THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter XXI: The Pale Harvest

  The change did not arrive with a war cry or a beast's roar. It arrived with a melody. A cold, metallic, funerary melody.

  Riiiiing… Riiiiing…

  The sound of steel dragging languidly over frozen snow, like a bell tolling for a single parishioner, emerged from the depths of the Great House. The black wooden door, with its intricate latticework, swung inward without a sound, gliding on perfectly oiled hinges. From the absolute darkness within, a solitary figure advanced toward the threshold, bathed in the light of the vermilion moon now filtering through ragged clouds.

  It was a woman. Young, or at least with the appearance of eternal youth. A spectral beauty, carved from ice and nostalgia. She wore a ceremonial gown of snowy white, so pure it hurt the eyes, but the embroidery decorating it was not of golden or silver threads. They were of a deep black, intricate as necrotic veins branching from the high collar down to the shoulders, descending along the wide sleeves and the long train that brushed the snow without disturbing it. Her skin was of a marble pallor, without pore, without imperfection, like the surface of a frozen lake under the moon. But it was her eyes that captured and froze the soul: two live coals, of an intense, vibrant red that shone with an inner light, a spark of ancient and cruel amusement.

  In her hands, long and pale as bird-of-prey claws, she dragged the weapon. A Scythe. Not an agricultural tool, but an instrument of divine harvest. The shaft was of a matte black metal that seemed to absorb the light around it, creating a visual void. The blade, curved and wide as the wing of a giant raven, was of a dark, rusted steel, with nicks that told stories of a thousand reapings, and veins of a reddish-brown color, the blood of eons drying on its edge.

  The woman, Lilith, stopped in the center of the courtyard, facing the decimated, bloodied group. She made a theatrical bow, slow, the white train spreading over the red snow. When she raised her head, a playful and deadly smile spread across her pale lips.

  —Greetings, dear thieves. I am Lilith. Deaconess of Ash, Guardian of this Eternal Rest. —Her voice was a melodious whisper that, nevertheless, reached every ear clearly, as if speaking directly into the mind—. It's fascinating, truly. Surviving the dragon, the collapse of Oskara, all that glorious chaos… a notable achievement for insects. But I'm afraid your luck, like all beautiful things, has run out. Tonight, in this silent valley, you will die. It will be poetic, don't you think? A quiet end, far from the noise of the world.

  As she spoke, from the curved rooftops and shadows of the other houses, the remaining Howlers dropped softly, landing silently in the snow. They formed a wide, lethal circle, closing off any escape route, their blind heads turned toward the group, their twisted horns vibrating faintly like antennae sensing prey.

  —Don't let them surround us! —roared Gallen, his voice laden with fierce pain from the loss of Syla and his men—. Irina, Luka, hold that right flank! Keep the pack busy! The rest, with me! That pale witch is the key!

  The Steel Front (Irina and Luka)

  Irina didn't wait for the order to finish. She was already moving, her body a released spring. She intercepted the advance of four Howlers trying to flank on the right, placing herself between them and the main group.

  Luka, the young recruit, his face stained with tears, dirt, and blood, swallowed hard. His hands trembled violently, but when he saw Irina advancing alone, something hardened inside him. He grabbed his kite shield, heavy and dented, and ran to stand shoulder to shoulder with her, closing the gap.

  —Keep the shield high —Irina ordered, her voice a calm, firm whisper in the midst of chaos—. Don't look at their teeth. Don't look at their eyes. Look at their shoulders. The shoulder that tenses is the one that strikes. The one that pulls back, the one that bites. Trust your periphery, not your fear.

  The first Howler, a monster with a particularly deformed giant arm, leaped from a low position, its open jaws emitting a guttural hiss aimed directly at Luka's neck.

  Luka, remembering the words, received the impact. He didn't dodge. He planted his feet in the blood-soaked snow, leaned his body forward, and presented the center of his shield.

  BAM!

  The sound was of a hammer striking a bell. The impact vibrated through Luka's entire body. He slid back two meters, dragging his feet, leaving deep furrows in the snow and frozen mud, but he didn't fall. The muscles of his arms screamed in protest, but the shield held.

