CHAPTER 57: THE SNOW FELL SLOWLY

The snow fell slowly. Each flake was a gentle blade, too white to be clean. The world was mute, the sky faded, and the air... sweet. Almost too sweet. Like the smell of something dying in silence.

Hagan walked among the bodies with careful steps. His feet sank into the snow, but the warmth emanating from his body melted it the instant it touched the ground. His fingers trembled—not from the cold, but from memory.

They were all there. The disciples. The tamers. The beasts. And her.

Her.

The dark-haired girl was kneeling in the center of the field, as if she had chosen that place to die. Her clothes were burned, her face stained with dried blood. Her eyes had been gouged out, and yet... she stared at him.

"You promised..." her voice whispered, issuing from unmoving lips.

Hagan fell to his knees. The weight of his coat seemed to multiply on his shoulders. The bells around her neck jingled with the wind.

"I tried, Liora. I swear by everything that still pulses in the world... I tried..."

"You expected redemption from those already corrupted," she said. But it wasn’t really her. It was the memory. It was the reflection of his guilt sculpted in flesh.

Around them, the monsters of his colleagues were twisted. Some had been killed by their own masters. Others had devoured them before collapsing under poorly made contracts. Broken bonds. Soulless pacts. The scene was a painting of ruin crafted by hands that had believed in the love between man and beast.

And he... had hesitated.

In the moment he could have broken the ritual, he did not. Because he still believed that everyone deserved redemption. Because he still believed there was purity... in any creature.

The world began to dissolve, as if the memory burned from the inside out.

And then, he awoke.

The stone ceiling of Barovik was no less cold than the memory. Hagan opened his eyes slowly, adjusting his focus to the greenish glow of the runes that traced the columns of the ancient temple. He had slept little. But enough for the nightmare to visit him again.

He sat up stiffly. He dressed in the layers of ceremonial clothing: a dark gray tunic, embroidered with metal fragments of the First Lance. His shoulders were marked with the symbol of the Order: the flaming eye. The fire of purification. The pain of memory. The necessity of control.

The leader of the paladins entered next, kneeling with his hand over his chest. He was a robust man, aged by scars and faith. His name was Malrik, as he was known among the fanatics.

"Barovik is under complete control," he said. "The civilians have been evacuated. The sanctuaries have been sealed. And Ser Modell’s blood... dried in the central square."

"Good," Hagan replied, without emotion. "The blood was a seed. The new structure grows from it."

Malrik hesitated, but continued:

"The inquisitors want to know... if Ser Modell had to die. He was... trying to help. Just with the wrong words."

Hagan turned his face, and that alone was enough to chill the air between them.

"Wrong words are fuses. And we already have too much kindling on this continent."

He rose, walking to the tower’s balcony. From there, he could see the ancient city, covered by newly installed purifying symbols. Sacred Barovik, where monsters and tamers had lived peacefully for decades, now became an altar of hunting and judgment.

He took a deep breath.

"Eren Vale will come. The fairy... gave his location. Do you still trust her?"

"Of course. Her bond was deep. And even if she was compromised... the location was real. He won’t resist the curiosity. It’s the kind of mistake the bold make when they think they’re smarter than fate."

Malrik bowed his head.

"Do you wish us to prepare the siege?"

"No," Hagan said. "I want a containment ritual in a triple circle. A veil of magical dissociation around the city’s core. I need him to enter... without knowing he’s entering."

"And his creatures?"

"Treat them like demons. Isolate. Contain. Avoid direct destruction. I want the bonds broken, not the creatures killed. Each broken link will be a warning to the world. An open lesson."

Hagan closed his eyes for a moment.

The memory of Liora was still there. The weight of the eyeless gaze. The sound of the bells. The promise never fulfilled.

He would not save the world by trying to understand the tamers. He would save it by eradicating everything that was deviant. Every perverted love, every monstrous attachment, every symbiosis. They weren’t bonds. They were parasites.

And Eren Vale was the greatest of them.

At night, the sky over Barovik turned purple. The runes on the city’s walls glowed like open wounds. The central temple was redesigned with silver lines, and the paladins began to form the three layers of the seal.

Hagan watched from above. His hands were clean. His eyes, tired.

But within him, the ancient fire burned.

"You wanted purity, Liora. I will give it to you. Even if the whole world has to be burned and rebuilt with the bones of those who dreamed wrongly."

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

The ground creaked under Eren’s feet as if Barovik could hear him approaching.

Each step on the dry earth was accompanied by crackles of static mana and the bothersome hum of magical barriers in the distance.

The city rose like a ceremonial scar: twisted towers, symbols of purification burning on once neutral walls, and that unsettling feeling that everything there had been ripped from the living world and replanted in dead soil.

Kaela stopped beside him, hands on her hips and eyes fixed on the towers.

"This city reeks of a cult. It’s going to be fun."

"Don’t underestimate it," Eren replied. "Hagan wants to make this a stage."

