Outside the main keep, the early winter dusk dropped over Border Town like a leaden shroud, burying the blood-stained snowfields beneath a suffocating blanket of darkness.
A relentless northern gale battered the thick glass panes of the third-floor lancet windows, howling down from the Impassable Mountain Range as a freezing reminder that the opening day of the Months of the Demons was merely a taste of the four-month siege to come. Inside Prince Roland's study, however, the roaring pine logs in the stone hearth cast a bright, comforting circle of orange light that kept the sub-zero chill at bay.
Sitting behind his heavy oak desk with his elbows resting on the wood and his fingers clasped beneath his chin, Roland kept his sharp gray eyes fixed on the girl across from him.
Now that Nightingale had reluctantly stepped out of the room and descended the stairs to respect Anna's request for total privacy, the quiet office held only the two of them. Seventeen-year-old Anna sat in the cushioned wooden armchair in front of the desk, holding a warm ceramic cup of boiled water between both palms as she watched the reflection of the flames dance across the polished tabletop.
For a long moment, Cheng Yan simply stared at his lead witch, his mechanical engineer's mind still struggling to digest the sheer ballistic violence he had witnessed on the southern rampart less than an hour ago.
— "Let's start with the metallurgy, Anna," — Roland said quietly, leaning forward slightly over his maps. — "Those three dozen silver spikes spinning around your cloak out there... you used your flame to forge and harden the high-carbon steel beforehand, and then superheated their tips in midair right before impact?"
— "Yes, Your Highness," — Anna replied, her voice calm, steady, and completely transparent now that they were on familiar scientific ground.
Even though she was still months away from her eighteenth birthday and the evolutionary threshold of the Day of Awakening, the precision of her control had grown by leaps and bounds since Roland first taught her about atomic vibration.
— "My fire always responds directly to my mental visualization," — Anna explained, tracing the rim of her warm cup with her thumb. — "Yesterday in the workshop, I took leftover rods of our hardest crucible steel and drew them out into fifty-centimeter needles, since a narrow cross-section concentrates kinetic energy onto the smallest possible surface area. Out on the wall today, I didn't need to alter the nature of my flame; I simply compressed the thermal output to the absolute maximum around the points so the steel would soften the creature's armor on contact without melting the shafts in flight."
Roland nodded slowly, his eyes gleaming with genuine fascination as he processed the thermodynamics.
— "Concentrating thermal energy at the tip of a sub-caliber penetrator to reduce friction against layered composite bone... the ballistic efficiency was extraordinary," — the Prince murmured, half to himself, before his gray eyes narrowed and locked directly onto hers. — "However, there is a massive variable in today's equation that thermal physics cannot explain, Anna."
Anna's small, calloused hands tightened around the warm porcelain of her cup. She knew the exact question that was coming next.
— "Ever since the day I met you in the dungeon, your Magic Core has operated strictly within the domain of heat and combustion," — Roland continued, his tone investigative yet remarkably gentle. — "Yet out there on the parapet, eighty soldiers and I watched you rise two meters into the air without a rope or a gust of exhaust beneath your boots. More than that, fire alone doesn't launch solid steel rods at two hundred and forty meters per second without an explosion. Anna... how did you fly today? Did your power suddenly mutate to manipulate gravity or magnetic fields?"
A heavy, uncomfortable silence settled over the warm study, broken only by the soft pop of burning pine resin in the hearth.
Anna lowered her gaze from the Prince's face, staring down into the clear water inside her cup as a leaden weight pressed against her chest.
Out of everyone in this cold, cruel world, Prince Roland was the person she treasured and respected the most. He was the man who had pulled her off the gallows, draped his own royal cloak over her freezing shoulders, and taught her that she wasn't a filthy servant of the devil. To a girl as straightforward as Anna, the mere thought of telling Roland a lie felt like swallowing broken glass.
Yet two nights ago in the lower corridor, Arthur had entrusted her with a secret that protected the survival of everyone fighting for Border Town—and Anna never broke her word.