  Irina moved in the exact instant the monster, unbalanced by the rebound, was recovering its stance. Her Toledo sword wasn't a flash of fury; it was an exercise in lethal geometry. The tip of the silver blade entered cleanly through the Howler's exposed armpit, where the armor of muscle and hair was thinnest. It pierced lung, heart, and emerged through the opposite shoulder blade with a dull sound of perforated flesh.

  Irina twisted her wrist, a precise motion, and withdrew the weapon with a sharp, quick tug. The beast, with a bubbling gasp, collapsed at Luka's feet, a dead, steaming weight.

  —One —Irina counted, her voice flat, her eyes already scanning for the next.

  Three more Howlers, enraged by their companion's death, attacked in unison from different angles.

  Irina became a whirlwind. Without the burden of a shield, her mobility was absolute, supernatural. She pivoted on her heels, leaned at impossible angles, dodging claws that passed millimeters from her face, her torso. Each evasive movement flowed directly into the next attack.

  One Howler launched a horizontal swipe at her face. Irina arched backward, feeling the wind of the blow graze her nose, and responded not with a thrust, but with an upward slash that opened the monster's stomach from groin to sternum, spilling black, steaming entrails onto the snow.

  Another, cleverer, tried to bite her leg while she was bent. Irina leaped, not backward, but forward, pushing off with her foot on the corpse of the first monster, and in mid-air, her body spinning, drove her sword directly into the second Howler's nape. The steel penetrated bone with a satisfying crunch.

  Luka, watching Irina's deadly dance, felt fear transform into something else: a fierce inspiration. He saw a third monster, which had flanked stealthily, lunge at Irina's blind side as she recovered from the jump.

  —No you don't! —shouted Luka, and this time his voice didn't tremble. He charged with all his weight, using his shield not as defense, but as a battering ram. The bottom edge struck the Howler's foreleg, unbalancing the beast and making it stumble.

  Irina, without needing to look, felt the opening. Upon landing, she pivoted on her supporting foot, her sword extended. The motion was a perfect horizontal slash, a silver arc passing at the level of the unbalanced monster's neck.

  The Howler's head, with its twisted horns, separated cleanly from its shoulders. It fell rolling, while the body collapsed, spraying a jet of black blood that painted a grotesque arc on the white snow.

  —Well done, boy —said Irina, panting slightly, a note of genuine approval in her voice.

  The Waltz of Death

  While Irina and Luka held the flank, the center of the courtyard was a stage of absolute nightmare.

  Gallen, his eyes bloodshot with fury and grief, charged at the pale woman. His black halberd descended in a devastating arc, a blow that would have split a granite block. The fury of a father, a leader, a man watching his family decimated, concentrated into a single movement.

  Lilith did not dodge. She vanished.

  Where she had been, only a trail of black shadows and a sudden cold remained. She reappeared a meter to the left, her white dress billowing as if she'd never broken momentum. She let out a clear little laugh, like broken crystal.

  —Ooh, so energetic. You remind me of a bear I once knew. Just as noisy.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  She moved her scythe with an almost lazy gesture. The black blade didn't cut the air; it seemed to drag darkness with it, creating a wave of absolute cold and shadows that advanced toward Gallen. Where it passed, the snow didn't melt; it burned, leaving a trail of black, carbonized crystal.

  Syla, dying on the ground but with the iron will of a wounded she-wolf, saw the distraction. With a final superhuman effort, she dragged herself and launched an attack with one of her scimitars from the ground, aiming at Lilith's Achilles tendon.

  The Deaconess didn't even turn her head.

  —Don't interfere, trash —she whispered, with a tone of annoyance.

  She struck backward with the butt of her scythe's shaft, a blind but perfectly calculated movement. The impact, dry and brutal, sank into Syla's stomach. The sound of ribs breaking was audible. The scout was flung, hitting the black wooden wall of a house with a final crack, and slid to the ground, motionless.

  —SYLA! —Gallen's cry was a roar of torn pain. All reason, all tactics, evaporated. He attacked again, a series of furious, wide swings with his halberd, seeking to crush, not wound.

