Free Web NovelThe three-day celebration of Red Tide City finally came to an end.
Irene returned to her home in the capital in the evening twilight, carrying the heavy "40th Anniversary Contributor Medal."
Pushing open the door, the aroma of stewed meat greeted her.
The sound of a pot lid rattling softly came from the kitchen; John was wearing an apron, staring intently at the stove.
"You're back?" He turned his head and wiped the water off his hands. "Sit down quickly, the water just boiled."
As he spoke, his gaze involuntarily fell on Irene's chest.
The dark gold medal shimmered slightly under the indoor lights, making it impossible to ignore.
Irene noticed this, and a proud curve appeared at the corner of her mouth.
She deliberately puffed out her chest, as if presenting a newly completed result in a laboratory.
"Take a good look, Comrade John," she said half-jokingly.
"Lord Louis personally pinned this on me. From today on, should logistics support work like washing dishes and taking out the trash be entirely your responsibility?"
John was stunned for a second, then quickly reacted.
He stood up straight with exaggerated formality and gave a slightly comical hand-to-chest salute.
"As you command, Great Academician." His tone was overly solemn, but his eyes were full of laughter. "It is my honor to work under your leadership."
Laughter soon filled the living room.
Her elderly mother walked over with a tray, her husband's father put down his newspaper, and the children scrambled for seats at the table.
Laughter rose and fell; no one felt the need to lower their voice.
The Magic-guided Radio on the wall was playing a light waltz, the melody echoing through the room.
Suddenly, the music was crudely cut off.
Then, what came from the speaker was no longer a melody, but the voice of the chief announcer.
That voice tried to remain calm, yet it still couldn't hide the trembling and hoarseness within.
A brief pause.
"To all citizens... an emergency announcement is being issued."
Everyone in the house stopped what they were doing.
"The ender of the old era, the undertaker of false gods, the savior of the world, the creator and father of the nation... Comrade Louis Calvin..."
The announcer's voice almost broke here.
"Due to exhaustion from overwork, at 17:09 today, in Red Tide Castle... he completed his glorious life."
The last sentence was squeezed out in a very low voice.
"The sun... has set."
John's father was the first to make a sound.
This old man, who had been a slave for half his life, suddenly fell to his knees, his forehead hitting the cold floor with a dull thud.
He curled up, his shoulders trembling violently.
To this first generation of slaves liberated by the Red Tide, Louis was a god.
He tremblingly raised his hands, looking at the palms that had once been rubbed bloody by chains.
"Gone... Lord Louis... is gone... If those monsters come back, who will protect our children?"
Mary stood aside, clutching the Broken Blade Knight Medal left behind by Old Smith.
Her eyes were terrifyingly empty, but tears silently soaked her collar, as if she had lost even the strength to cry.
John stood by the window; outside, the towering chimneys and rows of factories stood silently in the night.
Those were things he and countless engineers had built inch by inch according to the blueprints left by Louis.
He closed his eyes, his Adam's apple bobbing violently, but he couldn't say anything.
Irene lowered her head, her fingertips lightly touching the medal on her chest.
The medal still carried warmth—the residual heat from a few days ago when Louis had personally pinned it on her.
"Just three days ago..." Her voice was almost inaudible. "On the reviewing stand, the Lord still looked so energetic... the Lord hadn't even seen us..."
To her generation, Louis was a mentor, a direction, the voice that always provided answers when the fog was thickest.
A sense of overwhelming loneliness slowly pressed down.
From now on, when the truth was once again obscured by fog, there would no longer be anyone to point the way for her in that gentle tone.
The children didn't understand all this; they didn't know what war looked like, nor did they understand the taste of famine.
They only knew that the radio said the greatest person in the world had left.
The youngest child stood by the window, watching the landscape lights in the street go out one by one, and carefully tugged at Irene's sleeve.
"Mama," his voice was soft.
"The radio said... the sun has set. So... will it rise again tomorrow?"
The entire capital seemed to have been paused by some invisible force.
On the street, a Magic-guided Car that had been speeding along stopped in the middle of the tracks.
The driver slumped over the steering wheel, his shoulders heaving violently, his crying spilling out of the car unreservedly.
The car doors were wide open, but no passengers got out, and no one hurried him; instead, they cried along with him.
Further away, the roar of the factories vanished.
That low resonance that had lasted for forty years was completely cut off at this moment.
Thousands of men and women in overalls walked out of the workshops and stood in the shadows of the towering chimneys; no one spoke, no one directed.
They just silently knelt down, their foreheads against the cold ground, as if saluting an existence that could no longer respond.
There was no chaos in the city, but in less than an hour, its appearance changed.
In People's Square, white flowers began to pile up.
Flowers were sent from every district, placed in the center of the square, on street corners, and before every statue of Louis.
