Chapter 72 (Part 1): The Emperor's Shadow
The name hung in the frigid air like a curse.
Aragorn.
Bennett's jaw tightened. Of all the ghosts haunting this frozen wasteland, none loomed larger than the empire's founding emperor—a man whose legend was woven as much from divine hymns as demonic whispers.
Hussein's revelation had struck a chord. The "Supreme Champion Beneath the Stars," lauded by the Temple as a paragon of holy virtue, owed his power not to gods but to demons. To old Chris, that shadowy broker of damned bargains.
Hypocrisy drips from his legacy like poison, Bennett mused. A king who built an empire on demon-forged strength while kneeling at holy altars… No wonder the Temple scrubbed his truth from history.
Yet even Bennett couldn't deny the contradictions. Aragorn had unified the continent with the Temple's backing. Had he truly been a Sacred Knight? A zealot wielding hellfire in God's name? The irony burned sharper than the Arctic winds.
Fractured Revelations
Hussein slumped against a glacial outcropping, his breathing uneven. The Iceberry's afterglow had left him adrift—eyes clouded, words slurring.
"Nightmares…" he muttered, fingers clawing at his chest as if to rip out the memory. "The crest… His crest… It screamed…"
Bennett leaned closer, urgency prickling his veins. "What did you see in the Sacred Vault? What did Aragorn leave behind?"
But the knight's gaze dissolved into fog. Days of unrelenting pain, amplified by the narcotic haze, had fractured his resolve. His head lolled backward, a broken laugh escaping cracked lips. "Demons… in gilded armor… laughing…"
Then, silence.
Hussein collapsed into the snow, limbs splayed like a fallen marionette. For the first time in weeks, sleep claimed him—a deep, dreamless void where agony couldn't follow.
Dawn's Uneasy Truce
Morning light carved harsh lines across the camp.
Hussein awoke to Bennett's face inches from his own, the boy's breath visible in the cold. "You slept through the night. Congratulate yourself."
The knight bolted upright, shame flooding his veins. "I—I let my guard down. This weakness is—"
"Human," Bennett cut in, tossing him a steaming waterskin. "Even saints need rest. Especially ones who've been stabbed, frozen, and hunted like game."
Hussein grimaced but drank. The warmth steadied him, though his pride remained frostbitten.
Outside the tent, Dadanier sat sharpening a borrowed blade, his movements deliberate. The mountain guide's eyes flicked to Hussein—a silent storm of resentment and wary respect. Yesterday's mortal enemy now shared his fire. The dissonance hung thick.
"Your blade's edge is uneven," Hussein remarked, nodding at the curved dagger. "Here. Let me."
Dadanier hesitated, then relinquished the weapon. Their fingers brushed—a fleeting truce.
Bennett watched, amused, as Hussein demonstrated a whetstone technique. "You've got the grip of a farmer," the knight chided, though his tone lacked its usual bite.
"Says the man who slept like a drunkard," Dadanier shot back, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
Whispers of the Damned
Later, as Bennett drilled through his morning exercises—a series of fluid, animal-inspired stances taught by the old mage—Hussein observed with unnerving intensity.
"The basics," the knight finally said, "are a child's primer. Want to learn what comes next?"
Bennett froze mid-motion. "You know the advanced forms?"
"The old fool only ever mastered the foundation." Hussein's smirk held a edge of melancholy. "Our… shared teacher… deemed the rest too dangerous for half-trained apprentices."
What followed was a lesson in controlled agony.
Hussein's hands roamed Bennett's spine and joints, assessing with clinical detachment. "Your bones are brittle. Muscles underfed. A decade too late to forge a warrior's frame." He sighed, genuine regret softening his critique. "You'll never wield a sword like mine. But maybe—maybe—you'll survive long enough to outthink your enemies."
The words should have stung. Instead, Bennett grinned. "So teach me to cheat."
Echoes in the Snow
As Hussein guided him through serpentine twists and explosive lunges—movements that burned like fire—Bennett's mind circled back to Aragorn.
What pact did you make, Emperor? And what did Hussein uncover in that vault?
The knight's fragmented ramblings hinted at horrors: a crest that "screamed," visions of armored demons. Were these mere delusions… or echoes of Aragorn's buried sins?
Across the camp, Dadanier stirred a pot of stew, his wary gaze never fully leaving Hussein. The knight's newfound civility unnerved him. Men who swung so violently between fury and camaraderie rarely did so without breaking.
"Eat," Dadanier grunted, shoving a bowl toward Hussein. "You'll need strength for whatever madness comes next."
Hussein accepted the offering with a nod. For a heartbeat, the three of them—exile, heir, and hunter—existed in fragile equilibrium.
But Bennett knew better than to trust the calm.
Aragorn's shadow stretched long.
And in the Sacred Vault's silence, demons waited.