— "I... I cannot answer that question, Your Highness," — Anna murmured, her soft voice thick with genuine distress at having to withhold the truth from him as her small shoulders slumped slightly. — "Please, do not ask me to explain the mechanism that lifted me into the air or propelled the steel. I gave my solemn word to keep that part a secret in order to protect this town. If I reveal who or what held me above the walkway today, I would be betraying a critical promise. I ask for Your Highness's forgiveness."
Behind the oak desk, Roland blinked twice, genuinely caught off guard by the sudden wall of silence.
Over the past month of working side by side with Anna at the kilns and the steam engine shed, Cheng Yan had come to know her character inside and out. Anna didn't have a single manipulative or deceitful bone in her body; if she refused to answer a direct question from him while looking this pained, then whatever secret she was guarding was deadly serious.
And as a man who had just learned the afternoon before that Arthur and William were fellow ghosts from Earth—specifically from the year 2028—Roland didn't need a genius intellect to guess whose fingerprints were all over Anna's sudden vow of secrecy.
Letting out a long, soothing breath, Roland leaned back against the leather backrest of his chair, his expression softening into a warm, reassuring smile.
— "There is nothing to forgive, Anna. Put your head up," — Roland said gently. — "Whatever happened behind the scenes today, your courage on that wall saved the lives of eighty soldiers and kept our entire defense from collapsing on day one. If you made a promise to keep the method under wraps, I will respect your silence completely. After all... every single one of us in this castle carries a secret or two we aren't ready to put on the table yet."
Anna raised her head immediately, a wave of profound relief and gratitude washing the tension from her soot-smudged features.
— "Thank you, Your Highness," — she whispered.
— "Before you go back to your room to rest, however, there is one unrelated puzzle that perhaps you can help me make sense of," — Roland added, resting his elbow on the armrest and tapping his chin thoughtfully. — "Just before you arrived, Nightingale mentioned something rather baffling to me while she was patrolling the yard. According to her magical vision, Count Arthur has been walking around the castle for the past several days with a God's Stone of Retaliation tucked inside his coat pocket."
Roland frowned slightly, looking across the desk.
— "Because the stone projects a five-meter magic-nullifying field around his body, Nightingale can't get close to him inside the Mist without her spell being torn apart," — the Prince explained. — "Do you have any idea why our chief strategist—a man who works alongside you and Nana every single day—would carry the primary instrument of the Church's oppression in his pocket?"
This time,Anna didn't have to act or guard her tongue; the shock that flashed across her face was one hundred percent real.
Her blue eyes widened, and her brow furrowed in immediate, genuine astonishment.
— "A God's Stone of Retaliation...?" — Anna repeated aloud, her mind spinning as a massive logical contradiction hit her like a bucket of ice water.
Wait a second... how does that make any sense?! Anna thought, genuine confusion flooding her analytical brain. Two nights ago in the hallway, Sir Arthur told me his power is called Telekinesis, and he used it to catch my books and freeze a torch flame right in front of me! And today on the wall, he lifted me two meters into the sky from the watchtower! If he has been carrying a God's Stone of Retaliation in his overcoat pocket this whole time, shouldn't his own magic have been completely blocked by the stone?!
Seeing that the seventeen-year-old witch was clearly just as baffled by the news as Nightingale had been, Roland realized Anna truly knew nothing about the stone.
— "I had no idea he was carrying one, Your Highness," — Anna answered with crystalline sincerity, shaking her head slowly. — "I cannot imagine how or why he acquired an artifact from the Church... Yet I know Sir Arthur's heart through his actions. He risked himself on the North Slope yesterday to save a miner from the steam vent, and everything he plans is meant to keep your territory standing. Whatever his reason for carrying that stone, I have zero doubt that he is doing it to protect us."
Roland rubbed his chin, giving a quiet nod of agreement. Even if Arthur's methods were cold, sneaky, and occasionally infuriating, the strategist's loyalty to Border Town's survival was beyond question.
While Prince Roland and Anna were wrapping up their talk on the third floor, a pair of silent boots glided down the second-floor gallery of the eastern wing inside a washed-out world of black, white, and gray.
