Chapter 274 - Song of the End (End of Book 3)
Theodore Borir (A Few Days Ago):
" Do you even know who he is?" I asked.
The soldier looked confused.
" He’s your lord! Apologies for the disrespect, Lord Nathan. I am Theodore Borir, the officer in charge of this ship’s inspection. Forgive the lapse in decorum, my lord. We’ve been given direct orders to ensure your safety after… the incidents."
He ignored us, turning his gaze toward the underground river, taking in the chaotic scene of halted ships as guards conducted inspections.
"What happened?" Nathan Evenhart asked .
"A terrorist attack, my lord. Two high-level mages engaged in a confrontation here. My orders are to escort you to safety." I replied.
He stared at the water, watching the floating wreckage. But what truly caught his attention was the state of the port—the sheer scale of destruction. When he finally saw the shattered remains, and more importantly, the fact that the surrounding water was frozen solid, his expression changed.
"When did this happen?" he asked.
"It’s been a few days," I answered.
Nathan Evenhart stepped onto the ship’s railing, his gaze locked on the aftermath of the battle caused by Chloe Evenhart.
" Sir, I must insist—I need to escort you—," I insisted.
He looked at us for a mont before leaping into the water, dashing across its surface at incredible speed.
"My lord!" I called out, but he was already moving too fast, lightning sparking off his body as he raced toward the port.
A small smile crept onto my lips as I watched Nathan Evenhart head straight toward the underground city’s harbor, eager to witness the devastation left behind by Chloe Evenhart and the assassin.
***
I walked through the ruined harbor, surveying the wreckage left behind from the battle. The heir, Nathan Evenhart, had already vanished, likely returning to his castle. I was searching for sothing specific amidst the chaos. Lowering myself, I pushed aside so stones until I finally found what I was looking for.
"Here it is…" I murmured, removing a large piece of rubble to reveal what lay beneath—frozen fingers. They belonged to the assassin who had faced Chloe Evenhart, severed during their fierce battle.
"Quinn fulfilled his purpose during the years he served Nikolaus Wolves," I remarked, gripping one of the hands and carefully sliding the ring off its cold finger. "But it’s a sha things had to end like this…"
The voice in my mind answered, my lord’s whisper ever sharp and ever present.
"Yes… fascinating how the unforeseen continues to appear," I replied in thought. "In the vision of the future, Katherine Evenhart’s son should have died in childbirth along with her. That boy, Nathan, is an anomaly. But even when unforeseen events arise, the flow of the plan remains intact."
I twirled Quinn’s ring between my fingers, examining it. A ring I had given to him and his sister through Nikolaus Wolves, believing it to be nothing more than a locator for the pair linked to his sister’s.
"Quinn and Eliza never fully understood what they carried," I murmured, slipping the ring into my pocket. They thought it was rely a tracking device ant to locate the other half of the set, but to , it was much more than that.
"The corrupted ring we gave Quinn served its purpose perfectly," I muttered as I strode slowly through the rubble. "It poisoned his mind little by little, inflaming his hatred and resentnt until he was ready to bring chaos."
I paused, taking in the wreckage around . “Still, unforeseen events happened. But in the end, chaos was sown.”
"I never expected things to end like this. My plan was for his sister to be poisoned by the other ring and die… and for him to conclude that Nikolaus Wolves had orchestrated their deaths. By then, his mind would have been sufficiently corrupted to retaliate without thinking of the consequences. However, I never imagined that Nikolaus would try to use those two to assassinate a noble superior… or at least attempt to."
I kept walking, my mind racing through the events.
“Did his sister die because of the ring’s curse? Or was it in battle? How and when did she die?” I murmured to myself. “It doesn’t matter… unexpected things happen. My plan was always for Nikolaus to die. And after the ss he made, the kingdom won’t have many options but to condemn him to death,” I said with a cold smile. “Or will the Evenhart family take matters into their own hands?”
As I pondered, a grin ford on my lips. “The more chaos, the better.”
The voice of one of my lords continued to echo in my mind—ticulous, calculated.
