Chapter 64: The Leroy Advent cour 4:The Last Line of Lyne
The stone was cold. It pressed against her spine, a relentless, ancient chill that seeped past the tattered remains of her robe and into the marrow of her bones. Elara, once known as the Witch of Lyne, now infamous as the Witch of Greed, did not struggle. She had long since forgotten how.
Thick, sinuous vines, black as petrified blood and throbbing with a sickening, vibrant purple light, were woven around her arms, wrists, and throat. They weren't just shackles; they were parasites. With every microscopic tremor of the forest air, they drew from her, sucking the crystalline, cerulean mana from her core. It was not a fast or violent drain, but a meticulous, relentless siphoning—the magic of her essence converted into the grotesque, twitching, nascent life forms that shambled at the edge of the forest, the monsters that policed the borderlands of the Unified Villages.
A single tear, heavier than a stone, broke free from the corner of her eye. It traced a searing path down her dirt-streaked cheek before vanishing into the shadows of her chin. The pain of the mana drain was nothing compared to the agony of the decade-old memory it forced her to replay.
Ten years. A blink, yet an eternity. Elara had been the antithesis of her current moniker. They had called her the Witch of Lyne, the Weaver of the Line of Life. Her spells didn't destroy; they mended, nourished, and sustained. For generations, she had been Vurnam's secret anchor. The Lords of Vurnam came to her not for warfare, but for impossible crises: barren harvests, uncurable blights, or the complex sealing of volatile dungeon breaches that defied the Royal Mages.
Her greatest joy, however, lay not in the intricate dance of runic magic, but in a small, weathered cottage nestled just beyond the main city walls, in the quiet, unassuming cluster of villages known as the Outskirts. Her husband, Kaelen, was the embodiment of all things steady and good. A grizzled Vurnam Knight, his shield bore the city's crest, but his heart belonged entirely to her.
"My Line of Life," he would whisper, tracing the swollen curve of her belly as she lay in the warm sunlight filtering through the window. "You bring life into the world with your hands, and now with your soul."
Their son, Lian, was due soon. Her magic, usually a roaring waterfall, had slowed to a gentle, protective stream, wholly dedicated to the tiny life within her. She was complete.
Then the shadow fell. The Scarlet Blight. It swept through the Outskirts villages like a hungry fire, turning lungs to ash and flesh to mottled gray in a day. Thousands died. The Lord of Vurnam, Baron Alaric, was desperate.
The summons came at midnight, a frantic hammering on their door.
"The Lord demands your aid, Witch of Lyne! The Blight is incurable! You must weave your greatest spell!" a Herald cried.
Elara opened the door, her face drawn but firm. "I cannot, Herald. My power is bound. I am carrying a child. To weave a spell of that magnitude now would tear both him and me apart. Tell the Lord I will help when the babe is born."
The Herald's face was grim. "He fears there will be no Vurnam left by then."
"I understand the fear," Elara replied, placing a hand protectively over her abdomen. "But I will not sacrifice my family for this city."
Her refusal, born of a mother's fierce devotion, was perceived as the ultimate betrayal. The Lord, a man utterly consumed by panic and the scent of death, saw not a mother, but a weapon sheathing itself.
The following morning, Kaelen was preparing to patrol the quarantine lines when a squad of Alaric's elite Black Guards arrived, not at the gate, but at the window.
Elara watched, frozen in the kitchen, as Sir Gregor, Kaelen's own commander and friend, stepped forward. His face was a mask of agonizing duty.
"Kaelen," Gregor's voice cracked. "By order of the Lord Alaric, for the preservation of Vurnam… we must retrieve the Witch's power."
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He drew his sword, not in defense of his life, but for the son he hadn't yet met. "You will not touch her. She gave an oath of life, not death. Her magic is her own."
The clang of steel on steel was a dull, sickly sound. Elara, powerless in her advanced state of pregnancy, could only scream as Kaelen fought with the ferocious, doomed love of a lion protecting its cub. He was one against ten. The last sound he made was a grunt, a sudden, gurgling gasp as a blade found the gap in his armor.
Elara stumbled out, her breath stolen. Kaelen lay crumpled in the dirt, his blood already beginning to darken the earth. And as she knelt beside him, hands shaking, another sound tore through the quiet morning: the high, thin wail of Lian, born too early, too suddenly, in the dirt, already taking his final breath. The strain, the shock, the death of his father—it was too much for the life line to hold.
