Free Web NovelIn the cold cellar, the firelight flickered.
The coffin was placed in the center, made of dark solid wood, its lid not fully closed.
Inside lay the body of a young boy, Ike, a twelve-year-old Snowsworn.
Louis had Winter Dawn Territory transport him back a few days in advance, the reason simple: there might be some disease, so send him back for research.
He didn't have any particular feelings for the corpse itself; he brought it back mainly because it was related to the Mother Nest.
"Seriously," Louis sniffed lightly twice, tilting his head to look at his elder brother beside him, "did you fall into a cesspit one day and not wash yourself clean? Why does this smell more complex than a corpse?"
"Because there's a pile of shit next to me." Eduardo glared at him, his tone unruffled, "If it weren't for the inappropriate setting, I'd press you into the wall right now."
"Pfft, you really know how to talk." Louis's lips curled into a smile; not only was he not angry, he turned his head to sniff seriously instead.
After several encounters, the two brothers' relationship had become quite familiar, and both had a penchant for jokes, so a little teasing was nothing.
"I need to use my bloodline talent; you should step out for a moment," Eduardo said blandly.
Louis didn't move, as if he hadn't understood the meaning of "please leave," and instead raised an eyebrow: "Oh? Your talent can't be seen by others, and you need to use it alone."
"Louis." Eduardo's tone grew a little heavier, "I'm serious. Get out."
"The more serious you are, the more I think there's something wrong with you." Louis spread ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) his hands, showing an expression of 'I really can't do anything with you,' "Does your talent require you to strip naked to use it?"
"I'm saying this one last time." Eduardo looked up.
Louis shrugged and finally walked towards the door, muttering as he went: "Pfft, pfft, even guarding against your own younger brother, Father's education was a failure."
Eduardo's expression didn't change, but he subconsciously pulled the front of his cloak tighter, as if to conceal something.
He didn't want to lie, nor could he tell the truth.
Because in the Golden Feather Flower Theocracy, he was the Bishop's Emissary; and in this imperial territory, he was the son of one of the Eight Great Dukes.
Special reasons allowed him to navigate between two hostile forces, maintaining a delicate and dangerous balance.
The hatred between the Iron-Blood Empire and the Golden Feather Flower was too deep, a rift that he couldn't mend.
But he didn't know that Louis had already secretly learned all of this through the Daily Intelligence System.
He knew Eduardo came from the Holy See, and he knew his true mission for this trip to the Northern Territory was to investigate the disappearance of Grand Mage Jürgen Loken.
However, Louis had never exposed him.
Firstly, because there was no need.
Secondly, because—Eduardo's door slammed shut with a "thud," the echo reverberating under the stone arch ceiling.
The basement returned to silence, leaving only Eduardo and the young boy's coffin.
He sighed softly.
This younger brother, to be precise, was a brother he had only met a few times.
He had initially thought he would be a calm, steady, and cautious person.
After all, being able to thrive in a place like the Northern Territory and become a Viscount in a short time was not something an ordinary person could do. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
His initial impression was indeed like that, but after spending time together, he realized this person could actually crack some outlandish jokes, sometimes even leaving him speechless.
"Pfft." Eduardo let out a soft snort and shook his head.
Then he put away his lighthearted thoughts, his expression gradually becoming solemn.
Eduardo slowly exhaled, extending his right hand, revealing a golden pattern on his palm that was like a feather yet not a feather, the golden light trembling slightly, like a holy radiance unfolding and quietly blooming within his flesh and blood.
He leaned down and gently pressed his palm above Ike's chest.
The next moment, Divine Grace activated.
The faint light of the pattern surged like a tide, spreading along the flesh, bones, and echoes of memory.
Ike's brief and tragic life quietly emerged, intertwined, and echoed in fragments deep within his consciousness.
Eduardo "saw" Ike's childhood—
In a fiery raid, a baby cried as it was born.
A woman, pale-faced, clutching her abdomen, tremblingly handed the child to a blood-stained man.
"His name is Ike," she whispered finally, and with that, she extinguished like a candle in the wind.
Ike's childhood had no mother's embrace, only the rough hands of warriors and tents still smelling of gunpowder.
Every morning, Ike would stand on a snow hill to keep watch, the cold wind whipping his cloak, like a little adult.
