Episode-886
Chapter : 1771
It moved faster than sound. Lloyd saw the blur. He tried to move. He tried to summon the iron in his blood to harden his chest, to create a final, desperate layer of armor. But the Null-Stone kept his reaction time slow. He was too heavy. He was too slow.
He saw death coming.
But Rosa was faster.
She didn't use magic. She didn't use a spell. She used the last burst of adrenaline in her dying body. She threw herself sideways, slamming her shoulder into Lloyd’s chest with all her remaining strength.
"Move!" she screamed.
The impact knocked Lloyd off his feet. He tumbled into the mud, rolling away.
The Shadow Spear didn't hit the ground. It hit Rosa.
It struck her square in the center of her chest. There was a sickening sound of tearing flesh and breaking bone. The force of the blow lifted her off her feet and pinned her to the ground.
"Rosa!" Lloyd yelled, scrambling to his knees.
For a split second, reality was clear. He saw his wife, the woman he had accused, bleeding out in the mud because she had taken a bullet meant for him. He saw the truth. He saw the sacrifice.
But Mammon wasn't done.
"Oh, no," Mammon tutted, wagging a golden finger. "That’s not the script. He needs to die hating her. That creates the sweetest despair."
Mammon snapped his fingers.
A wave of invisible distortion washed over the valley. It was a high-tier illusion spell, powered by a Devil’s authority. It hijacked Lloyd’s sensory input. It rewrote the signals going from his eyes to his brain.
To Lloyd, the world shifted.
He blinked, shaking the mud from his eyes.
He didn't see Rosa lying wounded on the ground.
He saw Rosa standing over him. She looked tall, imperious, and untouched. Her eyes were glowing with a hateful red light. In her hand, she wasn't holding a staff. She was holding a bloody dagger.
And behind her, the image of Mammon vanished. Rubel appeared to be standing next to her, laughing.
"She did it!" the illusory Rubel shouted, his voice twisted and distorted in Lloyd’s ears. "She led you here, nephew! She stuck the pig! Well done, Lady Rosa!"
The illusory Rosa looked down at Lloyd. She sneered—a cruel, cold expression that Lloyd had always feared was underneath her mask.
"You were always a burden, Lloyd," the illusion said. It spoke with Rosa’s voice, but the words were Mammon’s script. "Mina was weak. You were weak. I needed you gone so I could finally rule."
Lloyd lay in the mud, his chest heaving. The cognitive dissonance was shattering his mind. He had felt her push him. He had felt her save him. But his eyes... his eyes showed him a murderer. His "Black Box" logic tried to analyze it, but the data was corrupted. The visual evidence overruled the physical sensation.
"Rosa..." Lloyd whispered. "You... you really..."
"Die," the illusion said.
In reality, Mammon stepped forward. He was invisible to Lloyd now. He held a second spear, this one smaller, made of pure condensed air.
He drove it down.
Lloyd gasped as the invisible blade pierced his heart.
Pain. Cold, absolute pain blossomed in his chest. He coughed, choking on hot blood. He couldn't move his arms. The strength left his legs. The rain felt like ice water poured into his veins.
He looked up at the woman standing over him. The illusion of his wife watched him die with a smile of satisfaction.
The betrayal hurt more than the spear. It was a coldness that went deeper than the freezing rain. He had been right. The logic had been right. She was the villain. She was the monster.
"I..." Lloyd choked out, his vision tunneling, the grey sky turning black. "I... knew it."
He locked eyes with the illusion. He wanted to scream. He wanted to ask why. But he only had breath for three words.
"I... hate... you."
The light faded from his blue eyes. The genius engineer, the ghost assassin, the boy who just wanted to be loved, died in the filth of a silent valley, believing that his wife had murdered him for power.
The silence returned.
Mammon dropped the illusion.
The scene reverted to reality.
