Episode-257

Words : 1565 Updated : Oct 3rd, 2025

Chapter : 513 There was not a loud, splintering crash. There was a single, sharp, concussive BOOM that sounded like a cannon firing, and the entire door, along with a significant portion of its stone frame, simply... disintegrated, blown inwards into a cloud of dust and splinters by the sheer, overwhelming kinetic force of the blow. It was an act of brutal, surgical, and terrifyingly efficient, entry. They burst into the room together, Roy and Ken, two apex predators moving as one, their senses assaulted by a scene of utter, comprehensive chaos. The room was a wreck. A warzone. The air was a chaotic, almost un-breathable soup of conflicting energies and smells. The sharp, clean scent of ozone from raw, untamed lightning warred with the acrid smell of superheated, melting metal. The cold, sterile bite of absolute zero fought against the lingering, smoky heat of a dozen small, extinguished fires. And beneath it all, the familiar, almost mocking, scent of rosemary and almond, the signature of the very enterprise that had, it seemed, just tried to kill its own creator. The study itself was a ruin. The heavy oak desk was gone, replaced by a pile of fine, grey dust. The weapons rack was a twisted, melted slag of steel. The shelves were shattered, ancient books and priceless scrolls scattered across the floor, some smoldering, some encased in a delicate, beautiful, and utterly unnatural, filigree of frost. The stone walls were gouged, scored with deep, black furrows, as if they had been clawed by a giant, metallic beast. The very air still seemed to shimmer, to vibrate with the aftershocks of the catastrophic energy release. And in the center of it all, in a small, clear space at the eye of the storm, lay Lloyd. He was unconscious, sprawled on the floor like a discarded marionette, his limbs at unnatural angles. His face was as pale as death, his dark hair plastered to his brow with a sweat that seemed to have frozen into a fine, crystalline frost. His tunic was shredded, his skin visible beneath, covered in a strange, terrifying pattern of both angry, red burn marks and delicate, lace-like frost burns, a testament to the warring elemental forces that had raged through his body. A thin trickle of blood, dark and sluggish, leaked from the corner of his mouth. But it was the energy still clinging to him that made both powerful men freeze. His body was still faintly crackling, tiny, uncontrolled arcs of azure lightning, no larger than a spark, dancing erratically across his skin, a sign that his bond with his spirit was still a raging, uncontrolled storm. He was a living lightning rod, a vessel on the verge of being consumed by the very power he was supposed to command. “By the ancestors...” Roy breathed, the words a raw, choked whisper of pure, paternal horror. He took a step forward, his hand outstretched, but Ken stopped him, a single, firm hand on his arm. “Careful, Your Grace,” Ken’s voice was a low, urgent growl. “The energy is still unstable. Touching him now could be... fatal.” It was in that moment of horrified, helpless paralysis that the third figure arrived. Milody Austin Ferrum swept into the ruined study, a silver-haired wraith, her usual serene grace replaced by a fierce, almost feral, maternal terror. Her eyes, one a normal, intelligent blue, the other a blazing, abyss-black ring of power, took in the scene in an instant. She saw her husband, her retainer, frozen in shock. She saw the devastation. And she saw her son, her child, lying broken and unconscious on the floor, a flickering candle in the heart of a magical hurricane. She did not hesitate. She did not pause to analyze. She acted. “Get back!” she commanded, her voice ringing with an authority that made both powerful men, the Arch Duke and his Transcended bodyguard, instinctively obey. She swept past them, her silken robe swirling around her, utterly unconcerned by the crackling, unstable energy. She knelt beside Lloyd, her face a mask of pale, fierce concentration. She could feel it, the chaos raging within him. The fiery, aggressive Ferrum Steel power, uncontrolled, lashing out. The cold, insidious Austin ice, a power she knew was not his own but had been imprinted upon him, trying to freeze him from the inside out. And the raw, untamed lightning of his Transcended spirit, a storm with no master, threatening to tear his very spirit core apart. And woven through it all, a new, strange, and utterly alien energy—the energy of the System update itself, a force that was not of this world, rewriting his very being at a