His favorite time was returning to camp at dusk, gathered around the campfire, listening to his father tell stories of "glory."
"One day, you will also wear it." Takarin pointed to his own cloak of glory.
At that moment, Ike believed he would eventually become a hero.
He nodded, his eyes young but firm.
Eduardo "felt" the child's suppressed fear—
But one day, Herick suddenly stopped joking. Ulla stood silently in the snow by the camp at night, gazing at the sky.
His father gritted his teeth in his sleep, muttering incomprehensible words.
He instinctively felt that the familiar camp was becoming strange.
He bit his lip, burying his fear in his chest.
The young boy didn't know what was happening, only that he couldn't let his father worry.
Eduardo "experienced" that escape—
Deep in the night, Ike's hand was tightly held by his father as they fled.
The cold wind tore at their cloaks; he fell countless times, his knees already scraped raw, blood freezing into a crust along his trousers.
"Go south, don't look back."
His father said in a low voice, a voice so cold it was almost inhuman, yet it felt like a blade piercing his ears and stabbing his heart.
"What about you?" Ike whispered.
His answer was a sudden series of footsteps from the nearby snowy forest.
They turned, and familiar figures stood in the snow: Bro, Hium—
The uncles and elders who had once drunk and fought alongside his father now approached slowly, like puppets being pulled.
His father drew his sword, roaring as he met his former brothers.
Blood stained the snow, roars pierced the night sky.
Ike looked back one last time; that was the last time he saw his father.
Eduardo "personally" witnessed the end of the morning—
Ike walked alone, stumbling through the vast white forest.
He fell, got up, and fell again, finally unable to stand.
His small feet on the ground were already splattered with blood, and before he fell, he still clutched the emblem and the overwhelmed short sword.
As if guarding something, or waiting for someone.
Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the trees, falling upon the small, stiff body, like a silent farewell.
The vision ended.
Eduardo slowly straightened up, his eyes already wet with tears.
That wasn't a hallucination, not an observation of a memory, but a life embedding, as if he had personally experienced it.
Divine Grace was not a gentle gift, but a heavy price of synesthesia.
Ike's fear, despair, stubbornness, and unfulfilled longing pierced his nerves like steel needles.
"Hah—" He gasped, wiping tears with the back of his hand, but the more he wiped, the blurrier it became.
His knuckles were white, clutching his sleeve to try and stop the trembling, but a mountain of fatigue pressed down, making him almost unable to stand steady.
This was a pain of being crushed by emotions, not his own, yet as deeply felt as heartbreak.
Eduardo leaned against the cold stone wall, closing his eyes and remaining silent for a good while.
That painful emotion finally subsided slightly, receding from his fingertips like a receding tide, leaving only rationality slowly returning.
He took a deep breath, exhaled a misty white breath, and began to sort through what he had just seen and felt.
"First, Ike did come into contact with the 'Mother Nest' before he died, or rather, some residual mental energy from it.
Second, the Mother Nest's contamination is not limited to corpses; it has the ability to subtly, secretly, and silently erode the minds of living people."
He looked at the still not fully closed coffin, his eyes filled with an undisguised pity.
"Third, the 'Snowsworn stronghold' from which Ike and his father finally escaped, judging from the mental echoes, was very likely not an ordinary camp. It was probably a Mother Nest hive disguised as a stronghold."
The door burst open with a "thud," letting out a dry, cold, and damp cellar scent.
Louis, who had been waiting outside bored, shrugged: "Finally letting me in? I thought you were in there stripping and dancing."
"Stop joking." Eduardo's voice was very low, his face grim, "We have a situation."
Louis's expression hardened, his joking instantly gone.
He followed into the room, and after listening to Eduardo's report, his face grew even more solemn.
"Contaminating living people, hidden strongholds, and possibly even breeding right under our noses—" Louis repeated in a low voice, a dangerous cold glint flashing in his eyes.
He didn't waste any more words, simply raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
"Reconnaissance knights deploy, target the area within thirty li around Winter Dawn Territory. You must find the Snowsworn stronghold."
Immediately, responses echoed from outside, armor clanging, knights running, figures retreating in an orderly fashion.