  Lilith blocked and dodged with absurd, amused grace. Her scythe parried each blow with a metallic clang, deflecting brute force with minimal movements.

  —Oops! —she exclaimed, feigning surprise when a blow tore the edge of her white sleeve—. Look, you scratched my fabric. Almost touched the skin. Jajaja. How cute. You're like an angry puppy.

  Her red eyes gleamed with malice. She vanished again.

  She reappeared not in front of Gallen, but beside Syla, who lay on the ground, breathing with difficulty, life slipping away through her blood-stained lips.

  —You said you were fast, didn't you? —Lilith whispered, bending over her like a friend sharing a secret.

  The scythe was a black blur. A movement so fast the eye barely registered it as a flicker in the air.

  It wasn't a cut. It was a subtraction.

  With the sound of scissors cutting thick fabric, Syla's two legs, from the knees down, were taken. The severed limbs fell to one side. Syla didn't scream at first; she only emitted a sound of choked surprise, her eyes looking at her own stumps, where blood began to gush in powerful, rhythmic jets pumping life onto the snow. Then, the shock gave way, and a piercing wail, laden with agony and disbelief, tore through the night.

  —SYLA! —Gallen's scream this time was of pure madness. The giant lost all remaining sanity, all strategy. He lunged at Lilith with a speed that seemed impossible for his size, his halberd seeking a mortal embrace.

  Lilith appeared behind him, as if she'd always been there. Gallen, with the reflexes of a veteran, half-turned, raising his halberd in a desperate block.

  It was useless.

  Lilith's scythe didn't strike the shaft. It passed through it. The black steel of the scythe cut through the thick oak and iron handle of the halberd as if it were a rotten branch, without slowing. It continued its trajectory, passed through the solid steel plate of Gallen's breastplate, and sank deep into his chest with a wet, profound sound.

  Gallen, the Captain of the Silver Fangs, the mountain of steel and loyalty, fell to his knees. A rictus of pain and surprise froze his bearded face. He looked down, where the black shaft of the scythe protruded from his torso. He coughed, and a thin trickle of frothy blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

  —Well, well —said Lilith, in a tone almost of pity—. So noisy at the start, and so silent at the end. The irony is delicious.

  She pulled the scythe out with a sharp tug. Gallen collapsed forward, his heavy body striking the snow with a dull thud, one more dark, still stain in the landscape of death.

  Lilith turned toward the rest, wiping the blood from her blade with a delicate gesture. Her red eyes settled on Irina, who had just taken down her last Howler on the flank and was turning, ready to face her.

  —On to the next —she sang.

  Irina, seeing Gallen fall, Syla bleeding out, the rest of the Fangs reduced to corpses or tatters, did not hesitate. She lunged at Lilith with a guttural cry, a desperate upward slash seeking from groin to shoulder, the dirtiest, deadliest technique she knew.

  Lilith parried it with one hand. Not with the scythe. With the open palm of her left hand. The edge of the Toledo blade stopped against her pale skin with a metallic ching, as if it had struck a steel plate. Not a scratch.

  —Ouch! —said Lilith, feigning a grimace of pain—. That almost hurt. Cheater. You use dirty tricks. —Her eyes hardened—. You want a turn too? I'll give you one. Brief.

  Elara, who had watched everything with a growing, feverish calm, entered the action. She didn't run. She exploded. She hurled at Lilith a concentrated sphere of her corrupt energy, a core of perverted black and gold electricity that hissed through the air, distorting space as it went.

  Lilith, for the first time, showed a flicker of interest. She didn't dodge. She swept her scythe, and the black blade dispersed the magic sphere as if it were smoke, absorbing its energy with a voracious hiss.

  —Beginner's magic. Bastardized. Mixed, impure. —She spat the words with disdain—. That won't work on m—

  She stopped.

  Her red eyes, ever alert, caught a movement at the far edge of her peripheral vision. A shadow. One that hadn't been there an instant before. It hadn't moved there; it simply was.

  Vael.

