Chapter 62: The Siren's Frozen Lament
The Icebound Vigil
The lakeshore night gnawed at bones. Unlike the forest's sheltering embrace, the Great Circle Lake's expanse offered no mercy. Winds howled unimpeded across the frozen wasteland, razoring through cloaks and resolve alike. Bennett's teeth chattered despite layered furs. Each breath crystallized into daggers stabbing his lungs.
Byrnrich crouched beside him, eyes scanning the obsidian ice. "You're mad to volunteer, mage," the mercenary chief grunted, though gratitude flickered beneath his frost-stiffened beard. "Your kind belongs near hearths, not corpses."
"Hearths don't hunt ghosts," Bennett countered, flexing numb fingers. Truthfully, he'd stayed for the unspoken pact between them—honor demanded no less. Eleven men had vanished without trace or scream. Whatever stalked them respected neither steel nor spell.
Theatrics of Desperation
The camp had transformed into a macabre stage. Men buried themselves in snowdrifts like hibernating bears. Strelir's archers roosted in skeletal pines, bowstrings taut as piano wire. Old One-Eye, ever the maestro of mortality, sprawled by a roaring fire, slurping stew with theatrical gusto.
"Bait's got to smell tasty," the one-handed cook had cackled, tossing a wolf femur into the flames. "Come on, you icy bastard. Dinner's served."
Three nights passed.
Three nights of silence.
By dawn's fourth mockery, even Byrnrich's resolve cracked. "We leave tomorrow," he rasped, scrubbing his face with snow until raw flesh gleamed. "Can't let pride slaughter what's left."
The Lullaby of Drowned Souls
Midnight's clawed hand gripped the camp. Exhaustion draped the men like burial shrouds. Strelir snored open-mouthed in his pine perch. Dadanel swayed mid-sentence, muttering incoherently about "shadow-wolves." Only Bennett remained sharp—his magically honed mind a blade against the creeping stupor.
Then it came.
A sound like drowned violins.
Melodic. Hypnotic.
Bennett's spine liquefied. The notes coiled through his skull—a mother's lullaby twisted into funeral dirge. His legs moved unbidden, boots crunching toward the lake. No. Fight it! He bit his tongue until copper flooded his mouth. Pain shattered the spell's gossamer threads.
The horror unfolded in slow motion.
Men shuffled like marionettes toward the ice. Byrnrich marched slack-jawed, sword abandoned. Dadanel giggled, clawing at phantom butterflies. At the shoreline, young Jorgen stepped onto the frozen mirror—and plunged through a sudden fissure without scream or splash.
Echoes Beneath the Ice
"WAKE!" Bennett roared, hurling a firebolt skyward. The explosion painted the scene in hellish relief.
There, midway across the lake, stood the thing.
Baer's corpse—pale as drowned moonlight—leered through lidless eyes. The fatal ice-spike wound gaped like a third socket. Its lips peeled back, releasing that cursed melody. Flesh sloughed from waterlogged fingers as it pointed accusingly at Bennett.
The mage's second firebolt disintegrated harmlessly against the ice. Baer's corpse croaked laughter, a sound like cracking glaciers. Behind it, shapes writhed beneath the frozen surface—elongated, sinuous, hungry.
Tactical Breakdown
1. The Lure of Oblivion
The siren song weaponizes despair—a psychic virus exploiting the men's exhaustion and grief. Each victim's memories feed the spell, making resistance a battle against one's own ghosts.
2. Fractured Reflections
Baer's reanimated corpse symbolizes the mercenaries' unprocessed trauma. His public death (Chapter 61) left wounds festering beneath stoic facades—now literalized as a vengeful apparition.
3. Elemental Warfare
Bennett's fire magic fails against enchanted ice, foreshadowing a critical vulnerability. The lake itself emerges as an ancient, sentient foe—a Lovecraftian leviathan wearing dead men's faces.
Chapter 63: The Phantom and the Phoenix
Symphony of Desperation
Bennett's roar split the frigid air as he slammed a dagger into a thrall-like mercenary's thigh. Blood bloomed crimson on snow, yet the man crawled onward, oblivious. The lake's siren song had hollowed their minds—zombies marching to a drowned god's tune.
"WAKE UP, DAMN YOU!" Bennett tackled another soldier, binding limbs with frayed ropes. His hands shook—not from cold, but terror. Across the ice, silhouettes plunged into black water. Two more gone. Three. Four.
A fireball fizzled in his palm. Too far. The spectral figure taunted from the lake's heart, its melody weaving through wind and madness.
Semel Rawlins: "It's a Lacustrine Siren."
Bennett whirled. The crimson-robed specter stood rigid, eyes flickering between panic and ancient recognition.
"Where the hell have you been?!" he snarled, gutting another mercenary's calf. "They're dying!"
