Cold drafts crept along the stone floor of the ground-floor corridor, making the orange flames in the iron wall sconces dance and cast long, shifting shadows across the rough masonry.
It was two evenings before the first Hybrid Beast ever stepped out of the Concealing Forest.
Standing near the sharp corner of the western stairwell, seventeen-year-old Anna hugged Prince Roland's heavy chemistry notebooks tightly against her wool dress. Just seconds earlier, after Arthur had used an invisible cushion of force to catch her from falling and explained the nature of his Telekinesis, the young witch had offered him a parting piece of advice.
She had warned him to be careful when flying over the castle roofs at midnight, reminding him that Nightingale patrolled the upper battlements every night and might throw a silver dagger at a floating shadow out of pure assassin's reflex.
Arthur hadn't laughed the warning off, nor had he stepped back to let her pass toward her room.
Instead, the twenty-four-year-old strategist had allowed a small, enigmatic smile to touch the corners of his mouth before taking a slow, deliberate step forward—closing the gap between them in the dimly lit passage.
Bending his knees slightly so that his dark eyes were level with hers, Arthur leaned in until his lips were barely two inches from Anna's small, soot-smudged ear. He lowered his voice to a microscopic murmur, speaking so softly that the sound waves died in the air before they could ever bounce off the surrounding stone walls.
— "Within the next few days, Anna, the opening surge of the Months of the Demons is going to drive an apex monster out of the northern peaks," — Arthur whispered, his tone icy, calm, and carrying the absolute certainty of a man who had already read the script of history. — "It will be a six-legged Hybrid Beast the size of a cottage, wrapped in a calcified shell thick enough to bounce our smoothbore musket balls like pebbles. I don't have the exact hour of its arrival on my wristwatch, yet its appearance at our southern wall is inevitable. And when it shows up, I am going to need your help to erase it."
Having a young man other than Prince Roland step so close into her personal space made Anna's breath hitch. Her blue eyes widened instinctively, and a sudden, warm flush of teenage shyness rushed up her neck to color her pale cheeks as her heart gave a fast thump against her ribs.
Yet the embarrassment lasted for less than two seconds.
As the terrifying tactical reality of what Arthur had just whispered registered inside her mind, her blush vanished, replaced by the focused, unblinking gravity of Border Town's lead engineer.
— "Both William and I already possess the raw power to kill an abomination of that size by ourselves," — Arthur continued, his breath barely stirring a loose strand of her orange-red hair as he chose every word with surgical precision. — "However, we cannot reveal our true capabilities in front of eighty soldiers in broad daylight. Under any circumstances."
Anna kept her eyes fixed on the wall past his shoulder, listening intently.
— "Think about the political chessboard outside this valley," — Arthur murmured. — "Across all Four Kingdoms, the law of magic has been absolute for four hundred years: only women awaken a Magic Core. If a single rumor leaks out of Border Town that foreign men are wielding inexplicable, god-like magic on the ramparts, the High Church of Hermes won't just send spies. Given the dark reputation His Highness already carries in King's City, the priests will declare that Roland Wimbledon has made a pact with real demons—and they will march an entire holy crusade and the God's Punishment Army straight down our throats with King Wimbledon III's blessing before our factories are even built."
Arthur pulled back just a fraction of an inch, locking his dark, calculating gaze directly onto Anna's blue eyes.
— "To buy Border Town the time it needs to industrialize, William and I need a visual shield," — Arthur explained softly. — "When that seven-meter monster marches up to the concrete wall, the soldiers and miners cannot see an unexplainable male anomaly breaking the rules of nature. They need to look up and see His Highness's trusted witch saving every single one of their lives. Tomorrow in your forge, between cement batches, I want you to quietly draw out three dozen fifty-centimeter rods of our hardest high-carbon steel and sharpen both ends like needles."
Three dozen steel rods? Anna processed the geometry immediately, her mind visualizing the metal stock sitting behind her furnace.
— "When the alarm horn sounds for the Hybrid Beast, bring those needles wrapped in a cloth and wait by the rear stairs of the central bastion," — Arthur instructed. — "I will position myself inside the wooden observation watchtower directly behind the barracks. From there, I will use my Level 10 Telekinesis to lift you into the air above the parapet and orbit the needles around your cloak. All you have to do is heat the steel tips to white-hot incandescence with your flame, surround yourself with a visible thermal aura, raise your hand, and point at the beast. My mind will provide the supersonic acceleration to punch those rods straight through its eyes and leg joints. To the entire army, you will be the war goddess who slew the titan; I will simply be the invisible gear turning behind the curtain. Do you understand the plan, Anna?"
