Chapter : 711

It was Ken who spotted the anomaly first. As the carriage navigated a sharp bend around a rocky outcropping, he held up a single, silent hand, a signal for the driver to halt.

“The stream,” Ken said, his voice a low murmur. His gaze was fixed on a small, clear stream that trickled across the road ahead. “The water is clear. But there is no life. No water-bugs on the surface. No small fish in the shallows. The birds on the bank are silent.”

It was a masterful piece of observation, the kind of subtle environmental detail that a hundred other travelers would have missed. But to a trained operative like Ken, it was a blaring alarm bell. Nature’s silence often preceded death.

Lloyd focused his [All-Seeing Eye] on the stream. The water itself appeared normal. But when he shifted his perception, looking for energy signatures beyond the visible spectrum, he saw it. A faint, almost invisible, sickly green aura clinging to the water molecules. It was a slow-acting paralytic poison, tasteless, odorless, and designed to be absorbed through the skin. The horses would have walked through it, their hooves and lower legs becoming coated. Within an hour, they would have collapsed, leaving the carriage and its occupants stranded in the wilderness, perfect, helpless targets.

It was a far more sophisticated and patient trap than the deadfall. This was the work of a professional.

“Poison,” Lloyd confirmed quietly. “A neurotoxin. Non-lethal to the touch, but absorbed over time. They want us stranded.”

“A clever gambit,” Ken acknowledged, a flicker of professional respect in his tone. “They are adapting. They have realized that overt, kinetic attacks are not the optimal path.”

“And we will adapt in turn,” Lloyd said. He had no way to neutralize the poison itself, but he didn't need to. He simply needed to bypass the trap. He looked at the terrain. The stream was narrow, but the banks were steep and muddy, too difficult for a heavy carriage to navigate.

Once again, a direct, magical solution would be too revealing. He needed to maintain the illusion of being a lucky, if unusually perceptive, nobleman.

He turned to his bodyguard. “Ken. I believe the horses are thirsty. But they seem hesitant to drink from this tainted stream. Perhaps we should… encourage them to find a different path.”

A flicker of understanding passed through Ken’s dark eyes. He understood the subtext perfectly. They were not just going to avoid the trap; they were going to leave a message.

Ken dismounted from the carriage, moving with his usual silent grace. He went to the head of the lead horses and spoke to them in a low, calming voice, his hand resting gently on the mare’s neck. Then, with a sudden, explosive display of his own inhuman power, he simply… lifted.

The muscles in his back and shoulders bunched, and with a low grunt of effort, he physically lifted the front end of the entire carriage—horses, harness, and all—clear off the ground. He turned, pivoting on his heel, and set the entire assembly down on the other side of the narrow, poisoned stream with a heavy, solid thud. The horses, terrified and confused by their brief, inexplicable flight, snorted and stamped their hooves.

From their distant observation point, Jager and Kael watched the entire event unfold through a pair of powerful scrying crystals. Kael’s jaw hung open, his face a mask of pure, slack-jawed disbelief.

“Did… did you just see that?” he stammered. “His bodyguard… he just… he just picked up the entire carriage.”

Jager was silent. The amused, confident smile was gone from his face, replaced by a thin, hard line. The faint green glow in his eyes intensified, a sign of his growing fury. He was no longer intrigued. He was angry.

First, an impossible mechanical failure. Now, a display of strength so monstrous it defied all known physical laws. The target’s bodyguard was not just a skilled warrior; he was a walking siege engine, a creature of myth. The data for his operation was becoming increasingly, infuriatingly flawed.

“That man is not a normal guard,” Kael whispered, his voice filled with a new, profound fear. “He is a monster. We are hunting a monster who is protected by another monster.”

“Every monster has a weakness,” Jager hissed, his voice a low, venomous snarl. But for the first time, his words lacked their usual, unshakeable confidence. He watched as the bodyguard calmly climbed back into the carriage, which then continued on its journey as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

They had been discovered. Their trap had not just been avoided; it had been contemptuously and physically bypassed in a way that was a direct, insulting message. We see you. We know you are there. And your pathetic little tricks are nothing to us.

The hunter was beginning to feel a great deal like the hunted.

Jager lowered his scrying crystal, his knuckles white. The game of shadows was not going according to plan. Their target was proving to be more than just perceptive; he was elusive, unpredictable, and protected by a force of nature. Their simple assassination mission was rapidly evolving into a complex and dangerous war of attrition.

“They are moving faster now,” Kael noted, his voice tight with anxiety. “They know we are behind them. We are losing them.”

“We are not losing them,” Jager corrected, his voice a cold whip-crack of authority. “We are allowing them to think they have escaped. Let them run. Let them feel a false sense of security. We will fall back, circle around, and get ahead of them. The next trap will not be one they can see or muscle their way through. The next trap will be a social one. A political one.”

