Free Web NovelIgor's heart skipped a beat.
A thought surfaced from the depths of his mind—vague, unformed, but carrying an intuition that sent a chill down his spine.
He pushed the thought down.
Now was not the time to overthink.
The problem now was—how to handle her words.
The other party's question was clear: what the Fire of Freedom was doing would objectively prolong the war.
This contradicted the organization's banner of "ending the war."
Igor could not deny this.
Because what she said was a fact.
But he could not admit it either.
And he certainly could not explain it. freēwēbnovel.com
Due to discipline, he could not reveal any information regarding the organization's current strategy to anyone whose identity had not been verified.
Even if the person had once been a member of the Fire of Freedom—there was a chasm between "once was" and "is now."
He had seen people in the organization defect.
Those who were bought off, coerced, turned, or simply ran away because they couldn't handle the pressure.
Before they were exposed, every defector looked exactly like a loyal member.
Therefore, the fact that "she used to be one of us" could not be a reason for him to trust her.
Moreover—
Igor gave a bitter smile in his heart.
Moreover, she was right.
What the Fire of Freedom was doing now was indeed prolonging the war.
This was a well-considered, top-down strategic shift.
The situation had changed.
Everything had changed.
The organization's original goal was to "end the war," and this goal itself had not changed.
But the path to achieving this goal was completely different from what it had been a few months ago.
He could not say it.
But he could not remain silent either.
Because he could feel the foot on his head slowly and steadily increasing its pressure.
Like tightening a screw.
Tightening turn by turn.
His temporal bone began to ache, and his scalp was being ground by the sole of the shoe, producing a faint, frictional sound.
She was waiting for his answer.
And her patience was clearly limited.
Igor dared not gamble.
He dared not gamble on whether she would really kill him.
Someone who could dislocate his arms in 1.5 seconds, someone who could watch the entire process under the noses of five well-trained operatives without being discovered.
Every word such a person said, every move they made, was not a bluff.
He took a deep breath. Dust from the gravel choked his nasal cavity, and he suppressed the urge to cough.
"...The situation has changed."
He spoke.
His voice was muffled between the ground and his cheek, sounding indistinct, but he tried to keep every word steady.
"When you left—no matter when you left—it was different from now."
The force on his head did not lighten, but it did not continue to increase either.
She was listening.
Igor weighed his words carefully.
Every word felt like walking on the tip of a knife.
Say too much, and he would violate discipline.
Say too little, and she would not be satisfied.
Say the wrong thing— freewēbnoveℓ.com
He dared not even think about the consequences of saying the wrong thing.
"The war will not stop on °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° its own."
He said, his voice lower than before.
"You should know this better than I do. Neither side can stop, neither side is willing to bow their head first, and both sides are betting that the other will collapse first."
"This kind of situation cannot be solved by negotiation, it cannot be solved by assassination, and it certainly cannot be solved by voting in parliament."
"So... sometimes, the only way to end a war is—"
He was searching for a phrasing that was sufficiently vague yet had enough weight.
"—to make it the last one."
The atmosphere in the alley changed abruptly.
Igor felt the pressure on him suddenly increase after he spoke, but he dared not stop.
"To make everyone realize that the cost of this war has become so great that no one can bear it."
"To make everyone sitting in high positions understand that if it continues, it won't just be the soldiers on the front lines who fall, but they themselves as well."
"This will be a war to end all wars—"
A loud bang.
It was the sound of metal piercing stone.
Sharp, crisp, and without warning.
Igor's words were cut off abruptly.
A dagger was slammed into the ground right next to his head.
The blade was buried nearly two inches into the gravel ground, the hilt still vibrating slightly, less than three centimeters from his right ear.
He could feel the chill from the blade, cold, pressing against his ear.
If it had been off by even a little, even by the width of a fingernail, that knife would have been embedded in his head.
But what truly made Igor's blood run cold was not the dagger itself.
It was what happened the moment the dagger pierced the ground.
A spiderweb of cracks burst open on the gravel road, centered on the blade.
The cracks spread in all directions from the point of contact like they were alive; the speed was extremely fast, but the trajectory was not random.
They spread precisely along the gaps between the stones, along the weakest joints of the mortar, and along every stress line almost invisible to the naked eye.
It was as if something had "seen through" the entire structure of the ground in an instant, and then, following every weak point, every fissure, and every hidden fragility, had drawn a map of destruction.
The gravel made faint clicking sounds where the cracks passed, and some pieces even shattered directly into powder.
The cracks stopped only when they reached the side of Igor's cheek.
He could feel the ground beneath his face vibrating.
A subtle, continuous vibration, as if the entire foundation were resonating.
And then, those eyes.
Igor could not see her face.
He was pressed face down on the ground, and his field of vision contained only gravel, cracks, the handle of the dagger, and that corpse three meters away.
But he did not need to see.
Because he could feel it.
The gaze from above was like a basin of ice water poured over his crown, trickling down his spine all the way to his tailbone.
That feeling was not even killing intent.
He had seen killing intent before—in the underground boxing rings of the slums, in the academy's dueling grounds, and when he had just slit Karl Winter's throat.
This was something more primitive, something that made one instinctively want to curl up.
Like standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down.
Like hearing the first muffled sound of an avalanche while in a blizzard.
Like—destruction itself was watching you.
