Chapter 699 The One Who Remained

Irina slowly rose from where she had been sitting, her eyes fixed on Voss as though she were trying to determine whether she had somehow misunderstood him. Eldric had been the village elder for years. He was the man everyone in Elaris looked toward when something went wrong, the man who spoke for the villagers, the man who welcomed them into his home with a smile and told them the history of the town as though he had carried its suffering on his shoulders.

Yet according to Voss, that same man had been at the center of the disaster that had destroyed the town fifteen years ago. Irina’s expression hardened as the pieces began falling into place, but one question remained so absurd that she could not keep it inside. "Wait," she said, her voice carrying a mixture of disbelief and anger. "If Eldric was responsible for all of this, how is he still the village elder? How did nobody find out? How could the people of this town continue trusting him after everything he supposedly did?"

Voss shook his head slowly. His expression had lost the nervousness he had shown earlier, replaced by something much heavier. He looked like someone who had carried a secret for so long that finally speaking about it felt almost unnatural. "Nobody knows," he said quietly. "Not even the people who have lived here their entire lives. I only found out after ten years of investigating." Irina’s eyes narrowed. Voss lowered his gaze for a moment, then continued, his voice becoming more deliberate as he spoke. "I started investigating when I was twelve. I was too young to understand what had happened when the town was destroyed, but I remembered enough. I remembered the explosion. I remembered people screaming. I remembered the adults refusing to talk about what happened. Every time I asked, I got a different story. Some said the two cultivators destroyed the town and one of them escaped. Others said they both died. Eldric’s story was always the same. He was another cultivator who had supposedly protected the village from the two cultivators."

Liam remained silent, watching Voss carefully. He could see that the young man was not simply recounting something he had heard from someone else. There was a difference in his body language whenever he mentioned certain details. His shoulders stiffened, his fingers tightened slightly against his knees, and his eyes lost focus for brief moments as memories surfaced. This was something Voss had personally spent years trying to understand. "Ten years," Liam repeated quietly. "You’ve been investigating this since you were twelve?"

Voss nodded. "Every year. I searched through abandoned houses. I talked to old people who remembered what happened. I memorized every version of the story I could find and compared them. I looked at where the destruction happened and where the old buildings used to stand. I searched places nobody else cared about. I even started following Eldric whenever I could without being noticed." A faint, humorless smile appeared on his face. "He was very careful. Much more careful than most people realize. But I kept looking. I couldn’t accept that the official story was true."

Irina crossed her arms over her chest. "And after ten years, you finally found the truth."

"Only this year," Voss replied. "I finally found enough pieces to understand what actually happened."

He paused for a moment before continuing. "After Eldric defeated the other cultivator fifteen years ago, he disappeared. Nobody knew where he went. He didn’t return to the village. He didn’t stay behind to help rebuild. He simply vanished. Everyone assumed he had left because he had won and had no reason to remain here anymore. But five days later, something happened."

The cave seemed to grow quieter.

Voss looked toward the entrance as though he could still hear the memory buried beneath the mountain. "There was an explosion."

Irina’s eyes sharpened.

"Not outside the village," Voss continued. "Under it. The entire ground shook. Houses trembled. People were thrown from their feet. Some structures collapsed. The sound was so powerful that people thought another cultivator had attacked us. But when the shaking stopped, nothing happened. No one appeared. No enemy came. There was simply... silence."

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

"That was the last time anyone ever left Elaris."

Irina’s expression changed.

Voss continued, "People tried afterward. They walked out through the same roads they had used their entire lives. They reached the edge of the village, crossed the fields, and somehow ended up back inside. Some walked for hours. Others marked trees and rocks to make sure they weren’t going in circles, but the result was always the same. They would eventually return to Elaris."

"And Eldric?" Liam asked.

Voss looked directly at him. "Five days after the battle, he came back."

That sentence hung in the air.

"He returned like nothing had happened," Voss said. "He didn’t explain where he had been. He didn’t tell anyone about the explosion. He simply appeared again and started helping rebuild the village. After that, he slowly became more involved with everything. He helped organize food. He settled arguments. He spoke to the villagers when people were afraid. Eventually, when the previous elder died, Eldric became the next village elder."

Irina’s eyes widened slightly.

"So he returned after activating whatever was beneath the town," she said, "and then somehow became the person in charge of everyone he had trapped."

