On the third day after Mason took over Avalon, the nauseating stench that had clung to the air finally dissolved beneath blankets of quicklime powder and Black Rose floral water.
But the miasma persisted — likely on account of the primeval forest here. The local residents had even mentioned that these woods harbored not only wild beasts, but monsters.
All of it was street-corner hearsay, of course. After all, in this world, no one had ever truly confirmed the existence of such creatures — much the same as the world Sophia had come from before her transmigration, where people frequently claimed to have seen ghosts, yet no one had ever produced hard proof.
The shattered city gate of Avalon had not yet been replaced with Mason's signature black stone cement structure, but the order within the city had already undergone a total, top-down reorganization.
Aside from the batch of branded war prisoners being supervised at bayonet-point to clear rubble, Avalon had one thousand one hundred and sixty ordinary residents remaining.
These people had once been shadows cowering in dark attics, trembling in fear. Now they clustered at the edges of the square, necks hunched, watching with complicated expressions as Mason soldiers ladled out thin porridge.
To Avalon's commoners, changing rulers was like changing seasons — the whip above their heads simply traded one pattern for another.
But this silver-haired tyrant everyone spoke of was a little different.
She hadn't looted their property, hadn't conscripted their women, hadn't even levied the symbolic entry tax.
Instead, a pink-haired girl who called herself Mason's Chief Great Inventor had shown up with a squad of soldiers, marching through every street and alley to loudly proclaim something no one had ever heard of: the Mason Citizen Card.
"Pay attention now! This is no ordinary token!"
Irene was currently standing atop a wooden crate that had once held explosives, brandishing a sample card in her hand. Her eyes still bore faint shadows from staying up all night, but those sapphire-blue irises blazed with unusual fervor.
"The moment you get this card, you are no longer a vagrant or an unprocessed variable — you become an official member of Her Majesty's workforce!
What does being a citizen mean? It means as long as you work, you get to drink bone broth seasoned with refined salt and rich fat!
It means if you fall ill, you can go to the medical station and receive medicine from Lord Daphne's apprentices!
And if you accumulate enough work-points — your children will be able to travel to the Royal City to learn how to build... ahem, to build tools that change the world!"
The residents below exchanged glances.
At first, they were certain this was a devil's temptation. In this world, apart from the clay idols inside a temple, who would paint such an enormous picture of paradise for common people?
But then they watched Mason soldiers break open sealed crates of salted dried fish, watched gleaming refined salt — so white it was almost painful in the sunlight — being casually shaken into the soup pot, and the primal hunger instinct shattered every last doubt in an instant.
This promise might not have reached their mouths yet, but it smelled... it smelled undeniably like the fragrance of freshly milled wheat.
People had even begun whispering among themselves, asking what they would need to do to earn one of those cards.
Up on the raised platform of the main hall, Victoria stood with a slightly heavy quill between her fingers, gazing through the latticed window at the fervor unfolding below.
Good grief.
That little stone-face Sophia — she was so lazy she couldn't even be bothered to run her own brainwashing operation, and had the nerve to send Irene to handle it instead.
But... one had to admit, this move was genuinely vicious.
Using the ephemeral future vision of a Citizen Card to forcibly bind these people's fates to Mason's. Once they accepted this higher standard of living as their baseline logic, even if you tried to drive them away someday, they'd come crying and begging Sophia to go on ruling them.
But for these wretched residents, what Irene was describing was the life they had dreamed of their entire existence.
Eat your fill just by working?
When had such a thing ever existed before?
Willow walked past the square carrying a bundle of freshly changed bed linens from one of the emptied rooms, and paused for a moment.
She watched the eyes of those residents gradually fill with light, and the corners of her lips curved upward slightly.
She understood His Majesty's deeper intent.
These residents were not prisoners of war. They needed no brand. But they required a deeper form of conditioning — a logical dependency on a better life.
His Majesty truly was the greatest painter in the world.
In just three days, she had made over a thousand people understand: in Avalon, survival had been a gift granted by grace. But in Mason, living well was a right delivered by logic itself.
The sense of disparity that gap produced would ensure that the moment they received their Citizen Cards, they would transform completely into Her Majesty's most loyal cogs.
Just wait — when General Delilah awoke, what she would find would no longer be a hostile, isolated fortress city, but a new stronghold being Mason-ified, brimming with vitality and hungry ambition.
