Novel Full Chapter 461: Cruel Fate
Chapter 461: Cruel Fate
Van Dijk steadied himself, lowering the hand from his nose, though a thin trickle of blood still ran over his lips. His crimson gaze hardened, but beneath the steel there was something else, confusion, perhaps even hesitation. “Me? Not understand?” He scoffed, but the sound lacked conviction. “Please… explain. I’ve already had a headache trying to comprehend how you’re even alive.”
Her laugh cut through the air like broken glass. It was sharp, bitter, nothing like the warmth of the sister he remembered. “Alive?” she echoed. “Is that what you call this? Survival?” Her sword dipped at her side, the faint glow dancing on the steel as if feeding on her contempt. “You truly don’t understand a thing, little brother.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Van Dijk said, his voice low, though the faintest crack betrayed him. His words carried no weight against the centuries in her tone.
“Patronize?” she tilted her head back, pale hair catching the light of the burning ruins. Her voice turned mocking, her tone dripping with scorn. “No, I speak as one who doted on you. As one who prayed you’d live long, live free, even after we were turned into these… monsters. Father and I, we all, hoped you’d live long and healthy, for a human at least. But you became this… You indeed survived. But instead of saving me, instead of even looking, or making an effort to hunt down what killed our family… You lived life in luxury and power. What is family to you, Van Dijk…”
Van Dijk’s crimson eyes flickered, his mouth opening then closing without words. He had no defense, not for that.
“Say it,” she pressed, stepping forward. “Seven centuries. Why did you never come? If you had looked hard enough, you’d know I wasn’t dead. I waited, I rotted, I endured. Where were you, brother?”
“I…” His voice faltered, the confidence of an Eight Circle mage stripped down to a man grasping at reasons. His jaw tightened. “I didn’t know. I swear it. I believed you were gone, I hunted the one who took everything from us. For seven centuries, I hunted him.”
Her laughter returned, harsher this time, hollow. “Seven centuries?” She raised her chin, eyes burning faintly red before flickering back to green. “And in all that time, with all that power, with all your rage… you couldn’t kill one mutt? You expect me to call that devotion? No, brother. That’s failure dressed as obsession.”
His gaze darkened, shadows crawling behind his eyes. “It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated?” she spat the word like venom. “That’s what you call it?” She stepped close enough that the faint heat of her aura brushed his chest. “You’re a mage. You adore your circles, your laws, your meticulous structures. Allow me, then, to show you complicated.”
Her lips curled into a half-snarl, half-smile. “Read my mind. Right here. Right now.”
Van Dijk froze. His hand twitched at his side. “…That’s dangerous,” he said after a pause. “Mind-reading in your state, it would tear at both of us. It taxes the spirit, and you’re unstable, ”
“I SAID NOW!” Her roar shattered the air, her left eye bursting crimson for a flicker of an instant before the silver sigils Van Dijk had cast earlier flared, restraining it back into green. The restraint only made her fury sharper.
The gathered adventurers stiffened. The clerics who had rushed closer fell back, their spells dimming on their lips. No one wanted to intervene, not between them. They weren’t fools. Even the Guildmaster, battered as he was, could only stand in silence, watching. They all understood. This was blood. This was Bastos blood, something older, darker, and none dared tread between.
Van Dijk’s jaw clenched, the struggle plain in the tension of his throat. Finally, with a voice low, resigned, he said, “…Fine.”
He lifted a hand, slow, deliberate. His palm pressed to her forehead.
His crimson gaze rolled upward, eyes turning a dead white as magic surged between them.
And then, only a second later, he tore his hand away as if seared, stumbling back two steps. His breath came sharp. His fingers trembled, his jaw slackened in rare, naked horror.
“What did you see?” she asked, her voice low and venomous, though the satisfaction was unmistakable.
His silence was answer enough.
Her smirk was razor-thin. “Liked it? The agony of your sister? Seven centuries of it, carved into my very veins? You accuse me of being unstable? You think me ungrateful?” She stepped forward, her voice rising into a hiss. “That is calmness, brother. That is patience. Waiting and waiting for someone who never came. Unlike you, that child did…”
Van Dijk’s crimson eyes, still wide, steadied slowly. His hand lashed out, catching her wrist, and with his own magic, he pushed her palm to his forehead. Energy flared between them again, light spilling like fire.
She gasped. Her vision filled with him. Seven hundred years of regret, of rage, of failure. The werewolf’s sneering grin over their slaughtered kin, the house drowned in fire and blood, his wife’s scream silenced, his daughter’s small hand limp in his own. Seven centuries of obsession, of chasing one enemy he could not overcome. Seven centuries of loathing himself for surviving.
She ripped her hand back with a sharp breath, chest heaving, pupils wide in shock.
They both stood there, staring, silent, unmoving. No one around dared break the moment.
In that silence, the truth was laid bare. She was a prisoner, tortured in flesh for centuries. He was a prisoner too, shackled to his failure and regret until it warped him into something inhuman. Neither could claim the heavier burden. Both bore wounds too deep for words.
And in that silence, they finally understood: silence itself was their only answer.
The silence between them stretched until it grew suffocating. The air itself felt thick, as if the ruined capital held its breath alongside the survivors scattered across the bloodied stones. Van Dijk was the first to break it, his voice low and measured, but still carrying an edge of disbelief.