Silence. The world went utterly silent. The Black Guards stood, weapons dripping, horrified by the carnage they had just caused and the devastating sight of the witch kneeling over her dead husband and infant son.
Elara did not weep. The tear on the stone seat ten years later was a greater expression of grief than the void that consumed her then. She stood up slowly, her eyes, once the serene blue of a mountain lake, now the terrifying, fractured azure of a glacier about to calve.
"You took my life line," she whispered, her voice a dry, rasping sound that echoed across the silent fields. "You broke the only vow I ever truly held sacred."
Her magic erupted. It was no longer a waterfall or a gentle stream. It was a sun. The air ignited. Nineteen villages, the entire Outskirts, caught fire simultaneously. It wasn't the slow burn of a normal blaze; it was a magical conflagration, a searing vengeance that rendered homes to ash in seconds. The Black Guards were vaporized before they could even scream a prayer.
Elara walked the burning earth, following the trail back to Vurnam Castle. She did not seek out Alaric immediately. Instead, she hunted every man, woman, and child who had benefited from her grace yet demanded the blood of her family. Hundreds of thousands died that day. They called it The Cleansing Fire, an irony that tasted like copper in her mouth.
She finally stood before the Lord's Tower, where the terrified Baron Alaric cowered, holding his two young daughters, Rachael and Marrielle, close to his chest. He was broken, his arrogance replaced by pure, sickening fear.
"I regret it, Elara," he choked out, tears mixing with sweat on his face. "I regret demanding your child's death. Please, spare my daughters!"
Elara looked down at the two small, trembling girls, their innocence a stark counterpoint to the raging fire behind her. She knew she could kill them, end the line, and finally have peace. But simple death was too quick, too merciful. She wanted a legacy of agony, a perpetual toll for the life they stole.
"My son's memory will be etched into the memory of Vurnam," Elara announced, her voice magically amplified, carrying over the roar of the distant flames. "From this day, and for all time, or until this memory fades to dust, you will pay a blood tithe. A child's life. A sacrifice must be sent into this forest every two years. The sweetest, most beloved child. To feed the earth that drank my husband's blood and held my son's body."
She fixed her gaze on the two pale girls. "Tell your father this, little Lords. If you are late in payment, even by a day, I will begin my work. I will convert the essence of this earth into monsters, and they will patrol your borders, a constant, physical reminder of the debt Vurnam owes to the Witch of Greed."
It was an impossible curse—a life of perpetual sin tied to the preservation of their city. She left them then, not wanting their blood, but their perpetual fear. She retreated to the heart of the forest, where the stone seat awaited, and bound herself with the parasitic vines, allowing them to transform her own stolen power into the very threat she had promised.
The cycle continued for ten years until the news came on the wind: Lord Alaric was dead, killed by his own nervous guards in a botched escape attempt. The villages, shattered by the weight of the endless, agonizing sacrifice, had finally unified under a new, yet-unnamed banner, intent on ending the witch's reign.
Elara finished her recall, the image of her husband's final, loving look and her son's quiet, newborn face burning her soul.
A tremor ran through the stone seat. The siphoning vines around Elara's arms pulsed, demanding her attention. Her eyes snapped open, the blue fire replaced by the resigned, desolate gaze of a woman waiting for an inevitable end.
A figure burst through the treeline, a whirlwind of motion and intent. It was Stacian, the celebrated warrior of the newly Unified Villages, a legend forged in the chaos of the last ten years. Stacian's face was set in a furious, grim mask, her sword, Aethelgard, humming with righteous energy.
"Elara! Witch of Greed! Your reign of blood ends now!" Stacian roared, not in an empty threat, but in a declaration of absolute conviction.
Elara merely tilted her head. "You are late, child. The sacrifices should have continued until the unity was complete. The monsters outside are your fault, not mine."
Stacian didn't waste breath on an answer. A single, compressed ball of pure, white-hot magical flame shot from her palm—a devastating spell meant to turn the witch and her stone seat to slag.
Elara didn't move. A shimmer, like heat rising from asphalt, rippled outward. The flame ball slammed into an invisible magic barrier, a defensive weave of such density and perfection that the projectile simply crumpled and vanished, leaving behind nothing but the scent of ozone.