It was Nightingale.
Ever since Anna had politely asked her to leave the Prince's study ten minutes ago, the blonde assassin's mind had been a churning hornet's nest of unanswered questions.
Being shut out of a war room debriefing had stung her pride, yet what truly drove Nightingale crazy was the impossible puzzle sitting right under her nose. She had seen the heavy leather notebooks floating in empty air between Arthur and Anna two nights ago; she had seen Anna hover two meters off the concrete parapet today without a trace of flight magic; and she had seen the pitch-black vacuum of a God's Stone of Retaliation sitting right inside Arthur's coat pocket.
Because of that cursed five-meter anti-magic dead zone surrounding the strategist, Nightingale couldn't corner Arthur in the Mist or use her truth-sense to read his pulse.
If the fox with the inkwell wants to hide behind a Church stone, fine, Nightingale thought, her blue eyes narrowing beneath her white hood as she turned down the hallway toward the Commander's quarters. I'll just bypass the schemer and go straight to his partner.
Unlike Arthur, who guarded every syllable like a miser counting gold coins, William was bold, direct, and utterly fearless. More importantly, Nightingale wasn't blind: she knew perfectly well that the tall, loudmouthed warrior had a massive, unhidden soft spot for her—and right now, she had zero qualms about using that leverage to pry the truth out of him.
Stopping outside the heavy oak door at the end of the hall, Nightingale didn't bother knocking; keeping her Mist veil active, she stepped straight through the solid timber door as if it were smoke.
Inside the bedroom, a cast-iron coal brazier glowed warmly in the corner, filling the stone chamber with a dry, comfortable heat that contrasted sharply with the howling blizzard outside the shutters.
Sitting on the edge of the wide wooden bed in the center of the floor was William.
Having just come up from the bathhouse after clearing the battlefield, the Commander of the First Army had stripped off his blood-splattered wool doublet and steel pauldrons, wearing only his dark breeches and one of those bizarre, seamless black short-sleeved shirts from his homeland that hugged the massive, corded muscles of his chest and shoulders. Resting across his knees was the twenty-kilogram steel heater shield he had used on the wall, and he was methodically wiping the last dark crusts of demonic fox blood off the metal rim with an oiled rag.
Stepping to the center of the flagstones four paces in front of the bed, Nightingale dropped her Mist veil.
The monochrome static dissolved instantly into warm orange candlelight as the assassin materialized in the middle of the room, her gloved arms crossed tightly over her chest and her sharp blue eyes fixed straight on him.
William's hand paused on the rim of the shield.
Looking up at the striking blonde woman standing four feet away with her hood down, he didn't flinch for a millisecond; instead, the grim battlefield focus vanished from his face, replaced immediately by his trademark rogue's smirk mixed with genuine, unmistakable warmth.
Tossing the bloodied rag casually onto the floor beside his boots, William leaned back on his palms against the mattress.
— "Nightingale, my queen," — William purred, his deep voice rumbling comfortably in the quiet room. — "And here I thought that after I spent all morning freezing my ass off in the snow and punching twenty-ton monsters off the wall, a guy would get an afternoon off. Though if you're sneaking through my bedroom walls while I'm half-undressed... I can only assume you finally decided to surrender to my irresistible charm."
Nightingale rolled her eyes toward the timber ceiling, though for the first time since they had met, the sharp, defensive venom was completely absent from her posture.
— "Save your tavern daydreams for later, William; I'm not in the mood for jokes right now," — Nightingale cut in, taking half a step closer as her expression turned dead serious. — "My head is about to split open from trying to make sense of you two, and since your strategist is hiding behind a rock, you're the only one in this castle who gives me straight answers. I was standing right behind you on the parapet today. I know Anna's Magic Core only controls fire, yet I watched her float six feet in the air. And two nights ago in the western hallway, I saw two heavy books hanging in midair between her and Arthur. Give it to me straight: who was holding Anna up in the sky today?"
