Supreme Warlock System : From Zero to Ultimate With My Wives

Warlock Ch 451. Consent?

Then Cedric stepped forward. The prince revealed the truth behind his disappearancem He had been taken—abducted by imposters dressed as fae soldiers, men who moved too precisely and spoke with tongues too polished. Ritual scars marked his skin, and Evelyn's projections showed him bound in a summoning circle.

Selena followed. Her voice didn't shake, but her eyes did. She recounted the exam—how it turned into a slaughter, how every participant but her and Damian was dead as a test. How each kill had fed something dark. And how, in the end, it was Damian who pulled her out.

The Fae King then turned the accusation on its head. He exposed the S-rank examination's rules for what they were: legalized bloodsport that had allowed ritual killings under the guise of trial by combat. The Tribunal had nothing to say to that.

Lysandra then explained how the Dragon King had sensed the anomaly—not from Damian, but from Haven's vault, and how that led her not to Blackthorn, but to Ralvek.

Then Cassius described the assassinations—nine in total within a month, each aimed at Damian. Assassins, poisons, mimics. All of it a pattern. A warning. A purge in progress.

The crowd of mages around the upper rings murmured again. This time, deeper. Uneasier.

Because the pattern was becoming clear.

One of the younger senators—one of Ralvek's old allies—finally spoke, trying to redirect.

"We do not dispute these… events," he said. "But the fact remains that Damian Blackthorn absorbed a creature's core. A core beyond any classification we've ever seen. That is a crime under Article—"

"—Fourteen, Section Eight, Clause Three," Damian finished for him, his voice flat. "Which refers to theft between magi. Not containment of eldritch-level catastrophic entities. Try again."

Another senator, more clever than the first, leaned forward.

"But what if containment becomes corruption?" she asked. "You have power now, beyond anything we can verify. What's to stop you from becoming the threat?"

Damian smiled. Cold. Thin.

"What stopped me last time?"

She didn't answer.

"Don't pretend you care about risk," he said. "What you care about is control."

The words were like glass across the floor.

The Tribunal remained quiet.

Because he was right.

They didn't fear him because he was unstable.

They feared him because he wasn't theirs.

Because the power he now held—god-tier, divine-adjacent, able to heal cities or level mountains—was something every Magus Council had dreamed of, theorized about, and tried to manufacture for centuries.

The power to construct, to destroy, to restore. To bend the world's weave to your will.

And Damian had it.

Not because he took it.

But because no one else survived holding it.

He turned back to the Tribunal slowly.

"I know what this is," he said. "This trial. This performance."

He pointed upward—toward the balconies of spectators, senators, scribes.

"It's not about guilt or innocence anymore. You're just buying time. Looking for a loophole. A clause. Something, anything, to trap me again. To wrap this up in legislation and call it justice."

He took one step forward, and the echo rang sharp.

"But here's the truth," he said, eyes glowing faintly now. "There's no loophole. No missing context. I lived. They didn't. I carry the power now."

He let his gaze sweep across them.

"And I didn't come here to plead."

He looked to Aria, then Victoria, then Lysandra and Cassius.

"I came here to testify."

He turned back to the council. His voice dropped.

"And if you twist that… if you try to brand me again… know this."

A flicker of his aura bled through—like a god's heartbeat underneath his skin.

"I won't destroy the Tribunal," he said.

"But I'll make sure no one ever believes a word from your mouths again."

The chamber was silent.

Utterly, absolutely silent.

Because the truth had been laid bare.

And not even magic could rewrite it.

The silence after Damian's final words wasn't just silence.

It was surrender.

Not the kind where banners dropped and swords clattered to the ground. No. This was the kind of surrender made of clenched jaws and sweaty palms. Of Tribunal members who realized—truly realized—that they'd lost control of the room the moment Damian walked in unshackled.

One of the younger judges—perhaps hoping to salvage some kind of upper ground—cleared his throat and leaned forward, fingers steepled tightly.

"Let us be… clear," he began, voice trembling slightly under the weight of every pair of eyes in the chamber. "We are not denying the contributions Damian Blackthorn made during the Haven Crisis."

Victoria snorted delicately. "Crisis. That's what you're calling it?"

The judge ignored her.

"But we must weigh the long-term consequences of his… actions. The containment of such power, the absorption of unstable cores, especially without consent—"

"Consent?" Aria's voice cut in like a lash. "Was the creature supposed to sign a contract before trying to annihilate an entire city?"

"I'm not finished," the judge snapped, temper fraying. "There are protocols for magical containment. Emergency channels that were bypassed. And above all—"

He turned back to Damian. "You made a decision. Alone. Without counsel. Without oversight."

"Because there wasn't time," Damian said flatly. "If I waited for you to finish filling out forms, the entire southern quarter would've been a crater."

"You don't get to decide that."

"But I did," Damian replied. "And I'd do it again."

The words landed with finality. Honest. Unapologetic.

Another judge, this one older and more composed, leaned forward.

"And if you lose control?" he asked softly. "What then?"

Damian didn't flinch. "I don't plan to."

"That's not an answer."

"No," Cassius drawled from the side, leaning against one of the pillars with his arms crossed, "but it's a hell of a better plan than the ones you've been throwing around."

The judge's mouth twitched.

Aria stepped forward again, her voice softer this time.

"If you're asking whether we have a contingency for Damian, the answer is yes. Me."

She looked over her shoulder at Damian—brief, trusting—and then returned her gaze to the Tribunal.

"If he loses control, I stop him."

That made several brows rise.