Anna held the strategist's dark gaze for three full seconds without blinking.
She understood far more than just the tactical choreography. She understood that this guarded, hyper-rational man—who didn't even let Nightingale or Carter Lannis see what was inside his head—had just placed his deepest, most dangerous secret squarely into her hands to protect Prince Roland's sanctuary.
A fierce spark of determination lit up her blue eyes. Without uttering a single word aloud that could echo down the hall, Anna gave a slow, firm nod of agreement, turned on her heel, and walked quietly away toward her quarters in the western wing.
Left alone at the base of the stairs, Arthur straightened his posture and watched her go.
As he turned toward the eastern gallery, he slipped his gloved right hand deep into the side pocket of his dark wool overcoat—his fingers curling around a cold, smooth, six-sided crystal medallion roughly the size of a pocket watch.
It was a God's Stone of Retaliation—the ancient, magic-nullifying mineral revered by the Church of Hermes, which Arthur had quietly blackmailed Assistant Minister Barov into handing over from the town hall vault four days earlier.
Inside his dark pocket, the sacred stone felt like a chunk of eternal winter ice.
Arthur hadn't acquired the artifact out of fear of witches; he had acquired it because he knew how Nightingale operated.
As Prince Roland's unseen shadow, the blonde assassin spent half her waking hours drifting through the castle halls inside her monochrome Mist World. Worse still, her passive magic automatically functioned as a biological lie detector whenever she stood within five meters of a person talking.
By keeping a God's Stone of Retaliation inside his coat pocket twenty-four hours a day, Arthur surrounded himself with an invisible, five-meter spherical "dead zone" that completely disrupted native Magic Cores. If Nightingale ever tried to walk within five meters of Arthur while invisible, the Stone's aura would rip her Mist veil open like wet paper and force her straight out into the physical corridor!
Because she didn't want to expose her constant tailing, Nightingale was physically forced to stay more than five meters away from Arthur at all times—and from more than five meters away, she couldn't hear a quiet whisper in Anna's ear, nor could her truth-sense reach his heartbeat!
It was a flawless, airtight security firewall.
Back in the freezing present on top of the southern concrete rampart, the echoes of that secret corridor pact had just rewritten the history of Border Town.
Down at the base of the twelve-foot wall, the twenty-ton, six-legged Hybrid Beast lay completely motionless in the churned snow—thirty-six half-meter spikes of high-carbon steel buried deep inside its dead wolf eyes and severed leg joints.
For the first second after Anna's boots touched back down onto the frosty concrete walkway and the shimmering heat haze around her wool cloak faded, the silence along the hundred-meter fortification was thick enough to cut with a knife.
To eighty former miners and serfs who had grown up listening to priests rave about the devil's curse, watching a seventeen-year-old girl float into the sky and slaughter an invincible mountain colossus with a single flick of her wrist had been a moment of sheer, bone-chilling terror.
Yet that superstitious fear lasted less than a heartbeat.
As the soldiers stared down at the dead titan—realizing that their wall didn't have a single crack in it, and that not one man among them had been crushed under those six millstone-sized paws—that "terrifying witchcraft" transformed instantly in their minds into a divine blessing. The tension in eighty chests broke all at once into a deafening, euphoric wave of cheers, relief, and profound gratitude toward the young woman who had just saved them all.
Ten paces away, Prince Roland's heart was still pounding like a war drum against his ribs as he hurried down the snow-dusted walkway toward Anna.
Completely forgetting royal decorum in front of his troops, Roland reached out with both gloved hands and held her small, hunched shoulders to steady her. Having seen Anna collapse into a three-day feverish coma back when she first pushed her limits in the castle yard, Cheng Yan fully expected the astronomical energy required to fly and launch thirty-six steel rods at rifle velocity to make her faint on the spot.
— "Anna! Are you alright?! Look at me—are you dizzy?!" — Roland asked urgently, his voice hoarse from the freezing wind as he searched her face for signs of Magic Core exhaustion.
Anna raised her head, looking up into the Prince's worried gray eyes.
Her cheeks weren't pale at all; in fact, her breathing was remarkably even, and her bright blue eyes were calm and clear.
— "I am completely fine, Your Highness. You don't need to hold me up," — Anna said softly, offering him a serene, reassuring nod before letting her gaze flick for half a second toward the wooden reserve watchtower behind the barracks yard. — "Shaping and heating those needles didn't drain nearly as much of my Magic Power as it looked like from down here... Though if Your Highness doesn't mind, I would really prefer to explain the details inside your office, away from the cold wind."
Stepping up beside them, William shook a layer of loose snow off his iron pauldrons, his signature cocky grin returning at full wattage now that the crisis was dead in the snow.
