Chapter 216 : Chapter 216

The woman’s voice was as light as smoke; before it could drift far, it dispersed.

Amid a shrill sound of distortion, the scene re-formed.

The Astrelia Royal Chapel.

The air was thick with the nauseating fragrance of white lilies, laced with the scorched smell left behind by burning candles. At the center of the great hall rested a heavy obsidian coffin, silent as some slumbering beast that had swallowed all the light.

Six-year-old Sylvia wore a black lace dress, elaborate and heavy, and her tiny figure looked especially lonely in the vast, empty hall. She could feel a cool, steady hand gripping hers tightly. It belonged to the younger Esmeralda, and the fingertips of the Captain of the Shadow Guard trembled ever so slightly, as though she were suppressing some overpowering emotion with all her strength.

Young Sylvia tilted her head up and looked at the noblewomen weeping behind their veils and the officials standing in solemn silence around her. She did not truly understand what “death” meant. She only instinctively felt that, in such a suffocating atmosphere, she too ought to display some emotion called “grief.”

Astrelia VI stood at the very front of the coffin.

He did not cry. He did not even look at his dead wife’s face one last time. Instead, he slowly turned those iron-cold eyes toward his own daughter.

There was no sorrow at losing his wife in that gaze, only a detached scrutiny reserved for a monster. He looked at Sylvia’s unnaturally rosy cheeks and the overbearing fluctuations of mana around her, excessive even for a child.

“Give her a lavish burial.”

The man withdrew his gaze. His voice was dry, like stone grinding against stone. From beginning to end, he did not say a single word to Sylvia.

The scene spread and blurred as though someone had splashed ink across it. In the blink of an eye, it turned into a royal garden bathed in the red glow of the setting sun.

Then the scene shattered again.

This time, the bitter medicinal smell was gone, replaced by the scent of grass and the earthy smell of sunbaked soil.

Seven-year-old Sylvia was hiding behind an ornamental rock, clutching a crude little wooden sword. On the lawn not far away, First Prince Dorg was patiently instructing Second Prince Carlisle. Back then, Dorg had not yet acquired that later air of sickness. His long pale hair gleamed like light itself, and when he smiled, there was a warmth to it that made people want to cry.

“Sylvia, come here. Don’t hide over there.”

Dorg had noticed her and beckoned her over. It was the only warmth she had ever been given in that cold palace.

“Do you miss it?”

The shadow’s voice crept through her soul like a maggot burrowing into bone.

“That was one of the very few people who was ever kind to you, wasn’t he?”

Sylvia’s gaze froze on the white-haired young man standing on the lawn.

Dorg.

Yes, she remembered.

During that dark childhood, when her father had treated her as a monster and everyone in the palace had excluded and isolated her...

Only this elder brother, not born of the same mother, had secretly brought her sweets, clumsily told her knight stories he had read in books, and, when other noble children mocked her, had hardened his face for the first time and shielded her behind him in his capacity as the Heir Apparent.

In Sylvia’s childhood, Dorg had once filled every empty space the role of “father” should have occupied.

But the good days did not last.

Without warning, the images in the illusion began to twist and accelerate, like a strip of film being maliciously fast-forwarded.

One moment, the royal garden was bright with sunlight. The next, it was shrouded beneath heavy storm clouds. A violent wind swept fallen leaves into the air, and the bleakness of it sent a chill through the heart.

Her elder brother suddenly fell ill.

Mouthful after mouthful of blood burst from Dorg’s lips, staining the costly lawn red beneath his feet. The entire palace was thrown into unprecedented panic in an instant. Countless royal physicians rushed in and out, yet none of them could do anything about the sudden weakness that had struck the heir to the throne.

“Your Highness! Your Highness, what’s wrong?!”

The attendants crowded around in panic, the whole place descending into chaos as screams and shouts rose one after another.

This time, even Astrelia VI was alarmed.

He strode into the bedchamber, but instead of looking at his son on the sickbed, he suddenly whipped his head around and fixed a deadly stare on Sylvia, who stood helpless in the corner.

“Enough!”

The man’s fury exploded through the room like thunder. He pointed at Sylvia, veins bulging at his temples.

“You disaster-bringing wretch... how many lives are you going to take before you are satisfied?!”

“Get out! Take her away from the Royal Capital! Don’t let this monster come within half a step of Dorg again!”

“Get out!”

Sylvia staggered back, her face pale. She looked toward Dorg on the sickbed. The brother who had once protected her struggled to open his eyes.

That look...

There was no longer even the slightest trace of affection or gentleness in it.

There was only a deep, unmistakable weariness, a fear that made her feel as though she had fallen into an ice abyss, and... distance.

From that day onward, even Dorg gradually drifted farther and farther away from her.

The shadow let out a vicious chuckle by Sylvia’s ear.

“Do you see now?”

Its voice turned both pitiful and cruel, as though it were admiring the process of a beautiful work of art being smashed to pieces.

“Even he changed.”

“What a healthy, warmhearted elder brother he was. But later, for some reason, he fell ill too. His body grew weaker by the day, and his coughing worsened by the day.”

The shadow leaned close to Sylvia, its poisonous whisper nearly drilling into her ear.

“Do you think he noticed too?”

“Noticed that you are an ill-omened lone star? Noticed that everyone who gets close to you ends up unfortunate, and that just like your mother, they will be drained dry of life by you?”

“That was why Dorg became afraid. He chose the cleverest course of all—he stayed away from you.”

The scene changed again, becoming a world of whirling snow and wind in the Northern Territory.

Under Esmeralda’s care, Sylvia was sent to that desolate frozen land. During the years she spent at the Grand Duke’s Manor of the Northern Territory, there was none of the Royal Capital’s splendor. There was only the training imposed by her grandfather, Fenrir, so harsh it bordered on cruelty, and an endless loneliness. She swung her sword in the wind and snow and ran across the ice fields, until that loneliness was forcibly shattered on the day the admission letter from Saint Arcadia Academy arrived.

“You thought you were becoming stronger?”

The shadow pressed close to her, its voice thick and cold.

“You were only turning into a more perfect monster, a tyrant fated to be betrayed and abandoned by all.”

“And that mage... Logaris.”

At the sound of that name, the numbness in Sylvia’s eyes suddenly trembled.

“You think he is your salvation? You think he is your kindred spirit?”

The shadow leaned close to her ear, its voice thick and frigid, like a wind blowing out of hell.

“Don’t be foolish, Sylvia. You already know, don’t you? That pure hellish aura on him.”

“A being as powerful, mysterious, and mad as he is—how could he ever willingly submit to you? The only reason he remains now is because you still have some use to him, or because this is merely a passing whim.”

“Sooner or later, hell will call its child home. And when he returns to that scorched land that belongs to him, you will still be alone.”