  He was standing, three meters from her, in a dead angle between her vision and the moon's reflection on the snow. Silent as death itself. His short spear was already in motion, a low, precise thrust aimed not at the heart, not at the head, but at the side of the neck, where the carotid artery pulsed beneath the pale skin.

  ?Since when…?? The thought, quick as lightning, crossed Lilith's mind. She hadn't heard footsteps. She hadn't felt a change in the air. It was as if the void itself had materialized to attack.

  She tried to move, a quick counter-twist that would have dodged any human attack. But it wasn't enough. The spear tip, sharp and cold, pierced her right shoulder, just above the collarbone. It entered in front and emerged behind, taking with it a chunk of flesh and white fabric, leaving a clean hole from which, not red blood, but a dark, almost black liquid gushed, staining her immaculate dress with a dark, glossy red.

  Lilith leaped backward, a feline, abrupt motion, separating herself from the spear. She landed in the snow, gasping for the first time, one hand pressing the smoking wound. Her red eyes, now wide open, stared at Vael with a mixture of pain, surprise, and… recognition.

  —Hey… that… that was dangerous —she said, and her voice had lost all amusement, now tense, calculating—. I see. Maybe the dragon wasn't the only thing that fell in Oskara. Maybe the Ebony Candidate also found something… unexpected in the chaos. Something like you.

  She spat a bit of that dark liquid onto the ground, where it boiled and evaporated with a hiss. The scythe in her other hand ignited. Not in normal flames, but in black flames, cold, consuming the light around it.

  The amusement was over. Lilith made a quick, brutal decision: eliminate the magical threat first, the one who could channel raw power. Then deal with the silent one.

  Her eyes locked onto Elara.

  —ELARA! —Vael's voice was a shout this time, sharp, a command.

  Elara felt the chill of death, a cold deeper than that of the mountain. The air around her solidified.

  Lilith appeared before her. No transition. One instant she was ten meters away, wounded; the next, she was there, inside Elara's personal space. The scythe, now wreathed in black flames, was already descending in a perfect arc, a pendulum of divine execution meant to split her from shoulder to hip, to turn her into two smoking halves.

  Elara had no time to dodge. She couldn't raise her broken sword in time. She couldn't channel another explosion.

  Instead, she did the only thing she could. What her deepest instinct, forged in darkness and loyalty, dictated.

  She raised her bare hands.

  CLANG!

  The sound was not of cut flesh. It was of energy colliding with cursed steel.

  Elara had caught the scythe's blade between her palms, just before the edge struck her skull. The black electricity that always danced beneath her skin now crackled wild and visible around her fingers, her forearms, forming a vibrating barrier of pure force that halted the cursed steel's advance centimeters from her face. The pressure was immense. The edge cut her palms, the blood—dark red, almost black—dripped between her fingers and fell upon her face, but she didn't let go. Her muscles trembled under the strain, her bones creaked, but her eyes, raised to meet Lilith's through the flaming blade, showed no fear.

  They showed black abysses. Filled with a fanatical devotion, a protective fury that transcended pain. And she smiled. A bloody, demented smile, beautiful in its total surrender.

  —I'm sorry… —Elara whispered, and the blood stained her white teeth—. But there's no way… I'm dying now… now that I belong to him. Before… maybe. Now… you're just an obstacle on my path to him.

  The ground around Elara began to crackle. Not from ice, but from black static. Tiny bolts of pure darkness leaped from the snow toward her feet, climbing her legs, coursing through her torso. The white scars on her neck, those frozen lightning roots, turned black, as if filling with ink, outlining her neck and jaw in an intricate, sinister tattoo of corrupt power.

  —AHHH! —Elara's cry was not of pain, but of liberation. A concentric explosion of black energy, mixed with twisted golden lightning, erupted from her body.

  The force wave sent both women flying backward. Lilith was hurled back, landing on her knees in the snow several meters away, her scythe smoking in her hand. She looked at the girl rising, now surrounded by an aura of dark lightning dancing around her like electric serpents, and for the first time, in those eternally amused red eyes, a spark of real fear surfaced.

