Chapter 56: Another Victim or...

Chapter 56: Chapter 56: Another Victim or...

Allan let out a long sigh, a bit more tired than usual.

He’d never dealt with nobles before. Not like this. Back when they were NPCs, he’d ignored them. Here, they literally ran the world, and every word out of their mouths seemed to carry a hidden meaning.

By now he was in his bedroom, a little smaller than the ones back at his Oakwood manor, though it still had room for Seris and Lira. He reached across the bed and found only cold linen where there should have been warmth. Their absence hurt more than the wound in his side. Even so, his eyelids grew heavier by the second.

"Seris," he whispered. "Lira... Amelia."

Boom!

The explosions came one after another, shaking the walls and jolting him awake. Smoke rolled into the room, thick and heavy, tasting of char and metal.

"What the...?" He ripped a sheet off the bed, pressed it to his mouth, and threw open the window to let the smoke out. What he saw froze him where he stood.

Flames were devouring the night market, the houses, even the streets he’d walked only hours before. People ran in every direction, begging for help.

He rushed downstairs. The manor was already burning, like everything else.

"My lord!" one of the maids screamed. "Save us!"

Allan ran for her, but the fire swallowed her whole before he got there.

All around him, servants he knew by face and name clawed at the doors, their skin blistering. He pulled them free one at a time, lungs burning, the wound in his side screaming with every movement.

At the main door, he threw his weight against it, but it wouldn’t budge. Something was holding it shut from the other side.

"Stay back!" he ordered. The servants shrank away, crying.

Allan took a breath and kicked the door so hard that the giant pillar jammed behind it split into pieces.

"Go, go, go!" he barked.

One by one, they stumbled out of the manor. Outside, the mayhem hadn’t let up.

A woman in a noble’s dress stood in the street, sobbing. "My boy! Somebody, please!"

Then Allan saw the boy she was crying for, at the burning, crumbling gate. He had just managed to pick up his toy, a wooden dog, and was clutching it in both hands.

Allan lunged and scooped him up. The boy’s frantic heartbeat hammered against his own chest, and for one perfect second, he believed he had won. The boy was safe.

Then something felt wrong. The air turned cold, even with the whole street on fire. A sudden gust slammed into him and threw him sideways.

He looked up. A huge shadow was circling overhead. A familiar one.

"No," he whispered. "It can’t be."

Close by, a house exploded, and splintered wood and burning scraps rained down beside him.

He turned toward the source of the flames, and there she was. Her silver scales glowed gold in the firelight as she perched on top of a burning house, perfectly calm. Their eyes met. She smiled, baring sharp teeth stained with blood, and he knew her at once. The dragon he had freed.

She took to the air and landed in front of him with impossible grace, never breaking eye contact. Her smile looked almost human.

"You should never have freed me," she said. Her throat burned gold, her breath scorching the air between them, ready to spew fire at him.

"No!" He shoved the boy aside as the fire crashed down, spreading across the whole street, no, the whole neighbourhood, drowning everything in flames.

Allan opened his eyes slowly. He wanted to scream. Most of his skin was gone, his bones showing through. He looked around. There was nothing left. The boy was gone, burned to ash so completely that even the wooden dog had crumbled into black dust that slipped through Allan’s fingers. The dragon’s claws reached toward him.

Allan jolted upright with a strangled scream, both hands locked around his own throat. Sweat had soaked the sheets. His wounded side throbbed as if the nightmare had been real.

The room was quiet and untouched.

"What the... was that just a nightmare?" he muttered.

He crossed to the window and pushed it open. No smoke this time, only cold morning air against his face. Everything outside looked normal.

He dressed and went downstairs. The ordinary world carried on, completely unaware it had already burned to the ground inside his head.

For a heartbeat, the servants were the ones from the dream, their skin gone, some already dead, some barely clinging to life, and every one of them still going about their work. Then Allan blinked, and they were just servants again.

In the entrance hall, just before he reached the door, one of them handed him three letters. He didn’t need to break the seals to know who they were from. Amelia’s formal, possessive strokes. Lira’s short, uneven lines that always struggled to say what she meant. Seris’s clean, practical script. He tucked all three into his coat, still unopened.

