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 fused.

  " He’s your lord! Apologies for the disrespect, Lord Nathan. I am Theodore Borir, the officer in charge of this ship’s iion. Five the pse in de, my lord. We’ve been given direct orders to ensure your safety after… the is."

  He ignored us, turning his gaze toward the underground river, taking in the chaotic se of halted ships as guards ducted iions.

  "What happened?" Nathan Evenhart asked me.

  "A terrorist attack, my lord. Two high-level mages engaged in a frontation here. My orders are to escort you to safety." I replied.

  He stared at the water, watg the floating wreckage. But what truly caught his attention was the state of the port—the sheer scale of destru. When he finally saw the shattered remains, and more importantly, the fact that the surrounding water was frozen solid, his expression ged.

  "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 oermath of the battle caused by Chloe Evenhart.

  " Sir, I must insist—I o escort you—," I insisted.

  He looked at us for a moment 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 withe devastatio 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 searg for something specific amidst the chaos. L myself, I pushed aside some stones until I finally found what I was looking for.

  "Here it is…" I murmured, removing a rge piece of rubble to reveal what y beh—frozen fingers. They beloo the assassin who had faced Chloe Evenhart, severed during their fierce battle.

  "Quinn fulfilled his purpose during the years he served Nikous Wolves," I remarked, gripping one of the hands and carefully sliding the ring off its cold finger. "But it’s a shame things had to end like this…"

  The voi my mind answered, my lord’s whisper ever sharp and ever present.

  "Yes… fasating how the unforeseen tio 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 unforesees arise, the flow of the pn remains intact."

  I twirled Quinn’s riween my fingers, examining it. A ring I had given to him and his sister through Nikous Wolves, believing it to be nothing more than a locator for the pair lio his sister’s.

  "Quinn and Eliza never fully uood what they carried," I murmured, slipping the ring into my pocket. They thought it was merely a trag device meant to locate the other half of the set, but to me, 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, infming his hatred ament until he was ready t chaos."

  I paused, taking in the wreckage around me. “Still, unforesees happened. But in the end, chaos was sown.”

  "I never expected things to end like this. My pn was for his sister to be poisoned by the other ring and die… and for him to clude that Nikous Wolves had orchestrated their deaths. By then, his mind would have been suffitly corrupted to retaliate without thinking of the sequences. However, I never imagihat Nikous would try to use those two to assassinate a noble superior… or at least attempt to."

  I kept walking, my mind rag 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… ued things happen. My pn was always for Nikous to die. And after the mess he made, the kingdom won’t have many options but to n 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 formed on my lips. “The more chaos, the better.”

  The voice of one of my lords tio echo in my miiculous, calcuted.

  “We successfully removed key figures, provoking that war at the border years ago,” I murmured, recalling past events. “After the flict, our infiltrators took their positions without issue. But Nikous Wolves… he failed. He should never have kept provoking the Evenhart family. His methods attracted too much attention. He should have waited in sileil the great flict 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 stant whispers of my lord flowing like an endless current, always guiding me in the right dire.

  I held Quinn’s ring in my palm, gazing into the two red eyes glowing withiohey were the eyes of one of my lords, watg me 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 wao have a little fun. You already amuse yourselves elsewhere, even oher ti. I thought it would be iing to stir things up here.”

  My lord’s voice grew firmer, correg me.

  “I merely wao move these defective pieces,” I murmured, stepping over the rubble. “Nikous Wolves failed years ago. He proved himself pathetid 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 e.

  “The time is almost here… Soon, everything will follow its natural course, and my lords will once again withe long-awaited end.”

  As I walked, I reflected on Nikous Wolves' fate. Would he be left to rot, unpunished? Or would the heir Evenhart and his family take justito their own hands? It didn’t matter in the end. Wolves was already living on borrowed time—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 t of chaos aru. The melody echoed in my mind like a shadow, waiting for the perfeent to rise and e 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 py,

  The devout man, and the young general's sway.

  When they sehe looming dread,

  We’ll toy in the field of the dead.

  When darkness finally cims its part,

  The new Ragnarok will start."

  I stopped walking and the words whispered to me.

  "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 pce where only the imperial family and the highest-ranking officials of the Dynasty were allowed entry. The walls emanated a palpable chill, a sinister presehat seemed to creep through the dimly lit shadows.

  “Are you afraid?” Sidao asked, his relentless eyes locked onto me.