— "You heard the little lady, Boss! The main star of the monster circus is already taking a permanent dirt nap!" — William boomed, tapping the flat of his heavy steel shield with his sword hilt. — "Take Anna and Sir Carter back inside the keep and warm up by the fire! Without that ugly two-headed general controlling their brains, the thirty wolves and boars left in the back are already losing their minds—Iron Axe, Trevor, and I will have this snowfield swept clean before your tea finishes steeping!"
Roland looked from William's unshakeable grin down to the thirty disorganized beasts beginning to snarl and snap at each other in the rear snowfield, then gave his Commander-in-Chief a firm nod.
— "Don't take unnecessary risks on the cleanup, William. Use the rifle volleys," — Roland ordered before turning with Carter Lannis to escort Anna down the wooden stairs toward the warmth of the castle keep.
And eighty-five paces behind the wall, standing inside the shadowed timber cabin at the top of the reserve watchtower, Arthur watched the royal party descend the ramp through a pair of small, polished brass binoculars.
Slowly lowering the lenses from his dark eyes, the twenty-four-year-old strategist tucked the binoculars neatly into his coat.
From three meters above the barracks roofs, his hundred-pace Level 10 telekinetic sphere had covered the entire engagement zone without breaking a sweat. Every single vector—from the smooth lift under Anna's boots to the two-hundred-and-forty-meter-per-second acceleration of the thirty-six superheated steel spikes—had executed with mathematical perfection.
Turning toward the narrow wooden ladder, Arthur looked at the lone eighteen-year-old militiaman standing guard at the top of the watchtower platform.
The boy was shivering violently from a combination of the sub-zero gale and sheer adrenaline, his wide eyes still glued to the monstrous brown shell lying dead outside the wall. Because "Count Arthur" was universally respected across Border Town as Prince Roland's chief strategist, alchemist, and right-hand advisor, the young sentry hadn't thought twice when the scholar climbed up to the rear tower fifteen minutes ago to "observe the ballistic angles" through his spyglass.
Reaching into the inner pocket of his black wool overcoat, Arthur pulled out eleven bright silver royals and dropped them into the boy's trembling, mittened palm.
— "For a pot of hot mulled wine with your squad tonight, soldier," — Arthur said, his baritone voice smooth, polite, and completely unreadable as a faint smile curved his lips. — "Consider it a toast to Miss Anna's triumph, and to our first clean defense of the winter."
Leaving the speechless teenager staring down at eleven weeks' worth of wages in his hand, Arthur walked calmly down the creaking wooden stairs of the watchtower.
As his fur-lined boots sank into the soft, six-inch snow of the inner barracks yard, he flipped the thick wool collar of his overcoat up around his ears, pulled his dark scarf back over his mouth and nose, and slid both gloved hands back into his warm pockets.
He had barely taken ten steps toward the castle keep when the translucent blue window he had been waiting for flared to life with a brilliant golden border in the corner of his vision:
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: TIMELINE ANOMALY DETECTED]
Evaluation:Major localized timeline trajectory altered through covert host intervention. Direct outcome: Border Town's southern fortification suffered zero structural breaches, zero militia casualties were incurred against the vanguard Hybrid Beast, and key personnel (Anna) was spared a three-day magical depletion coma.
[REWARD: +170 Credits]
[CURRENT BALANCE: 170 Credits]
Behind his wool scarf, Arthur's dark eyes narrowed as a cold, sovereign wave of satisfaction flowed through his veins.
One hundred and seventy credits in a single morning, Arthur thought, savoring the immaculate efficiency of the play. Not only did I prevent the wall from cracking and keep William from exposing himself in front of eighty witnesses, I turned a profit of over four full attribute points without a single soul knowing I pulled the trigger.
Or so it appeared to ordinary mortal eyes.
Less than thirty paces to Arthur's left, perched high atop the snow-covered timber roof of a barracks storage cabin inside a parallel world where all color was bleached into shifting shades of black, white, and gray, a pair of sharp blue eyes locked onto the back of Arthur's black overcoat.
It was Nightingale.
Inside the silent realm of the Mist World, solid stone walls and wooden roofs appeared as translucent, vibrating outlines, while living humans glowed like warm beacons of white light.
Around the solitary figure of Count Arthur walking calmly through the snow below her, however, the geometry of the Mist World was violently warped. Centered directly on his right coat pocket was a five-meter sphere of absolute, pitch-black nothingness—a moving hole torn straight through the fabric of her magic by the God's Stone of Retaliation he carried.
If Nightingale stepped even one inch inside that five-meter black radius while invisible, the Stone's aura would instantly shred her Mist veil and dump her out into the snow right in front of him.
