Strongest Incubus System

Damon ran.

He should not have. His body was still weak, his muscles hurt, and his breathing became heavy before he reached the middle of the corridor, but he did not slow down. This time, he was not following a threat planted by Seraphine. He was correcting an error he had identified himself.

The difference mattered.

Cold began circulating through his legs, reinforcing his movements without exploding outward. Ester noticed and shouted at him not to use Qi.

"I am not using the root," Damon answered without stopping. "Only the body."

"That does not improve things as much as you think."

The old wing appeared ahead. One of the guards lay near the entrance, breathing, with a small puncture in his shoulder. The second remained conscious but disoriented. There was no sign of the two men positioned in the inner corridor.

Damon crouched beside the wounded guard.

"Who passed through?"

"A girl," the guard answered with difficulty. "She said she was lost. Then... a needle."

Elizabeth arrived just behind him and examined the puncture.

"Paralytic."

Damon stood. The double doors to the former Duchess’s room were open.

There was no sound.

That worried him more than a fight.

Morgana tried to enter first, but Damon caught her arm.

"She wants the frame. I can feel if there is a reaction."

"You are not going in alone."

"I am not."

Ingrivid positioned herself on the left. Elizabeth stood on the right. Ester remained behind Damon, ready to interrupt any reaction. Morgana drew her sword.

Damon entered.

The room was different. Drawers had been opened, books were scattered across the floor, and the portrait frame had been placed on the desk. The painting of the former Duchess had been carefully removed. Inside the wood was a thin plate, completely white, without any image.

The girl from the entourage stood in front of it.

She was no longer wearing page clothing. She had removed the coat, revealing a dark outfit marked with green lines. Her hair was tied back, and the childish expression had disappeared. In her right hand, she held a short blade. In the left, a small blue vial.

"You arrived quickly," she said.

Damon took two more steps into the room.

"You stayed behind to steal a map."

"I stayed behind to awaken it."

She shattered the vial over the white plate.

Nothing happened.

The girl looked at Damon.

"It needs the correct cold."

Morgana raised her sword.

"Step away."

"If you kill me, you will never know the path."

Damon watched the plate. The root inside him had already recognized something. Not the Heart. Not the bell. It was similar to the sensation from Xue Lian’s memory, but more rigid, compressed inside the wood.

"Seraphine left you here because she knew I would come," Damon said.

"She left me because she knew you would choose to discover it."

The sentence was exactly the trap Nera had described. Create a situation in which Damon believed he was acting by his own decision. The agent wanted him to touch the map. Perhaps she expected the route to the fortress to appear in that very room.

Damon stopped.

The girl smiled.

"Are you afraid?"

"No. I am tired of people trying to decide my next choice."

He raised his hand, but did not point toward the plate.

He pointed toward the window.

Ice crossed the floor in a thin line, climbed the wall, and sealed the window from the outside. At the same time, another layer trapped the door behind them. It was not meant to block his allies.

It was meant to prevent escape.

The agent lost part of her smile.

Damon looked at Morgana.

"The frame stays in Arven."

Then he looked at Elizabeth.

"She stays alive."

Finally, he faced the girl.

"And the map opens only when I decide."

She advanced with the blade.

Damon did not wait.

He moved aside, seized her wrist, and used the agent’s own motion to throw her against the desk. She was fast, far faster than a child should have been, and tried to break the remaining vial attached to her belt. Damon froze only the buckle, trapping her hand. The girl turned and struck his knee. His leg nearly failed, but Damon remained standing and answered with a short blow to the stomach, enough to force out the air without breaking ribs.

She tried to use a needle hidden between her fingers.

Damon caught her hand before it reached his neck.

"You trained well," he said, tightening his grip until the needle fell. "But Seraphine sent you against someone who already knows children can be weapons."

The agent tried to bite her own tongue.

Ester entered and pressed a point on her jaw before she could. Ingrivid restrained her arms, while Elizabeth removed three poison capsules hidden in her mouth, sleeve, and beneath her collar.

Morgana approached the white plate.

"Is it truly a map?"

Damon remained still for several seconds, breathing until the cold returned under control. Then he walked to the desk but did not touch the surface.

"It is a door to a map."

"Can you open it?"

"I can feel that it wants to respond."

Ester stood beside him.

"Then do not touch it."

Damon nodded.

The agent laughed, still restrained.

"You will touch it. You can wait an hour, a day, or a week. In the end, you will always choose the path."

Damon looked at her.

"Perhaps."

Her confidence returned for an instant.

Then Damon continued.

"But Seraphine will not be there when I do."

He turned toward Morgana.

"Prepare the transfer of the children and Nera today. Double the guards at the mines. I want the room completely isolated and this frame placed inside a stone box. No one touches it unless Ester, Elizabeth, and I are present."

Morgana nodded immediately.

Not because Damon had given an order inside her territory, but because the decision made sense and, at that moment, he was the only person capable of sensing what existed within the plate.

Damon looked again at the empty white surface.

For the first time, Xue Lian’s fortress was not merely a distant memory. Part of the path stood in front of him, hidden for years inside the portrait of the woman who had nearly destroyed Arven.

Seraphine wanted him to open it.

The agent was certain curiosity would win.

Perhaps she was right.

But Damon would not do it in that room, surrounded by traces of the enemy and reacting to a provocation. He would open the map when the anchor was ready, when the children were safe, and when Seraphine believed her final piece had failed.

Damon brought his hand close to the plate, only enough to feel the cold trapped within it.

The white surface vibrated.

A black line appeared for less than a second, drawing the beginning of a mountain before disappearing.

Everyone saw it.

The agent stopped laughing.

Damon moved his hand back and smiled faintly.

"Now we know two things."

Elizabeth looked at the plate.

"Which ones?"

"The map is real."

He turned his eyes toward the restrained agent.

"And Seraphine does not know I can awaken it without touching it."

The girl’s expression changed.

Only slightly, but enough.

Damon noticed.

For the first time since Seraphine entered Arven, one of her important pieces appeared genuinely surprised.

And that was exactly the kind of advantage he needed before returning to the snow.