  —Who… what are you? —she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  —Me? —said Elara, and her voice resonated with a strange echo, as if two people spoke at once—. I am only his. Nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.

  The entire battlefield, the blood-soaked snow, the corpses, began to glow from beneath. Black lightning, lines of corrupt power, emerged from the ground like roots of an evil tree, weaving a shimmering net at everyone's feet.

  Lilith, terrified, understood she could not win on the ground. With a quick motion, she leaped onto the roof of the nearest house, seeking height, distance, a moment to plan.

  Elara watched her ascend. There was no haste in her expression. Only a cold, analytical evaluation.

  —So… this won't work on you from here —she murmured, as if solving a math problem.

  She extended her open hand, her bleeding palm, toward the roof where Lilith had landed, catching her breath. And then, with deliberate slowness, she closed her fist.

  —Die.

  Lilith screamed from above.

  —NOOO! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!

  The black lightning emerging from the ground didn't pursue her. Instead, it rose from every point in the courtyard, converging in the air above the roof where she stood. They formed a perfect, geometric cage, made of pure black light and twisted electricity. The cage closed around Lilith with a sonic clang that made teeth vibrate.

  Then, the cage began to contract.

  —STOP! CEASE! —Lilith's screams became agonized, distorted by the energy enveloping her.

  The cage grew smaller, denser, compacting the space within. Lilith's white silhouette was seen writhing inside, beating against the energy bars with her hands, with her scythe, in vain.

  And then, when the cage was the size of a small coffin…

  It exploded.

  It wasn't an explosion of fire and sound. It was a detonation of void. A flash of white and black light simultaneously, an absolute silence that sucked the air for an instant, and then… nothing.

  The house, the roof, and Lilith were gone. No rubble remained. No crater. Only a perfectly circular patch of vaporized snow, and over it, floating in the air for a second, a fine rain of hot ash and evaporated blood that began to fall like a crimson and grey snow.

  Elara walked forward, through that circle of annihilation. The rain of ash and hot blood fell on her hair, her shoulders, her impassive face. No body remained. No trace of the Deaconess of Ash remained.

  Only one thing fell from the sky, spinning slowly, and embedded itself in the melted snow before her with a dull thunk.

  A severed hand. Pale, perfect, with long, sharp nails. Still gripping with cadaverous strength the shaft of the enormous black scythe.

  Elara approached. She crouched. With an almost reverent gentleness, she pried open the dead hand's rigid fingers and took the scythe. The weapon was heavy, heavier than it looked, and pulsed with a residual energy, a hum of dark, frustrated power.

  She raised it. The scythe, upon contact with her bleeding hands, shone for an instant. Not with black flames, but with a deep, dark purple hue, the color of eternal twilight. It seemed to vibrate, to adapt, to accept its new mistress.

  Elara turned. Her body was covered in ash, blood both foreign and her own, and the black electricity still danced occasionally on her fingers. In her eyes, the fanatical devotion burned with an incandescent intensity, but now it was directed at a single point.

  At Vael.

  He stood among the corpses of the Silver Fangs, motionless, watching. There was no joy on his face. No triumph. Only that serene evaluation, that acceptance of the inevitable.

  Elara walked toward him, dragging the scythe's tip through the snow, leaving a black furrow. She stopped before him, and her expression transformed. The ferocity, the madness, softened into something more vulnerable, more terrible: a pure ecstasy of surrender. A look of absolute love, distorted and dangerous, directed only at him.

  —I think… —she said, and her voice trembled slightly, not from weakness, but from the intensity of the feeling— …this suits me better. Don't you think, Vael?

  Vael held her gaze. His green eyes, empty as ever, seemed to absorb the light of the moon, of the blood, of her devotion. And then, slowly, he smiled. Not the farmer's foolish smile. Not the cold smile of the strategist. It was a smile of satisfied possession. Of an artist seeing that his masterpiece has exceeded all expectations.

  —It suits you perfectly —he said, his voice an intimate whisper in the silent night.

  And at that moment, beneath the rain of ash and with the scythe of a dead goddess in her hands, Elara Vane knew she had crossed a threshold from which there would be no return. And she wanted none.