White flowers piled up layer by layer, soon submerging the stone steps like a silent but surging torrent.
The crowd stood outside the sea of flowers; they sobbed quietly, staring blankly at the white expanse, motionless.
That grief had no outlet; it was real and heavy, like a stone pressing on the chest.
It felt as if everyone had lost a close relative.
The broadcast continued.
The voice was much smoother than before; it was the last recording left by Louis.
"I am just a passerby who brought the spark to you. Now it has been passed to your hands. Take it to work, to study, and to love this world..."
...Across ten thousand miles, arriving at the northernmost tip of the continent, here was the end of extreme cold.
And on this permafrost with almost no signs of life, a black pyramid stood silently.
It was built block by block from pitch-black Starstones; the body of the tower was not smooth, and dense Primordial Runes covered every inch of its surface.
Dark red and deep purple light flowed slowly between the runes; this was an entire set of functioning magical structures.
This building was not to commemorate anyone; its only purpose for existence was isolation.
To isolate those original sins that, once out of control, would be enough to return civilization to the wild.
At the moment the capital's broadcast announced Louis Calvin's passing to the world, the old man was standing beneath the pyramid.
Louis's cheeks, neck, and even the backs of his exposed hands were already covered with twisted, spreading runes.
Those runes crouched beneath his skin like living things, flickering with his breath.
This was the price; for forty years, he had used himself as a seal to forcibly suppress, divide, and bind the seven original sins.
Every suppression was a silent overextension.
Now his breathing had become difficult, and every inhalation was accompanied by an unmaskable tremor.
The erosion of the original sins had already approached the critical point; he knew very well that he had reached the end of his life.
But he could not die naturally in the outside world.
Once the restraint was lost, those sealed powers would instantly backfire upon the world.
Sif and Emily were on either side, holding his hands tightly.
Time had not taken away their beauty, only leaving traces at the corners of their eyes.
They did not make a sound as they cried, but tears fell continuously, freezing into tiny crystals before they could hit the ice field.
Although they °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° had long known this day would come.
The children knelt in the snow.
They were no longer young, in their forties, with responsibilities on their shoulders.
The eldest son, Olthers, bowed his head, hands clenched; the eldest daughter, Aurelia's gaze never left her father's face, her eyes full of reluctance... Louis slowly raised that rune-covered hand and placed it on the children's heads, stroking them one by one as he had many years ago.
And the several Archons standing before the pyramid had already turned pale from the cold.
Even so, none of them spoke of leaving first.
The youngest among them finally couldn't help himself.
He trembled in the cold wind, his voice tight with suppression: "Lord... please, give us one last bit of guidance."
The wind and snow swept over the outer wall of the pyramid, the faint light of the runes flowing on the black stone surface.
After hearing this, Louis gave a soft laugh: "You guys."
He slowly turned around, looking at those familiar but no longer young faces.
"Having sat in those positions for so many years, do you really still need an old man like me to teach you how to walk?"
The Archons were momentarily speechless; some bowed their heads, while others nodded subconsciously.
The smile on Louis's face gradually faded.
"Then I will say that phrase I have repeated countless times, one last time." His voice was not loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the wind and snow.
"Remember that development is right, but you must always remember that all development is ultimately for the benefit of the vast majority of the people, not for the selfish desires of a few powerful elites."
He paused, his gaze sweeping over everyone.
"At no time should you stop treating people as people, but rather as consumables to keep the gears of society turning."
The wind and snow howled, and Louis's tone became low and solemn: "If you forget this, if you let the Red Tide become cold, rigid, and corrupt..."
Louis turned around, his back to the crowd, and raised his hand to wave dismissively.
"I will walk out of this pyramid again and personally settle accounts with you. Go, you return; I will go in alone."
As he finished speaking, he no longer lingered; he stepped forward and walked toward the pyramid.
Weil stood in place.
This old general, now a Peak Knight with many children and grandchildren, stepped forward with red-rimmed eyes.
"Lord Louis." His voice was low and raspy. "Let me stand guard outside."
Louis's footsteps paused.
He did not look back, only letting out a long sigh in the wind and snow: "As you wish."
The heavy black stone doors of the pyramid slowly opened with a low rumble.
Inside the doors, there was no light.
It was a kind of absolute darkness that seemed capable of swallowing everything.
Louis walked into that darkness alone.
The heavy black stone doors closed behind him.
The rumble echoed across the Far Northern Wilderness, lingering for a long time.
The runes on the tower flared with light for an instant, dark red and deep purple intertwining and surging, before quickly returning to a dead silence. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ
The wind and snow covered everything once more.
On the Far Northern Wilderness, only the falling snow remained.
Along with an old knight standing before the pyramid doors like a statue.