Your Majesty. Even souls left to rot in a cellar — your radiance can reignite them.
"Um... Lord Irene..."
From within the crowd, a bold old farmer swallowed hard and raised a trembling hand.
"As long as we follow Her Majesty's arrangements, can we truly earn enough work-points to... to let our children become apprentices?"
Irene planted her fists on her hips and broke into a brilliant grin.
"Absolutely! As long as you don't slack off during the upcoming road-widening project, Her Majesty has never been stingy with rewarding those who deliver results!"
In that moment, the heartbeats of one thousand one hundred and sixty residents quietly quickened.
They didn't care who sat behind that rosewood desk. What they cared about was whether they could bite off a piece of that magnificent, glittering promise.
If this girl named Sophia could bring them dignity, bread, and salt, then... they were willing to seal the name "Avalon" away in the mist forever.
And so, a single logic quietly took shape in the minds of Avalon's residents.
Work hard. Perform well. Earn the Citizen Card that qualified you for Mason's recognition.
Once you had the card, keep working to accumulate work-points — eat your fill, learn a trade yourself, and let your children learn one too. You might even receive a small flock of poultry distributed by Her Majesty herself.
The more they thought about it, the more it seemed like things could only get better from here.
And at that moment, in the quietest bedchamber deep within the palace.
Sophia sat at the head of the bed, a warm damp cloth in hand, gently wiping the last traces of dust from between Delilah's fingers.
Through the window came the faint, distant sound of cheering. Not a single ripple crossed those pale gold irises of hers — until she wiped across a scar on Delilah's wrist, and the tip of her finger gave the most imperceptible tremor.
She lowered her lashes. A flash of carefully concealed emotion — something called displeasure — passed through those pale gold eyes.
"Report —"
A scout slipped soundlessly into the side hall. From behind the room divider, his voice was pressed low to a near-whisper, terrified of disturbing the general still deep in unconscious sleep.
"Your Majesty, over the past three days, we have eliminated four separate groups of watchers lurking in the dense forest outside Avalon City. Their movements were clumsy — they did not have the bearing of Olan's regular elite forces. They appeared to be scouts dispatched by several of the surrounding principalities.
Because they refused to identify their employers and showed clear deathsworn tendencies carrying lethal poison, Commander Bardess has carried out your standing orders. All of them have been executed."
From behind the divider, Sophia set the damp cloth back into the basin. Her voice was flat and completely without inflection.
"Components that cannot be interrogated have no reason to be preserved.
Since someone is in such a hurry to confirm whether this patch of fog has changed hands, I will personally send them their receipt."
She rose to her feet. The silver skirts she had worn before had long since been exchanged for a trim black riding ensemble.
Delilah still had not opened her eyes. But Sophia knew — it was time.
The flies circling in the forest were a signal. The plan the Earl of Olan had left behind was accelerating its operation now that Avalon had gone silent.
If she stayed still, those flies would swarm into a mass and make a nuisance of themselves right at her feet.
"Daphne."
Sophia stepped out from behind the divider and looked toward the Saint waiting outside.
Daphne had rested for some time now. Her complexion had improved slightly, though her eyes still carried visible worry for her comrade.
"If we depart now and travel along uneven mountain roads, will Delilah's condition be able to withstand it?"
Daphne thought carefully for a moment, a faint glimmer of magical power flickering in her jade-green eyes.
"Your Majesty, I have laid three layers of soft cushioning inside the specially prepared carriage, and there is both Irene's shock-absorbing system and my own magical support to draw on.
As long as we encounter no large-scale physical impacts, transporting her... is actually safer than leaving her here in a forest full of miasma and monster legends."
"Good."
Sophia gave a slight nod.
Out in the corridor of the main hall, Victoria was idly counting the number of prisoners of war being forced to repair the road in the distance.
When she heard that Sophia intended to break camp and move out with an injured soldier in tow at a time like this, she was inwardly shocked.
That red-haired general is important, yes — but marching with a living corpse is, without question, dragging the entire army's mobility down.
If I were one of those neighboring duchy lords, I'd absolutely stage an ambush the moment this weighed-down column reached a narrow pass.
