Chapter 296: Chapter 287: The Sins of the father II
[Realm: ??lfheimr]
[Location: Heart Kingdom Outskirts]
[Virelheim Mountain Village]
As a man of great age, one often finds themselves dulled to the world.
The things that once set the heart ablaze — the first snowfall, the cry of your newborn, the songs sung at dusk — all begin to fade into shades of familiarity.
What once felt sacred becos habit.
And habit, in ti, turns to madness.
Gerard had lived long enough to understand that truth far too well. He’d seen kingdoms rise and rot from within, seen ideals bloom into tyranny, seen hope weaponized in the na of salvation. And though the years had wearied his bones, what dulled him more was not ti, but repetition.
He used to believe that no experience could move him anymore. That nothing in this fractured world could awaken in him that old spark of wonder or fear.
That was before today.
For the first ti in many long, heavy years, tension — real, mortal tension — twisted within him as he faced the figure standing across the village square.
Snow.
Her beauty was the kind one could mistake for divine if not for the eeriness in it — a lifeless kind. The silence between them was thick enough to feel. Even the air seed unwilling to breathe.
"I’m surprised you deigned to co face
yourself, Gerard." Snow’s voice was as ever quiet and her expression that sa blank face. "I’ve only heard varying reports — that you’ve been leading strikes against Heart Kingdom outposts, disrupting their supply routes, rallying the desperate. Tell —" she tilted her head faintly, her gaze narrowing, "—what are you hoping to achieve in the end?"
Gerard’s lips twisted. "I very much doubt you care for that answer."
His tone was hoarse, struggling to stay steady. His eyes darted briefly toward the edge of the square — a handful of villagers still lingered, peering from cracked shutters and corners of hos that offered no real shelter. Mothers clutching children. Old n gripping tools that would not save them. Most had already fled, but those who remained did so because they had nowhere else to run.
They sensed what was to co.
Snow followed his glance, her eyes passing over the hos without a shred of pity. "Do you think they realize who I am?" she asked softly. "Not my title, of course — not the Mortifer. But the na beneath it. Do they rember ?"
Gerard exhaled heavily. "That happened long ago, Snow. Most here had no hand in it."
"But they watched," she countered, eyes narrowing faintly. "They watched and they did nothing. You think silence absolves them?"
"The sins of the past are not theirs to bear," Gerard said firmly, though his own voice trembled slightly at a bitter mory. "Nor are they the children’s."
Snow’s lips twitched into what might have been a smirk, though it never reached her eyes. "Do you think sins vanish, old man? That they’re washed away simply because the years have been kind enough to bury the bones?" She took a step forward. "Filth does not fade because ti refuses to look at it. Depravity doesn’t die because the guilty do. The world rembers — even if n pretend it doesn’t."
Gerard’s shoulders tensed. He could feel the cold spilling off her, not of temperature, but of presence — a chill that crept into the soul. "You rely want soone to bla," he said finally, voice tense. "What happened to your kingdom was tragedy, not justice. But even in that tragedy, there were innocents, Snow. There always are."
Her eyes fixed on him. "There are no innocents," she said flatly. "Every soul bears a stain — whether by their hand, their silence, or their comfort. The people of this land... they chose this decay. And for that, they share in its guilt."
"You sound just like the tyrants you despised," Gerard muttered, his jaw tightening. "You’ve traded sorrow for cruelty. And now you think it’s clarity."
"And you," she murmured, almost gently, "have traded clarity for cowardice."
The air stilled between them.
Finally, Snow spoke again — her tone lighter, conversational almost. "Tell , Gerard. Where is the artifact you stole? The one you hired that girl to retrieve?"
Gerard’s hand clenched faintly at his side. "If I told you... if I gave it to you, would you spare the village?"
A soft, humorless smile curved her lips. "No," she said simply. "But I would make their deaths swift." She tilted her head. "Consider my asking rely... a courtesy. I already know the answer."
He said nothing. His jaw locked, muscles flexing beneath. The old man’s gaze hardened — not out of hatred, but out of inevitability.
