Chapter 547

The more Nick looked into the ether, the worse the feedback became.

Eventually, he gasped and took an involuntary step back as he realized the enormity of what had happened here.

The village was a mutilated place, scarred by an eruption of unfathomable violence. He felt the edges of torn souls, lingering like shards of glass on the spiritual plane. Waves of mortal terror washed over him, a collective scream permanently etched into the bedrock by the violent termination of at least two hundred lives.

Nick gritted his teeth, forcing his mana outward to form a mental bulkhead that insulated his mind from the psychic static.

The echoes dulled to a low, manageable thrum, letting him assess the situation and notice the spiritual scars deteriorating.

He swept his gaze across the ruined square. The physical evidence pointed to a raid, but he knew bandits, and this didn’t seem like their modus operandi.

The roofs of the timber houses had caved in, collapsing on themselves while the souls within were still being tortured. The doors were shattered inward, blown off their hinges by a kinetic force strong enough to pulverize civilians yet precise enough to avoid harming them. Strange weeds grew through the gaps in the stone, as lifeblood had been spilled in great quantities across the village, giving birth to mutations of the normal flora.

His second thought was that demons or demon worshippers had been here. They were the only ones who relished pain for its own sake, but that didn’t fit either.

He found no sign of an abomination’s presence. The ambient mana was thin, filled with the tortured screams of the departed, yet completely pure. Too weak to give birth to the sort of spirit a demon would enjoy summoning.

No matter how hard he looked, there was no demonic taint, and he’d grown very familiar with that energy. There was only the cold, sterile imprint of human intent.

He didn’t know whether that made it worse, but the killers had not acted out of malice, frenzy, or bloodlust. The violence recorded in the ether was almost administrative, a calculated execution carried out with the exactitude of a butcher breaking down a carcass.

The poor victims hadn’t seen it that way, of course. Their terror was too strong. But he couldn’t shake the impression that whoever had committed the atrocity hadn’t enjoyed it at all, despite doing their best to make it as painful as possible.

Only a hint of powerful magic remained in the air, giving him an idea of what they’d been working toward, but it was too faint for him to get a proper read on it.

Something to do with memory. But on a great scale, yet extremely localized.

Nick opened his eyes, gritting his teeth as the echoes of the dead still reached out to him. They couldn’t do anything, too spent and weak to ever materialize, but it was still unpleasant. His senses had grown very fine since his rank-up, and this was the first true atrocity he’d witnessed with them.

Lasazar stood near a dried-up well, his hands clasped behind his back, his posture rigid. He watched Nick with an unreadable look.

"The official decree stated this was a demonic attack," he said, his voice echoing strangely through the dead village's absolute silence. "A minor breach that was fortunately addressed before it could grow. The few surviving inhabitants were declared tainted beyond salvation. The Royal forces arrived, contained the threat, and cleansed the corruption with fire. The Tower stamped the paperwork. The Temples offered prayers for the fallen. The Kingdom moved on.”

"It is a lie," Nick said firmly. "There is no taint here. No Abyssal residue. Just dead mortals and the echo of the men who killed them.”

"I know," Lasazar replied. He reached into his coat and pulled out a silver flask. He unscrewed the cap, took a slow drink, then offered it to Nick, who accepted.

The liquor was strong, but it grounded him in the present and helped him shake off the lingering dread of what he’d seen. He handed it back. "Why bring me here, Master? What is this place?”

"A lesson," Lasazar said, capping the flask. "One you need to learn before you set foot in Siderea." The Battlemage turned his gaze to the charred remains of the square's largest house. "Years ago, this village produced a prodigy. A boy with a natural affinity for body reinforcement, the likes of which have rarely been seen. He took up a sword, traveled to the provincial tournaments, and won. And then he kept winning. He caught the eye of the nobility, and eventually the Court. He was knighted. A low-born boy, elevated to landed knight by sheer martial brilliance. Everyone thought he had the potential to become a Grandmaster one day.”

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Lasazar paced slowly along the well's edge. "He was a hero to these people. Their pride. He grew arrogant, as young men with power often do. After a particularly spectacular victory, he was invited to train with the Royal Guard and spent many days in the Palace, training in the inner gardens and even taking on their duties. There, he met one of the King's daughters. A minor princess, far down the line of succession, but royal blood nonetheless. He attempted to court her.”

Nick didn’t like that. Not only because of the story’s obvious conclusion, but because he saw parallels with his own. Was he a reincarnator as well?

“A fatal overreach, I imagine,” he said instead. He trusted Lasazar, but this was a topic that couldn’t be spoken about. With anyone. Ever.

"The King thought so," Lasazar agreed. "The knight was dismissed, stripped of his post among the elites and reassigned to a border garrison. It was a harsh rebuke, but a survivable one. He should have taken the warning, served his time, and faded into obscurity, returning here to take up his position." Lasazar paused, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the ruins. "But the boy was in love. More dangerously, the princess returned the sentiment. They exchanged letters through sympathetic servants. They made a plan.”

"He tried to take her away," Nick guessed. It wasn’t exactly a unique story, though the consequences were certainly beyond most of the genre’s norms.