And yet... watching Willow and Irene go about their business with that expression of Her Majesty's decisions are always correct, I somehow feel like I'm the one who's lost her mind.
Has Sophia already laid a lethal trap on a road she hasn't even traveled yet?
And another thing — those few hundred soldiers being left behind to guard the city and control the prisoners... is she not afraid they'll be overwhelmed by over a thousand residents?
No... wait.
Victoria suddenly recalled that just moments ago, she had watched those Avalon residents cheerfully hauling crates of Black Bread that Mason had shipped in.
All right.
Victoria took back what she was about to say.
In the face of the logic of having food to eat, any notion of uprising or revolt had no room to survive.
Sophia issued a set of extremely concise orders.
Seven hundred Mason soldiers were left behind.
Three hundred of them were tasked with supervising the four hundred-odd war prisoners branded with magical marks, forcing them to continue constructing permanent black stone defensive fortifications in the rubble.
The remaining four hundred were distributed to the four corners of Avalon City.
To call them garrison troops would be generous — they were more like instructors.
Their job was to teach those residents who desperately wanted a Citizen Card how to carry out basic construction according to Mason's standards.
"Soldiers remaining here will receive double work-points every ten days."
Sophia's final sentence made those soldiers who had originally been crestfallen about not following Her Majesty onward instantly straighten their spines, their eyes sweeping over the residents the way a man eyes a floor strewn with gold coins.
Besides — it wasn't as though they would be left here forever.
Once everything settled down, Her Majesty would naturally make proper arrangements for every one of them.
Morning.
At Avalon's broken city gate.
Four thousand three hundred of Mason's finest reformed into columns.
They still wore their black masks, the deep crimson Black Rose emblem on each one flickering in and out of the mist like a heartbeat.
At the center of the formation stood a heavy carriage drawn by four warhorses, its body wrapped tight in black cloth.
The wheels were bound in thick rawhide to muffle the noise. Daphne sat inside the carriage cabin, monitoring without pause.
Sophia stepped onto the carriage. Her silver hair leaped in the cold morning wind.
"Willow. Irene. Daphne."
"We are here, Your Majesty."
The three answered in unison.
"Full army — advance."
The black iron current surged into motion once more — carrying with it a biting, unquestionable sense of Order — and slowly ground through the mist surrounding Avalon, roaring toward the next resource point awaiting reclamation.
The dawn light was blocked by the heavy carriage curtains. Only the faintest glimmer seeped through the gaps into the cabin.
Avalon's damp, rugged mountain roads produced surprisingly little jolting inside the vehicle — a credit to the mechanical balance logic Irene had woven into that complex suspension system.
In the second carriage trailing behind, the atmosphere was stifling enough to suffocate.
Victoria sat cross-legged, leaning with practiced elegance against the custom leather cushion, still holding that cup of warm black tea. Her pale gold irises drifted through the curling steam, sizing up Bardess, who sat directly across from her and was cleaning the components of her black musket with complete indifference to the scrutiny.
Bardess, as an ordinary musketeer squad captain, now occupied a position of considerable standing at Sophia's side — and she had been granted use of a black musket to boot. She treasured that weapon dearly.
As for the nonsense her subordinates muttered about whether she harbored ambitions of becoming a general — Bardess couldn't be bothered to give it a second thought.
And this Victoria in front of her?
Bardess had long since noticed the other woman watching her, but she couldn't be bothered with that either.
This gunpowder-reeking savage of a woman looked at Victoria the way someone looks at a pile of work-points waiting to be cashed in.
Victoria rolled her eyes so hard internally they nearly left orbit, though her outward expression remained one of breezy, unruffled composure.
She had expected that after handing over that secret list — one capable of rewriting the map of the Northern border — Sophia would have shown at least a flicker of shock, or some sign of being momentarily overwhelmed by the intelligence windfall.
And what had that little stone-face actually done?
She had merely extended those absurdly pale fingertips, accepted that thick stack of papers with cold detachment, and without sparing her own sister so much as a second glance, turned immediately to issue marching instructions.
How on earth did someone with a personality this completely outside the bounds of convention survive in a place like the royal court?
No... she didn't just survive. She was reshaping the world according to her own formula.
Am I, a diplomatic variable of this caliber, genuinely worth less to her than a single strand of that comatose red-haired little general's hair?