Chapter 72 (Part 2): The Emperor's Legacy
The Dance of Steel and Flame
Bennett shrugged off the knight's lament. Becoming a peerless warrior had never been his ambition. Yet the promise of a sturdier frame—one less prone to collapsing under a stiff breeze—appealed to his pragmatic side.
"I don't mind," he said, brushing snow from his sleeves. "Never planned to swing swords for glory anyway."
Hussein's glare could have frozen magma. "Fool. Do you even grasp what you're holding? These forms—these—are fragments of a legacy guarded for a millennium. A mere three souls in history were deemed worthy to learn them. With even modest talent, one could ascend to the pinnacle of martial prowess. But you…" His voice trailed into a bitter sigh. "Your body is a cracked vessel. A shame."
Curiosity flickered in Bennett's eyes. "What is this system?"
The knight glanced at Dadaniel, who stood silently feeding the fire. Without a word, the mountain guide rose, his movements stiff with unspoken resentment. "I'll gather more kindling," he muttered, vanishing into the skeletal pines.
Hussein watched him go, then turned to Bennett. "Pay attention. I'll perform it once. Memorize what you can."
The Impossible Forms
What followed defied anatomy.
Hussein's body became liquid—joints bending backward, spine twisting like rope, limbs folding into angles that screamed wrongness. Bennett stared, equal parts awed and horrified. Even the most supple circus contortionist from his past life would have wept at the sight.
When the knight finished, sweat glistened on his brow—not from exertion, but the unnatural heat radiating from his core. "These forms prime the body," he explained. "Enhance flexibility, speed, resilience. Survive a snapped joint? Easy, if the joint chooses not to snap."
Bennett snorted. "So circus performers should rule the world?"
"Fools see only the surface." Hussein's tone sharpened. "This is but the foundation. Master it, and your body becomes a conduit—a crucible for combat aura."
"Aura?" Bennett perked up. "Like the energy knights channel?"
"Not like. Beyond." The knight's gaze turned distant. "But you're decades from that. Now, demonstrate."
Baptism by Fire
Bennett stepped into the snow, replicating the sequence with surprising fidelity—a testament to his obsessive drills under the old mage's tutelage. Yet where Hussein flowed like water, Bennett creaked like rusted hinges.
"Passable," the knight grunted. "For a cripple."
Then the heat hit.
Fire erupted in Bennett's veins, scorching bone and sinew. Sweat drenched him instantly, pooling beneath his boots. Hussein leaned close, whispering arcane syllables that slithered into the boy's mind.
"Guide the flame. Let it purge weakness."
Agony and ecstasy warred as Bennett obeyed. The inferno surged—through atrophied muscle, around brittle joints, into forgotten crevices of his being. When he opened his eyes hours later, noon sunlight glared down.
"Welcome," Hussein said dryly, "to the first day of your real life."
Bennett flexed fingers that no longer ached in the cold. "So this… isn't combat aura yet?"
The knight barked a laugh. "You've barely licked the spoon. But your body now absorbs energy differently—food, breath, even sunlight. Efficiency personified."
Like upgrading from a donkey cart to a steam engine, Bennett mused, reveling in the alien vigor.
Snow and Shadows
Later, as Bennett scrubbed himself with snow—skin steaming, laughter echoing—Hussein watched in brooding silence.
This changes nothing, the knight told himself. The boy will never wield Stellar Combat Aura. Not truly.
Yet as Bennett whooped, hurling a snowball at Dadaniel's scowling face, Hussein's resolve wavered. Aragorn's cursed legacy lived—not in some vaulted relic, but in this scrawny noble's defiant grin.
"Move out!" Hussein barked, scattering the campfire with a gust of will. "We've dallied enough with children's games."
As they trekked northward, Bennett's laughter lingered—a spark against the gathering dark.
Chapter 73: The Unseen Watchers
Northbound Through the Frozen Labyrinth
The trio pressed deeper into the glacial wilderness, their boots crunching over snow that glittered like shattered diamonds. By the third day, the vast expanse of Great Round Lake lay behind them, its northern shore giving way to a forest so ancient, even the pines seemed to hunch under the weight of forgotten centuries.
Bennett unfurled the map gifted by Beinrich of the Snow Wolves mercenary band. The parchment trembled in his gloved hands—a mosaic of meticulous notes for the southern lakeshore that dissolved into yawning voids beyond the northern treeline. A single threadlike path, cobbled from two centuries of fragmented explorer journals, snaked toward an unnamed gorge.
"We've two choices," Bennett announced, breath fogging the air. "Follow this marked route through the gorge—where 'advanced magical beasts' apparently hold court—or wander blind into uncharted frost hell. Thoughts?"
Dadaniel leaned in, tracing the inked path with a calloused finger. "Gorge. Better to face known devils than dance with phantoms."
