Chapter 114: The Throne and the Bullet

 

The war didn’t start with a bang—it started with silence.

 

The kind of silence that hummed beneath the skin. That itched in the spine. That wrapped its fingers around the throat and waited.

 

Jungkook stood at the edge of the old capital, the wind sweeping back his coat like the wings of something too dark to name. Behind him, the twins moved like ghosts—Kim Taehyung with his precision, Kim V with his frostfire calm. And before them stretched the scorched ruins of the city that once belonged to the blood empire.

 

This was where it had all begun.

Where Jungkook had been taken.

Where his father had died.

Where the bullet had been fired into his life and turned him into something sharp.

 

The last of the loyalist clan—The Black Circle—had holed themselves in the old royal towers, barricading behind steel gates and a private militia of trained killers. Men who had served Jungkook’s bloodline once. Men who now wanted to kill the last of it.

 

But Jungkook didn’t come to run.

 

He came to bury them.

 

The plan was simple.

 

They would split three ways.

 

V would intercept the east flank—disable their surveillance and eliminate the sharpshooters hidden in the bell towers. Taehyung would slip through the old underground catacombs, past the bodies of kings and bones of treason, to breach the central core.

 

And Jungkook—

 

Jungkook would walk in through the front gate alone.

 

Because nothing says revenge like knocking on the front door with a loaded smile and a gun painted black.

 

The guards saw him.

 

They didn't recognize him until it was too late.

 

The crown on his head wasn’t gold. It was matte steel, twisted at the edges like teeth.

 

His hands—soft once—were gloved and held a pistol with a grip like a lover’s palm.

 

“State your name!” one of the guards barked from the wall.

 

Jungkook looked up, tilted his head. His voice was velvet.

 

“Jeon Jungkook. Prince of nothing. King of what’s left.”

 

And then, without waiting for another word, he raised the gun and fired.

 

Inside, chaos bloomed.

 

The alarms hadn’t even finished blaring when V slipped in, silent as ash, his movements a whisper of death. One by one, the sharpshooters fell from their nests, eyes wide in confusion. They never even saw him.

 

Below the ground, Taehyung moved like water, steady and cruel. The catacombs stank of decay and betrayal, the walls etched with forgotten oaths. He ignored the ghosts. He had one mission: cut the power grid and unlock the chamber where the Black Circle waited with trembling hands and loaded guns.

 

Jungkook stormed the hall.

 

They fired first.

 

He moved faster.

 

Glass shattered. Blood sprayed across marble. His coat fluttered with each step like a flag soaked in war. They tried to retreat. He laughed. Low. Unhinged.

 

Then he found them.

 

The thirteen men who had orchestrated it all. The men who sold him. Who sold his kingdom. Who murdered his father not for power—but for fear.

 

Fear of the boy with too many shadows in his eyes.

 

They sat in a circle around a war table, the walls behind them lined with relics of a stolen dynasty.

 

“You came alone,” one of them sneered, lifting his pistol. “You’re not your father, boy. He begged for his life.”

 

Jungkook’s voice was ice.

 

“No. I’m not my father. I don’t beg.”

 

Then he tossed the detonator to the ground.

 

Behind them, the wall erupted.

 

Taehyung emerged, guns smoking.

V followed, silent and steady.

 

The three of them stood before the thirteen traitors like a prophecy come true.

 

“Jeon Jungkook,” another whispered, backing away. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

 

Jungkook smiled. Slowly. Beautifully.

 

“I was.”

 

And then he pulled the trigger.

 

It didn’t last long.

 

The Black Circle fell like dominoes, each man marked with the bullet of their own sins.

 

Jungkook left the last one—Kang Ilho—on his knees.

 

He was the one who gave the order. The one who tore him from his cradle. The one who whispered lies into his mother’s ear, who lit the match that burned the empire.

 

And now, he was crying.

 

“Please,” Ilho whimpered, blood pouring from his side. “Your father… he wouldn’t have wanted—”

 

Jungkook knelt before him, gaze calm.

 

“My father died wishing he could see me smile again,” he said softly. “So watch me.”

 

Then he smiled.

 

And pulled the final trigger.

 

The towers fell before dawn.

 

V lit the eastern wing. Taehyung wired the vaults.

 

Jungkook stood at the balcony of the topmost floor, watching the fire consume the ghosts.

 

“Do you feel free now?” Taehyung asked as he joined him, smoke clinging to his clothes.

 

Jungkook didn’t answer.

 

V came next, his gloved hand slipping into Jungkook’s.

 

“I don’t feel free,” Jungkook whispered. “But I feel... lighter.”

 

“Good,” V murmured, pressing a kiss to his temple.

 

“Then let it all fall,” Taehyung said behind him. “We’ll build something new.”

 

And as the flames ate the last of the old kingdom, Jeon Jungkook—no longer a prince, no longer a pawn—stepped into the throne he made with his own hands.

 

Not to rule.

 

But to protect.

 

Because love, unlike blood, was not inherited.

 

It was chosen.

 

And tonight, he chose them.

https://novelreadingislife.blogspot.com/2025/05/chapter-115-kingdom-come.html