"Princess Victoria, stop turning things over in that head of yours."
Bardess looked up abruptly, flashing a mouthful of white teeth in a grin that carried an unsettling frankness.
"Her Majesty's brain spins faster than the cylinder in this musket. If you genuinely want to live comfortably, pray that the Kingdom of Jasu on that list behaves itself — and pray you haven't been lying to our Empress.
Because the bullets in my gun don't have eyes."
Victoria's mouth twitched. She reassembled her perfect artificial smile.
"But of course, Commander Bardess. I have always known which way the wind blows."
Meanwhile, in the lead carriage — the one Irene had taken to calling the mobile fortress — the tension was of an entirely different dimension.
The spacious interior was laid with thick velvet carpeting. On the padded couch at the rear, Delilah remained submerged in deep sleep, her chest rising and falling faintly but steadily.
Daphne knelt at the edge of the couch, a faint green glow wreathing her fingertips, checking the logical stability of the wounds every half-hour without fail.
Spread open on the low rosewood table at the center of the cabin was the list Victoria had surrendered.
"The Kingdom of Jasu."
Sophia's fingertip tapped lightly on a red mark on the map. Her pale gold irises looked unusually deep in the wavering candlelight.
"According to the information Victoria provided, this nation, despite bearing the name of a kingdom, is in reality a loose federation jointly governed by six mine owners.
While the Earl of Olan was courting Avalon, he also promised those greedy operators in Jasu a monopoly over Northern border iron ore."
Willow poured steaming black tea for everyone present and let her gaze rest on the names Victoria had specifically marked on the list. Her brow furrowed faintly.
"Your Majesty, if Olan's envoys have already reached the Kingdom of Jasu ahead of us, then Jasu has likely already become a second trap set against us.
We only have four thousand three hundred soldiers, and we must also escort the gravely wounded General Delilah. A direct assault would carry far too high a logical cost.
And we still don't know whether Olan's soldiers are already there. Olan is a wealthy and populous nation. I am afraid that if they're pushed to the edge, they'll choose to bring everything down together with us."
Irene bit into her Black Bread, waving a hand dismissively through a muffled mouthful, her sapphire eyes blazing with the zeal of a true technocrat.
"Willow, you're running the numbers with old-era thinking again. Those so-called Iron-Clad Armies of the Kingdom of Jasu are nothing but thugs with access to mineral wealth who managed to afford slightly thicker armor.
Against my armor-piercing round logic, their plating is no different from a sheet of tissue paper."
She tapped the hidden compartment beneath the carriage floor and let out a satisfied chuckle.
"And besides — what do the Jasu crowd value above all else? Money.
If we can demonstrate that the monopoly the Earl of Olan promised them is nothing more than a piece of wastepaper Her Majesty could shred at any moment, while Mason's industrial cooperation could bring them ten times the returns... these greedy variables will turn coat faster than anyone.
But honestly, we don't even need that angle. The situation right now isn't a question of whether we want to attack — it's that if we don't attack, they'll march straight to our doorstep. So we have no choice but to find a way forward."
Sophia lifted her teacup, took a quiet sip, and let her gaze travel to the special seal at the bottom of the list — the one marking Olan's senior envoy.
"Victoria was right about one thing. The Kingdom of Jasu is the core node in Olan's plan."
Sophia's tone remained ice-cold, yet it carried a certainty that was quietly alarming.
"Since they have already planted their poisonous seeds there, I will harvest the first batch of labor resources right on that same ground.
Pass the order down — full army, advance at maximum speed. Make no attempt to conceal our movements.
I want those mine owners in Jasu to understand that Mason's Order... has already arrived at their front door."
She turned her head slightly, glancing at Delilah still sleeping in the rear of the cabin, her fingertip tracing an absent circle along the rim of the teacup.
Inside the carriage, the fragrance of black tea intertwined with the cold crispness of the alchemical incense.
The moment Sophia's words fell, the carriage sank into a brief, complete silence.
Willow, Irene — and even Daphne, mid-spell — all stilled the movements of their hands and turned toward the silver-haired girl seated at the head of the carriage with expressions that bordered on reverence and awe.
In the Western fantasy laws of the old era, a monarch was a chess player enthroned at the top of an ivory tower, and the people were pawns to be discarded at any moment.
