Chapter 34: Echoes of a Cold Star

  "I'm sorry," she said softly, then quickly bent down and started gathering her books.

  Corvus knelt to help her, moving with an instinct he didn't know he possessed. His hand, which never missed the path of a sword, now seemed clumsy. Their fingers touched for a moment as he handed her a book. He felt a light electric shock, an unexpected warmth that seeped through his icy shield.

  He picked up another book. "Echoes of a Forgotten Star," he read the title faintly. "Philosophical poetry. A strange choice."

  She looked up at him again, a glimmer of curiosity in her eyes. "Have you read it?"

  "I read and analyzed it. The poet is obsessed with the idea that all light is merely a memory of some hing that died a long time ago." He said it with his usual analytical coldness, but felt the words were hollow.

  "I don't see it as an obsession," she said calmly, taking the book from his hand. "I see it as hope. The idea that beauty can continue to travel through the void for unimaginable distances, even after its source dies... don't you find that beautiful?"

  Silence. He had never thought of it that way. To him, death was the end. Period. No echoes, no beauty, just a final cessation. She, in a single sentence, presented him with a complete perspective he hadn't considered.

  "Thank you," she said, standing up. She didn't smile, but the corners of her lips lifted slightly, as if it were a small secret between them. She gave a slight bow, turned, and continued on her way, disappearing into the corridor as if she were a dream.

  Corvus remained kneeling on one knee, staring at the empty space where she had stood. He forgot his friends, he forgot his victory, he forgot everything. For the first time in his life, his cold and organized world had been breached by something he couldn't analyze, couldn't categorize, and couldn't ignore. He had just collided with his own star. And he didn't know he was looking at the most beautiful echo of a star that would soon die.

  It wasn't falling in love; it was more like learning a new language. A language he didn't know he needed until he started speaking it. Their meetings became the axis around which his world revolved.

  He would find her in the library, surrounded by towers of books, her black hair draped over the pages of an old manuscript. He would sit silently across from her, not reading, but reading her. Once, they were searching for a rare text on primal magic in a forbidden section.

  Dust danced in the single beam of light. Both reached for the same volume at the same moment. Their fingers touched over the cracked leather of the book. Neither pulled their hand away immediately. In that absolute silence, broken only by the sound of their breathing, he felt a connection deeper than any word spoken. There was a silent acknowledgment that both were searching for something beyond written knowledge.

  She would sometimes come to watch him train in the dueling arena. Others saw strength, speed, lethal precision. She saw something else. She once told him, her voice barely audible over the clang of swords: "When you duel, you look like you are dancing with a shadow.

  There is a sadness in your movements, Corvus." No one had ever told him his movements were sad. He felt seen, not as "Van der Wood" the First Ranker, but as a person dancing with his shadow. And from that moment, every move he made was for her.

  But the real world that brought them together was her home. The home of her father, Philip, the Academy's Vice Headmaster. It wasn't a palace, but a warm academic cottage that smelled of old books, bergamot tea, and pine wood burning in the fireplace.

  Philip was a kind man, with eyes that gleamed with endless curiosity. They would sit for hours, discussing theories of the universe, while she listened quietly, placing another cup of tea in front of Corvus before he even realized his cup had gone cold.

  In that house, Corvus was not an heir or a duelist. He was just a young man sitting by the fire with the woman he loved and her father, whom he had come to respect. He tasted family for the first time, and he didn't know how hungry he had been for it. She became his world, and he soon married her, to make that world permanent. Or so he thought.

  It started as curiosity. Philip noticed, through his own observatory, that the stars were dimming. It was slight at first, just a whisper in the astronomical data. But it quickly turned into an obsession.

  His office, once a model of academic order, became a mad wizard's cave. Star charts covered every inch of the walls, with red lines connecting the fading constellations. Ancient and forbidden manuscripts piled up on the floor. He stopped eating regularly, and slept on a couch in his office, if he slept at all.

  "It's not just stars dying, Corvus!" Philip told him one night, his eyes blazing with the fever of research. "It's the Universe itself... it's dying. The Stone Energy, the source we rely on, is what's stealing their light. We are parasites, living at the expense of something greater's life."

  Corvus saw the worry in his wife's eyes as she looked at her father. Her love for him was mixed with fear. One quiet night, as they sat together in their private garden, Corvus surrendered to the anxiety that was gnawing at him.