Snow’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes softened with sothing faint — sothing like pity, or mory. "You regret it, don’t you?" she asked quietly. "Sparing , that day. When Gwendolyn ordered my death."
"I do not," Gerard replied without hesitation.
For the first ti, Snow blinked, as though the certainty in his tone caught her off guard.
"I spared an innocent girl," he continued, his voice deep and calm, "not the woman standing before
now."
There was silence again. The kind that made the world feel hollow.
Snow closed her eyes briefly, as if listening to so distant sound that only she could hear. When she spoke again, her tone was almost wistful. "Then it seems that girl truly is dead." Her hand rose slowly. "Goodbye, Gerard."
Gerard’s eyes flicked toward the sky — gray and silent as ever. And so terribly dull.
He inhaled deeply.
There was no trembling in him now. Only the calm that cos when a man has already made peace with the inevitable.
--------------------
[Realm: ??lfheimr]
[Location: Heart Kingdom Outskirts]
("Tch... that was much too close for comfort.")
The thought left Mikoto’s mind with an irritated sigh. His red eyes tracked the motion of sothing that had barely missed impaling him.
A spear — but not just any.
It quivered where it struck a nearby tree, the wood hissing and darkening further around the impact point. The weapon was pitch black, a kind of black that swallowed the light around it. Its shaft looked uneven, scarred by so ritualistic process, and the tip was serrated.
A sickly, malevolent aura clung to it. Demonic, but different. More refined in so odd way.
Mikoto frowned, taking a step closer. The air near it felt heavy, thick with sothing he could only describe as despair condensed into matter.
"Lovely craftsmanship," he muttered under his breath.
Before he could study it further, the spear began to lt. Slowly, like wax under fire, it dripped into black ooze that slid down the bark, staining the ground beneath it. The sll of sothing putrid lingered briefly before vanishing into the air.
Mikoto’s expression hardened. His gaze lifted — past the dissolving weapon — to the one who had thrown it.
A man stood between the trees, frad by the dim light filtering through the canopy. Blond hair, a faint smirk, and an air of indifference.
He recognized that face.
The Mortifer from the Heart Kingdom encampnt.
Lindworm.
The man gave a slow, almost lazy sigh as he stepped forward, brushing nonexistent dust from his shoulder. His smile was disarmingly easy — almost pleasant — but the faint distortion around him betrayed what he truly was.
"I had hoped," Lindworm began conversationally, "that Abyssal-soaked spear would be enough to kill you while you were off guard." His tone was light, almost disappointed. "Seems you’re no lower-ranking Angel."
Mikoto blinked, montarily caught off guard by the bluntness of it. So this man knew.
He knew what Mikoto was.
With such confidence he said those words, not a hint of speculation. It threw him for a loop.
Regaining composure, Mikoto exhaled softly. "If you know what I am, then you should also know how stupid you’re being."
Lindworm chuckled at that, tilting his head. "Mayhap. When I first heard the reports, I assud it a coincidence. Another Angel wandering this land? Unlikely." His gaze road over Mikoto, unhurried and analytical. "But that beauty... that figure... and that radiant mana that hums like a prayer... no mistaking it."
Mikoto arched a brow, tone dry. "Oh, wow. You’ll make
blush."
Lindworm’s grin widened, but Mikoto didn’t miss the shift — the faint distortion rippling through the air around him. That telltale static. The strange, unstable hum that marked a Nil.
His presence flickered — existing and not, as though reality itself was uncertain about him. It was weaker than Snow’s, Mikoto noted, but that ant little. Strength wasn’t always about the noise one made in the world. Sotis it was about how silently they erased it.
"So what?" Mikoto continued, tightening his gauntleted fist. "That little spear was your ace in the hole? If so, this is going to be sad."
"Do you know," Lindworm replied, as if genuinely wounded, "how difficult it is to make those spears?"
Mikoto gave a look that said I really don’t care, but Lindworm pressed on.
