The mory should not have existed. Albedo’s fingers remained pressed lightly against the cultist’s temple, his Athyst-threaded consciousness sliding through the fractured corridors of a dying mind.
Images flickered.
Stone walls slick with condensation.
A chamber far beneath bedrock.
A sigil carved into obsidian, its geotry not chaotic like common Abyssal cult marks, but structured.
And before it was Alexander Graves, kneeling before a figure veiled in abyssal distortion, crowned in shadows that seed to drip downward like liquid smoke.
Two hollow eyes burning faint violet.
Albedo’s breath stalled. He knew that silhouette. He knew that presence. He had seen it in the middle arcs of the Novel, during the period when the world began collapsing inward under layered Abyssal incursions.
When dungeons began appearing unnaturally. When entire adventuring parties vanished. When rumors spread of spirits screaming in the night.
Nazghul -- The Soul-Drinker.
An Abyssal Monarch. The mory sharpened for a split second as Albedo forced more clarity through Source Code.
Graves’ voice echoed faintly in recollection.
"As promised, Lord Nazghul. Zephyr Academy offers fertile ground."
The veiled figure did not speak.
It did not need to. The air around it rippled with whispering voices. Thousands of them all layered. So crying, so pleading.
All of them were spirits Nazghul had consud.
Albedo felt sothing cold settle behind his ribs.
Nazghul was not a warlord like other Monarchs. Not a conqueror who razed cities in open invasion.
He was patient. He cultivated death. He seeded domains. He constructed dungeons, self-contained slaughter chambers.
Adventurers would enter, struggle and die, and with every death within his claid territory, Nazghul would feed on them, devouring their spirits and essence to accumulate power.
In the Novel, this did not occur until far later. After regional destabilizations. After multiple Monarchs had already revealed themselves.
Nazghul was mid-arc escalation. A slow-burning catastrophe. He was not supposed to be here.
Not now. Not during first-year examinations.
Albedo’s pulse remained steady outwardly. Inwardly, calculations accelerated.
Either, the tiline had shifted drastically. Or Nazghul had always been present in the background, unseen.
Cultivating silently beneath the Academy itself.
And Albedo’s interference had accelerated exposure.
He pushed deeper into the mory.
The chamber beneath stone trembled.
The sigil pulsed.
Nazghul’s form shifted slightly.
And then, The Monarch’s head turned.
Not within the mory. Toward him.
The distortion parted slightly.
Hollow eyes aligned.
Directly.
With Albedo.
The whispering voices rose in pitch.
Albedo’s instincts detonated in warning.
This was no passive recollection.
Nazghul was aware.
Through the tether.
Through the severed control line.
Through the cultist’s fading soul.
He could feel the Monarch probing the thread.
Tracing backward.
Searching for the observer.
Albedo did not hesitate.
He severed the connection instantly. He cut it cleanly at its root. Source Code flared once behind his eyes, violet lines snapping shut like locked gates.
The cultist’s remaining mories disintegrated into aningless static.
Silence reclaid the clearing.
Albedo exhaled slowly.
He withdrew his hand.
The unconscious cultist’s breathing was shallow but stable.
The forest fog shifted unnaturally again.
But this ti, It was not recoiling from him. It was pulling inward. Toward sothing distant. Toward sothing that had noticed.
He did not look upward.He did not flare his aura. He did not reveal awareness.
If Nazghul had glimpsed him, it was partial, not at all enough to reveal his identity.
Albedo replayed the sensation.
The Monarch’s awareness had brushed him, but not anchored, which was good.
If Nazghul truly identified him now, the ga would escalate beyond calculated engagent.And Albedo was not yet ready to wage open war against a Monarch who fed on death itself.
He rose slowly to his feet.
The shattered remains of the half-ford Athyst creature had already dissolved completely. The containnt circle lay inert. The underground conduits were dark.
But he knew better. This was not the end of a node. It was the trimming of an expendable branch.
Nazghul did not rely on singular altars.He constructed networks.Interlinked death zones. Testing grounds.
If Graves had offered Zephyr Academy as "fertile ground," then the Monarch’s strategy was terrifyingly elegant.
Ergency missions.
Field operations.
Rank-scaled dungeon exams.
Controlled environnts.
Structured combat.
Students dying "tragically" during Abyssal outbreaks.
Spirits feeding the Monarch silently.
All under academic legitimacy.
Albedo’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.
This was not rely conspiracy.
This was infrastructure.
He knelt beside the altar.
Examined its construction carefully.
Obsidian base stone infused with layered Abyssal etching.
The sigils were advanced.
Not cultist-level craftsmanship.
Monarch-tier design.
He traced the outermost ring lightly.
morizing geotry.
Capturing pattern sequences.
If Nazghul was constructing early-stage dungeon networks,
There would be alot more.
Albedo carefully dismantled several ritual implents. Bone fragnts etched with summoning runes. A blackened crystal shard still faintly resonant.
Three ritual daggers infused with void essence.
He wrapped them in a containnt cloth from his spatial ring.
Proof. Enough to complete the mission formally.
But far more valuable as material samples.
He glanced once more at the fallen cultists.
He could kill them.
Ensure no further leakage.
But killing them here, Within residual domain influence, might feed Nazghul regardless.
Better to leave them alive.
Severed from the ritual.
Stripped of their circle.
They were pawns, now broken by him.
Albedo stood up and walked back through Shatterwood Forest, remaining alert.
Every branch creak. Every fog shift. Every mana fluctuation analyzed. Twice he sensed faint Abyssal signatures flicker at the edge of perception.
Observation attempts and probes. He allowed none of them to lock onto him.
When the Academy’s extraction beacon flared in the distance, he allowed himself to step into its radius.
Teleportation light swallowed him. He reappeared within the designated return chamber at Zephyr Academy.
Faculty observers stood nearby.
Healing staff, everything going as planned.
He bowed slightly to the overseeing professor and gave them his proof of completing the mission, handing the wrapped evidence.
The staff imdiately secured them.
"Nice job," The staff said and Albedo nodded, leaving the room, still wrapped in his thoughts on all that was happening.
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