  "There is an ancient prophecy in my family," he whispered in the darkness, the words sounding foreign on his tongue. "It speaks of a person called the Magic Swordsman, the first and not the last, who will be the harbinger of the world's destruction."

  She held his hand. She didn't mock the story. "Do you believe it?"

  "I believe what I see. I see your father consumed by his fear. And I see the stars fading in the sky. And I don't want to believe that our happiness... that this world we built together... could disappear."

  In that moment, under a sky that was beginning to lose its light, he felt that his happiness was fragile, like thin glass in a world made of stone. Fear was no longer just a possibility; it had become a permanent guest on the threshold of their lives.

  The end came on a stormy night. Rain lashed the Academy windows like whips. Corvus received an urgent message from his wife: "Father is performing the ritual tonight. I'm scared. Come quickly."

  He ran. He didn't use magic; he ran through the muddy corridors, the wind howling around him. When he reached Philip's observatory, the door was slightly ajar, a sick, pulsing violet light spilling out.

  The smell of burning ozone filled his lungs. In the center of the room, there was a complex summoning circle using forbidden magic, its runes glowing with unstable energy. Philip was standing in the center, his hands raised to the sky, chanting words in a dead language, pleading with the void between the stars to reveal the truth to him.

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  And his wife... she was standing just outside the circle, her hand stretched toward him, her face pale with fear. "Father, stop! This is too much!"

  "I'm so close, my daughter! The truth... is about to be revealed!" Philip shouted.

  Then everything happened in a single instant. Corvus felt the change in air pressure. The energy in the circle, which was pleading with the cosmos, received a reply. But it wasn't a reply of knowledge; it was the limitless hunger of the Void. Black energy flowed from the center of the circle, pure energy of nothingness. It was searching for something to devour, for the nearest anchor point to this reality.

  It didn't go to Philip, the source of the summoning. It jumped to the nearest source of life and light.

  Corvus watched, helpless from the doorway, as a thread of pure darkness leaped from the circle and touched her outstretched hand.

  There was no scream. There was no explosion. There was only sudden and absolute silence. The violet light went out. The runes faded. The rain stopped.

  The only thing that happened was that she... vanished. She turned into a dust of faint light for a moment, like a miniature galaxy disintegrating, then disappeared. All that remained of her was a faint echo of jasmine scent in the air.

  Corvus entered the room. The storm outside stopped, and the storm inside him stopped. The whole world stopped.

  Philip fell to his knees in the middle of the dead circle. He looked at his empty hands, then at the place where his daughter had stood. He didn't cry. He made one sound, an inhuman sound, the wail of a dying animal that had lost everything.

  Corvus stood there, staring at the void she had filled. He didn't feel sadness. He didn't feel anger. He felt nothing. He looked at the universe, and the universe looked back at him, and Corvus realized the ultimate truth Philip was seeking: the universe is empty. And now, he too was empty. His star had died, and all that remained was the cold, endless darkness traveling through the void.

  In the days that followed, the world turned into a black and white canvas. Food had no taste, music became just organized noise, and the faces of his friends—Jose, Gaspar, Lucius—became empty masks.

  Philip's grief curdled and hardened, transforming from pain into doctrine. "I was punished," he whispered to Corvus one night in the ruined office. "Punished because I sought forbidden knowledge. This magic... the Stone Energy... it's not a blessing. It's a curse. It's the punishment the world inflicted on itself. And the whole world must pay the price."

  Corvus looked at the shattered man before him. He neither agreed nor disagreed. He found in Philip's words an echo of the void within him. If the world had taken everything from him, why should this world continue to exist?

  And so, in the ashes of that tragedy, the seed of the Jacobins was born. It wasn't a religious movement; it was a nihilistic philosophy. A philosophy that said this world was flawed, and its only salvation was in purifying it with fire and returning to zero.

  And they were not alone. The void that resided in them found an echo in other shattered souls, souls burned by this world's cruelty and left to rot.

  There was Antoine. A child cursed with an infantile immortality. He killed his father with his small hands, not out of malice, but out of desperate love to protect his mother from his violent, drunken grip. But the mother, instead of seeing him as a savior, saw him as a demon.

  And in a moment of madness and grief, she cursed him with forbidden magic, condemning him to remain a child forever. His body never ages, but his soul grows, withers, dies, and is reborn inside this small cage, living a thousand lives of pain in an innocent child's body. The "Saint of Mercy" who learned that true mercy is in ending pain, even if it means ending life.