Standing on the icy roof with her white cloak snapping in the wind, Graycastle's deadliest assassin rubbed her temple with a gloved hand, her mind spinning in a chaotic whirlwind of frustration and deep suspicion.
She had been standing on the front parapet right behind William when Anna rose into the air.
Nightingale had fought alongside witches for years; her magical vision was honed to a razor's edge. There was zero doubt that the white-hot thermal energy heating those thirty-six steel needles had belonged to Anna. Yet as Nightingale had stared at her younger sister hovering two meters above the concrete walkway, she had seen no magical flow supporting Anna's boots against gravity, and no burst of fire propelling those steel rods across the snow at rifle speed!
And as Nightingale watched Arthur's unhurried figure walk toward the castle doors, a memory from two nights ago flashed vividly across her mind: standing at the far end of the western corridor, safely outside his five-meter Stone radius, and watching Anna bump into Arthur while two heavy leather notebooks hung suspended in midair between them as if resting on an invisible table!
Anna didn't fly out there today—he was holding her up, Nightingale realized, her fingers tightening into a fist beneath her cloak. Just like he held those books in the hallway!
Yet the very second her assassin's intuition landed on the truth, the sheer logical impossibility of it threatened to give her a migraine.
How in the name of the seven hells could Arthur be the one behind it?! Nightingale argued with herself silently in the gray mist. Ever since the afternoon at the gallows, I have looked at him and William with my magical vision dozens of times! Neither of them has a Magic Core! Men cannot awaken magic!
Even if she threw away four hundred years of human biology and accepted that Arthur somehow possessed an invisible, signatureless power to move objects from a distance, the remaining two pieces of the puzzle broke every law of reality she knew:
When Anna floated above the parapet, Arthur was eighty-five paces back inside the wooden watchtower! What kind of monster can lift a human body and fire thirty-six steel needles with pinpoint accuracy from eighty-five paces away without even raising a hand?!
And above all else—how can anyone use magic while carrying a God's Stone of Retaliation inside his own pocket?! That stone devours all magical flow on contact! Walking around with a Stone in your pocket while casting spells from a tower is like breathing underwater while your lungs are filled with lead!
Nightingale let out a long, exasperated sigh in the monochrome world. Every time she tried to put Count Arthur and Commander William into a box that made sense, the two foreigners shattered the box from the inside out.
Meanwhile, out on the blood-splattered concrete walkway of the southern wall, the final cleanup of the battlefield was reaching a loud conclusion.
Deprived of the two-headed Hybrid Beast's hypnotic control, the thirty common demonic beasts trailing in the rear—wolves, foxes, and jagged-tusked boars—had completely lost their formation, reverting to chaotic pack instincts as they threw themselves blindly against the spiked trench funnels.
Without a twenty-ton shell to shield them, the disorganized charge was little more than target practice. Pacing along the parapet with his bloodied steel shield on his left arm and his broadsword in his right, William directed the rotating musket volleys and pike thrusts with the effortless authority of a veteran general, turning the snowdrifts red and black.
Only on the eastern flank of the main trench did a thick, snarling mob of fourteen wolves and two black bears manage to jam themselves together against the iron stakes in a cluster dense enough to threaten the barrier by sheer weight.
Panting heavily in the freezing air, Van'er and two artillerymen dragged a heavy, iron-reinforced wooden crate up to the inner lip of the parapet—a forty-pound demolition box packed tightly with twenty pounds of corned black powder and scrap iron that Roland had originally prepared to drop under the Hybrid Beast's stomach.
Now that Anna's silver needles had left the giant turtle dead in the snow, the demolition box didn't need to go to waste.
— "Commander William! Over a dozen of them are piled up right against the eastern spike pit—too thick for the pikes to reach!" — Van'er shouted over the din, striking his flint steel and lighting the thick, lard-soaked hemp fuse sticking out of the top of the box.
Fssssss—!
The waterproof cord immediately began to hiss and spit bright orange sparks, burning rapidly down toward the powder chamber.
— "Clear the rail, Van'er! Stand back—I'll deliver the mail!" — William barked, jogging over and sliding his broadsword back into its scabbard.
Reaching down with one gloved hand, William grabbed the iron rope-handle of the forty-pound wooden crate and hoisted it effortlessly up onto his right shoulder as if he were picking up a bundle of dry hay.
Standing tall on the stone crenelation with his Strength: 16 muscles coiled beneath his navy-blue coat, William kept his eyes locked on the burning fuse—calculating the burn rate down to the fraction of a second until the spitting orange flame was less than half an inch from the inner wooden plug.