Voss nodded.

"If my theory is correct," he said, "that explosion was when Eldric activated whatever is underneath this town. And whatever he activated cost him his power."

Liam’s expression became thoughtful. He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows against his knees while he processed everything Voss had said. "You’re saying he was powerful enough to fight another cultivator fifteen years ago, but after activating whatever was beneath Elaris, he lost his abilities?"

"That’s what I believe."

Irina stared at Voss for several seconds before a realization crossed her face. "So he mistakenly flipped a switch and trapped everyone under some giant magical barrier?"

Voss blinked.

Liam looked at Irina.

For a moment, nobody spoke.

Then Liam’s lips twitched.

"That’s one way to put it."

Irina shrugged. "What? That’s basically what happened."

"Except we don’t know if it was accidental," Liam said.

Her expression immediately became more serious.

Voss slowly nodded. "That’s the problem. I don’t know either. Maybe Eldric intended to activate it. Maybe he didn’t understand what it would do. Maybe the barrier was part of something he was searching for beneath the village. There are too many things we don’t know."

Liam’s fingers tapped lightly against his knee as he thought. "But something happened underneath this town. Something powerful enough to seal the entire area from the outside world."

"Yes."

"And Eldric lost his power afterward."

"Yes."

Liam’s eyes shifted toward Voss’s blue suit.

There was something else bothering him.

He had seen that suit before.

Not this exact one, but something similar.

Liam slowly raised his eyes toward Voss. "So Eldric has a suit like yours."

Voss’s expression changed.

"But his is fire instead."

Voss nodded.

Irina’s eyes immediately moved between the two of them. "The fire entity."

"Exactly," Liam said.

Voss took a slow breath. "I don’t know if it is exactly the same as mine, but from everything I’ve seen, yes. His suit is almost identical in design. The biggest difference is its energy. Mine is freezing cold. His produces intense heat."

Liam leaned back slightly. His mind immediately returned to the battle he had witnessed from the tree. He remembered the humanoid figure formed from flames, the way the air itself seemed to distort around it, the way its movements had carried an unnatural aggression. More importantly, he remembered the second entity attacking it. The cold one had not been trying to destroy the village. It had been trying to stop the fire entity.

And now he understood why.

"You found yours in this cave," Liam said.

Voss nodded.

"I found it when I was young."

He looked around the cave, almost as if he were seeing it for the first time.

"I always liked climbing when I was a kid. I don’t know why. Maybe because there wasn’t much else to do. We couldn’t leave the village, and most adults were too busy surviving to pay attention to what children were doing. So I climbed."

A faint smile appeared on Voss’s face.

"One day I climbed this mountain."

Irina looked toward the cave entrance, then toward the enormous mountain outside. Her eyebrows lifted. "You climbed this high?"

Voss laughed softly.

"I was twelve."

"That doesn’t answer my question."

"It was either climb or go crazy."

Irina stared at him.

Voss shrugged. "When you’re trapped somewhere with nothing to do for your entire childhood, you start doing crazy things. Or you go crazy. Sometimes both."

Liam couldn’t help but smile slightly.

Voss continued, "I found the cave by accident. At first, I thought it was just another crack in the mountain. I crawled inside and discovered that it went deeper. Eventually I found the box."

He gestured toward the wooden container where the blue suit had been stored.

"I had no idea what it was. I thought maybe someone had hidden a strange piece of armor here. But when I touched it, the suit reacted to me. It was freezing, but it didn’t hurt me. It felt like it recognized me."

Liam’s expression became more focused.

"Then I put it on."

Voss glanced down at his hands.

"At first, I thought that was all it did. It made me invisible to people in the village. I could walk through places without anyone noticing me. I could stand right beside someone and they wouldn’t see me. That’s how I started investigating."

Irina’s eyes narrowed. "You could watch anyone?"

"Yes."

"Without them knowing?"

"Yes."

Irina’s expression became slightly uncomfortable.

Liam noticed.

Voss quickly raised his hands. "I wasn’t spying on everyone for fun."

Irina gave him a flat look.

"I mean it," Voss said. "I was looking for answers."

Liam chuckled quietly. "Continue."

Voss nodded. "The suit had another ability. One I didn’t understand at first. When I focused on someone, I could see something inside them."