But the order Sophia had just given —
"Advance at maximum speed. Make no attempt to conceal our movements."
— to the eyes of these intimates who understood logic deeply, it was no different from igniting an enormous torch in the dark northern wilderness, one bright enough to draw every moth within range.
This was not an advance. She was using her own body — her sacred person — to build a wall of flesh and blood for Mason's countless subjects.
She knew full well what Olan and those greedy minor nations truly wanted.
Her head, this heretic's head. The core of the Black Rose Order.
As long as she paraded herself openly out here, those wolves crouched at Mason's borders would pull back and hurl themselves frantically at this lone army of only four thousand.
Her Majesty was using herself as bait — drawing the scorched earth of war away from the homeland and into the wilderness.
This form of tyranny — stripped of all self-interest, every ounce of danger calculated precisely onto her own body — was the most merciful Divine Miracle in all the world.
Since Her Majesty has chosen to become the shield, then I must become the sharpest spear in her hand — and drive it through every last wretch who dares approach that silver light.
Daphne's eyes turned faintly red at the rims. She could feel the steady pulse of magic in her palm, and when she spoke, her voice carried a conviction deeper than usual.
"Your Majesty — as long as I am here, even if this carriage is surrounded by a tide of iron armor, I will deploy the highest sequence of Holy Light defense and hold an absolute sanctuary open for you."
"Enough. Put away those mournful expressions, all of you."
Sophia turned her head. Those pale gold irises swept across each face in turn, her voice carrying its usual absence of inflection.
"This is the simplest damage-minimization logic. Mason's Royal City is the heart of industrialization — production efficiency cannot be interrupted.
And I am merely a mobile variable. Drawing enemy fire is the choice that maximizes national gain at this stage."
Cold as her explanation was, every person present understood perfectly well that the premise of this maximized gain was a wager made with the Queen's own life.
Irene snapped open the mineral distribution map of the Kingdom of Jasu, the sapphire eyes blazing with a destructive fervor.
"Since Her Majesty wants to play big, let's give those backwater landowners in Jasu a proper dimension-shattering surprise!"
She jabbed a finger at the Iron Throat fortress on the map — the gateway into the Kingdom of Jasu.
"Their strength is iron — heavy armor and solid walls.
But in my logic, that is also their greatest fatal flaw.
If they think having ore makes them Truth, then I'll use science to teach them that Truth only exists at the center of an explosion!"
Willow steadied her thoughts, her slender fingers tracing along the list of the six mine owners, her voice cool and clear as frost.
"Your Majesty, Jasu's federal system is a classic community of shared interests — and that also means fractures within it are exceptionally easy to produce.
According to Princess Victoria's intelligence, two of these six mine owners have harbored a long-standing grudge over overlapping mineral veins.
We can use our scouts to feed false intelligence to one party — claiming the other has secretly reached a deal with Mason, and plans to stab them in the back when battle begins."
Willow paused, a sharp glint flashing through her eyes.
"Pair that with Irene's artillery bombardment, and as long as their internal logic fractures, it will be enough to take over the mine operations there."
Meanwhile, in the carriage trailing behind, Victoria was watching the lead vehicle — steady as a mountain, living up to its nickname — through a gap in the window curtain.
Being the intelligent person she was, she had quickly registered the peculiar conspicuousness of this column marching with no attempt at concealment.
Sophia... you really are a madwoman. And a genius.
Victoria tightened her fingers around her pen and paper.
She realized that if she still wanted to hold a seat in the future Mason order, she would need to deliver her most impressive performance in this gambit where the Queen was using herself as bait.
That envoy in the Kingdom of Jasu... I remember him. A timid fat man.
If I could write him a letter in the identity of a fugitive princess bearing critical intelligence and valuable treasures, and lure him to the border...
Sophia set down her teacup, her gaze drifting once more to the tranquil expression on Delilah's sleeping face.
"Tactics confirmed."
She stood. Her frame was slender, but the oppressive force that radiated from her — enough to crush the miasma itself — surged instantaneously into the air.
"Irene, handle long-range fire suppression.
Willow, handle intelligence deception and internal division.
Daphne, maintain logistics and defense.
As for the rats Olan has sent —"
Sophia let out a cold laugh. It was the contempt of a conqueror.