"I… I shouldn't know this," Semel Rawlins whispered, clutching her temples. "But the words—they're burning—"
"BURN LATER!" Bennett hurled a knife. It passed through her illusion, clattering on ice. "SAVE THEM NOW!"
Echoes of a Goddess
Semel Rawlins's form flickered. Then—
A seismic shift.
Her posture straightened, shoulders rolling back like a queen reclaiming her throne. The playful lilt in her voice hardened to glacial steel: "Enough."
A single syllable cracked the night.
Bennett staggered as her true voice erupted—a blade forged from starlight and suffering. The mercenaries collapsed, writhing. Ice shattered. The siren's song faltered.
"Pathetic vermin," Semel Rawlins intoned, levitating above the carnage. Her hair writhed like silver serpents, eyes blazing with millennia-old contempt. "You dare serenade me?"
The lake demon screeched, clawing at its borrowed corpse. Semel Rawlins smirked, fingers dancing. A prismatic sphere engulfed the creature, peeling flesh from bone.
Revealed: A bulbous, mucus-slick abomination—half squid, half eel—twitching in midair.
"Ah. Lernaea lacus," Semel Rawlins purred, dissecting it with finger-flicks. Green ichor rained. "Your species' extinction was my third-favorite pastime."
The Lover's Gambit
Bennett gaped as the lake vomited up swallowed men. This wasn't his chatty, barefoot companion. This was her—the legends made flesh. The woman who'd once scorched continents for love.
Semel Rawlins drifted earthward, aura dimming. Her gaze softened upon meeting Bennett's blood-streaked face.
"Dearest…" Her voice fractured, trembling. "I swore… never to wield magic again. But when you were in pain…"
She collapsed.
Bennett caught her—or tried. His hands phased through.
"Zak…" she murmured, translucent fingers brushing his cheek. "You smell like him. Sunfire and elderwood."
Bennett: "Who's Zak?"
The name detonated in his skull. Zak Roland. His five-times-great-grandfather. The husband of the Semel Rawlins—archmage, conqueror, and the woman who'd famously burned her own soul to escape grief.
"Oh hells," Bennett whispered. "You're not a copy. You're her echo."
Semel Rawlins's spectral form flickered, a smile ghosting her lips. "Clever boy. Now ask yourself… why does a shadow bleed memories?"
Tactical Revelations
1. The Fractured Mirror
Semel Rawlins's split identity—playful illusion vs. wrathful archmage—mirrors the lake siren's duality (corpse puppet vs. true form). Both are entities wearing borrowed skins, probing Bennett's world.
2. Bloodline Crucible
Zak's invocation ties Bennett's lineage to ancient magical pacts. Semel Rawlins's lingering attachment suggests his blood may be a key—or a sacrifice—to restoring her power.
3. The Cost of Godhood
Semel Rawlins's refusal to use magic (until now) hints at a catastrophic oath. Her momentary resurrection likely drained stored energy, forcing her back into dormancy—and leaving Bennett with more questions than allies.
Chapter 64: The Lover's Echo and the Debt of Blood
Fireside Confessions
Bennett tossed another stick into the flames, its crackle punctuating his dry recitation. Beside him, Serene hovered like a phantom painted in firelight, her brow furrowed as he recounted her godlike intervention.
"You stood there, dripping with power," he said, voice edged with bitter awe. "Called me Zak. Claimed you loved me. Then collapsed like a marionette with cut strings."
The mercenaries' distant laughter rang hollow. A bandaged man staggered past, still coughing lakewater.
Serene's translucent hands trembled. "I… I don't remember."
"Convenient." Bennett flung the siren's prismatic core onto snow—a jeweled accusation. "This isn't some tavern trick, Serene. Shadows don't cast spells."
Her spectral form flickered, crimson robes bleeding into smoke. "Perhaps I'm not a shadow. Perhaps you're not who you think."
The words hung like poisoned honey.
Gifts and Ghosts
Byron's approach shattered the tension. The burly leader knelt, offering a leather pouch heavy with thirty-seven magic cores—each a droplet of his crew's blood and sweat.
"Take this, Mage Bennett. Or let me die ashamed."
Bennett recoiled. "Friends don't barter lives for baubles."
A warrior's embrace sealed the refusal. Yet the captain's cunning prevailed—eight cores pressed into Bennett's palm as "parting gifts." The cores pulsed warmth, their hues mirroring Serene's confused gaze.
Later, alone:
"Why hide your truth?" Bennett whispered to the empty air.
Serene materialized, fingers brushing the cores. "What if my truth would burn you?"
Oaths in the Snow
Darnell's vow came at dusk, as frozen pines clawed at the crimson sky.
"I'll be your sword-arm, Bennett. Your shield when spells falter."
Bennett choked on a laugh. "I'm a hedge mage who nearly died roasting rabbits!"