But there was a fourth letter, a formal summons from Countess Mary, waiting on the table where the others had been. It bore a heavy seal. A baron did not ignore a countess, so this was the one he broke open, reading the precise wording line by line.

"...would like to take your advice on business ventures?" he murmured. "Strange."

He folded the letter away. This wasn’t about business. It never was; there was always something more. He checked the time and realised he was already cutting it close.

At the door, he turned back to the servants. "Take the day off, everyone. Don’t worry, you’ll be paid in full," he said, and stepped outside.

The maids and servants traded delighted looks.

On the way there, he saw the boy.

Same face. Same clothes. Same small wooden dog dangling from one hand, knocking against the pavement with a soft clack. Allan stopped so abruptly that a passer-by muttered and stepped around him. For half a second, the boy’s skin crumbled to ash before his eyes. Then reality snapped back.

The boy looked up, curious and unafraid. "Are you okay, sir?"

Allan’s throat locked. The boy waited a moment, then smiled at someone behind him and walked away, wooden dog swinging, completely untouched by the death Allan had already seen.

Allan stood in the middle of the street while people moved around him.

"It really was just a nightmare," he said, with relief. Then he turned toward the Countess’s manor and walked on, without letting his eyes rest on anything for long.

Before long, he reached the manor. The moment he stepped through the gates, the place felt eerie. The smell of medicine and healing tonics hung over everything.

Hurried footsteps echoed from every direction, and he stepped aside to let them pass. Too many healers, all moving with the same tight, controlled urgency. Bloodied cloths in basins. The sharp smell of medicine clung to them, and they looked like people who hadn’t rested in days. At a corner, a woman was crying behind a closed door, and no one came to comfort her.

Further in, he spotted a servant who wasn’t rushing anywhere. "Hello."

The servant kept his eyes down.

"Hello," Allan said again, stepping closer.

The servant finally looked up. His eyes were hollow, and it took him a moment to register the man in front of him, and the badge of nobility on his chest.

"Sir! No, my lord. I’m sorry! What do you need?"

Allan rested a hand on his shoulder. "It’s okay, it’s okay. I just wanted to ask where your lady is. The Countess. Countess Mary."

The servant pointed to the far corner, to the only room that was quiet. When Allan reached the door, he checked the clock hanging at his side. Right on time.

He knocked twice.

"Come in..." a weary voice answered.

He opened the door. Countess Mary sat behind a desk that still bore her late husband’s seal. Exhaustion had carved deep lines around her eyes, but her voice didn’t shake. It was a particular kind of steadiness, the kind that comes from suffering alone.

"My lady." He gave a slight bow.

"Lord Oakwood. I’m glad you came. You look even more handsome than the rumours say." She stood and returned his bow with a small one of her own. She was dressed all in grey and black, the colours of mourning.

Her husband had died of the sickness creeping quietly through the nobility, and now their newborn daughter had it too. She had hired every healer and priest she could find, and she was still hiring. They worked day and night. But every one of them had failed.

"You jest, my lady," he said. "I was called here for tea, and all I see is paperwork."

She smiled, a real smile, but it died almost as soon as it appeared. "Let’s be honest, Lord Oakwood. We both know why I called you."

Allan nodded.

"So I’ll be straight with you. My title. My lands. My treasury. My soldiers. My family name. If you save her, they’re yours."

Neither of them spoke.

Allan felt the Investment System stir. He didn’t look at it. Not yet.

"Isn’t that a bit sudden?" he asked.

"I’d call it straightforward."

Silence settled between them again.

"I don’t even know what’s wrong with her," he said. "Can I see her?"

"Of course. This way, please."

She led him down a long corridor to a quiet room at the far end. The infant lay far too still in her cradle. When he touched her cheek, her skin was unnaturally cold.

A faint silver discoloration threaded beneath the surface, thin lines that stirred when he looked straight at them and vanished when he looked away. A metallic smell rose from the blankets.

The same smell that had filled the burning night.