"Since they want to see me — let them see clearly how Mason's Black Rose renames every last place it touches on top of the iron ore."
As for Victoria's proposed strategy of going alone into danger herself — though it seemed like it could yield decent results, Sophia dismissed it outright.
Sophia stated coolly and simply: "Have her sit in the carriage and stay put. I don't need more complications."
Everyone present understood, of course, that Her Majesty was simply unwilling to let the Third Princess put herself in harm's way.
Victoria, upon hearing this, cursed the madwoman twice inside her head.
But after she was done cursing, for reasons she could not quite explain, a faint stirring moved through her chest.
Then the mocking cold laugh rose and swallowed it.
Royalty. As if a thing like familial affection could possibly exist within it.
Two days of travel dissolved in an instant amid the sound of black musket maintenance and the whinnying of warhorses.
Victoria had eaten well these past few days — it reminded her of her time in the Imperial Capital. The food in Olan had been decent enough, but she found, inexplicably, that Sophia's Willow produced something that tasted far better than anything she had eaten anywhere else.
And that small sweet confection called Pudding — even Victoria, who was fastidious about keeping her figure, couldn't help going back for a few extra bites.
When the first rays of the third day's dawn fell upon the border iron gate of the Kingdom of Jasu, what greeted them there made the heart recoil.
As the glass window of the carriage reflected that first sliver of morning light, the border fortress of hewn rock that everyone had anticipated — the one that was supposed to carry the authority of a federation — showed no such grandeur.
Instead, what lay before them was a scene of utter apocalyptic ruin, as if hellfire had licked it over and over again until nothing remained.
The damp, cold fragrance of ancient forest that had permeated the air was gone. In its place was a nauseating smell — a blend of charred timber and the sweet, iron-tinged stench of burned protein.
Sophia pushed open the carriage window. In the cold wind, her pale gold irises contracted slightly. What filled her sight were vast, sweeping stretches of blackened rubble and broken walls.
There were no war drums here. No shouting. Even the thick, clinging miasma of Avalon had been driven off by this annihilating heat.
The villages along the road had been reduced to an unbroken row of black burial mounds. Those stone houses that had once stood solid and firm had been crushed into heaps of rubble under the brute force of catapult strikes.
Ahead, the Iron Throat Fortress — the pass Victoria had described as capable of holding back a thousand armies — now resembled a giant with its jaw smashed in. The gaps in the city wall gaped like wounds. The iron chains that had once hung from the battlements were snapped into sections of scrap metal, hanging limp and useless in the silted moat below.
Most chilling of all were the mineshafts.
The very foundation upon which the Kingdom of Jasu stood — those tunnels bored deep into the earth — appeared to have been forcibly detonated or collapsed by some external hand. The tunnel mouths were sealed shut by massive piles of earth and shattered rock, as if to imprison forever whatever life remained inside.
Victoria's gaze trembled.
This defies all logic.
In my list, the six mine owners of Jasu were greedy, yes — but they also harbored a near-pathological possessiveness over their own property: these mine operations, and their people.
Who burns the goose that lays the golden eggs, along with the nest?
Looking at the catapult-smashed impact patterns — this was absolutely not an ordinary internal conflict.
This kind of premeditated, annihilating strike feels more like...
A purge. Conducted to erase certain traces.
Olan — what in the world have you done to this land?
"Your Majesty!"
With the heavy thud of military boots on earth, Bardess led a squad of elite soldiers back from behind a stretch of ruins ahead.
Her black cloak was coated in ash. That usually bold, fierce face was now overlaid with a heavy, suffocating darkness.
"Intelligence gathering from the forward position is complete...
Which is to say — there is no intelligence.
The entire border defense line has been completely erased."
Bardess stepped to the side and signaled. Two soldiers came forward carrying a frail figure between them.
It was a little girl.
She appeared to be no more than six or seven years old. Her cheeks, which should have been rosy, were now deeply sunken and had taken on an unhealthy ashen color, covered in thick, dried blood. The rough-spun clothing on her — originally decent quality — had been torn to rags. The exposed arms were thin as kindling, covered in a crosshatch of scratch marks and bruises.
"Your Majesty, we found her three li ahead, in a village that had been burned to a crisp."
Bardess's voice had a rough edge to it as she pointed toward the little girl.
"Right there among the dead.
