Chapter 91 – The Winter Schemer
Chapter 91 – The Winter Schemer
Nellisa had learned that true power wasn’t found in steel or blood alone. It was carved slowly, day after day, inside the quietest corners of the heart — where despair nested and where hatred, once planted, grew like a blackened tree twisting toward the sky.
From the moment she became ‘Housekeeper Nelly,’ she cast aside her last shreds of royalty. The girl who clutched books and dreamed of happy kingdoms was dead; in her place stood something sharper, colder.
She scrubbed the halls on trembling knees, her fingers raw and red beneath icy water. She polished the ceremonial armour King Wing displayed like trophies, the gleaming plates mocking her reflection. Each sweep of the broom was not mindless labour but a silent act of resistance. She memorized the creaks in the floorboards, the guards’ footsteps at each hour, the whispered plans King Wing carelessly tossed aside during his drunken boasting.
“I am no longer a princess,” she told herself, tracing a finger along a dusty banister. “I am the blade that will end his reign.”
---
It did not take long before she discovered the secret behind King Wing’s unnatural strength.
One frigid morning, while replacing bed linens, she watched from the shadows as King Wing spoke with a cloaked merchant outside the armoury. The figure’s hood shimmered in the frost-dim light; his gnarled claws held a wooden crate, dripping faint black ichor onto the stone.
When he cracked open a bottle, a radiant glow spilled out — pale as moonlight on snow. King Wing lifted it reverently, sniffing it with a wolfish grin.
“This is true power,” King Wing muttered, his voice thick with greed. “More potent than any sword or spell.”
The merchant, the so-called ‘Bone Juice Seller,’ gave a slow, crooked nod, eyes hidden behind the shadows of his hood. “Drink deeply, Your Majesty. Each drop peels away your mortal limits.”
Nellisa’s breath caught in her throat. She shrank further into the corridor, heart hammering in her chest.
When she ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle days later, King Wing’s fury exploded.
“You worm!” he roared, seizing her by the collar and shaking her like a rag doll. “Do you know what that cost me? A hundred coins for a single bottle — more than your worthless life is worth!”
Her head snapped back against the wall. She tasted iron, yet her mind raced behind the pain. Bone juice… so that’s it… his strength is not divine, it’s fed by something vile, something purchased like wine.
“I cannot match this by coin. I must find another path.”
---
Desperation forced her gaze elsewhere — to knowledge. She began recalling the library her father had once cherished. Between books on kingdom etiquette and legends of old gods, she had glimpsed tomes on arcane rituals and sealing spells. Now, she scavenged every coin she could, bribing Yandi smugglers to bring her forbidden texts.
When the soldiers smuggled her scraps of bread, they also brought pages torn from ancient scrolls. She read by the moonlight seeping through a cracked window, each glyph burning into her eyes like frostbite.
Despite their hunger and ragged armour, the loyalist soldiers continued to deliver these treasures. They shared their meagre food rations to keep her alive, even as their own ribs jutted against their uniforms. Some limped from wounds they couldn’t afford to heal, yet still they knelt before her, whispering:
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
“For Shindo… for His Majesty… please, Your Highness… live.”
Nellisa would hold their hands, her own trembling. “I have a plan,” she whispered once, her voice barely audible. “Stay patient… just a little longer.”
Their eyes flickered with hope — a fragile flame that refused to die.
---
Through years of clandestine study, she gave birth to an elite force of wizards.
By day, they wore the masks of loyal guards, polished armour gleaming under King Wing’s harsh inspections. But by moonlit nights, they descended into secret cellar chambers hidden behind barrels and rotten tapestries.
Nellisa knelt beside them as they scrawled crooked runes on damp stone floors, correcting their trembling strokes, guiding their stuttering incantations. Her own fingers bled from etching symbols into the walls, and her voice grew hoarse from chanting corrections.
Many soldiers fainted during training, frost forming on their brows from uncontrolled magic surges. She nursed them through each failure, wrapping their hands and whispering, “Stand again. For Shindo. For the warmth we have lost.”
