Chapter 126: Black Winter

The storm overhead did not relent; if anything, the tempest seemed to double its fury, screaming down the crags of the Opark Mountain range as sheets of icy, torrential rain battered the blood-soaked earth.

Jagged, purplish forks of lightning violently split the obsidian vault of the sky, casting erratic, strobe-like flashes across the carnage of the battlefield.

The accompanying thunder rolled in a continuous, deafening roar that vibrated deep within the chest cavities of everyone present, drowning out the dying moans of the fallen.

In the center of the narrow, high-altitude trail, Ser Hughway stood like an unstoppable monolith of death.

The air around him shimmered with residual, high-tier battle aura, parting the driving rain and sending billows of white steam rising from the cooling blood that coated his grey knight’s armor.

Out of the twenty elite, matte-black armored cavalrymen who had charged into the pass with lethal, uncompromising intent, barely a handful remained standing.

The rest lay strewn across the jagged stones and mud in grotesque, mangled heaps—armor shattered, limbs severed, and mounts gutted by the terrifying, mana-infused sweeps of the Indestructible Sword.

Standing a short distance back on his war stallion, Craig von Darkstar watched the final seconds of the skirmish unfold.

His transfigured silver-white hair clung tightly to his forehead, and his deep emerald-green eyes remained narrowed into cold, calculating slits.

Beneath his calm, unreadable exterior, his mind was racing at a terrifying velocity.

The puzzle pieces were refusing to settle, and the lingering phantom of Hydra—the secretive, ruthless syndicate that had previously attempted to end his life back when he was merely an isolated young master—continued to cast a long, suffocating shadow over his thoughts.

’How could they have known?’

Craig’s inner voice echoed sharply, his jaw tightening beneath his collar. I erased every trace of our departure from the Myrain Viscounty.

’We bypassed village watchtowers under the cover of night, and our route through the Opark range was chosen on the fly. This level of precise interception requires either an impossible stroke of spiritual divination or... an active, high-level informant sitting directly inside my own castle walls.’

At that exact realization, a cold, lethal shiver ran down Craig’s spine.

The identity of that informant flickered immediately into his consciousness:

Arya Benova.

’Could she have leaked our movements?’ Craig mentally debated, his analytical mind dissecting the timeline. ’No... I deliberately fed her a false narrative just hours before our departure, telling her I was heading south to recruit Rutiger Paulo.

If Arya is indeed passing intelligence to her masters, they should be scrambling assets in the Southern Continent right now, not laying an elite cavalry ambush in the northern mountain passes. Unless... her handler intercepted that lie immediately, realized it was a decoy, and deduced our true path toward the Asherian Viscounty anyway.’

If that was true, it meant the intelligence network backing Arya was far more sophisticated, resourceful, and deeply entrenched than he had originally anticipated.

It meant he was dealing with an adversary who could see right through his multilayered deceptions in real-time.

While Craig dissected the geopolitical chess board in his mind, the brutal reality on the ground reached its violent conclusion.

The final surviving black-armored cavalryman—the squad commander, identified by the slightly more ornate gold filigree etched into his visored helm—realized he was entirely cut off.

Surrounded by the mutilated corpses of his subordinates and facing a veteran Sword Master whose aura alone made the air heavy and unbreathable, the commander dropped to one knee.

His heavy steel lance slipped from his gauntleted hand, clattering uselessly against the blood-slicked stones.

He tried to raise his hands in surrender, opening his mouth to speak, but Ser Hughway gave him no quarter.

With a blinding, lightning-fast flick of his wrist, Hughway closed the distance.

He did not kill the man, but he delivered a devastating, flat-bladed strike with the heavy pommel of his broadsword directly against the commander’s reinforced shoulder guard.

CRACK!

The force of the blow shattered the steel plating and dislocated the man’s arm instantly.

A strangled, agonizing scream tore through the commander’s throat as he collapsed hard into the mud, his body convulsing from the shock.

"Arghhh...!" the commander gasped, writhing in the freezing mire.

Ser Hughway stepped forward, planting the tip of his blood-stained broadsword mere inches from the downed man’s throat.

The veteran knight cast a cold, emotionless glance down at his captive, before turning his head slightly toward the sovereign waiting in the background.

"The vanguard is secured, My Lord," Hughway called out over the howling wind, his voice steady and completely unbothered by the massacre he had just executed single-handedly.

"One breathing fool captured, exactly as you requested. It seems he is their commander, shall I drag him over for the interrogation?"

Craig slowly urged his war stallion forward, his mount stepping carefully over the shattered lances and fallen bodies strewn across the trail.

Behind him, Ser Damian and Annie Blacksun maintained their tight, disciplined formation, their eyes scanning the dark, mist-chrouded treeline to ensure no secondary waves of assassins were waiting to exploit the distraction.

Reaching the center of the crimson-stained carnage, Craig reined in his horse.