Rosa was lying five feet away, pinned to the ground by the Shadow Spear. She was still alive, barely. She had seen everything. She had heard his last words.
"He..." Rosa whispered, blood bubbling past her lips. "He thinks... I did it."
Mammon clapped his hands together, the sound echoing like a gunshot.
Chapter : 1772
"And cut!" Mammon cheered, beaming with delight. "Oh, that was marvelous! Did you see the look in his eyes? The pure, unadulterated betrayal? That flavor... it’s better than any vintage wine."
He walked over to Lloyd’s body and nudged it with his golden boot.
"Dead as a doornail," Mammon confirmed. "The Ferrum line is ended. The threat is neutralized."
He turned to Rubel, who was looking a little pale. Even for a villain, the cruelty of the scene was stomaching-turning.
"Clean this up," Mammon commanded. "Leave the bodies. Let the wolves have them. It adds to the ambiance."
Mammon looked at Rosa one last time. He saw the life fading from her eyes. He didn't bother to finish her off. The spear in her chest was fatal. She had minutes left, at best.
"You played your part perfectly, my dear," Mammon sneered. "Now you get to die knowing that the last thing he felt for you was pure hatred. You’re the villain of his story, forever. Enjoy the legacy."
With a swirl of his golden cloak, Mammon dissolved into shadows, taking the terrified Rubel and the cultists with him.
The valley was empty again. Just the rain, the stones, and two broken bodies.
Lloyd Ferrum was dead. His story was over.
Or it should have been.
But Mammon, in his arrogance, had made a calculation error. He had forgotten one variable. He had forgotten that Rosa Siddik was not just a mage. She was a woman who had spent her entire life hoarding resources for a miracle she hoped she would never have to use.
Rosa’s hand twitched.
She looked at her dead husband. She heard his last words echoing in her mind. I hate you.
"No," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the rain. "I won't... let it end... like this."
Rosa’s fingers finally brushed against the cold, smooth surface of the sphere hidden in her silks. It was a faint, stubborn pulse of light that the Null-Stone couldn't swallow. With a final, agonizing heave, she dragged her shattered body across the last few inches of mud until her hand rested on Lloyd’s cooling chest. She didn't look at the sky or the shadows. She only looked at the small, glowing orb in her palm—the Aethel-Core. As the light of the artifact began to bleed through her trembling fingers, the silence of the valley was finally broken by the sound of a miracle beginning to burn.
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The silence in the valley was not peaceful. It was heavy. It pressed down on the mud and the stones like a physical weight, trying to crush everything that still had a heartbeat.
Rosa Siddik lay in the freezing slush. The rain hammered against her back, soaking through the torn remains of her silk dress. She could feel the cold water mixing with the warm blood that was still seeping from her chest, creating a strange, sickening contrast of temperatures on her skin. The Shadow Spear—that terrible, jagged weapon thrown by the Devil—was still buried deep inside her. It pinned her to the ground like a nail through a piece of paper.
Every breath she took was a battle. Her lungs felt like they were filled with broken glass. But Rosa didn't care about the pain. She didn't care about the spear or the Devil or the ruin of her family name.
Her trembling fingers were already locked onto the front of Lloyd’s jacket, her knuckles white as she clung to him. The distance between them was finally gone, but the silence of the valley felt like a new wall. Now that she was close enough to touch him, the reality of his stillness was more painful than the spear in her own chest. Her palm was pressed flat against his chest, right over the spot where his heart used to beat.
He was cold. He was so incredibly cold.
Rosa looked at his face. The rain had washed away the mud and the blood, leaving him looking pale and clean. His eyes were open, staring up at the grey, angry sky. They were blue, like the summer sky she remembered from her childhood, but the light behind them was gone. There was no anger left in them. No confusion. Just an empty, blank stare that broke her heart into a thousand pieces.
"I’m here," Rosa whispered. Her voice was weak, barely louder than the sound of the rain hitting the rocks. "I didn't leave you."