With a booming shout of pure martial power, William twisted his torso and hurled the forty-pound crate one-handed high out across the snowfield!
Driven by superhuman force, the heavy timber box sailed in a clean thirty-yard arc through the gray winter sky and slammed squarely into the dead center of the thrashing pile of wolves and bears at the exact millisecond the spark hit the main charge.
KRA-BOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion shook the entire southern valley.
A towering dome of blinding orange fire, oily black smoke, and pulverized frozen dirt shot forty feet into the sky, followed instantly by a concussive shockwave that swept a cloud of loose snow straight off the base of the concrete wall and left every militiaman's ears ringing. Splintered trench stakes, chunks of frozen mud, and torn pieces of demonic carcasses rained down across the field.
When the mountain wind tore the black smoke away a few seconds later, the sixteen clustered monsters had vanished completely—leaving only a wide, blackened, smoking crater in the ice.
Up on the parapet, William casually brushed a speck of gray ash off his leather gauntlets, flashing his troops a wide, victorious grin.
— "Alright, soldiers! I think we can officially call the morning shift wrapped up!" — William roared across the quiet snowfield.
A deafening, triumphant cheer erupted from the eighty men of the First Army, their pikes waving high against the snowy sky as Border Town celebrated a flawless, zero-casualty victory on the opening day of winter.
Twenty minutes later, the deafening roar of gunpowder and the stench of black blood on the wall felt a world away from the quiet, crackling warmth of Prince Roland's third-floor office inside the keep.
Sitting behind his heavy oak desk with his hands clasped loosely over his maps, Roland fixed his sharp gray eyes on Anna, who sat in the cushioned wooden chair across from him holding a warm ceramic cup of boiled water between her hands to chase away the chill of the wind.
Before the former engineer could unleash the dozen urgent questions burning in his mind—about how she had forged high-carbon steel needles, how she had accelerated them past two hundred meters per second, and above all else, how a fire witch had suddenly floated into the sky—Anna slowly lowered her ceramic cup onto the saucer.
She didn't look at Roland right away; instead, her clear blue eyes swept quietly across the four shadowy corners of the stone study.
— "Your Highness," — Anna began, her voice soft and polite, yet carrying an unmistakable weight of urgency. — "Before I answer your questions about what happened out there on the wall, and the real reason I went out to face that creature... I need to know if Miss Nightingale is currently standing in this room."
Roland frowned slightly in surprise at the request, then turned his head toward the dark gap beside the tall bookshelves in the corner.
— "Nightingale?" — the Prince called out.
A heartbeat later, the warm air beside the bookcase rippled like disturbed water, and Nightingale stepped smoothly out of the monochrome Mist World, crossing her gloved arms over her white-and-gold trimmed cloak. Her sharp blue eyes moved from Roland to Anna, gleaming with intense curiosity.
— "I am here, Your Highness," — Nightingale replied.
Turning her head to look directly at the older witch, Anna offered an expression that held genuine regret, yet remained as firm and unyielding as iron.
— "Since Miss Nightingale is present, I must ask that you excuse us and step outside the office," — Anna said with her trademark bluntness. — "I cannot speak while you are listening—neither in this room, nor from inside the Mist behind the wall. I need to speak entirely in private with His Highness the Prince."
Nightingale's eyebrows shot up, a flash of clear offense crossing her pale face at being explicitly excluded by a seventeen-year-old witch she considered a little sister. She opened her mouth to object, glancing toward the desk—only for Prince Roland's calm, authoritative gaze and a single, silent nod of his head to cut her protest short.
Letting out a quiet, dissatisfied huff through her nose, Nightingale stepped backward into the gray veil of the Mist and walked straight out through the heavy oak door. Only after five full seconds of complete silence confirmed that her footsteps had descended the stone stairs did Roland turn his attention back to the girl in front of him.
With the third-floor office finally empty and secure, Anna drew in a slow, deep breath, preparing to walk the delicate tightrope of her explanation.
During their secret talk in the corridor two nights ago, Arthur had told her that Roland already knew he and William came from Earth and possessed an enhancement "budget"—yet Anna had quickly deduced from Roland's shock on the wall today that Arthur had completely hidden the existence of his Telekinesis and their interdimensional System from the Prince, letting Roland believe William's gift was purely physical!
Sitting across from the man who had pulled her off the gallows and given her a warm home, Anna hated falsehoods with all her heart; lying to Prince Roland went against her very nature.
Therefore, she resolved that she wouldn't tell him a single lie. By speaking the exact truth about her fire—and guarding the hidden mechanism of her flight behind an unbreakable wall of silence—she would keep Arthur's dangerous secret safe in the shadows where it belonged.