Chapter : 965
With a discipline forged in the crucible of two lifetimes of war and loss, he stepped forward. He did not offer a hand. He did not offer a familiar greeting. He performed a single, perfect, and deeply respectful gesture. He gave her a low, formal bow, his head bent, his posture a testament to the proper deference owed to his wife’s elder sister, the acting matriarch of the house.
It was a brilliant move, a masterpiece of social and emotional misdirection. It was a gesture of profound respect, but it was also a wall. It established a formal, unbreachable distance between them. It was a silent declaration: I am Lord Ferrum. You are Lady Mina. We are strangers, bound only by the contract of my marriage to your sister. That is all we are. That is all we will ever be.
And in the silent, secret chamber of his own heart, it was something else entirely. It was a tribute. A final, painful farewell to the woman he had once known, the friend he had once lost. It was an apology and a goodbye, all wrapped in a perfect, impenetrable shell of courtly etiquette.
Mina was visibly, if fractionally, taken aback. She had been prepared for the awkward, stammering boy of the past. She had not been prepared for this… this quiet, confident, and impeccably formal lord. She saw the gesture for what it was—a display of respect, a perfect adherence to protocol—and she could not fault it. She returned the gesture with a polite, pragmatic nod of her own, her mind already recalibrating her assessment of her strange, new brother-in-law.
“Lord Ferrum,” she said, her voice a calm, practical instrument. “Welcome to our home. We had not… expected you. My sister’s letters spoke only of her own return.”
“The decision was a last-minute one,” Lloyd replied, his voice a smooth, level baritone, devoid of all emotion. He had found his mask. He was Lord Ferrum now. “My wife’s concern for her mother’s condition was… profound. As her husband, I felt it was my duty to accompany her, to offer whatever support I could.”
The words were perfect. They were noble, supportive, and utterly unimpeachable. They painted him as the perfect, concerned husband, a portrait so at odds with the cold, hard reality of his marriage that it was a work of breathtakingly audacious fiction.
Mina’s gaze flickered to her sister, a silent, questioning look passing between them. Rosa, who had been a silent observer, finally spoke. “His presence is… acceptable,” she stated, her voice the familiar, flat monotone. The words were not an endorsement; they were a concession, a statement of logistical fact.
The awkward, tense standoff was finally broken by Mina’s practical nature reasserting itself. She clapped her hands together, a sharp, no-nonsense sound that seemed to clear the air. “Well, the journey has been long, and you must be exhausted. Yacob, stop staring and show your brother-in-law to the guest suites. The Azure Wing has been prepared.” She then turned her attention to the household staff, her voice becoming a crisp, clear instrument of command, issuing a dozen orders for refreshments, for luggage, for the preparation of a formal dinner. The administrator was back in control.
As they were about to be led away, Mina’s gaze settled on Lloyd once more, and this time, a flicker of genuine, human warmth broke through her professional facade. “And Lord Ferrum,” she said, her voice softening slightly. “I… I was sorry to hear of your… recent illness. The news reached us, but the distance… I hope you are now fully recovered.”
The simple, sincere expression of concern was another, unexpected knife in his soul. He forced his own polite mask to remain in place. “Thank you, my lady. I am well.”
The strained pleasantries were finally over. They were led into the cool, marble halls of the Siddik manor. The house itself was a shrine of preserved grief. The air was still and heavy, smelling of dried flowers and old, polished wood. Every surface was immaculate, every tapestry perfectly hung. It was a house that was not lived in, but maintained, a beautiful, silent tomb where a family was waiting for a ghost to either awaken or finally pass on.
They were led to the matriarch’s chambers. The room was bathed in a soft, filtered light, the windows draped with heavy, velvet curtains. The only sound was the slow, rhythmic ticking of a grand, ornate clock. And on a massive, four-poster bed in the center of the room, lay Lady Nilufa Siddik.