He looked down from the saddle at the trembling, bleeding commander groveling in the mud.

’Are this people fools or ignorant? To think they sent a cavalry of mundane fighters led by a mere Sword Apprentice’

Craig couldn’t help but laugh internally as he surveyed the wounded Sword Apprentice commander.

The heavy rain washed the dark gore from the man’s matte-black armor, but the oppressive, suffocating aura radiating from Craig’s emerald-green eyes made the captive freeze entirely.

Craig dismounted smoothly, his leather boots landing softly in the wet mud.

He walked slowly toward the fallen soldier, his long black traveling cloak dragging slightly along the ground.

He crouched down on one knee, bringing himself eye-level with the terrified, visored captive.

"You ride with the heavy discipline of a professional death squad," Craig spoke softly, his voice carrying an icy, hypnotic calm that cut through the thunder.

"You wear unmarked, matte-black plate armor, and you march into a trade mountain pass during a violent storm without a shred of hesitation. That tells me two things: you are either extraordinarily brave fools, or you are highly compensated disposable dogs."

The commander gritted his teeth behind his iron visor, trying to suppress the agonizing pain of his shattered shoulder.

He let out a harsh, defiant scoff. "You... you think you’ve won, young foolish seventh successor... You have no idea what forces you’ve stumbled into..."

Craig’s expression did not change by a single micro-expression. Instead, a slow, razor-sharp smile touched the corners of his lips.

He reached out with his gloved hand and grabbed the edge of the man’s iron-visored helm with terrifying, hydraulic grip strength.

"I am well aware of the forces playing on this continent," Craig whispered dangerously.

"Now, let us test your loyalty to whoever pays your wages."

With a sudden, violent wrench, Craig ripped the visored helm completely off the man’s head, tossing it aside into the mud.

Revealed beneath the steel was a hardened, middle-aged mercenary with a jagged scar running across his left cheek and eyes wide with primal, unadulterated terror.

"Who sent you?" Craig asked, his voice dropping into a chilling, absolute register. "Was it Hydra? Or is my dear second brother growing impatient in the Asherian Viscounty?"

The commander gasped for air, his eyes darting frantically between Craig’s piercing emerald-green gaze and the bloody broadsword resting inches from his throat by Ser Hughway’s hand.

He realized, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that the noble standing before him was not a pampered aristocrat stumbling through the frontier.

He was an apex predator wearing a human face.

"I... I don’t know who commands the higher syndicate..." the commander choked out, coughing up a spray of warm blood as the terror broke his resolve.

"We were only... we were only hired through a broker in the third mountain port! We were paid fifty gold coins per head to intercept a small noble party heading toward the Asherian border! We were given your exact travel schedule by an anonymous courier!"

Craig’s eyebrows twitched slightly.

An anonymous courier at a mountain port.

That confirmed it—the intel hadn’t leaked directly from within his inner sanctum’s primary leadership, but rather through an external logistical slip or a compromised low-level village informant along their early route.

"A courier," Craig repeated, his tone flat and glacial. "And who was the ultimate client? Who stands behind the broker?"

The commander shook his head frantically, his face turning pale as the pain and blood loss caught up to him. "I swear... I swear on my soul I don’t know! The syndicate... they call themselves the BLACK WINTER. They are revolutionaries, noble hunters who take contracts from the capital’s shadows! If you kill me, you’ll never find—"

PUCHI!

Before the man could finish his sentence, a sudden, piercing whistle cut through the air.

THWIP!

A heavy, black-fletched crossbow bolt materialized from the dense, mist-shrouded tree line high up on the mountain ridge, plunging with terrifying velocity directly through the center of the commander’s throat.

The captive’s eyes bulged wide, his voice instantly cut off as dark, arterial blood erupted from his neck.

He slumped backward into the mud, his body twitching twice before going completely, lifelessly still.

"Ambush from the ridge!" Ser Damian roared instantly, drawing his blade from its scabbard with a deafening ring of steel.

Ser Hughway spun around, his broadsword sweeping upward as he cast a protective wall of battle aura over Craig and Annie.

"Tch, I never anticipated that Guardian Knight to be this powerful" a voice whispered from the shadows.

High above them, amidst the crashing thunder and flashing lightning, a dark, shadowy figure clad in complete stealth leather could be seen leaping backward off the high cliff ledge, vanishing instantly into the thick pine canopy of the Opark Mountain range before anyone could mount a counter-attack.

They had silenced their own asset the moment he began to talk.

Craig slowly stood up from the mud, brushing a speck of dirt from his knee.

He looked up toward the empty cliff ridge where the assassin had just disappeared.

A dark, dangerous fire burned deep within his emerald-green eyes, completely replacing any trace of surprise.

The BLACK WINTER.

Not Hydra?

For the first time since the last assasination attempt on his life.

Craig’s heart felt heavy for he realized that truly the game had just escalated to an entirely new level.