He turned, his dark cloak swirling around him. “We are done playing games in the wilderness. Our new hunting ground will be the city. And in a city, even a monster can be caught in a gilded cage.”

He melted back into the shadows of the rocks, leaving a bewildered and terrified Kael to scramble after him. The physical trail was lost. But the hunt was far from over. It was simply moving to a new, and far more dangerous, battlefield.

Chapter : 712

The sound was almost imperceptible, a gentle, rhythmic patter against the leaded glass of the suite’s towering windows. Rain. Not a storm, but a soft, persistent drizzle that blurred the world outside into a watercolor of greys and muted greens. Rosa Siddik sat at her writing desk, a quill held in her slender fingers, poised over a blank sheet of parchment. She had been sitting this way for nearly an hour, her mind a pristine, orderly void. The silence in the room was absolute, a carefully constructed fortress she had built around herself over the years. It was her sanctuary, her armor.

But the rain… the rain was a traitor.

Each soft tap on the glass was a pebble striking the surface of a still pond, sending out ripples that disturbed the perfect calm of her mind. The ripples were not of thought, but of feeling. Faint, ghostly echoes of something long buried. A warmth she had not allowed herself to feel in years. Her icy composure, the legendary stillness that had earned her the name "Ice Flower of the South," felt a single, microscopic crack form in its foundation.

And through that crack, a memory bloomed. Not a memory she had summoned, but one that had slipped past her guards, invited by the traitorous sound of the rain.

---

“Hurry up, Rosa-chan! We’re going to be late!”

Seven-year-old Rosa giggled, her feet a blur as she ran down the grand, sunlit hallway of the Siddik estate. Her dress, a confection of sky-blue silk, swished around her knees. “I’m coming, Mama! I’m coming!”

Her mother, Nilufa, waited by the main doors, a vision of warmth and grace. She held the hand of Mina, who, at nine, already carried herself with a weary sort of dignity, as if her younger sister’s boundless energy was a personal burden. A nurse stood beside them, gently rocking a swaddled bundle that was the infant Yacob.

“And where are we going, Mama? Is it the market? Can I get a honey-cake?” Rosa bounced on the balls of her feet, her bright, curious eyes wide with anticipation.

Nilufa laughed, a sound like wind chimes. “Not the market today, my little spark. We are visiting your father’s old friend, an Arch Duke. It’s a very important house, so you must be on your best behavior.” She looked at her daughter’s irrepressible smile and sighed fondly. “Or, at least, try not to break anything too expensive.”

Mina rolled her eyes. “She’ll probably try to slide down the main staircase.”

“Ooh, that’s a good idea!” Rosa chirped, earning a sharp look from her mother that was softened by the amusement in her eyes.

The journey in the carriage was an eternity for a girl whose entire being was made of wiggles and questions. She pressed her face to the window, watching the world race by in a smear of green and brown. The Ferrum estate, when they finally arrived, was a different world. It was a fortress of grey stone, imposing and ancient, with banners that snapped in the wind like angry dragons. It was so… serious.

But to a seven-year-old girl, “serious” was just another word for “a really big playground.”

While the adults disappeared into a stuffy room filled with maps and low, rumbling voices, Rosa was given her freedom. “Stay in the gardens, dear,” her mother had said. “And do not wander.”

It was advice given to the wind. The gardens were a beautiful prison, meticulously kept with rows of stern-looking roses and hedges cut into severe shapes. It was boring. Her feet, possessed of a will entirely their own, carried her past the manicured lawns, following the sound of water.

She found it at the edge of the formal gardens, a small, natural pond that had been allowed to remain wild. Dragonflies with wings like stained glass darted over the water’s surface, and the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and sweet blossoms. And there, at the edge of the pond, was a boy.

He was about her age, with dark, serious hair and an even more serious expression on his face. He was crouched by the water, his brow furrowed in a look of intense, world-ending frustration. He picked up a flat, smooth stone, weighed it in his palm, and with a grunt of effort, flicked his wrist. The stone skipped across the water—one, two, three, four times—before sinking with a sad little plunk.

The boy let out an exasperated sigh.

Rosa, who had never seen a creature so young look so utterly annoyed, trotted over. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked, her voice a cheerful bell in the quiet air.

The boy startled, looking up at her with wide, dark eyes. “I’m skipping stones,” he grumbled, as if it were the most difficult and thankless task in the world.

“Why’s your face all scrunched up like that?” she asked, tilting her head. “It doesn’t look very fun.”

“It’s not,” he muttered, picking up another stone. “I can’t get it to skip more than four times. My father can do seven. Even Ken can do six. But I’m stuck at four.” He said the word “four” like it was a curse.