“We successfully removed key figures, provoking that war at the border years ago,” I murmured, recalling past events. “After the conflict, our infiltrators took their positions without issue. But Nikolaus Wolves… he failed. He should never have kept provoking the Evenhart family. His thods attracted too much attention. He should have waited in silence until the great conflict began. He was a fool, and that’s why I set Quinn up to kill him… but I never imagined such a turn of events would happen.”
I nodded as I walked, the constant whispers of my lord flowing like an endless current, always guiding in the right direction.
I held Quinn’s ring in my palm, gazing into the two red eyes glowing within the stone. They were the eyes of one of my lords, watching through the artifact.
“Yes, I know… I might have gone a little too far,” I admitted, aware that I had crossed certain lines. “I just wanted to have a little fun. You already amuse yourselves elsewhere, even on the other continent. I thought it would be interesting to stir things up here.”
My lord’s voice grew firr, correcting .
“I rely wanted to move these defective pieces,” I murmured, stepping over the rubble. “Nikolaus Wolves failed years ago. He proved himself pathetic and unworthy. Now, I return my focus to the real purpose of the grand day.”
I tucked the corrupted ring into my pocket, feeling the weight of the decisions to co.
“The ti is almost here… Soon, everything will follow its natural course, and my lords will once again witness the long-awaited end.”
As I walked, I reflected on Nikolaus Wolves' fate. Would he be left to rot, unpunished? Or would the heir Evenhart and his family take justice into their own hands? It didn’t matter in the end. Wolves was already living on borrowed ti—he would be dead soon, one way or another.
Wandering through the ruins, I began humming the great song we had all waited so long to see fulfilled—a chant of chaos and destruction. The lody echoed in my mind like a shadow, waiting for the perfect mont to rise and consu the world.
Everything was aligning for the return.
"When the great day draws near,
Five heads will then appear.
The small ones will be amazed,
By the vengeful girl’s fierce gaze,
The serpent’s crafty, subtle play,
The devout man, and the young general's sway.
When they sense the looming dread,
We’ll toy in the field of the dead.
When darkness finally claims its part,
The new Ragnarok will start."
I stopped walking and nodded at the words whispered to .
"Everything must be perfect for the return of the Great Lord Loki."
Yu Xin (Song Dynasty):
We walked through the dark corridors of the Song crypt, a place where only the imperial family and the highest-ranking officials of the Dynasty were allowed entry. The walls emanated a palpable chill, a sinister presence that seed to creep through the dimly lit shadows.
“Are you afraid?” Sidao asked, his relentless eyes locked onto .
“Yes…” I admitted, trying to keep my composure. “This place gives a strange feeling. I an, I respect the mory of the ancient emperors, but it’s the walls that give chills.”
He let out a cold laugh and continued walking with firm, resolute steps.
The young Empress was sowhere at the end of these corridors, in the midst of this suffocating, ominous atmosphere. Every ti she finished her grueling training, she would co to the crypt to visit her mother’s grave. The walls of the crypt were covered in macabre paintings, all hand-drawn, and the scattered torches along the corridor only intensified the sinister aura of the place. Each fla seed to flicker under the weight of the images, making the environnt even more unnerving.
I glanced at one of the paintings, feeling an even deeper chill run down my spine.
When I turned, Sidao was standing still, watching with a piercing gaze.
“Macabre, isn’t it?” he asked. “Do you know the origin of these paintings on the walls?”
I shook my head slightly.
“Of course, you don’t,” he chuckled softly, a polite smile on his face, though his eyes remained cold, as sharp as a serpent’s. “These and other secrets are entrusted only to the next Emperor and the Chancellor beneath him.” Then, he resud walking.
I quickened my pace to keep up, not daring to ask anything else.
“Do you want to know who painted these walls?” he asked, his voice echoing eerily through the empty corridors.
“I don’t have the authorization to know,” I replied hesitantly.
He laughed again, this ti lower, as if amused.
“You’re the Chancellor’s assistant. Don’t worry,” Sidao said, his voice carrying an enigmatic confidence. He continued forward, and I followed closely behind.
“A long ti ago,” he began narrating, his voice reverberating in the corridor, “there was a survivor from an ancient order. She was a Norn—a Weaver of Fate.”
“A Weaver of Fate?” I repeated, surprised.
He nodded slowly.