“That child,” he said, crimson eyes narrowing. “The one in your memory… I saw him.” His tone faltered, as if he did not wish to name him, as if the words might crumble to ash in his throat. “That was him, wasn’t it?”
Celine’s face turned away slightly, her silver hair falling like a veil across her expression. When she spoke, her voice was softer than before, but no less cutting. “That is your disciple. Funny how fate winds its threads. You left him to perish, and yet…” Her gaze flicked back, pinning him with an almost cruel clarity. Cruel fate isn’t it… he came… unlike you…brother. Right next to where you appeared, you saw him fall to his death after having saved your sister, the one you couldn’t…”
His lips parted, but no sound came. The word Disciple struck him like a blade turned inward. His chest tightened, and for the first time in centuries, a shard of guilt, not the smoldering, cold guilt of regret, but the sharp sting of personal failure, slid beneath his skin. “At the time… I didn’t know it was Ludwig… I was too confused with wrath…”
“Careful,” she snapped, her tone returning like iron. “Do not speak his name so easily. Remember what you are, and what the church hunts you for. Remember what he is suspected of being. I thought you were smarter than this, brother…” Her eyes flicked around at the clerics, the adventurers, the knights still gathering corpses of the fallen. “One wrong word, one careless breath, and they will brand him for what he is. And then your ’disciple’ will be hunted until the edges of the world.
The words silenced him more thoroughly than any spell. He said nothing, only watched her.
Celine, after a long pause, turned her gaze outward, her voice dropping low but carrying across the hushed battlefield. “This was a sad day for Tulmud’s capital.” Her words were weary, but steady, meant for the ears of all. “We all witnessed a sacrifice. We all witnessed ruin. But we also witnessed a soul who gave everything for this city. ”
Every cleric, every adventurer, every knight turned to listen. Her words carved through despair like a blade. “Davon,” she said, using the name with deliberate weight, “threw himself into the maw of destruction. He faced the Wrathful Death head-on, when no one else could. And though he fell, he held the line long enough for the rest of us to survive.”
Murmurs spread, voices trembling between grief and pride. They understood her meaning. Though faceless, though unknown, the man they called Davon had spared them all. His death was a legend born in the ashes of a nightmare.
Van Dijk’s gaze lingered on her profile, catching the flicker of something, bitterness, perhaps, or a flicker of respect she refused to speak aloud. Quietly, he asked, “And what will you do now, sister?”
She did not look at him. “What must be done. Mourn the dead, calm the living. Keep the Order blind to truths they should never know. And you?”
He exhaled slowly, as if even saying it would invite his doom. “I’ll head to Solania.”
Her eyes snapped to him, sharp as her blade. “Solania? For what purpose? That thing would crush you before you even set foot on its slopes. Even you cannot wrestle a god of slaughter.”
“No,” he said, his voice low and absolute, the quiet certainty of a man who had already embraced damnation. “Not if I prepare. I am not easy to kill. And I must bring him back.”
Her jaw clenched, the name she did not want to utter ringing nonetheless in her tone. “Davon should be long dead by now.”
Van Dijk leaned closer, enough that only she could hear. His crimson eyes burned with a strange intensity. “No, he isn’t. Remember… he is bound to me. I can still feel our link.”
She stared at him, silent, the faintest shift in her expression betraying uncertainty.
Before either could speak further, the air shifted.
Four shapes materialized with no warning, slipping through reality as if they had always been standing there: a woman in flowing blue robes whose eyes glimmered like glassy water, a scarred man with a predator’s grin clad in crimson, a youth in robes of immaculate white that almost glowed, and finally, a bearded elder draped in solemn gray. The Four Tower Masters had arrived.
Every knight and adventurer dropped to silence, the mere aura of their presence stilling the air.
Van Dijk’s lips curled into a faint smirk, though his eyes narrowed. “Well, isn’t this rare. All of you together. Quite the honor.”
The woman in blue spoke first, her voice measured. “We received an imperial edict. You are to come with us, Van Dijk. The Emperor demands your presence. And not only yours, everyone who fought in this battle is to attend.”
Van Dijk tilted his head, his crimson gaze sharp. “The Emperor himself, hm? That explains why the four of you moved. But tell me, where were you before? You know as well as I do that your arrival hours earlier would have turned the tide. You could have flipped this entire city with a wave of your hands.”
The scarred man in red only grinned wider. “And yet we did not.”
The youth in white stepped forward, his voice quiet, precise. “Because this was never ours to turn. We were… occupied.”
Celine’s grip on her sword tightened, the steel vibrating faintly. Her pale-green eyes narrowed.
Van Dijk clicked his tongue. He knew. He had known the instant they appeared. This entire disaster had been permitted to happen. let alone to unfold, to fester, to claim lives. Not because it couldn’t have been stopped, but because someone wished it so.
And that someone was the Emperor.
For the first time in centuries, Van Dijk’s carefully measured calm cracked, his aura thrumming with a restrained fury. “You left thousands to die… on purpose.” His voice was soft, but every word dripped venom.
The gray-bearded master finally raised his head, his gaze heavy. “You will understand, when you hear it from his Majesty himself.”
Van Dijk’s crimson eyes blazed, but he said nothing. Only a low growl of frustration vibrated in his throat, the sound of a predator restrained by invisible chains.
And that silence was more dangerous than any threat he could have spoken.