fundamental, metaphysical level. Chapter : 514 “Fools,” she whispered, her voice a mixture of love, of fear, of a mother’s absolute, unwavering resolve. “You see only the storm. You do not see the cause.” She placed her hands on her son’s chest. Not with the gentle, healing glow of a common life-mage. But with the cold, absolute authority of a master of her own, unique, and terrifyingly potent, bloodline. Her own Black Ring Eye blazed with a new, intense light. She was not trying to heal him. She was not trying to fight the storm. She was trying to do something far more difficult, far more dangerous. She was trying to contain it. To impose order on the chaos. To seal the raging, warring powers within him before they consumed him completely. She focused her will, her entire being, pouring the ancient, controlling power of her Austin lineage into him. She placed a seal, not on his senses, not on his strength, but on the very flow of the chaotic energy itself, trying to build a dam against the flood. The room fell silent, the only sound the ragged, shallow breathing of the unconscious boy on the floor, and the low, intense hum of a mother fighting a desperate, silent, and deeply, profoundly, personal war for the life, and the very soul, of her fallen prince. The battle for Lloyd Ferrum’s future was no longer his own to fight. It was now in the hands of the woman who had given him half of the very power that was threatening to destroy him. --- Consciousness was a distant shore, and Lloyd Ferrum was adrift on a vast, turbulent, and utterly silent ocean of non-being. The world, if it could be called a world, was a chaotic, swirling nebula of deep, bruised blue and a stark, furious, almost aggressive, crimson. The two colors did not blend; they warred, they clashed, they twisted around each other in a silent, cosmic ballet of conflict and despair. He was a disembodied point of awareness, a single, lonely thought floating in this beautiful, terrifying void, a space that felt both intimately familiar and profoundly, terrifyingly, alien. This dream... he recognized it. It was the same unsettling, abstract vision that had haunted the edges of his sleep since his return to Riverio, a recurring nightmare that left him with a lingering sense of unease he couldn't quite shake. But this time, it was different. Sharper. More... urgent. From the heart of the swirling crimson mist, the figure began to coalesce. It was not a gradual formation, but a sudden, sharp assertion of presence, as if a tear had been ripped in the fabric of the dream. The crimson silhouette of a man, taller than any man had a right to be, its form featureless, sculpted from pure, silent, incandescent rage. It stood across the void, a beacon of raw, untamed, and deeply, profoundly, familiar emotion. In previous dreams, the figure had been distant, its gestures vague, its attempts at communication a meaningless torrent of static. But now... now, it was closer. The details, while still absent, felt more defined. The anger radiating from it was no longer a diffuse, background hum; it was a focused, desperate, almost painful, wave of energy directed solely at him. The crimson man raised his featureless hand, and this time, the gesture was not one of vague command or frustrated beckoning. It was a plea. A desperate, silent scream for help. The crimson of his form seemed to pulse, to brighten with the sheer, overwhelming force of his silent entreaty. He was trying to reach him, to bridge the swirling, silent abyss that separated them. Lloyd’s own point of awareness felt a surge of a strange, inexplicable emotion—a powerful, almost overwhelming, empathy for this silent, raging, crimson ghost. He didn’t know who he was, what he represented. But he felt his pain. He felt his urgency. He felt his desperate, silent call. He tried to move towards him, to answer the call. He focused his will, his disembodied consciousness, trying to push through the turbulent currents of the dream-sea. But something held him back. A cold, heavy, and equally powerful, force. The deep, bruised blue of the void seemed to congeal around him, a thick, viscous, and deeply sorrowful presence, pulling him away, anchoring him in a sea of silent, glacial despair. The two forces, the furious red and the sorrowful blue, warred over him, a silent, cosmic tug-of-war with his very soul as the rope. The crimson man’s form flickered, his silent scream of frustration intensifying. The blue mist swirled, thickened, its cold, heavy sorrow a tangible, crushing weight.

Episode-257

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