When my people reached her, she was sitting in the middle of several gutted corpses, both hands clenched around a piece of bone that the fire had charred black as coal, eyes not blinking at all.
At first we thought she was dead through and through — but we reached out and checked, and she still had a breath in her."
The little girl was set down before Sophia.
She didn't cry. Didn't struggle. Didn't even display the fear a stranger's presence ought to provoke.
Those eyes — eyes that should have been full of starlight — held nothing now but the vacant, glassy stillness of a dry well.
No matter how the soldiers around the carriage looked at her, she remained what she was: a shell, abandoned by the world, with nothing left inside.
Willow felt a sharp clench in her chest at the sight.
She thought of Hailey — that little girl who had found new life in Mason. The contrast made the child in front of her feel like the crudest, most direct expression of malice this ruthless world had ever produced.
"Your Majesty, she seems... to be unable to speak."
Willow crouched down, attempting to wipe the blood from the girl's face with a warm damp cloth. But the girl appeared to feel nothing — not even the warmth of the cloth. No reaction whatsoever.
"She is not unable to speak."
Sophia descended slowly from the carriage. Her black riding boots landed on the scorched earth with a crisp, clean sound.
She walked to stand before the girl, looking down from above at that blank, expressionless face.
"When a living organism receives external harm in excess of what the brain can bear, in order to protect core logical function from collapse, it will choose to shut itself away.
She is not mute. She has simply... locked herself inside that pile of corpses."
Sophia raised her head. Her gaze moved past the little girl, settling on the still-smoking ruins of the fortress city in the near distance. The trace of warmth that had faintly inhabited her eyes in the morning light — gone. Utterly extinguished.
Irene stood nearby, staring at those collapsed mine shafts and the people lying dead in positions of agony. The black metal component in her hand was being gripped so hard it had nearly deformed.
This wasn't war. This was pure slaughter.
Those so-called six mine owners, those Olan nobles — they had treated this rich iron ore region as a testing ground to be set ablaze whenever it suited them.
Just to keep Her Majesty from getting her hands on these resources, they were willing to destroy all of it with their own hands!
Sophia issued the order to rest in place for two hours. For these four-thousand-strong elite troops, four hours of stopping was more than sufficient to complete the most meticulous formation deployment and a deep reconnaissance sweep of the surrounding ten-li radius.
Soldiers drew a perimeter line at the edge of the ruins. The cold gleam of black musket barrels flickered in the last wisps of dissipating smoke. Mason's strict discipline was rapidly covering this patch of lawless scorched earth.
Beneath a hastily erected sun canopy, Daphne knelt before the little girl.
The sustained spellcasting kept Daphne's fingertips wreathed in a soft jade-green Holy Light. The scrapes and bruises from being dragged and hauled had already healed completely under the magic's nourishment, leaving behind new skin — wax-yellow from malnutrition.
Yet no matter how much life-force the Holy Light poured in, the girl's eyes — sunk deep in shadow — did not stir.
"Please eat something. Even just one bite."
Willow held a bowl of warm minced-meat rice porridge, its contents cooked down to soft, tender pieces, her voice gentled to the utmost degree.
The spoon touched the edge of her lips. The girl remained a stone carving — mouth sealed tight.
She simply stared, unmoving, at some fixed point in the void. It was as though her consciousness had been left behind forever in that burning pile of corpses.
Daphne exhaled slowly.
My magic can mend blood vessels and bones. But it cannot mend a heart that has already completely collapsed.
In her logic, being alive had apparently become an erroneous command — one that needed to be refused because it carried too much pain.
This kind of absolute numbness was more terrifying than any lethal poison.
Olan — what kind of hell did you manufacture on this earth to make a child prefer to turn herself into a stone rather than look at this world one more time?
Victoria sat on a low stool nearby, watching this standoff that had now stretched two hours. The sense of unease in the pit of her stomach had grown steadily stronger.
Her black tea had been refilled three times. She was now glancing, with the corner of her eye, at Sophia — who sat on the carriage step not far away.
Look at that. The little stone-face had even managed to stare at that scrawny little ghost for two solid hours without moving a muscle.
Was she feeling sympathy?
No. To me, she looks more like someone observing a broken-down component that has fallen into an infinite logical loop.
Genuinely spine-chilling.
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