Episode-799
Chapter : 1597
'We will gather her,' Valerius said, his voice thick with suppressed rage. 'Every piece. She will be returned to the earth with the honor of a Queen.'"
Medics swarmed Roy. They began casting healing spells, pouring potions onto his wounds. They talked about stabilizing him, about saving the arm, about his spirit veins.
Roy didn't care. He grabbed Valerius's robe with his good hand. His grip was weak, trembling.
"Valerius," Roy choked out. "Lloyd. My son."
"He is safe, Roy," Valerius soothed. "He is in the south. He wasn't here."
"No," Roy said, his eyes wild. "You don't understand. When he finds out... when he comes home and sees this..."
Roy looked at the empty spot where Jasmin had stood. He imagined his son's face. He imagined the cold, calculating mind of the boy who had built an empire out of soap and salt. He imagined the rage that would come.
"He will burn the world," Roy whispered, his head falling back against the stone. "Gods help us all... he will burn the world."
The medics lifted the Arch Duke onto a stretcher. As they carried him away towards the ruins of the keep, the wind finally cleared the courtyard.
The diamond dust was gone. The purple sun was gone.
Only the rust remained.
The carriage wheels rumbled rhythmically against the cobblestone road, a steady, hypnotic sound that usually allowed Lloyd Ferrum to think. They were returning from the North, the mission to secure the rare minerals for the vaccine successful. Beside the driver, Ken Park sat with his usual stoic vigilance, though his posture was slightly more relaxed than usual. The mission had been dangerous, but they had won. They always won. That was the rule of Lloyd’s new life. He planned, he executed, and he won.
Inside the carriage, Lloyd leaned back against the plush leather seat. He was tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from physical exertion, but the deep, bone-weary exhaustion of a man who spends every waking hour holding up the sky. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the swaying of the carriage lull him. He thought about the next steps. The vaccine production was already underway in his mind. He was calculating logistics, distribution routes, and the political capital he could gain from saving the northern villages.
"We are about an hour out, Master," Ken’s voice drifted down from the driver’s seat. It was calm, steady. The voice of a man who expected a warm meal and a clean bed upon arrival.
"Good," Lloyd replied, not opening his eyes. "I want a bath. And I want to check on the manufacturing line. If Borin blew up another vat while I was gone, I’m going to deduct it from his pay."
It was a joke. Lloyd never deducted their pay. He paid his people better than the King paid his generals. He treated them like family because, in this strange, violent world, they were the only thing that kept him grounded. He thought of Jasmin. He had picked up a small trinket in the northern market—a simple silver comb. She wouldn't accept expensive jewelry, but she needed something to manage her hair during the long hours in the manufactory. He smiled faintly, imagining her flustered gratitude.
The carriage rolled on. The scenery outside the window changed from the wild forests of the north to the manicured lands of the Ferrum Duchy. Farmers waved as the carriage with the Ferrum crest passed. It was peaceful. It was normal.
But then, Lloyd felt it.
It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a smell. It was a glitch in the data.
Since upgrading his [All-Seeing Eye], Lloyd didn't just see the world; he read it. He perceived the flow of energy, the structural integrity of matter, the ambient magic in the air. Even with the ability dialed down to a passive hum to save energy, he was constantly processing his environment.
And the environment was screaming.
Lloyd sat up straight, his eyes snapping open. He leaned out the window. They were still miles away from the main estate, but the air tasted wrong. It tasted like static electricity and rust. It tasted like ozone and old blood.
"Ken," Lloyd said. His voice wasn't loud, but the urgency in it made Ken pull the reins instantly. "Stop."
"Master?" Ken looked back, confused. "Is something wrong? We are nearly home."
"Look at the sky," Lloyd ordered.
Ken looked up. The sky was blue. There were a few white clouds drifting lazily. "It is clear, sir."
Chapter : 1598
"No," Lloyd whispered. He activated the [All-Seeing Eye] fully. The world overlayed with a grid of information.
To the naked eye, the estate in the distance looked fine. The towers stood tall. The flags were waving. But through Lloyd’s eye, the reality was a nightmare.
The energy signature of the Ferrum Estate—usually a robust, golden hum of protective wards and latent earth magic—was shattered. It looked like a broken mirror. There were gaping holes in the mana field. The ley lines that ran beneath the castle were twisted and bleeding raw energy into the soil. And hovering over the entire area was a residual stain. It was a color that didn't exist in nature, a sickly, bruised purple that pulsed with a lingering, malicious intent.
"It's broken," Lloyd muttered, his heart skipping a beat. "The sanctuary is broken."
He looked at the main gates in the distance. To normal eyes, they were just dots on the horizon. Lloyd zoomed in with his vision.
The massive iron gates, forged to withstand a siege of ten thousand men, were gone. They weren't open. They weren't battered down. They were twisted like wet clay, imploded inward as if a giant invisible fist had punched through them.
"Ken," Lloyd said, and this time his voice was cold, devoid of all emotion. It was the voice of the Major General. "Get the horses. Unhitch them. We are not taking the carriage."
Ken didn't ask questions. He heard the shift in Lloyd’s tone. He jumped down and began working on the harness.
"What do you see?" Ken asked, his hands moving with blurred speed.
"An attack," Lloyd said. "A big one. The defensive grid is gone. The structural integrity of the outer wall is compromised. And I don't sense... I don't sense the guards."
That was the terrifying part. Usually, the estate buzzed with the life signatures of hundreds of soldiers. Now, the heatmap of the castle was patchy. There were pockets of life, huddled together, but the courtyards? The ramparts? They were cold.
"Done," Ken said, mounting one of the horses.
Lloyd didn't mount the other. He looked at the distance. Three miles. A horse was fast, but not fast enough. Not for the dread that was currently clawing at his throat.
"Follow me," Lloyd said. "I'm not waiting."
He stepped away from the carriage. He took a breath, centering his Void energy. He recalled the sensation of the world folding, of distance becoming a suggestion rather than a rule.
"Void Steps," he whispered.
The world fractured.
To Ken's eyes, Lloyd didn't run. He simply vanished in a burst of azure static, reappearing a hundred yards away in the blink of an eye, leaving a trail of blue afterimages that faded like ghosts.
Lloyd moved. He pushed the [Void Steps] to their limit. He wasn't conserving energy. He was burning it. Step. Flash. Step. Flash. The landscape blurred into a tunnel of green and grey.
Please be wrong, Lloyd thought. Please let it be a magical accident. Maybe Roy lost control during training. Maybe an experiment went wrong.
He tried to rationalize the data. He tried to find a logical explanation that didn't involve an enemy strong enough to crush the Ferrum estate like a paper cup. But the closer he got, the harder it was to lie to himself.
He flashed past the outer perimeter. The guard posts were empty. There were no bodies, which gave him a flicker of hope, until he looked closer at the ground as he passed. There were piles of red dust on the stone floors of the guard shacks. Armor lay in heaps, rusted and brittle, as if it had aged a thousand years in a day.
He reached the main gates.
He stopped for a fraction of a second, his boots skidding on the dirt. Up close, the destruction was absolute. The iron bars, thick as a man's thigh, were twisted into spirals. The stone archway was cracked down the middle.
And the smell.
It wasn't the smell of fire. It wasn't the smell of rot. It was the metallic, coppery tang of blood mixed with the dry, dusty scent of rust. It smelled like a slaughterhouse that had been abandoned for a century, yet the blood was fresh.
Lloyd stepped through the ruined gates. He didn't use the Void Step now. He walked. He needed to see.
The main courtyard was a graveyard.