Nyssa approached with short steps, her cheeks quivering and her eyes downcast.

"Is-is it true the fairy is... alive? I-I think I heard you say that..."

"I said we have her location. I didn’t say she’s alive."

Nyssa lowered her gaze even further.

"So it’s a trap," she murmured.

"Of course it’s a trap," replied Kaela. "This is the end of the line. If we enter wrong, there won’t even be teeth left."

Morwynn appeared, walking slowly along the sides of a tree. Her steps made no sound, as if respecting the setting. She raised her eyes towards the containment fields covering the city’s surroundings.

"Hmmm. Negation webs. Weak, but artistic. Unsettling. Hagan likes symmetry. He likes spectacles. Tragedies with an audience."

"And this will be his last."

Eren opened his palm. The living key given by the Guild The Core still pulsed with a rhythmic warmth. A small seal appeared at the base of his hand: five points, like clawed fingers, marking permission. Or observation. It was hard to tell.

He sat on a smooth-surfaced rock and began tracing the vectors of approach in the air. Magical lines appeared between his fingers, forming a skeletal map of the city. Towers, energy flows, probable routes.

Kaela crouched nearby, analyzing with a furrowed brow.

"Okay. Who goes in, who distracts, who blows up?"

"You and Morwynn take the east sector. I want confusion there. Noise. Magical pressure. Enough to seem like a serious assault."

"Stab and scream, got it," said Kaela, already smiling.

Morwynn let out a sound closer to a passionate sigh.

"Ahh... the east has always been a good place for tragedies. Dried blood on ancient stones... living poetry."

"Nyssa, you’re with me at the start. But your role is to create exits. Open reverse routes, dissolve the ground, hide the trails. When I advance to the temple, you fall back."

Nyssa nodded quickly, but her voice came out as a thread:

"O-okay... j-just don’t take long..."

"Sylha..."

"ME?!"

The ghost appeared upside down, twirling in the air with her own ballet, laughing loudly.

"Ahh, finally, my triumphant entrance!"

"You’ll stay in spiritual overlay. Invisible. On standby. If I call you... it’s because someone needs to cry very quickly."

Sylha placed her hands on her chest as if she had been proposed to.

"Ahhh, little Eren... you want me to be your pocket haunting?! I accept! But I’ll need a new ethereal dress, okay? This one already smells like emotional destruction!"

Kaela snorted.

"The ghost will mess everything up."

"If she messes up, I’ll let Hagan use her as a ritual bell. But she won’t."

Sylha made a gesture of sealing her lips with an invisible zipper. Then, she immediately pretended to choke on the zipper, laughing at herself. Nyssa let out a timid giggle.

Eren activated the system. A sequence of commands flashed before him.

[Main Mission: Ambush Hagan]

[Secondary Objective: Corrupt Order’s Core]

[Location: Barovik – Central Sector]

[Extra Condition: Preserve Integrity of Bonds]

[Strategic Analysis: Presumed Trap]

[Confirm Entry?]

[Y/N]

Eren pressed Y with his index finger.

"If he wants a stage... let’s give him a fire."

Morwynn approached slowly, observing the floating map.

"He still trusts the fairy, doesn’t he?"

"Probably."

"That means he’ll come prepared for you... but unprepared for real pain."

"Exactly. I’ll enter the temple from the back. Use the point where the three mana veins cross. And when I reach him, I won’t kill him quickly."

Kaela snapped her fingers.

"Now we’re talking."

"I want to mark him. Not just hurt. I want to disfigure the bond. Make the system itself reject him. He wants purification? Then he’ll see what happens when the system spits out a prophet."

Sylha raised an invisible sign with "Poetic!" written on it, waving it in the air.

"All that’s missing is rain and a kiss at the end, Eren! This is turning into an opera!"

Eren stood up. The late afternoon light reflected in his eyes with intensity. The group began to align in a natural formation—each knowing where they needed to be. That’s how they worked now. Like gears of a strange mechanism... but functional.

The relic waiting for him inside the city didn’t matter as much anymore. The fight with Hagan would just be the first explosion of something bigger. A cut in the theater of the Order. And he intended to open this wound with both hands.

In the distance, Barovik lit its towers. Signs of magical vigilance. Containment seals. A show about to start.

Eren pulled his hood up.

"Time to walk."

[Active Mission: Ambush in Progress]

[Objective: Infiltration | Coordinated action in multiple sectors]

[Mental State: Total Focus | Spiritual Alert: Moderate]

Kaela cracked her neck.

"Finally. Let’s end this stupid cult."

Nyssa clutched the edge of Eren’s tunic.

"You’re c-coming back, right?"

He didn’t respond immediately. He just looked into her eyes—and that was enough.

Morwynn vanished into the shadows. Sylha twirled in the air, laughing like one who dances on the edge of an abyss.

And the group advanced towards Barovik.

At the front, Eren walked as if the city owed him something.

As if he were the collector.