Episode-872
Chapter : 1743
"If you handle it?" Lloyd interrupted, standing up. "Yes, of course. Let the great Siddik prodigy handle everything while the Ferrum heir sits in the corner. Is that it?"
Lloyd, the current observer, watched the scene with a cringe. "Wow," he muttered. "I was really insecure, wasn't I? She’s trying to save our lives, and I’m worried about my ego."
"She pitied me," the Reflection said, looking at his past self with disdain. "And she was frustrated. I was incompetent. I couldn't summon a spark of spirit power. I was a liability. Rosa knew that as long as I was weak, the family was vulnerable."
"Mammon saw it too," the Reflection continued.
In the corner of the memory, unobserved by the people in the room, the shadow of Mammon lingered. The Devil Prince was watching the argument with a smile that stretched too wide. He was feeding on the insecurity.
"He recognized that Rosa was the only variable capable of stopping him," the Reflection explained. "Her ice power had Sovereign-level potential, even back then. If she stayed at the estate, his cultists would freeze before they reached the gates. She was the shield. So... he decided to remove her from the board."
The doors to the strategy room burst open. A messenger stumbled in, covered in dust and dried blood. He collapsed at Rosa's feet, gasping for air.
"My Lady!" the messenger wheezed. "Urgent news from the South! From the Siddik lands!"
He held out a scroll sealed with black wax. Rosa snatched it, her hands trembling. As she read, her face went pale. The color drained from her cheeks until she looked like a ghost.
"What is it?" the Original Lloyd asked, stepping around the table.
"It's... it's an invasion," Rosa whispered. "A demonic rift has opened on the southern border of my family's land. They say it's a horde. And... Lloyd, they say there's a specific demon leading it. One with a heart that possesses immense restorative energy."
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with a desperate, fragile hope. "They say the heart could cure my mother's paralysis."
Lloyd felt a chill. It was too perfect.
"The bait," the Reflection said sadly. "Mammon orchestrated a fake demonic incursion on the southern borders. He made it look like a catastrophic invasion to pull the Siddik forces away. But he added a sweetener. He planted rumors of a rare demonic heart—an ingredient that could save her mother."
"It was a trap," Lloyd muttered, his tactical mind analyzing the move. "Split the forces. Lure the strongest defender away with a personal stake. If she stays, she feels guilty for not saving her mother. If she goes, she leaves us defenseless."
In the memory, Rosa was torn. She looked at the map of the Ferrum estate, then at the letter.
"I... I can't go," she said, her voice shaking. "Lloyd, the threats here are real. If I leave, you won't have the magical support."
She was waiting for him to ask her to stay. She was waiting for him to be the husband who needed her.
But the Original Lloyd saw an opportunity. He saw a chance to be the commander without his talented wife overshadowing him. He saw a chance to prove he could handle the North alone.
"Go," the Original Lloyd said.
Rosa looked at him, surprised. "Lloyd?"
"I can handle this," he said, puffing out his chest. "We’ll hire mercenaries. We have the walls. Your mother needs you, Rosa. Go to the South. Save her. I’ll hold the fort."
"He wanted her gone," the Reflection said, his voice bitter. "I tried to tell myself I was being noble. But deep down? I wanted her gone because her competence made me feel small. I told her I could handle the North. I was a fool."
Rosa looked at him for a long moment. She saw the false bravado, but she also saw his permission. She nodded slowly.
"I will return as soon as I have the heart," she promised. "Keep the gates closed. Trust no one."
Lloyd watched as Rosa rode out of the gates an hour later, looking back one last time with a gaze full of worry. She wasn't abandoning them. She was rushing to put out a fire so she could come back and guard the house.
"And that," the Reflection said as the sky in the memory began to darken, "was when the curtain fell."
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Chapter : 1744
The sky in the memory turned black. It wasn't the natural darkness of night; it was a thick, choking smoke that blotted out the stars. The smell of burning wood and melting iron filled the air.
Lloyd stood in the courtyard of the Ferrum estate. It was absolute chaos.
The walls had been breached. The mercenaries the Original Lloyd had hired—men he thought he could control—had turned on them. They had opened the side gates. Now, cultists in red robes poured through the gaps like a wound bleeding inward. They were followed by twisted, shadow-beasts that loped along the ground on all fours.
"She was gone," the Reflection said, his voice trembling with the memory of fear. "And we were naked."
Lloyd watched the slaughter. It was brutal, efficient, and horrifying.
His father, Arch Duke Roy of the first timeline, was fighting near the main keep. He was a strong man, a warrior of the old school. He wielded a massive claymore, cutting down cultists with wide, sweeping strikes. But there were too many of them.
"Hold the line!" Roy screamed, his armor dented and bloody. "Protect the heir! Fall back to the library!"
Duchess Milody was on the balcony above, using her Austin eyes. Beams of suppression magic shot from her eyes, freezing enemies in place so the guards could finish them. But she was exhausted. Blood trickled from her nose. Without Rosa’s massive area-of-effect ice spells to control the crowd, the sheer numbers were overwhelming.
Lloyd watched his father fall. A Shadow Knight—one of the elites—slipped past Roy’s guard and drove a spear through his knee. As the Arch Duke fell, a dozen cultists swarmed him like ants on a beetle.
"Father!" the Original Lloyd screamed from where he was hiding near the stables. He held a sword, but his hands were shaking so hard he dropped it.
"I couldn't move," the Reflection whispered. "I was frozen with terror. I watched him die."
But the worst part wasn't the death. It was the words.
The leader of the cultists walked over to the dying Arch Duke Roy. He leaned down, grabbing Roy by his hair to lift his head. The memory zoomed in, the audio becoming crisp and clear amidst the screams of battle.
"The Ice Queen sends her regards," the cultist leader hissed into Roy's ear. "She sends her thanks for leaving the gate unbarred. The South rises while the North burns."
Roy’s eyes went wide. In his final moments, he didn't see an enemy invasion. He saw a political betrayal. He died believing his daughter-in-law had sold them out.
"They lied to him," Lloyd whispered, feeling a surge of nausea. "They made him think she did it."
"Mammon didn't just want to kill them," the Reflection said, tears streaming down his face. "He wanted to destroy the bond. He wanted my father to die believing his alliance was a lie. He wanted my mother to die regretting the marriage. He wanted to poison the legacy."
The scene shifted. The estate was a ruin. The fires had burned down to embers. The Original Lloyd was crawling through the ashes, coughing, broken. He found the bodies of his parents.
And beside them, planted like a flag in the chest of a dead guard, was a banner.
It was blue and silver. The banner of House Siddik. It was torn and bloody, left there as "proof."
"Another plant," Lloyd said, his voice cold. "Evidence."
"By the time Rosa returned," the Reflection said, "the ashes were cold."
The memory fast-forwarded to a week later. Rosa rode into the courtyard. Her horse was foaming with exhaustion. She had ridden day and night, abandoning the hunt for the heart the moment she realized the "invasion" in the South was a phantom.
She looked devastated. She saw the ruins. She saw the graves.
She dismounted and ran toward the survivors. There were only a few dozen left, huddled in the remains of the great hall. She had her hands outstretched, glowing with healing magic.
"I'm here!" she cried out. "I'm here! Who is wounded? I have supplies! I brought the Siddik healers!"
But the Original Lloyd stood up.
He was covered in soot and dried blood. His eyes were hollow, rimmed with red. He looked at her not with relief, but with a hatred so pure it burned hotter than the fires.
Every survivor had told him the same story for seven days. The Siddik troops withdrew just before the attack. The gates were opened from the inside. The cultists shouted her name. They left her banner.