"They must be bathed in Abyssal energy for days. One spear — one use. I was told they were crafted specifically to pierce Angelic flesh." He gave a theatrical sigh. "And here you are, standing there, looking pretty. I must look like quite the joke."
"At least you’re self-aware," Mikoto muttered. "But you seem clever enough. Young, too." He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing. "Do you really want to throw your life away like this? Just walk away. There’s no reason to die here."
He said it simply, not as rcy, but as fact.
Truthfully, Mikoto didn’t care either way. Whether this man fought or fled, his na would be another among too many already written into a ledger of necessity.
Lindworm smirked faintly. "I don’t quite know how to feel being called ’young’ by a child."
That word — child — made sothing faint twitch behind Mikoto’s expression.
"I’m sixteen," he said flatly, though the look in his eyes carried a kind of exhaustion that didn’t belong to a child.
Lindworm gave an exaggerated shrug, his cloak rippling with the motion. "Unfortunately, I’ve been tasked with keeping you occupied. Snow’s orders, you see. And as the lowest ranking Mortifer, I can do little else but obey."
Mikoto’s gaze sharpened. "Is that what loyalty ans to you?"
Lindworm paused. "What do you an?"
Mikoto’s voice dropped. "Following orders you don’t believe in because you think you have no choice. Calling it duty or aning. And when it ends, you tell yourself it was for sothing larger than you." He lifted his hand slowly. "Seems you’re just borrowing soone else’s conviction."
Lindworm’s smirk faltered slightly — not entirely gone, but thinner now.
"Spoken like soone who’s been on both sides of that equation," he said quietly.
Mikoto didn’t answer.
("I don’t expect this to be easy,") Mikoto thought, his expression calm. ("Even if he’s the lowest-ranking Mortifer, he wouldn’t have co unprepared. My gut tells
I’m about to deal with so massive bullshit.")
Behind Mikoto, two circular black glyphs unfurled into existence with a sound like grinding glass. The air warped around them as they pulsed with mana. They pulsed once more—before stabilizing into perfect symtry, rotating slowly.
He didn’t need complexity. It was a simple spell, an uncomplicated offensive burst ant to test, not kill. Yet Mikoto knew—underestimating Lindworm would be fatal.
A single thought. That was all it took.
A sharp detonation cracked through the silence as both glyphs exploded outward. Streaks of darkness ripped across the air, trailing black motes that seared the ground they passed over. The air hissed as they cut through it, and a deep, thunderous burst followed in their wake.
The force shook the ground as the wind recoiled.
The streaks closed the distance within an instant. Ordinarily—against any mortal—they would have torn flesh and bone apart effortlessly, leaving nothing but a drifting haze of red mist.
Ordinarily.
But the sound died. The streaks were gone.
Mikoto blinked. The glyphs—gone as well.
One mont they existed; the next, they simply didn’t.
No smoke. No residue. Just absence.
Lindworm hadn’t moved. His hands hung idly by his sides, expression neutral. And yet his presence thickened, twisting through the air. It warped, flickering at its edges, as though reality were attempting to correct sothing that should not be.
Mikoto’s eyes narrowed, pupils constricting.
("This isn’t erasure... not like Selwyn’s.")
Chthonia stirred within his vision, the logic behind it grinding through. The invisible frawork behind the world began to unfurl itself in clarity.
("No... this is different. The spell wasn’t destroyed. It was peeled. Stripped layer by layer until all that remained was its raw essence—my mana returned to formlessness.")
His gauntleted fingers twitched.
The observation sent a chill down his spine—not fear, but fascination.
"How scary," Lindworm finally said, his tone almost weary. "That was a spell ant to kill, wasn’t it?" His head tilted slightly, a lazy smile on his lips. "Co now, I’m the weakest of the Mortifer. You could at least show
a little rcy."
The way he said it—mockingly—only fueled Mikoto’s irritation.