For two seconds, William looked straight up into Nightingale's piercing blue eyes without saying a word.
He knew that right now, inside her magical vision, she was watching the luminous outline of his body—waiting to see if his silhouette would flicker and darken with the black stain of a lie. He also remembered Arthur's paranoid lecture in the training yard about never breathing a word of the System to anyone.
Yet as William looked at the woman who had stood invisible in the flying black blood on the wall today just to whisper "Good job" in his ear and watch his back, he decided he was completely done feeding Veronica half-truths.
Letting out a slow, honest sigh through his nose, William dropped the playful smirk completely and sat up straight on the edge of the mattress.
— "Honestly? For the first two seconds when she floated up over the concrete, I nearly lost my jaw too," — William admitted bluntly, meeting her gaze without blinking. — "Then I put two and two together with what I scanned on his status sheet this morning. There's zero doubt about it, Veronica. That wasn't Anna flying—that was one hundred percent Arthur's work."
Inside the hidden frequencies of Nightingale's magical sight, William's silhouette didn't darken by a single shade. It shone with pure, unblemished white light—confirming that he believed every single syllable he had just spoken.
Even though she had already suspected the answer on the barracks roof, hearing it confirmed aloud made Nightingale's breath catch in her throat.
Her crossed arms dropped slightly to her sides, her defensive assassin's stance crumbling into sheer, wide-eyed astonishment—followed immediately by a sudden, overwhelming wave of relief that washed through her soul like warm sunlight.
— "He... he really does possess magic?" — Nightingale whispered, a half-incredulous, almost awestruck smile trembling at the corners of her lips as she looked down at William. — "Wait—that means both of you have magic! How is that biologically possible?! Men have never awakened in the history of the Four Kingdoms, and when I look at your chests, neither of you has a Magic Core! Yet if you wield magic... that means you aren't church inquisitors, and you aren't monsters! You're... you're just like us!"
Seeing the way her face lit up at the realization that she and her sisters weren't alone in the universe made William smile warmly.
— "We have magical capabilities, yeah, though our setup works on completely different hardware than a witch's body," — William explained, tapping two fingers against the center of his broad chest. — "You don't see a Magic Core inside Arthur or me because our power doesn't come from winter miasma. Everything we do originates from something called a Dimensional System that fused with us when we crossed over into this world—it's what stores, regulates, and upgrades our abilities."
Nightingale's ecstatic smile faltered, her dark-gold eyebrows knitting together in adorable confusion as she tried to translate the twenty-first-century gaming term into medieval concepts.
— "A... 'System'?" — she repeated slowly, testing the word on her tongue. — "Do you mean some kind of royal banking system from the Kingdom of Dawn? Or is it a secret underground guild of male scholars that passes down ancient magical relics to its initiates?"
William let out a genuine, booming laugh, reaching up to rub the back of his neck.
— "No, gorgeous, it's not a merchant guild or a secret society," — William chuckled, shaking his head before pointing a finger at his own temple. — "It's literally inside my head—and inside Arthur's. The easiest way to picture it is like an invisible piece of glowing blue parchment floating in front of my eyes that only I can see. Whenever Arthur and I complete major survival objectives, save people who were supposed to die, or crush enemies to alter the fate of this valley, that 'System' rewards us with points we call credits. And we can spend those credits directly to upgrade our bodies or our magic."
William held up two fingers.
— "Arthur's awakened magic is called Telekinesis—the ability to grab, lift, and crush physical matter from a distance using only his mind and his mathematical calculations," — William continued openly. — "He dumped all his points into boosting that mental power overnight, which is how he caught Anna's books in the hall and how he lifted her into the sky from the rear watchtower today while firing those steel needles like cannonballs. My personal magic, on the other hand, is called Teleportation. It lets me fold space between two points instantly—though ever since you started shadowing us, I've kept it locked up in the vault and put all my credits into my physical body instead."
Throughout the entire explanation, Nightingale didn't blink once.
In her magical sight, the tall young man sitting on the bed radiated a blinding, unwavering honesty. Every single word—no matter how alien or fantastical it sounded—was the absolute truth.
