Chapter 416

When Nick slipped through the oak door after giving the correct password, the two veteran guards gave him a brief nod and stepped aside to let him approach the cot. The healer, whose greying hair now escaped its neat bun in sweaty strands, was wiping a damp cloth across Marius's forehead.She seemed to have used more power than he expected, given how lightly injured the noble had been, which made him uneasy.

"He's physically stable," the woman said quietly as she observed Nick's approach. "The coil degradation has been halted, but his mind... you’ll see for yourself once you try to talk to him.”

Nick moved closer, his instincts warning him of something even his senses couldn’t detect.

Marius’s eyes were wide open, but he saw nothing of the stone ceiling. His pupils were dilated, and his lips moved in a frantic, constant babble.

"...the blood burns the water, the water cleans the blood... Joran, I’m sorry, the Hollow Voice promised, the flame and the rot... for the family, for the Tower, burn it all…"

Nick frowned. "Has he said anything coherent? A name? A location?”

"No," the healer sighed. "He’s been repeating nonsense in a loop since he woke up, but it’s not just trauma, Lord Crowley; his mind has been barricaded from the inside. I tried to push a restorative spell even beyond what is advised, but his own mana attacked it, and any further attempt would have turned him into a vegetable.”

“I see, thank you for your efforts,” he replied, making a point to acknowledge the woman. She might not have been able to do as much as he’d hoped, but he was starting to think it wasn’t due to her skills as a healer. There was something else going on here.

Leaning over Marius, he opened to its maximum extent and searched for whatever that was.

The fanaticism he had sensed from him at the festival wasn't fading; in fact, it was growing, even without conscious thought behind it.

At this point, standard interrogation was completely out of the question. He wouldn’t get any useful information by forcibly stabilizing him and interrogating him, especially since he was unlikely to even recognize his own face in this state.

“This might get a little messy. Stand back and guard the door," he finally said, pulling up a wooden stool and sitting next to the cot.

The healer hesitated but then moved away, joining the guards near the door. She seemed to want to ask many questions, but her professionalism kept her curiosity in check, and he once again made a mental note to thank Xander for sending such capable people.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Nick delved into his soul and began shaping his wind mana with the most positive emotions he could summon. It wasn’t easy, given the deep annoyance and wariness he felt toward Marius, but he needed to find the source of the blockage, and a small part of him felt enough pity for his condition to power the spell he required.

As the two energies blended, he gave them purpose and cast. “.”

Exhaling slowly, a metaphysical breeze flowed from his lips, invisible to the naked eye but brightly luminescent to his senses. He let the spiritual wind carry his intent, slipping it through the cracks in Marius’s chaotic aura and directly into the boy's psyche.

The physical world disappeared, and Nick found himself within a storm.

Marius’s mindscape was a fractured, shifting jumble of shattered memories and dark corridors. Once, that would have been enough to stop him, but he’d gained quite a bit of experience dealing with this kind of thing when healing the werewolves.

At his command, the wind from Nick's spell served as his tether and compass, blowing away the superficial layers of panic to expose deeper traumas.

Giant, distorted visages of Joran Illismonde loomed in the dark, bleeding from unseen wounds. Nick saw his own face, magnified and sneering, repeating the humiliation in the student lounge.

The heavy weight of the Illismonde family's expectations pressed down like a crushing ceiling, with Marius’ father sitting at the top, untouchable and impossible to satisfy.

Nick thought, wrapping his spiritual wind around himself like a cloak to shield against the sting of Marius's grief.

He pushed further, searching for the psychic echo of the voice he had heard in the teahouse.

The storm finally cleared, revealing a reconstruction of the Weeping Willow. The paper lanterns appeared dull, their colors muted, and Nick saw the memory-avatar of Marius sitting in the booth, slamming his fist on the table.

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the memory-Marius shouted.

Nick moved closer to the booth. The shadow across the table was beginning to take shape as Marius’ mind tried to identify the contact.

Even if the person behind the puppet hadn’t been there, he had to have an idea of who he was talking to, and that would be enough, for now.

Suddenly, the mindscape violently warped.

The paper lanterns flickered with an ominous purple glow. The shadow across the table spread outward, obscuring anything behind it.

A massive, writhing mass of pure malice detached itself from the scene. It reeked of wrongness and carried a suffocating pressure that was entirely unfamiliar to Marius’s fragile, human mind.

The dark being let out a scream that grated on Nick’s soul and lashed out with chains made from dark power.

Unfortunately for it, Nick was not as easy a prey as Marius. "Let's see how you handle my kind of crazy," he growled.

Drawing upon his lightning and spiritual magic, Nick allowed his righteous anger at the blatant violation of this magic to drive him. "!”

A spear of crimson-black lightning appeared in his hand, and he threw it at the approaching chains. The impact was muted in the dark void, but the furious energy still shattered the links into dissipating mist.