  And there was Julian. A prisoner in a hell made by others. With a dream-girl beauty, he was unjustly convicted of a murder framed by the son of an influential family. In prison, his beauty was not a blessing but a curse. Every day was a beating, and every night was a rape.

  He learned hatred in the darkness, learning that power is not in muscles, but in breaking the opponent's soul. When he was released, he was no longer that handsome young man, but a monster wearing a mask of pride, determined to destroy a world that worshiped appearances and raped everything pure in the shadow.

  And finally, there was Louis. The other half of a mad story. A twin to Louis, the Republic leader, but born into two different worlds. One was taken by his mother and lived in the warmth of her love. As for him, Louis the Clown, he stayed with a father obsessed with theater and distorted laughter.

  A father who didn't raise a son but created a puppet. He forced him to dance, to laugh, to act as a clown, to find acceptance in his eyes. His love for his father turned into an eternal performance, and his laughter became a mask hiding the cry of a soul that was never allowed to be real. The "Saint of Laughter" who found that the most authentic laugh is the one that emanates from the heart of absolute chaos.

  As for their army, the Jacobin army, they stole it. It was a filthy organization operating in the shadow for the Knoxville family. They entered it like a virus, infiltrating the minds of its broken members, planting their nihilistic philosophy in them as a new faith. They turned hired killers into apostles of punishment, soldiers in a holy war against existence itself.

  His family forced him to remarry, to a woman from a distant branch, to preserve the lineage. He agreed, as it didn't matter. When Deo was born, he looked at him in his cradle. He saw a crying baby, and felt nothing. No love, no hatred, no connection. It was just a biological obligation fulfilled.

  A flawed product of a flawed world. He felt his new wife looked at him the same way she had looked at him, and that made him hate her. It was a pathetic attempt to imitate something sacred.

  Years later, when Deo was just a stubborn, noisy, outcast boy, something strange happened. The legendary Knoxville family book, said to contain the secrets of the First Magic Swordsman, surfaced in Deo's possession.

  Philip came to him, his eyes now blazing with cold fanaticism. "The book has appeared. It's with your son. We must take it. It's a relic of the old world that must be erased."

  And for the first time in years, Corvus felt something other than emptiness. A strange feeling, a flicker of... defiance. He looked into Philip's eyes, and lied with a coldness he didn't think he still possessed.

  "You are mistaken. The book was not with him. It was with my second wife. It appeared with her."

  He was shocked himself. It was a massive lie, a lie that protected a piece of the past and protected the boy in the present. Why did he do it? He didn't know. Was he protecting his son? Perhaps it was just one last act of rebellion against the man who had shared in the destruction of his world.

  He didn't care about the answer. All he knew was that when he saw Deo later, looking at him with silent defiance at the funeral of that child and his second wife, he saw a spark in his eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time. A spark that did not belong in this gray world.

  Years passed. The Jacobins grew. He and Philip became two forces moving history in the shadow. Then he saw Deo with that girl, Clara. The way he looked at her... it was a mirror. A mirror of the way he had looked at her. And in that moment, he didn't feel emptiness; he felt pain. A sharp, real pain, the pain of longing. He missed her.

  Months later, a small package arrived at his mansion. It had no official seal. Just a simple brown box. He opened it. Inside, there was a handmade card made of cheap cardboard. The drawing on it was childish, depicting two cartoon figures holding hands. And the words, written in an unpolished but clear handwriting:

  "Invitation to the wedding of Deo and Clara. Father, bring my brother and your wife Edith. I want you to be there. In the end, you are my only family."

  Corvus held the card. It looked ridiculous in his hand, in his polished, cold office. Something real, warm, and chaotic in a world of order and ice. A beautiful lie. He is not a father. And Deo is not his son. But... he went.

  At that strange, small wedding, Deo approached him. There was no anger in his eyes, only quiet exhaustion. "Thank you for coming."

  Corvus did not reply. What was he supposed to say?

  He said many strange words, but only one word stuck: I need you.

  The word "I need you" struck Corvus with a force no sword strike could match. He, Corvus, was "needed" by someone. He, the black hole that devoured everything, was an anchor for someone else. It wasn't a good feeling. It was a terrifying feeling. It was a weight he hadn't felt in a long time. The weight of being something to someone.

  Corvus ended his memories, closing his eyes in the darkness. The photo in his hand now felt cold. Memories were no longer a refuge; they had become a cage. And now, in the future, his son, that flawed product he never wanted, was about to face the world he had created. And for the first time in decades, Corvus didn't know what he felt.