Hussein stood apart, arms folded, his silhouette sharp against the milky sky. "North is north. Pick a path; it's all ice and teeth either way."
Bennett squinted at the knight. Still playing the sphinx, eh? Whatever secret mission had dragged Hussein into this frozen purgatory remained locked behind those glacial eyes.
The vote carried. They turned toward the gorge.
Beneath the Iceglass Canopy
Winter here had teeth.
Even Bennett's reforged body—tempered daily through Hussein's torturous drills—ached under the cold's vampiric kiss. Dadaniel fared worse. The burly guide's breaths now came in ragged puffs, his third-tier warrior's stamina crumbling like old mortar.
The forest itself defied reason. Trees clawed skyward from foundations of pure ice, roots fossilized in glacial blue. Snow didn't fall here—it congealed, forming crusts so hard their camp shovels sparked against the surface.
"No soil," Dadaniel muttered one evening, hacking fruitlessly at the ground. "Just endless ice. How do these damned trees eat? Drink sunlight?"
Bennett said nothing. His enhanced senses prickled with unease. The silence here wasn't peaceful—it was hungry.
"We're being watched," he whispered as they broke camp.
Hussein's lips twitched. "By many somethings. Let them watch. Easier to kill what shows itself."
Night of Claws and Revelations
The ambush came at moonrise.
Three frostwyrms—scaled terrors the size of boars—erupted from the ice beneath Dadaniel's tent. Bennett barely registered their arrival before chaos unfolded:
Dadaniel's war cry choked into a gurgle as talons punched through his shoulder. Steel shattered against diamond-hard hides. Then—golden light.
Hussein moved like a comet. His rusted longsword blazed with auric flames, shearing through wyrms as if they were paper puppets. When the last head thudded to the ice, the knight stood amidst steaming carcasses, breath steady as a metronome.
That night, they feasted on wyrm hearts—ruby-hued delicacies that warmed the belly like spiced wine. Hussein gifted Bennett a sack of iridescent scales ("Lighter than silk, harder than adamant") and restrung Dadaniel's bow with sinews that hummed with latent power.
The guide stared at his reforged weapon, conflict warring in his eyes. Gratitude, Bennett realized, could be as bitter as worm bile.
Threshold of the Stone Sentinels
The gorge unveiled its guardians at twilight.
Twin statues flanked the pass—a knight mid-swing, face contorted in eternal fury; his counterpart a mage staff raised in defiant incantation. Bennett wiped frost from the knight's breastplate, fingers tracing armor grooves too precise for chisel.
"Not carvings," he breathed. "Petrified. Alive once."
Dadaniel paled. "Gold-Eye Serpents…"
Hussein's blade hissed free. "Eyes on the cliffs. We've company."
Whispers in the Stone
The revelation hung heavier than the glacial air.
"Gold-Eye's venom turns flesh to stone in minutes," Dadaniel rasped. "But these…the details…they'd need decades to petrify so perfectly."
Bennett's mind raced. Unless the venom's enhanced. Or the victims were—
Hussein cut his thoughts short. "Save theories. Our watchers grow bold."
Indeed, the prickling scrutiny had intensified—a thousand invisible needles tracing their spines. The gorge ahead yawned like a stone throat, its walls glistening with ice-threaded rock.
As they advanced, Bennett noted the statues' positioning—not random sentries, but bookends to some greater horror. The true guardian lay deeper, patient and ancient, its gaze already upon them.
Hussein's Crucible
Campfire shadows danced across the knight's scarred face that night. Bennett prodded carefully:
"Your aura—golden, like the legends say of Saints. Yet you deny the title."
Hussein fed a wyrm scale into the flames, watching it warp. "A Saint's power transcends mortality. I…" He flexed his sword hand; faint tremors betrayed him. "…am still bound by flesh."
The admission hung raw between them. Here stood a man who'd slain two ninth-tier knights and a high priest, yet remained caged by human limits.
"The Saint's Threshold," Bennett pressed. "What does it demand?"
"Annihilation." The knight's laugh held no mirth. "To become more—and less—than human. A price I've danced around for years." His gaze drifted to the gorge's mouth. "Perhaps here, at world's edge, I'll finally pay it."
Echoes in the Abyss
Dawn revealed the gorge's secret.
Beyond the petrified sentries, the pass narrowed into a cathedral of ice. Frozen waterfalls hung like crystallized ghosts; air shimmered with prismatic cold. And there, embedded in the central glacier—
A throne.
Carved from black ice veined with gold, its high back crowned by antlers of pure crystal. Empty, yet radiating malice so palpable Bennett's teeth ached.
Hussein froze mid-step. "Turn back."
Too late.
The glacier shuddered. Ice rained down as something vast uncoiled above—a sinuous shape blending with the frost until it blinked, revealing eyes like molten suns.
The Gold-Eye Serpent's hiss resonated in their bones:
"Mine."