"He plotted to infiltrate the Palace and elope," Lasazar corrected. "A willing departure on her part, but the King's network of spies is vast. The letters were intercepted. The plot was uncovered before the knight even left his border post. To the King, this was not a foolish romance, but a direct assault on the Royal Bloodline. A low-born warrior attempting to steal a piece of the dynasty for his nefarious purposes.”

Lasazar gestured toward the blackened timber and shattered stone. “His Majesty is a great man, but when roused, his paranoia is absolute. He could have simply executed the knight for treason, but he chose to make an example of him, a warning to anyone who might harbor similar ambitions.”

Nick frowned, his mind working through the implications. "A public execution would serve as a warning. Burning this village in secret does not, especially if it was deemed demonic.”

“The destruction was not the warning," Lasazar said softly.

He met Nick’s gaze, and for the first time, Nick saw a flicker of genuine revulsion on the older man’s face. “Shadows were dispatched. They slaughtered the knight at his post. Then they marched here in the dead of night. They killed his parents. His siblings. His neighbors. Everyone who had ever known him, everyone who had ever spoken his name with pride. And as the blood soaked into the ground, the Royal Arcanists channeled the village’s collective death into a ritual.”

Nick’s breath caught as the realization clicked. The sterile, administrative intent he had sensed in the ether. The cold, mechanical nature of the violence.

“They did all this to curse his name,” he muttered, shocked. He was familiar with such spells, having seen traces of them in Earth’s past, but they were either the work of divine beings or entire civilizations. For something like that to be applied to a single, ambitious young man…

“It was a Great Work of conceptual erasure," Lasazar confirmed. "They used these people’s lives as fuel to establish a connection to the World and scoured the knight’s identity from it. You cannot find his name anywhere. You cannot find a portrait of his face. He is known only as the Nameless Traitor. His legacy is a void, sustained by the lingering sacrifice of his own home.”

Nick looked away from Lasazar and stared into the tree line.

Xander had warned him that the capital was a snake pit. One-Ear had told him to trust no one. His parents had said the same. Master Tholm had equipped him with defensive artifacts. All those warnings had felt abstract after the true dangers he’d faced.

This was not abstract. The charred stone beneath his feet was real. The psychic screams echoing through the bedrock were real.

A cold knot tightened in his stomach as his thoughts snapped to Floria.

He thought of Rose, living in Arthur’s farmhouse, slowly regaining her power. He had known he needed to hide her to protect his house, that there was a chance they’d all die, but he had underestimated the scale of the threat.

If the Shadow had realized what she was, the manor would have burned. The people of Floria would have been slaughtered, their deaths used to fuel whatever horror the Royal Arcanists deemed necessary to erase House Crowley from the map. The King did not play games of influence when he felt threatened.

The title of Mage Errant was a mighty shield, but it was granted by the Tower, an institution that had clearly turned a blind eye to this very massacre.

I am walking into a tyrant's den, Nick thought, his pulse settling into a slow thud. I cannot rely on the laws of this Kingdom, only on the power to break them.

His [Blasphemy] trait pulsed in response to his fear, a quiet thrum of defiance against the World’s established rules. He didn’t know whether the story he’d just heard was the whole truth. Some parts would have been shrouded by the very magic cast here, after all, and the similarities to his own rise were strong enough to make him suspect there was more to the Nameless Traitor.

"You see it now," Lasazar said, noting the shift in Nick’s posture. "The Court will smile on you, Nicholas. They will pour your wine and praise your magical prowess. They will offer you wealth, titles, and alliances. And the moment you step out of line, the moment you threaten their control, they will unmake you.”

"I understand," Nick said softly, even as his mind worked furiously. "Thank you, Master. The lesson is received.”

Lasazar nodded slowly. He stepped away from the well and walked toward the edge of the ruined square. "We have a long flight back to your little camp," he noted, adjusting his bowler hat's brim. "And you have a long journey to the capital. You’d be better off using that time. Tell me, Mage Errant. If you were commanding the defense of a settlement this size against a coordinated strike by high-tier operatives, how would you do it?”

Nick blinked, the sudden pivot in conversation catching him off guard for a fraction of a second. He recovered quickly, however, recognizing the value of the thought experiment, both to refine his tactical knowledge and to take his mind off the horrors.

“If I were the only mage of significant power, I wouldn’t waste time holding the position. I’d escape, and if that wasn’t possible, I’d evacuate as many people as possible before trapping the whole place in the hells and back.”

Slowly, they rose into the air and made their way back to Nick’s camp, but at a more leisurely pace to allow for conversation.

The debate was surprisingly engaging, and Nick even learned a trick or two for countering mass forces.

Eventually, however, he found the time to ask something that had been on his mind for a while.

"Master, you hunted cults in your youth," Nick began, keeping his tone casual. "You must have seen Prestige spells beyond the standard elemental spectrum.”

Lasazar glanced sideways at him. "I have seen a great many foolish things. Make your point.”

“Against such forces, traditional spells would do little,” Nick said, licking his lips. “But what about... consumption? Creating a vacuum in the ether to draw in the incoming energy rather than fighting it.”

"A vacuum," Lasazar repeated. "You are asking about the Void.”

Nick opened his mouth to deflect, but thought better of it. “Yes, I am.”