"You're the man who walked into hell for strangers." Darnell's axe gleamed as he split kindling. "My family's debt dies with me. Let my new life serve light."
The words carved deeper than any blade. Bennett nodded—not in acceptance, but grief. How many more will bleed for secrets I don't own?
The Icebound Truth
The corpse emerged at noon—a knight bisected at the waist, his frozen scream eternal.
Darnell wiped frost from the insignia: a serpent coiled around a shattered crown. "Northern Inquisitors. But what butchered them?"
Bennett's flame sputtered. The wound's edges glistened too smooth for blade or claw.
Serene's whisper slithered into his mind: "Zak faced this once. They called it… Frostblight's Kiss."
When he turned, her eyes held the vacancy of winter stars.
Key Revelations
Spectral Paradox
Serene's magic leaves no trace in her memory yet imprints on physical objects (siren core). Suggests her power exists outside linear time—or that Bennett anchors her to reality.
Lineage's Curse
The "Zak" slips hint at Bennett's bloodline carrying ancestral pacts. Serene's sporadic awareness implies she's both prisoner and architect of this bond.
Frostblight's Omen
The bisected knight ties to Chapter 61's vanishing caravan. "Frostblight's Kiss" mirrors legends of the Icebound Throne—a relic Serene allegedly destroyed in her mortal life.
Chapter 65: Hallowed Graves and the Icebound Truth
The Severed Saint
Darnell crouched over the bisected corpse, his breath frosting the frozen air. The dead knight's torso lay two paces from his legs, the wound edge glinting with unnatural smoothness.
"Dead less than forty-eight hours," Darnell muttered, gloved fingers brushing the victim's stiffened wrist. "But what blade cleaves through a Fourth-Rank Knight's combat aura and his steel?"
Bennett knelt beside the snow grave, lifting the knight's shattered longsword. The fracture gleamed mirror-bright. "No beast's fang leaves such edges. This was a deliberate killing."
Darnell stiffened. "To bisect a Fourth-Rank opponent mid-battle... This reeks of political murder."
Their eyes met, the unspoken truth crystallizing between them.
Emblem of the Faithful
Bennett's finger hovered over the dead knight's chest armor. "Two badge mounts—one still bears his Fourth-Rank insignia. The missing one..."
"Was the Sacred Order's seal," Darnell finished grimly. He wrenched up the corpse's frozen sleeve, exposing a flame-shaped scar seared into flesh. "Holy Anointing Brand. Only Sacred Knights endure this ritual."
Bennett's jaw tightened. "So why remove his Sacred Emblem? Even executed heretics retain—"
"Unless this was no execution," Darnell interrupted. "Sacred Knights remove comrades' emblems only when..." He trailed off, snow crunching beneath his boots.
"When?"
"When they need plausible deniability."
Frozen Vanguard
Three graves emerged at dusk. The central corpse wore silver-plated armor, his beard meticulously trimmed, hands clasped over an unblemished greatsword.
Darnell's breath hitched. "Gods' breath... Sir Gawain."
Bennett studied the warrior's face—nobility etched into frozen features. "You knew him?"
"Eighth-Rank Sacred Knight. Commander of the Northern Vanguard." Darnell's voice thickened. "They called him 'the Unbroken Wall' after holding Frostspire Pass alone for five days against the Icebound Horde."
Bennett noted the pristine armor. "No battle wounds. Poison?"
"Worse." Darnell pointed to the knight's throat—a hairline cut concealed beneath his gorget. "Assassin's Mercy. A Sacred Order execution method."
The Pontiff's Ledger
Within Sir Gawain's burial cache, Bennett found a wyvernhide-bound journal. Frost crackled as he opened to the final entry:
"January 14th: The Trialmaster showed me the target. My own squire—the boy I raised from an orphanage. Pontiff's edict: 'No trial. No witnesses.'
Tonight, I'll warn him. Let the Holy Flame judge me."
Darnell palmed his Sacred Emblem—its edge biting into flesh. "The Pontiff ordered his own vanguard commander's death. Why?"
Bennett flipped pages, landing on a pressed winterbloom. "Because Gawain discovered this." He revealed a charcoal sketch—a spectral woman hovering over an icebound obelisk.
"Serene?" Darnell recoiled.
"No. The inscription names her Semel Rawlins."
Critical Revelations
Sacred Betrayal
The bisected Fourth-Rank Knight's missing emblem later appears clutched in a frost wolf's jaws (foreshadowing Frostblight's involvement).
Obelisk's Shadow
Gawain's sketch of Semel matches carvings in the Icebound Throne ruins (Chapter 63), confirming her ties to the forbidden relic.
Pontiff's Gambit
Journal entries confirm the Holy See deliberately abandoned Lady Hester (Chapter 64), allowing her curse to manifest.