"Consciousness," Liam said.

Voss nodded slowly.

"It was almost like I could tap into their soul. I couldn’t control people or read every thought they had, but I could see something deeper than their physical bodies. I could sense their consciousness. I could tell when someone was asleep, awake, unconscious, frightened, angry..." He paused. "And eventually I realized that if I concentrated enough, I could see traces of something connected to their soul."

Liam’s expression sharpened.

Irina looked at him.

Neither of them said anything for several seconds.

That ability was far more significant than Voss seemed to understand.

Liam had already seen something similar when he performed the forbidden soul-switching ritual with Leo. Souls, consciousness, spiritual energy, and the boundary between them were not ordinary things. If this suit allowed Voss to perceive consciousness directly, then it was not merely a piece of armor.

It was a supernatural artifact.

And judging by the energy Liam had sensed from it, it was an extremely powerful one.

Voss continued, "Once I understood what the suit could do, I started using it to investigate Eldric. I watched him without him knowing. I followed him whenever he disappeared. I listened to conversations from places nobody could see me."

"And that’s when you realized he had another suit," Liam said.

Voss nodded.

"I never actually saw him put it on at first. But I saw the signs. The strange heat around him. The way animals reacted whenever he came near certain areas. The places he disappeared to. Eventually I saw the suit."

Liam’s eyes narrowed.

"So you knew Eldric had it."

"I knew he had something," Voss corrected. "And eventually I realized it was another suit."

"And you didn’t tell anyone?"

Voss shook his head.

Liam’s expression hardened slightly. "Why?"

Voss looked at him.

"Because unless I get enough concrete evidence, there is nothing I can do."

Irina frowned.

Voss continued, "Think about it. I walk into the village square and accuse the elder of being responsible for everything that happened fifteen years ago. What happens next? They ask me for proof. I tell them I saw him using a strange suit. They ask me where. I tell them I followed him while wearing another strange suit that makes me invisible."

His face tightened.

"They’d think I was crazy."

Liam remained silent.

"And even if some people believed me," Voss continued, "Eldric would deny everything. He has spent fifteen years building his reputation. He is the village elder. People trust him. They don’t know what I know. They don’t know what happened beneath the village. They don’t know about the suits. They don’t know about the explosion. They don’t know that the story about the witch and her sons is completely fabricated."

Voss clenched his fists.

"If I expose him without evidence, he gets off the hook."

Irina’s eyes darkened.

"And then?" she asked.

"He knows someone has been investigating him."

Liam’s gaze sharpened.

Voss looked down at the blue suit.

"And if he finds out that I’m the one who has been following him all these years, I lose the only advantage I have."

Liam finally understood.

"And that would expose your identity," he said.

Voss slowly nodded.

Silence settled over the cave.

Liam leaned back against the stone wall, his eyes becoming distant as he replayed everything they had learned since arriving in Elaris. The deaths. The dreams. Leo’s stolen soul. The dome. The strange fire entity. The cold entity. Eldric’s suspicious behavior. Mira’s injuries. The hidden cave. Voss’s suit. The fifteen-year-old explosion. And now the revelation that Eldric had another suit capable of producing the fire entity.

The situation was far more complicated than he had initially thought.

If they wanted to bring Eldric down, they couldn’t simply walk into the village and accuse him. They needed proof. Real proof. Something undeniable. Something that couldn’t be dismissed as a frightened villager’s accusation or the theory of two outsiders who had only recently arrived.

They needed to catch Eldric doing something he couldn’t explain away.

Liam slowly exhaled.

It was harder than he had thought.

If Eldric really was behind what was happening to Elaris, then exposing him meant forcing him to reveal his own hand. And that meant they would have to watch him without being discovered, understand what he was planning, and somehow obtain evidence while dealing with whatever supernatural power he still possessed.

Liam’s eyes shifted toward Voss.

"We need to catch him in the act."

Voss nodded.

"Exactly."

Irina’s expression became cold and determined.

Liam looked toward the cave entrance, where the faint light of the outside world barely reached the darkness within.

And for the first time since arriving in Elaris, Liam realized that solving the mystery was no longer simply about finding the thing that had been stealing people’s souls.

They were now hunting a man who had spent fifteen years hiding the truth.

And if Voss was right, that man had been watching them too.