Only then did Louis turn his face, his gaze falling on his silent elder brother, his voice so low it was almost a whisper:
"If that really is the Mother Nest." He paused for a moment, then a hint of malevolent smile suddenly curled his lips, "Then perfect, I was just wondering if my sword was sharp enough."
Leaves drifted down from the hillside, the swirling wind rustling dead branches, and the forest was silent, as if even the birds dared not sing.
Under Louis's command, the Red Tide scout knight squad began a systematic search of the area around the "Chosen Sworn Stronghold" in batches.
After two days and two nights of reconnaissance, one small team finally discovered an unmapped settlement far off on a hillside deep within the Northern Territory dense forest.
Kasluo lay behind a rock, his brows tightly furrowed.
He was the captain of this scout team, experienced and steady. At this moment, his gaze was fixed on the unfamiliar village below the hillside.
"A place not on the map, actually has a complete stronghold, damn stinking rats—"
He said in a low voice.
The settlement's houses were crude and simple, mostly crooked wooden huts and walls built of stone slabs.
But strangely, several structurally complete watchtowers and wooden arrow towers were still operational, as if they had been carefully maintained.
This was not a naturally formed village, but some kind of organized military stronghold.
However, even more bizarre were the people.
They were not ordinary villagers, but Snowsworn.
The shoulder blades, armor marks, calluses on their hands, and the remaining insignia on their belts all indicated this:
This was a complete unit.
Adult men, strong and robust, who had once sworn to die for their beliefs, brave and skilled in combat.
But now they stood motionless like statues from which the soul had been extracted, by the side of the street, under eaves, and in watchtowers.
Kasluo stared at them intently, his throat dry.
He personally saw a burly man, built like a bear, wearing tattered leather armor, holding a rusty great axe, yet standing ramrod straight in front of a wooden hut, his gaze fixed on a certain corner for a full half-hour without even a flicker of his brow.
Not alertness, not vigilance, but immersion.
"Are they spacing out?" Allan whispered.
"No," Rio's voice was barely audible, "They—they simply don't want to move."
Kasluo slowly narrowed his eyes: "It's not that they can't move, but that they don't want to move. They're trapped, as if—crushed by a dream within their bodies, even their muscles have forgotten to contract."
The scouts saw a Snowsworn leaning against a wooden pillar, his head rigidly tilted back, his mouth slightly open, as if silently reciting some ancient words.
But the shape of his mouth, the tone, the rhythm—it was like a distorted echo from underwater, almost making one's heart itch.
"Don't you guys feel like they're not even alive anymore?" Allan gritted his teeth, "But their breathing is clearly still there."
They continued to observe, and the more they watched, the more chilling it became.
One Snowsworn warrior was wiping his knife, but he was wiping the air; there was no knife in his hand at all.
Someone was practicing archery, their posture incredibly standard, but there was nothing in front of them. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
And a tall female warrior stood on a drying platform, sunlight bathing her entire body, raising her arms as if welcoming something.
"—This is sleepwalking." Rio finally spoke, "They still remember their combat moves, their training habits, but for some reason, it's as if the entire village has fallen into some shared dream, constantly repeating things that have long since lost their meaning."
"They're not out-of-control madmen," Kasluo whispered, "they're conscious puppets."
Suddenly Allan gasped, looking into the distance.
At the village entrance, a Snowsworn stood by the wooden fence, motionless, like a statue keeping watch.
That person suddenly—very slightly, almost imperceptibly—turned his eyeball, looking directly in the direction of their hiding place.
Faint blood vessels appeared in those dead eyes, tangling and shifting like spider silk.
"He—he saw us?" Allan's voice trembled.
"No," Kasluo pulled them back, "He didn't see us; he saw something in his dream."
"We can't watch anymore." He made a sudden decision, his voice cold and hard, "If we watch any longer, we'll get trapped too."
Allan gritted his teeth and whispered, "Should we set it on fire now?"
Kasluo looked back at him, his voice low but exceptionally firm: "No. The Lord wants intelligence, and it's easy to backfire."
Allan and Rio nodded in unison: "Understood."
They quickly descended the mountain, not saying another word.
The wind blew through the mountain forest, rustling the edges of their cloaks, and also blowing towards the eerily dormant village in the valley below.
No dog barks, no cooking smoke.
Only that group of softly murmuring people, who seemed alive yet sleepwalking, slowly repeating those meaningless sentences.