They adopted the title Storm Wizards proudly, vowing to wield storms in her name even if it meant certain death.
---
In one of the scrolls smuggled from Yandi, she learned the truth that shattered her heart and steeled it all at once: Shindeon had not died.
Instead, he had been sealed within the Underworld by Yandeon’s ultimate spell — the Eternal Winter curse. The snow that blanketed Shindo wasn’t a natural phenomenon or divine abandonment; it was the residue of a binding spell meant to freeze spiritual channels and seal Shindeon’s influence.
Shindeon wasn’t dead. He was imprisoned — a cosmic house arrest. But unlike ordinary prisoners, Shindeon, as the Infernal Warden of the Underworld, ruled that realm in secret. In his confinement, he did not weaken. He brooded, gathered strength, and nursed vengeance like a smouldering coal.
All this time… Nellisa pressed her forehead against the cold stone wall. The Sun didn’t leave us… it was stolen from us. Father… your final fight wasn’t for nothing.
---
Then, a new variable entered Shindo: the [Player].
Nellisa saw him first as a flicker of rumour — a lone warrior clad in metal armour, his presence shifting the atmosphere wherever he stepped. When she finally glimpsed him herself, she felt the breath freeze in her lungs.
Even in his weakest state, he carried an indescribable gravity, as though the world itself tilted slightly to follow him.
If only he stood with us… she thought, watching him from the shadows as he crushed her Storm Wizard camps. With his potential, he could be the storm I’ve been waiting for…
But he acted like King Wing’s obedient hound, destroying rebel strongholds without question. It gnawed at her, a silent betrayal by someone who had never even known her.
---
Her frustration and sorrow only pushed her forward faster. In a desperate gamble, she ordered her Storm Wizards to proceed with the first summoning attempt — an incomplete ritual that birthed only a hollow shell of Shindeon.
Though that shell was defeated and scattered, Nellisa saw it as a crucial crack in the cage around the Infernal Warden.
Some of her soldiers wept after the failure. Others trembled in despair. Nellisa stood before them, her voice cold and unwavering. “Do not falter now. This was but a rehearsal — a crack in the ice. With each attempt, the seal weakens.”
They looked up at her then, eyes raw with devotion. Even in that cold chamber, they saw not a princess or a housekeeper, but a prophet of frost and storm.
---
Months blurred into years. Soldiers vanished into snowy nights on secret errands, returning with frostbitten limbs and torn cloaks. Magic circles spread beneath the castle like a spider’s web, each rune another thread tightening around King Wing’s neck.
Nellisa stood above them all, her own heart an icy moon orbiting a sun she could no longer see.
She watched the preparations complete at last — the basement transformed into a sprawling altar of runes glowing like frozen stars.
Nellisa touched one circle, feeling the magic pulse against her fingertips. She imagined her father’s gaze, the soldiers’ dying words, and the warmth of a sun that had once smiled down on Shindo.
“If salvation must come draped in storms and blood… so be it.”
She straightened, frost-blue light spilling across her eyes.
“This kingdom will not be reborn beneath gentle light. It will rise beneath thunder’s roar.”
Nellisa turned away from the final circle, her cloak swirling like a winter squall. She pressed her palm to her chest, feeling her heartbeat echo through the frost-laced runes below — steady, resolute, unyielding.
“Father… I once dreamed of a kingdom blooming under gentle light. But that dream is gone — devoured by betrayal and frost. I will not beg for warmth any longer. I will become the storm that shatters this silence.”
Her fingers curled into a fist, knuckles pale as moonlit snow.
“Watch me from the abyss, or turn away in shame — it no longer matters. I am no longer your daughter. I am the harbinger this frozen kingdom deserves.”
Above, King Wing’s laughter rattled through the halls, oblivious to the storm gathering beneath his throne.
And beyond the walls, [Player] drifted ever closer — a blade without allegiance, waiting to be claimed by fate or fury.