“They are cursed won, gifted with the ability to dream of the future. Cursed by fate, slaves to it, destined to fulfill a purpose,” he explained.
“One of these won arrived here as a fugitive from a distant land, beyond the Cursed Sea. She claid to have escaped and eventually found refuge on this continent. The Song Emperor at the ti took her in, and she provided him with counsel that helped him overco his enemies. Her wisdom was so great that, over ti, she was promoted to Chancellor.”
He paused briefly, allowing his words to settle in the heavy air of the crypt.
“She beca the second most important person in the Empire. However, one day… she lost her mind.” He stopped before a section of particularly disturbing paintings, where strange symbols and bizarre figures were mixed into distorted imagery.
“These eerie things on the walls,” he said, pointing at the grotesque paintings, “were made by her during her fits of madness. On stormy nights, she would have vivid nightmares and begin painting frantically. They say she would only calm down once her insane works were finished.”
As we moved forward, the details in the paintings beca increasingly grotesque. The scales of a gigantic serpent-dragon, the emblem of the Song Dynasty, stretched along the walls. Within the serpent, strange and senseless scenes unfolded—dismbered figures, ruined kingdoms, and deford faces frozen in silent screams.
"You know what this ans?" I asked, pointing to a particularly strange image. A boy lying in a bed, with a cloaked figure standing beside him.
"No one ever knew," Sidao replied, his eyes still fixed on the paintings. "The emperor at the ti made records and copied her notes, trying to interpret whether it was connected to his future. In the end, it led to nothing. All that is known is that during her episodes, she would murmur strange nas while she painted."
"What nas?" I asked, a cold shiver running down my spine.
Sidao seed to reflect for a mont, as if trying to recall the details he had read.
"Icarus, Athena, Ares, Apollo, Zeus, Helen, Hades, Poseidon, Chronos," he enurated slowly. "And other nas… Whenever she finished murmuring, she would repeat them again, like an unending lant."
We reached a painting depicting a young boy holding a lifeless girl in his arms, his face contorted in despair.
"She used to say: 'Everything begins when he arrives, and everything ends when he departs.'" Sidao's words echoed ominously in the chamber as I stared at the painting, feeling the weight settle in my chest.
Sidao continued walking down the path, but I remained, staring at the paintings.
One of the images on the wall showed a vivid and chaotic scene—a boy with white hair and blue eyes fighting amidst a raging storm at sea. Colossal waves rose around him, as if the ocean itself was being molded by the fury of battle. Lightning split the dark sky, and the boy stood firm against the tempest with unwavering determination.
Before him, a man hovered in the air, gripping a hamr, each strike carrying the power of thunder. Lightning coiled around the weapon, casting eerie illumination over his face as he lood over the boy.
We kept walking through the dark corridor, the thick shadows swallowing each step, and the images on the walls growing increasingly grotesque. Each painting held sothing new and disturbing, as if the figures depicted were on the verge of coming to life, their dark eyes and twisted mouths seeming to track our movents.
As we advanced, a chill crept down my spine. There was sothing unsettling, almost supernatural, about each image, as if they writhed within the stone, twisting in agony or rage. Every now and then, I could swear I saw a subtle movent, a flicker of shadow at the corners of the figures, like sothing struggling to break free.
The flickering torches cast an unsteady light on the walls, intensifying the effect, making every grotesque detail seem more vivid, more haunting. Each scene felt as though it was pulling into its depths, and the air around us grew colder and heavier, as if the very corridor was breathing, absorbing our presence.
Finally, we reached the center of the crypt, where the young Empress knelt before her mother's tomb. Sidao walked toward her, but I remained frozen, entranced by the final painting at the far end.
It was the image of the boy with white hair and blue eyes, lying in a pool of blood, his body motionless and lifeless. Dark, shadowy figures surrounded him—so laughing, others dancing in celebration of his death. Above everything, a vast darkness stretched across the painting, with black threads slithering through the scene, like puppet strings controlling fate, manipulating everyone as re pieces in a twisted ga.
"Hell of Icarus…" I murmured, reading the words written by the Weaver of Fate beneath the painting.
Further below, scrawled in deep red ink, so dark it looked like dried blood, were the sa words Sidao had whispered to :
"Everything begins when he arrives, and everything ends when he departs."
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