Unable to contain her intense curiosity, Nightingale took an eager step closer to the bed, her blue eyes shining like sapphires in the candlelight.
— "Show me," — she asked, her husky voice dropping to an excited murmur. — "There is no one else in this wing right now, William. Please... use your magic once so I can see what it looks like with my own eyes."
William grinned, looking very much like a guy who had been dying for an excuse to show off his favorite trick to the girl he liked.
Setting the heavy steel shield down against the bedpost, he stood up smoothly from the mattress, his tall frame towering a head above her in the warm room.
— "Just so we're clear: the brute strength I used to smash those wolves today, and the bone density that let me tank that shield hit without flinching, aren't spells—that's just permanent physical evolution from the System's attribute points," — William explained, rolling his shoulders casually. — "My actual active magic is pretty unique, though. Even in the Association, I doubt you've ever seen a spatial jump that works quite like ours. Watch closely."
Nightingale widened her stance slightly, focusing her magical vision and her elite assassin's reflexes to their absolute peak so she wouldn't miss the slightest ripple of mana.
In the very next millisecond, William mentally pulled the Level 3 spatial trigger inside his chest.
There was no chant. There was no glow of a Magic Core, no preliminary shift of footwork, and not even the faint pop of displaced air he used to make before upgrading his physical control.
One heartbeat, William was standing two feet in front of her beside the bed; the next heartbeat, the space he occupied was completely empty.
Nightingale gasped softly, her blue eyes snapping wide open.
Her battle-honed instincts flared instantly, her senses sweeping the room for the black-and-white spatial distortion that accompanied her own Mist World—yet there was zero trail in the air to track.
Before her boots could even pivot on the flagstones to check her blind spot, she felt the warm, calloused tip of an index finger lightly tap the curve of her left shoulder from directly behind her back.
— "Basically, it works like this," — William's deep, amused baritone sounded two inches behind her ear. — "Zero travel time. Instant spatial displacement."
Nightingale spun around on her heel with the speed of a striking viper, her white cloak flaring out around her legs.
William wasn't even standing right behind her anymore—using a second consecutive charge in the fraction of a second while she turned, he had already reappeared four meters away across the room, leaning his broad shoulder casually against the stone wall beside the coal brazier with his arms crossed and a lazy grin on his face!
For three full seconds, Graycastle's deadliest killer simply stared at him across the bedroom in pure, breathless fascination.
Unlike her Mist World, which shifted her body into an adjacent planar dimension where she still had to walk with her own two feet, William had literally folded the fabric of three-dimensional space in half like a sheet of paper and stepped across the room in zero time!
— "By the gods..." — Nightingale breathed, her hands coming up slightly as a wave of pure, unguarded joy broke across her pale face. — "It really is magic! William, if you and Arthur possess gifts like this... you shouldn't be hiding them in the shadows of a mortal noble's court! Come with me to the Witch Cooperation Association! Even if you are men, once Cara and my sisters see what you can do, I swear to you on my life that you will be welcomed as our brothers!"
Across the room by the brazier, William's cocky grin softened into a warm, slightly melancholic smile.
Pushing his shoulder off the stone wall, he walked slowly back across the flagstones until he was standing in front of her again, shaking his head gently.
— "As tempting as it sounds to run off into the wilderness with you, my queen... I have to turn down the invitation," — William said softly, his voice calm and grounded. — "Did you already forget what I warned you about in this exact room three mornings ago? The Holy Mountain that Cara is chasing in the northern peaks doesn't exist, Veronica. It's a freezing graveyard filled with intelligent Demons. Arthur's place and mine isn't out in an icy cave; it's right here in Border Town, helping Roland build an industrial fortress strong enough that witches never have to run into the snow again."
Nightingale swallowed hard, the reminder of his terrifying prophecy about her sisters sending a sharp pang of anxiety through her chest—especially because, under her magical vision, his refusal shone with the exact same unblemished white light of truth as everything else he had just said.