  “Yes…” I admitted, trying to keep my posure. “This pce gives me a strange feeling. I mean, I respect the memory of the a emperors, but it’s the walls that give me chills.”

  He let out a cold ugh and tinued walking with firm, resolute steps.

  The young Empress was somewhere at the end of these corridors, in the midst of this suffog, ominous atmosphere. Every time she finished her grueling training, she would e to the crypt to visit her mrave. 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 pce. Each fme seemed to flicker uhe weight of the images, making the enviro even more unnerving.

  I g one of the paintings, feeling an even deeper chill run down my spine.

  When I turned, Sidao was standing still, watg me with a pierg gaze.

  “Macabre, isn’t it?” he asked. “Do you know the in 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 Emperor and the cellor beh him.” Then, he resumed walking.

  I quied my pace to keep up, not daring to ask anything else.

  “Do you want to know who paihese walls?” he asked, his voice eg eerily through the empty corridors.

  “I don’t have the authorization to know,” I replied hesitantly.

  He ughed again, this time lower, as if amused.

  “You’re the cellor’s assistant. Don’t worry,” Sidao said, his voice carrying an enigmatifidence. He tinued forward, and I followed closely behind.

  “A long time ago,” he began narrating, his voice reverberating in the corridor, “there was a survivor from an a order. She was a Norn—a Weaver of Fate.”

  “A Weaver of Fate?” I repeated, surprised.

  He nodded slowly.

  “They are cursed women, gifted with the ability to dream of the future. Cursed by fate, sves to it, destio fulfill a purpose,” he expined.

  “One of these women arrived here as a fugitive from a distant nd, beyond the Cursed Sea. She cimed to have escaped aually found refuge on this ti. The Song Emperor at the time took her in, and she provided him with sel that helped him overe his enemies. Her wisdom was so great that, over time, she romoted to cellor.”

  He paused briefly, allowing his words to settle in the heavy air of the crypt.

  “She became the seost important person in the Empire. However, one day… she lost her mind.” He stopped before a se of particurly 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 became 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 ses unfolded—dismembered figures, ruined kingdoms, and deformed faces frozen in silent screams.

  "You know what this means?" I asked, pointing to a particurly 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 time made records and copied her rying to interpret whether it was ected to his future. In the end, it led to nothing. All that is known is that during her episodes, she would murmur strange names while she painted."

  "What names?" I asked, a cold shiver running down my spine.

  Sidao seemed to reflect for a moment, as if trying to recall the details he had read.

  "Icarus, Athena, Ares, Apollo, Zeus, Helen, Hades, Poseidon, os," he eed slowly. "And other names… Whenever she finished murmuring, she would repeat them again, like an unendi."

  We reached a paintiing a young boy holding a lifeless girl in his arms, his face torted 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 tinued walking dowh, but I remained, staring at the paintings.

  One of the images on the wall showed a vivid and chaotic se—a boy with white hair and blue eyes fighting amidst a raging storm at sea. Colossal waves rose around him, as if the o itself was being molded by the fury of battle. Lightning split the dark sky, and the boy stood firm against the tempest with unwaveriermination.

  Before him, a man hovered in the air, gripping a hammer, each strike carrying the power of thunder. Lightning coiled around the on, casting eerie illumination over his face as he loomed 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 something new and disturbing, as if the figures depicted were on the verge of ing to life, their dark eyes and twisted mouths seeming to traovements.

  As we advanced, a chill crept down my spihere was something uling, almost supernatural, about each image, as if they writhed withiowisting in agony e. Every now and then, I could swear I saw a subtle movement, a flicker of shadow at the ers of the figures, like something 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 se felt as though it ullio its depths, and the air around us grew colder and heavier, as if the very corridor was breathing, abs our presence.

  Finally, we reached the ter of the crypt, where the young Empress k before her mother's tomb. Sidao walked toward her, but I remained frozeranced 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—some ughing, others dang in celebration of his death. Above everything, a vast darkness stretched across the painting, with bck threads slithering through the se, like puppet strings trolling fate, maniputing everyone as mere pieces in a twisted game.

  "Hell of Icarus…" I murmured, reading the words written by the Weaver of Fate beh the painting.

  Further below, scrawled in deep red ink, so dark it looked like dried blood, were the same words Sidao had whispered to me:

  "Everything begins when he arrives, and everything ends when he departs."