"You getting cocky, punk?" Mikoto muttered coldly. His red eyes flared faintly. He wasn’t sure why it bothered him so deeply—perhaps the man’s tone, or perhaps the effortless ease with which he had erased that spell.
But he had seen enough.
This was his first glimpse at a Nil’s Null Schema.
The realization clicked. A faint, involuntary grin touched Mikoto’s lips. ("So this is what that is...")
To any other observer, it would appear supernatural—beyond reason. But Mikoto’s Chthonia dissected it in real-ti, layer by layer. It wasn’t destruction or absorption—it was a reversal, a personal void imposed upon reality.
A Nil’s power was not drawn from mana, nor from discipline of the body. It was drawn from absence—the hollow between existence and nonexistence. A place that did not belong to reality. A personal void that obeyed only its wielder.
Freakish, terrifying and... superior to magic.
One glance was all Mikoto needed. He could see the truth behind it. A Nil brought their own personal world into this one. They rewrote the rules as they pleased.
He exhaled softly. "I’ve seen what I wanted. Quite the nifty ability you’ve got there." His lips curved faintly. "Stripping away the layers of concepts or physical objects, huh?"
Lindworm’s eyes widened slightly, caught off guard by the precision of the remark.
"Oh, now that’s no fair," he said with mock despair. "You even know what my Null Schema is." His posture deflated, shoulders sagging dramatically. "You Angels ruin all the fun." Then, almost instantly, his tone sharpened, voice losing its feigned levity. "But yes, this is my Null Schema: Ecdysis of Souls." He placed a hand on his chest, bowing with a flourish that was both mocking and theatrical. "Lindworm, holder of the tenth seat of the Retorta Guild—seat of Bela. Pleased to et you."
"How charming," Mikoto deadpanned, lips twitching faintly in mock amusent. His expression softened just enough to look cute. "Well, why don’t you use that power of yours on ?" He tilted his head. "Who knows, maybe even I couldn’t defend myself against it."
A faint, teasing smile graced his lips—almost angelic—and that expression alone seed to mock the Mortifer more than any insult could.
Lindworm blinked once, then smirked faintly. "Can you bla
if I don’t?" he murmured. "I’d rather not stare into the heart of an Angel. I’ve heard it drives n insane."
"Smart," Mikoto replied softly, the humor gone from his voice. His gaze hardened. "Unfortunately, it’s too late to start using your brain." He stepped forward, sabatons crunching lightly against the fractured ground. "Because rest assured, this isn’t going to be fun for you."
Lindworm opened his mouth, perhaps to retort—but the words died in his throat.
Mikoto was gone.
No sound, no blur.
Not even a flash.
He was just gone.
Then suddenly an impact.
A single gauntleted arm cleaved through Lindworm’s torso like a blade. The motion was clean, his upper body separated from his lower half in a blink, both halves twisting away with his arms as Mikoto passed through, his tail coat fluttering.
There was no blood. No torn flesh. Just an unnatural absence.
Mikoto landed lightly, turning slightly, the jingle of his armor the only sound that remained. His red eyes narrowed as he glanced back over his shoulder.
Then a voice.
"That hurt. A lot."
Lindworm’s halves began to writhe, grotesque white tendrils sprouting from the severed ends of his arms and waist, twisting and pulling the pieces back together with a wet, squelching sound. The tendrils glead faintly before dissolving as his body reford, even his tattered clothing knitting itself back into place.
He stood again, exhaling through his nose, a hint of frustration in his eyes.
"Seems you’re right," he muttered with a humorless smile. "This really isn’t going to be fun."
Mikoto turned fully now, his expression unreadable.
"You catch on quick," he said quietly. His tone wasn’t mocking this ti.
"Is rcy still on the table?" Lindworm questioned.
"rcy," Mikoto continued softly, "is a kindness only a few can afford. For you? You’ll have to settle for an unkind fate."
Lindworm said nothing, but his eyes flickered—montary in understanding.
It was odd; one mont the boy was annoyed, the next mocking, and then so somber.
Sothing told Lindworm that this really, really wasn’t going to be fun.
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