Shaking her head slightly to clear the heavy thought, she crossed her arms again and looked up at him, her sharp eyes narrowing on the final piece of the puzzle that still didn't add up.
— "Alright, leave the Association aside for a moment. There is still one glaring contradiction in your story, William," — Nightingale said, her tone turning investigative once more. — "Earlier today in the yard, and for the past three days in the corridors, I tried to approach Arthur inside the Mist. Every time I get within five meters of him, my spell hits a pitch-black wall of anti-magic. Your friend is carrying a God's Stone of Retaliation in his coat pocket! If his Telekinesis is magic like yours, how in the world is he carrying a Stone without his own power being completely shut down?!"
The calm, knowing expression on William's face vanished in a microsecond, replaced by a look of genuine, bug-eyed shock.
— "Wait a second... he's carrying what?!" — William blurted out, his jaw dropping as he stared at her in complete disbelief. — "Arthur has been walking around the castle with a God's Stone of Retaliation in his pocket for three days?! Where the hell did he even get one—and why didn't that paranoid, scheming bastard tell me about it?!"
Nightingale blinked, taking half a step back in surprise as his silhouette remained crystal-clear. — "Wait... you genuinely didn't know?"
— "Of course I didn't know!" — William huffed in exasperation, running a hand through his messy dark hair as he paced two steps beside the bed. — "That guy keeps his cards so close to his chest I'm surprised he tells me what day of the week it is! Everybody who knows this world knows that a Stone of Retaliation cancels out native magic on contact... As for why his Telekinesis still works while he has one sitting right inside his pocket?"
William stopped pacing and rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger, his gamer brain rapidly chewing on the lore of the world.
— "Honestly, I have no clue how he figured it out—he probably stole a stone from Barov's vault and tested it on himself in his room without telling me," — William muttered aloud.
Or maybe, William thought silently to himself as a fascinating theory clicked together inside his skull, because our powers come from an interdimensional System rather than a standard Magic Core, the world treats our capabilities the exact same way it treats Extraordinary witches like Tilly, Ashes, and Scroll! In the novel, once a witch evolves past the Extraordinary threshold, her magic becomes completely immune to the God's Stone of Retaliation!
Watching the tall warrior mutter to himself in genuine annoyance at his secretive best friend—every single word and gesture shining with pure, unfiltered honesty in her sight—Nightingale let out a long, quiet breath.
The last shred of professional suspicion that forty-eight hours of training as an assassin had drilled into her vanished completely, replaced by a profound, almost overwhelming mixture of relief, awe, and confusion.
Slowly, Nightingale uncrossed her arms and took one small step forward across the flagstones, closing the distance between them until she was standing less than two feet from his bare chest.
Tilting her head back to look straight up into his dark eyes, her husky voice dropped into a much softer, deeply intimate register:
— "William..." — she began quietly. — "What you just told me and showed me in this room—that two men are walking around Graycastle wielding invisible, Stone-immune powers from another system—is quite possibly the single most dangerous secret on this entire continent. If the Church or the King ever caught a whisper of it, the sky would fall. Yet the moment I walked in here and asked... you didn't hesitate for a single breath. You didn't feed me a polite half-truth, and you didn't refuse to answer like Anna did for Arthur. Why? You've only known me for three weeks. Why do you trust me with your life like this?"
William didn't crack a joke this time. He didn't flash his cocky grin, and he didn't call her a cheeky nickname.
As he looked down at the pale, slender young woman standing in the warm glow of the brazier, the stone bedroom seemed to shrink around them—the howling snowstorm and the roar of gunpowder outside fading away under a sudden, heavy wave of emotional gravity.
For five long seconds, William remained completely silent, his dark eyes searching her face as if weighing the unfathomable ocean of time, space, and tragedy that separated their two lives—and yet had somehow brought them together in this room.
— "You asked me a version of that question once before, in Roland's study," — William said finally, his deep baritone dropping to a soft, remarkably gentle timbre. — "Do you remember that morning when I called you by your birth name—Veronica—for the very first time? And your immediate instinct was to put a silver dagger against my throat because you thought I was a bounty hunter or an inquisitor sent to drag you back to the ashes of your old life?"