Rosa’s eyes lit up. “Oooh! A game! Show me how to play!”

The boy sighed again, the long-suffering sigh of a master craftsman burdened with a clueless apprentice. He stood, demonstrated the precise grip on the stone, the low, side-arm posture, and the final, sharp flick of the wrist. He threw his stone. One… two… three… four… plunk.

“See?” he said, his shoulders slumping.

Rosa nodded seriously, absorbing the information. She then bent down, her eyes scanning the pebbles. She didn’t look for the flattest one, but for one that felt right in her small hand—smooth, balanced, happy. She found one, a perfect grey disc. Mimicking the boy’s posture with the natural, unthinking grace of a child, she drew her arm back and threw.

It wasn’t a flick of the wrist. It was a dance. The stone left her fingers with a whisper and kissed the surface of the pond.

Skip.

It leaped, a tiny silver fish breaking the surface.

Skip. Skip. Skip. Skip.

It passed four, and the boy’s eyes widened.

Skip. Skip. Skip.

It passed seven, and the boy’s jaw fell open.

Skip. Skip. Skip.

The stone finally lost its momentum after the twelfth skip, sliding to a gentle stop before sinking into the green depths.

Silence. The only sound was the buzzing of a dragonfly.

The boy stared at the ripples, then at Rosa, then back at the ripples, his mind clearly struggling to process the event. “Was that… was that your first time?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Rosa beamed, a smile that lit up the entire pond. “Yep! But this stone skipping thing is very easy!”

To prove her point, she picked up another stone and threw it. Eleven skips. She threw another. Thirteen. It was effortless, a natural extension of her own joyful energy. The boy, meanwhile, picked up his own stone and threw it with a renewed, desperate focus. One, two, three, plunk. He threw another. One, two, three, four, plunk.

He finally dropped his stones and turned to her, his earlier frustration completely replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated awe. “You’re a genius,” he breathed.

Rosa puffed out her little chest, placing her hands on her hips in a posture of magnificent pride. “I know,” she declared happily. “My mama says so all the time!”

The spell of his frustration was broken. The boy laughed, a real, genuine laugh that made his serious face look entirely different. For the rest of the day, the pond was forgotten. They ran through the wilder parts of the estate, he the serious planner, she the joyful force of chaos. They had a mock sword fight with fallen branches, where he tried to teach her proper stances and she just whacked him repeatedly while giggling. They discovered a hollow log and declared it their secret fortress, swearing an oath of eternal secrecy sealed by a shared wild berry that stained their lips purple. He was quiet, thoughtful, and methodical. She was bright, spontaneous, and laughed at everything. They were a perfect mismatch, and they had the most fun Rosa had ever had.

Later, as the sun began to dip below the trees, casting long shadows across the grass, a voice called her name. It was time to go.

As she was being led away by her mother, she turned and waved frantically at the boy. “Wait!” she called out. “I don’t know your name!”

The boy, who had been watching her leave with a strangely sad expression, smiled a little. “My name is Lloyd,” he called back. “Lloyd Ferrum.”

Rosa grinned. “I’m Rosa! See you again soon, Lloyd!”

He waved back, a small, hopeful gesture.

But she never did see him again. Not for many, many years. Not until the boy was a man and she was… something else entirely. The memory of that day, of the sunshine and the laughter and the easy, uncomplicated joy of a new friend, had been one of her most treasured possessions. A perfect, sun-warmed stone she kept in the pocket of her heart.

----

The quill in the present-day Rosa’s hand trembled, leaving a tiny black tear of ink on the pristine parchment. Her eyes were fixed on the rain-streaked window, but she wasn’t seeing the gardens of the Ferrum estate. She was seeing a pond, a lifetime ago.

She had forgotten so much.

In the last few years, since her mother had slipped into that endless, silent sleep, the world had lost its color. Joy became a liability. Laughter felt like a betrayal. To survive the crushing weight of her family’s grief and the sudden burden of its future, Rosa had systematically packed away every bright and warm piece of herself. She had taken the cheerful, lively girl who could make stones dance on water and locked her in the coldest, deepest dungeon of her soul. In her place, she had forged the Ice Flower of the South. A perfect, unfeeling, and unbreakable work of art.

The memory of Lloyd Ferrum—the quiet, serious boy at the pond—was a ghost. It was the ghost of a feeling she had long since murdered. The pure, simple fun of that day was a language she no longer spoke. The warmth in her chest as the memory faded was an agonizing ache, a phantom limb of a heart she had amputated herself.

A single, crystalline tear traced a path down her cheek, as cold as the rain on the windowpane. She did not wipe it away. She simply let it fall, a final, silent tribute to the girl she had been, and the fun she had completely, utterly, forgotten.