Chapter : 966
She was breathtakingly beautiful, her face serene, her long, silver hair spread out on the pillow like a halo. She did not look sick. She did not look to be in pain. She looked… unnaturally peaceful, like a sleeping queen from a fairy tale, waiting for a kiss that would never come.
Lloyd approached the bed, his face a mask of solemn, professional concern. He could feel the desperate, hopeful gazes of Rosa, Mina, and Yacob on his back. They were looking for a miracle worker. A saint.
He was a soldier, a spy, and a liar. And he was about to perform his greatest, most dangerous, and most necessary deception yet.
He reached out, his hand steady, his movements slow and deliberate. Under the guise of checking her pulse, a simple, healer’s gesture, he laid his hand on her wrist.
And he activated his [All-Seeing Eye].
The serene, beautiful image of the sleeping queen shattered. The world of light and shadow dissolved, replaced by a horrifying, multi-layered schematic of pure, absolute damnation. His vision was flooded with a sickening, viscous, and actively malevolent energy. A living, breathing tide of dark, corrupted smoke was coiled around her Spirit Core, the very heart of her soul. It was not just touching it; it was strangling it, its foul, black tendrils sinking deep into her essence, slowly, patiently, and inexorably sucking the life, the very light, from her being.
In the silent, analytical space of his mind, the System’s voice, the calm, dispassionate Administrator, delivered a diagnosis that was a death sentence.
[TARGET ANALYSIS COMPLETE. DIAGNOSIS: SPIRITUAL CORRUPTION CURSE - GRADE A.]
[NATURE: SOUL-DEVOURING, SELF-SUSTAINING PARASITIC ENTITY.]
[PROGNOSIS: ETERNAL, LIVING DEATH.]
Lloyd had come here expecting a mystery. He had found, instead, a monster. A quiet, patient, and utterly evil monster that had been feeding on this family’s soul for a decade.
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The silent, internal world of Lloyd’s diagnostic scan was a vision of pure, refined horror. The [All-Seeing Eye] did not just show him the curse; it allowed him to perceive its very nature, its foul, intricate mechanics. It was not a crude, blunt-force affliction. It was a masterpiece of malevolent engineering, a slow, patient, and utterly insidious parasite.
He could see the way the dark, smoky tendrils had integrated themselves into Lady Nilufa’s spiritual nervous system, replacing her own life-giving energy with its own corrupting influence. It was not attacking her; it was replacing her, slowly and methodically overwriting her very soul with its own dark code. The curse was designed with a terrible, patient intelligence. It kept her body alive, her heart beating, her lungs breathing, turning her into a perfect, self-sustaining incubator for its own growth. It was a prison forged from her own life force, a cage of flesh where her conscious, terrified mind was the only audience to its own slow, inexorable dissolution.
The Grade A classification, he knew from the texts in his mother’s library, was reserved for curses of the highest, most ancient order, magic that bordered on the divine in its complexity and cruelty. This was not the work of a common hedge-mage or a back-alley devil worshiper. This was the work of a master, a grandmaster of the darkest arts, an artist whose medium was the suffering of the human soul. The implications were chilling. The conspiracy he was hunting was not just well-funded; it was commanded by a being of immense and terrifying power.
He maintained the contact for a few more seconds, his mind a whirlwind of data acquisition, his [All-Seeing Eye] recording every nuance of the curse’s structure, its energy signature, its resonant frequency. He was not just a doctor diagnosing an illness; he was a sapper, meticulously mapping the architecture of an impossibly complex bomb, searching for a single, microscopic flaw in its design.
Then, with a final, mental command, he deactivated his power.
The horrifying schematic of spiritual decay vanished, replaced once more by the serene, beautiful face of the sleeping matriarch. The whiplash was profound, the contrast between the beautiful lie of her appearance and the ugly, screaming truth of her reality a thing of grotesque, cosmic irony.
He withdrew his hand from her wrist, his own expression now a mask of grim, solemn finality. He had the diagnosis. He had the data. Now, he had to deliver the verdict.