifice, her body cast into the lightless trenches of the deepest sea."

He looked up, his eyes locking with Orion’s, burning with an ocean of hatred and pain.

"That was her fate. Are you satisfied now?"

When the pure, undiluted animosity reached its peak, it finally broke him.

"You bastard!" Vorluk screamed, stumbling forward.

"If you were an Archlord, why didn’t you come sooner? Why didn’t you come to the Silvercurrent Sea and demand her hand?"

"She was waiting for you! Until the very end, she was waiting! She told me she didn’t regret it!"

He choked on a sob, the sound raw and terrible. Marina was his full-blood sister. Her horrific end had branded his soul with the mark of his own powerlessness.

"If you had just come sooner, she wouldn’t have had to die! Heket wouldn’t have attacked your ships, and he wouldn’t be dead! You are the root of this calamity! You are the devil who brought this upon us! It is all your fault!"

He dissolved into a desperate, wracking wail. "Ah..."

Orion did not move. He stared at the broken, raving prince, and for the first time, a flicker of uncertainty clouded his gaze. Hearing the full, wretched story, he felt adrift.

He could, on a cold, logical level, understand it. Sacrifice as a means of purification, of cleansing a bloodline of a perceived stain—his own giant tribes held similar, if less codified, beliefs. Purity of blood was a concept he knew well.

But this knowledge offered no comfort. It only hollowed him out further.

Who was to blame? he thought, the question echoing in the sudden silence of his mind.

Was I wrong? Or was I simply too late?

The death of the mermaid princess, a woman with whom he had shared a brief, strange intimacy, had plunged him into a state of chilling self-reproach.