"Crude," Elara murmured, the first word of the confrontation.
"Then let's try 'refined'!" Stacian snarled, abandoning magic for the cold precision of her blade.
She covered the distance in a single, blurring lunge. Aethelgard sang as it sliced the air, aimed not at Elara, but at the parasitic vines holding her.
Clang!
The vine was not cut. A secondary, invisible shield, no thicker than paper but harder than dragon scale, deflected the sword. The impact sent a painful vibration up Stacian's arm.
"The magic shields are too fast!" Stacian realized, retreating an inch, her eyes narrowed. "I can't break the vines while your shields are up, and you can't fight while you're bound!"
"A fair assessment, warrior," Elara said, her voice dry. "I am the wellspring, the source. Even bound, my subconscious shields are flawless. You must break the source or you break nothing."
Knowing she couldn't rely on pure force, Stacian became a phantom. She didn't attack the shields; she attacked the air around them. Her footwork was a blur, her body a coiled spring. She feinted with the sword, drawing Elara's automated defense to focus on the frontal arc, then executed a dizzying spin, sending a controlled burst of air mana—not a spell, but a physical force—at the base of the stone seat.
The seat wobbled, then shifted. The vines groaned, and for a split second, the mana-siphoning paused.
That was all Elara needed. Her eyes flared. A wave of kinetic force, raw and crushing, erupted from her core, slamming into Stacian. It was not a blast, but an invisible, instantaneous surge meant to flatten her to paste.
Stacian screamed, the pressure overwhelming, but she was already executing her counter: a Hand-to-Hand technique refined in the deepest dungeons—The Iron Shell. She didn't try to negate the force; she used her own mana to compress the air immediately around her, creating a tiny pocket of stability within the crushing wave. The force slammed her backward, but instead of breaking her bones, it sent her soaring upwards.
She landed lightly on a massive, moss-covered tree branch twenty feet above the witch, breathing hard.
"You possess a surprising versatility for a warrior," Elara commented, sounding genuinely interested for the first time. "Most who come for me are single-minded blasters."
Stacian didn't reply. She hurled Aethelgard not at Elara, but into the bark of the tree thirty feet to Elara's left, where it stuck deep. With the enemy's main weapon gone, Elara's automated shields shifted their focus, calculating a magical response to the next projected spell.
Stacian then leapt from the branch, plummeting straight down, landing between Elara and the tree where the sword was stuck. She had only her fists.
The witch's primary shield flared white, anticipating a magical barrage. But Stacian, in the millisecond before impact, changed her attack to pure, concentrated physical force. She struck the stone seat—not the witch, not the vines—with a Thunder Punch, using her full body weight and augmented strength to smash the supporting column.
The seat shattered.
The impact broke the parasitic connection. The black vines instantly withered, turning to dust.
Elara, free for the first time in a decade, floated an inch above the wreckage, her magical power, long suppressed, surging back into her. Her hands, pale and trembling, rose. She had not fought unbound for ten years, and the sheer power felt like a physical agony of its own.
"You… are dangerous," Elara hissed, the ancient blue fire roaring back into her eyes. "I will not be defeated by a common warrior."
Elara's magic was not raw energy; it was a perfect system. She wove a Runic Net, an intricate cage of silver-blue light that expanded rapidly, designed to capture and hold Stacian's mana while suffocating her body.
Stacian didn't try to run. She grinned, a feral, terrifying look. Her eyes, already focused in battle, suddenly went from a deep hazel to a shocking, empty black. Her skin began to ripple, the flesh turning a deep, throbbing crimson. Two massive, black horns tore through the skin of her forehead, smoke curling around their tips, and enormous, leathery wings exploded from her back, ripping through the remnants of her armor.
It was no mere transformation. It was a shattering of reality. The invisibility spell she had used for years to hide this form was gone. She was 600 feet of bloody, burning terror, a figure of impossible scale and monstrous, terrible beauty.
Elara stopped. The Runic Net spell dissipated into dust. She knew that form. The Crimson Aspect. The stories whispered in the depths of the oldest dungeons. The final, hidden defense of the world. She didn't fight back. She couldn't. Her power, once the wellspring of Vurnam, suddenly felt like a puddle.