Nightingale's shoulders stiffened imperceptibly. Even now, the mere mention of that buried name made old, jagged scars ache beneath her ribs, yet she didn't pull back, giving him a single slow nod.
William took half a step closer, looking down at her with a quiet, unguarded reverence that no man in Graycastle had ever shown her.
— "When I told you that Arthur and I had read the chronicle of your life before we ever came to Border Town, that wasn't a figure of speech," — William said softly. — "I didn't just read your combat stats or your codename, Veronica. I know who you are underneath that white cloak. I know every single piece of hell you walked through before you ever met Cara or Roland."
Nightingale's breath hitched in her chest.
— "I know that when you were just a little girl in a minor noble house, your parents were torn away from you overnight," — William continued, his voice thick with a deep, aching empathy that made her blue eyes widen and tremble in the candlelight. — "Nobody gave you an explanation, and nobody gave you justice. You had to lock yourself in the dark and swallow your grief completely alone so you could be strong for your younger brother."
To Nightingale, every quiet word leaving William's mouth felt like a warm iron key turning inside a rusted lock she had welded shut at the bottom of her soul years ago.
— "I know that you sacrificed your entire youth for that brother," — William said, holding her trembling gaze without blinking. — "You loved him, you shielded him from your scheming relatives, and when your greedy uncle cornered the two of you after your magic awakened... you agreed to dirty your own hands so your brother could live a clean, safe noble life. You let your uncle turn you into his invisible blade in the dark. A girl who only wanted to protect her family was forced to slit the throats of dozens—maybe hundreds—of political rivals against her will, carrying the crushing weight of strangers' blood on her conscience every single night."
Nightingale couldn't draw a breath. Her chest felt as though an iron band were tightening around her lungs.
She had never spoken a single word about those dark years to anyone—not to Prince Roland, and not even to Wendy, the gentle witch who had been her closest friend in the Association for years. Even among her witch sisters, Veronica had always hidden her blood-soaked past behind a mask of lazy smiles, dried fish, and sharp sarcasm, secretly terrified that if anyone knew how many people she had murdered before escaping her family, they would look at her as the exact monster the Church claimed she was.
And yet here stood this impossibly strong man from another world, laying her darkest, ugliest scars out in the warm light—and there wasn't a single drop of judgment, disgust, or pity in his eyes. There was only pure, fiercely protective respect.
— "And I know how that nightmare ended," — William whispered, his voice rough with emotion. — "When the noble house finally turned on you, the very brother you had sacrificed your soul to protect looked at you with terror and betrayed you to save his own skin, leaving you to burn down your old life and bury 'Veronica' in the ashes. I know all of that, Nightingale. Even if a guy like me from a peaceful world could never truly fathom a fraction of how lonely and agonizing those years were for you... I know your heart well enough to know that you deserve nothing less than my complete honesty."
Raising his right hand, William rubbed the back of his neck with a self-conscious, almost boyish vulnerability—stripping away every trace of the "Invincible Guardian" and the loudmouthed protagonist.
— "Because the truth is, Veronica... compared to you, I'm not emotionally strong at all," — William confessed quietly. — "I talk loud and I punch hard because I was lucky enough to grow up in a world where my biggest problem was passing exams and winning martial arts tournaments. If I had been thrown into even one-tenth of the betrayal and darkness you survived as a teenager, I would have lost my mind, turned bitter against the whole world, or given up. Yet you didn't break. You crawled out of those ashes, kept your heart warm, and still risk your life every single day to keep girls like Anna and Nana safe. That is why I admire you so damn much. And that is why I respect you more than any king, prince, or general on this continent."
William drew in a slow, deep breath, taking one final half-step forward until the heat radiating from his chest brushed against her cloak as he spoke his final, absolute truth:
— "To me, Veronica, you aren't just the most extraordinary witch I've ever seen, and you aren't just the most breathtaking woman in Graycastle," — William said, his dark eyes burning with unwavering sincerity. — "You are, without a single shadow of a doubt, the most incredible human being in this entire world."