The being recoiled, then lunged forward, trying to crush Nick under the psychic weight of its presence. It was far stronger than Marius, confirming that it couldn’t have come naturally from his mind, and felt more like facing a Guardian—though without access to the dungeon for near-infinite power.

Still, Nick wasn't finished and unleashed the in reply, soaking up much of the power being thrown around so recklessly.

The dark, greedy waters flooded the floor of the memory in the tea house, rushing to meet the monster, consuming more of its power and eroding the fear and despair the parasite was using to hold itself in place.

Its form flickered briefly as it tore through the Mire, scraping itself free with a sickening sound. Despite losing a limb, it reared back, compressing its mass into a lance of dark energy aimed directly at Nick's core, and he knew that if it hit him straight on, it would do more than just hurt.

However, Nick didn’t feel the need to dodge. Dimensions and distance were just afterthoughts here, and he didn’t have to fear such magic.

he thought, his eyes burning a fierce crimson in the gloom of the mindscape.

Lifting his hand in what was an unmistakable challenge, he directed his arrogance and absolute conviction that the monster had no right to affect him into a single gesture.

The kinetic-spiritual force bypassed the being’s offensive spell and defensive layers entirely. It struck its core, the anchor point holding it to Marius's soul, weakening its grip on the attack it had been preparing and causing the magic to collapse, turning against its master.

A pulse went through the mindscape, and the monster froze as a network of glowing purple cracks spread across its form. With a final scream, it shattered into a million pieces, turning to ash.

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Nick gasped, his eyes snapping open as he was violently ripped from Marius’ mind as failed to find another foothold.

He gripped the edges of his stool as his chest heaved, letting the herbal smell of the safehouse ground him.

On the cot, Marius went rigid. He released a long, shuddering exhale, then his body went completely limp.

The frantic babbling finally stopped, and his breathing eased into a calmer rhythm.

"What happened?" the healer asked, rushing forward in alarm to support him.

“I’m fine,” Nick muttered, gesturing for her to check on Marius first.

The woman gasped, drawing his attention, and he saw that resting just above the boy's heart, sitting on the fabric of his tunic as if it had simply phased out of his body, was something.

Nick reached out cautiously. It was no bigger than a fingernail, jagged and pitch-black. As his fingers brushed it, a wave of cold, sickening malice washed over him. It was a tiny sliver of bone, yet the demonic taint radiating from it was so strong it made the World recoil like a startled cat.

, Nick realized, his blood running cold.

He didn't dare touch it with his bare skin for any longer, especially given how agitated the World was becoming, and quickly pulled a small pouch woven from ghostgrass out of his spatial ring.

The material was highly resistant to all forms of energy, and while it probably wouldn’t last as a long-term storage, it was enough to hide the taint for now. Using the edge of his sleeve to sweep the bone sliver into the pouch, he pulled the drawstrings tight, and only once the pressure in the room eased did he allow himself a sigh of relief.

"He'll sleep now," Nick told the healer, ignoring the much more nervous feelings they were all emitting. Their professionalism kept it from showing on their faces, and he’d have to trust they could handle it for now. "When he wakes up, his mind will be his own again, so he might try to escape. Keep him here.”

Without waiting for a response, Nick turned and left the safe house, his mind racing faster than his feet.

The Tower lobby was unexpectedly quiet, and for a moment, he worried he’d have to face another of Politod’s surprise appearances, but no one stopped him as he stepped into the elevator and headed for the seventy-seventh floor.

Once there, Nick walked straight past the library and into Tholm's private office, where the Archmage sat behind his desk, a single reading lamp illuminating a sprawling map of the western territories.

Tholm looked up, narrowing his eyes at Nick’s expression. “I take it there were complications?”

"Worse," Nick replied, walking up to the desk, pulling the ghostgrass pouch from his robes, and setting it down exactly in the center of the polished wood.

"Marius Illismonde couldn’t be interrogated at all," he explained, stepping back. "His mind was artificially barricaded by some kind of parasite. I had to dive in and kill it, and this is what came out.”

Tholm’s eyes fell on the pouch, but he didn’t reach for it.

Impatient, Nick reached out with the tip of his staff and nudged the pouch open, revealing the black sliver of bone, causing an immediate reaction.

Tholm’s aura, usually a perfectly controlled, calm pressure, suddenly erupted violently. The air in the office crackled with arcane energy, and the reading lamp shattered, plunging the room into shadows illuminated only by the furious blue glow of the Archmage's power.

Tholm stared at the sliver of bone, paling as the reality of what it was sank in.

"Where did you get this?" he whispered.

"It was anchored to Marius's soul," Nick said. "It’s demonic, isn't it? That’s how Hone has been coordinating this.”

Tholm slowly sank back into his heavy leather chair. The defensive flare of his aura didn't fade, but the anger in his eyes was suddenly replaced by deep grief. “Oh, Elias, what have you done?”