Elara didn't fall, but sank, collapsing gracefully onto the broken stones, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and ancient recognition.
Stacian's colossal figure stepped into the clearing. Her eyes were not just black, they were furnaces, burning with a light that seemed to devour the very color of the forest. The air itself shrieked, compressed by the sheer, overwhelming pressure of her presence.
Stacian's voice was no longer human. It was a chorus of a thousand voices, the sound of mountains grinding together, echoing in Elara's mind and soul:
"Catena Ruptor: Antiquum Mundum Redire."
(Chain Breaker: Reverse to the Old World.)
The entire forest, Elara, the figure of Stacian—all of it was instantly engulfed in a void dimension. The world turned from green and brown to a swirling abyss of absolute black, stitched with impossibly distant, cold white nebulae.
Elara's mana core, the perfect blue crystal at her center, abruptly went dark. Her connection to the universe, to the very fabric of magic, was nullified. Not blocked, but erased. In this dimension, the fundamental rules of existence bowed to the entity before her.
Elara fell onto her knees. She was just a woman again, small and broken, staring up at the terrifying, magnificent, towering figure of Stacian.
The crimson giant leaned down, her flaming horns casting a terrible, divine light onto the humbled witch.
"This is my Chain breaker, the Old world . I am God in this place," Stacian's voice boomed, shattering the silence of the void. "I can alter any event or phenomenon. I can stop time, power, existence itself. No reality, magic, or soul negation works here without my consent. I have peered into the deepest abyss of the worlds, and I have come for the balance."
Stacian manifested an impossible weapon: a colossal, featureless black blade, its edges absorbing all light and radiating absolute cold. It hung in the air, a final, inescapable judgment.
"Your cycle of sin has become the foundation of your world's suffering," Stacian declared, her voice now tinged with a devastating sadness. "Now, I'll give you eternal rest."
As the black blade began its slow, inevitable descent, cutting through the void itself, Elara's eyes lost their terror. A faint, peaceful smile touched her lips.
Her memories, vivid and warm, flashed across the void dimension for her—the last sights of her heart. Kaelen's kind, laughing eyes; the feel of her husband's calloused hand in hers; the quiet, perfect moment when she felt Lian's first, tiny kick. The guilt of the thousands she had killed faded, replaced by the perfect, complete love that had driven her madness.
"I am at peace," Elara whispered, her voice weak but clear in the all-consuming silence. "I can finally see my family again. Forgive my sin, warrior."
The black blade descended. There was no sound, no flash of light, no blood. The Witch of Greed, the Witch of Lyne, Elara, was simply erased. Instantly, absolutely, pulled from existence and sent into the deep sleep she had longed for.
The Aftermath
The void dimension shattered. Reality snapped back into place. Stacian was instantly reduced to her human form, the crimson skin, the horns, and the wings dissolving into embers that vanished into the forest air.
The massive figure was gone. Stacian stood over the spot where the witch had been, the only evidence of the encounter being the shattered stone seat.
The warrior didn't fall from exhaustion, but from a profound, sudden, soul-deep grief. She sank onto her knees, gasping, her head bowed. The Chain Breaker power—the ultimate weapon of reality—had shown her everything. In the seconds before she delivered the final blow, she had seen into the very core of Elara's mind, witnessed the perfect, crushing agony of Kaelen's murder and Lian's death, felt the white-hot vengeance that became a curse.
She hadn't killed a monster. She had freed a victim who had become a weapon.
Stacian raised a trembling hand to her face. A single, perfect, hot tear broke free, carving a clean line through the dirt and sweat of battle.
She didn't weep for the war she had won, but for the tragedy that had started it all. The chain was broken. But the wound remained.
"It wasn't greed," Stacian whispered, her voice raw, echoing the silence of the now-peaceful forest. "It was the line of life, broken by the greed of men."
She looked up at the sky, wiping her face with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of dirt. The immense weight of her power—the burden of the Crimson Aspect, the Chain Breaker—settled back into its core, dormant but ever-present. The world was safe. But the taste of this victory was bitter ashes.
Stacian stood, retrieved Aethelgard from the tree, and slowly turned to face the unified villages, a single, scarred warrior carrying the impossible weight of what it means to be the judge, the executioner, and the witness to a thousand years of pain. The war was over, but the chain of suffering would need more than a sword to truly sever.