When his voice faded, a silence deeper than the snowstorm outside fell over the stone chamber.
Standing less than a foot in front of him, Nightingale opened her parted lips, automatically trying to summon one of her practiced, teasing retorts—some sharp, ironic joke about his cheesy tongue that had always served as her impenetrable armor whenever someone got too close.
No sound came out. It felt as though a jagged stone had lodged itself sideways in her throat.
She dropped her gaze toward the flagstones between their boots as a sudden, suffocating ache tightened across the center of her chest. Without warning, the sharp outlines of the stone floor blurred into a watery smear of gray and gold.
She blinked once in confusion—and two hot, salty drops spilled over her pale lower lashes, cutting twin tracks down her cheeks before splashing onto the front of her white cloak.
She was crying.
Stunned by the betrayal of her own body, Nightingale quickly raised a gloved hand to her face, trying to scrub the moisture fiercely off her skin before he could see it—yet the moment she touched her cheek, the dam that had held back ten years of solitary grief, silent guilt, and bone-deep loneliness shattered into a million pieces.
The overwhelming shock of finally being completely seen, understood, and cherished for the exact person she was underneath the blood and the mist dissolved every defense she possessed. Lowering her head, Graycastle's most feared assassin stood in the middle of the bedroom with her gloved hands pressed over her eyes as quiet, heartbreaking sobs shook her slender shoulders.
Two feet away, William took a startled half-step backward, his dark eyes flying wide open in absolute, deer-in-the-headlights panic.
Holy crap—WHAT DID I JUST DO?! William's brain completely short-circuited, all his smooth confidence evaporating in half a second. Wait a minute! In the entire thousand-chapter webnovel, Nightingale is the toughest girl in the cast! She practically never cries except when her heart breaks over Roland choosing Anna at the very end! Why the hell did my speech just make her burst into tears?! Did I push her trauma buttons way too hard?!
For two agonizing seconds, the man who had just punched charging demonic wolves to death in midair stood frozen to the floorboards, utterly terrified of making the wrong move. He didn't want to seem pushy, and he was terrified that if he grabbed her right now, she would think he was taking advantage of her while her guard was down.
His large, calloused hands hovered awkwardly in the air, trembling slightly as his voice cracked:
— "N-Nightingale...? Veronica?!" — William stammered, practically tripping over his own tongue in front of the weeping girl. — "H-hey, is everything okay?! Why are you crying?! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to dig up bad memories to hurt you, I just—"
Keeping her face hidden behind her gloved palms, Nightingale shook her head rapidly from side to side—unable to form a single spoken word as the hot tears slipped freely between her fingers and her knees trembled from the sheer emotional release.
Watching her struggle desperately and unsuccessfully to pull her stoic mask back over her trembling shoulders, William's awkward panic vanished in a heartbeat—swallowed whole by the fierce, unthinking instinct to protect that defined everything he was.
He wasn't a slick poet like Arthur, and he knew he sucked at delicate, comforting speeches. Yet looking at her right now, he didn't need a System interface to tell him what he had to do.
Closing the last foot of distance between them in a single, steady stride, William reached out with both strong arms and wrapped them gently—yet unyieldingly—around Nightingale's trembling shoulders, pulling her straight against his chest.
Resting his chin lightly atop her soft silver-blonde hair, he guided her face into the warm curve of his neck and shoulder, shielding her from the light of the room.
For a fraction of a second, Nightingale's body tensed by pure reflex—before the last ounce of resistance drained out of her frame. Her gloved hands dropped from her face and gripped the fabric of his black shirt at his ribs with white-knuckled force, burying her wet forehead against his warm skin.
William didn't say another word. He simply stood like an immovable pillar in the center of the brazier-lit chamber, holding the deadliest witch in the kingdom securely in his arms and offering her the one thing she had never possessed in her entire life: a warm, unbreakable harbor where she didn't have to be strong alone anymore.