Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence Chapter 751 - 419: Madness

As dusk settled, Grey Rock Castle remained intact, untouched by artillery’s roar.

Beyond the ramparts, the Red Tide Legion’s formidable vehicle phalanx had fully arrayed itself.

Rows upon rows of steel, engines humming at the lowest setting, produced a deep vibration that resonated through the ground like suppressed thunder.

Their advance was measured, their sole action being the simultaneous activation of their searchlights.

Piercing white beams swept across the castle’s walls, its moats, and its arrow towers, ultimately settling on the imposing keep. This deliberate halt felt more agonizing than any direct assault.

A profound silence descended upon Grey Rock Castle; the soldiers held their positions, but a palpable uncertainty hung in the air, an unspoken question of what they awaited.

The attack was postponed, negotiations were absent, and even the inevitability of death seemed suspended.

Kael Remont stood upon the tower's balcony, his eyes raw and bloodshot, his fingernails gouging into his flesh.

The wind whispered past his ears, its tone shifting, like a sibilant voice directly behind him.

"Kael." The voice was eerily calm, as if it had been loitering behind him for an age, "I can observe your every action."

Kael spun around, finding the balcony deserted, save for the jagged silhouette of the castle, bisected by the sweeping searchlights.

This unsettling auditory hallucination had plagued him since his defeat at Blackstone Canyon.

It typically manifested at night, or when he dared to close his eyes.

Kael stumbled into the council chamber, his gait unsteady.

The heavy oak door swung shut behind him, its closing muffled, yet the echo reverberated.

The sound trailed unnaturally in the vacant hall, like a solitary, ill-timed funeral bell.

The long table was crowded with figures.

The assembled nobility, commanders, and quartermasters of Gray Rock Province were all present.

Candles, arranged in two parallel lines, flickered, their unsteady flames casting a waxy pallor of exhaustion upon each face.

Commander Baron stood near the table's head, his brow glistening with sweat, his hand resting habitually on his sword hilt.

This was an almost involuntary gesture born of mounting tension, a subconscious defense against the siege horn that could erupt at any moment from beyond the defenses.

Some of the nobles were engaged in hushed prayers.

Others, officers among them, stared intently at the tabletop, perhaps silently calculating their remaining reserves or pondering if they could hold out until the Duke’s return.

This was the grim reality, yet Kael found himself detached from it.

In his perception, the world had warped into a grotesque distortion.

The faint candlelight elongated their shadows, stretching them into thin, serpentine forms that writhed across the stone walls like a pack of menacing beasts.

Within his sight, his companions and subordinates were no longer recognizable.

Each face appeared as a hidden operative of the Red Tide.

Every minute gesture seemed to be a prearranged signal for an imminent strike.

Commander Baron’s hand upon his sword hilt was, in Kael’s distorted view, not a mark of tension, but a prelude to drawing his weapon.

The slight tremor at the corner of the Baron’s mouth transformed, in Kael’s warped vision, into a malevolent smirk.

The murmured prayers were no longer appeals to a higher power, but coded exchanges for mutual affirmation.

He perceived these words not through his ears, but as if they resonated directly within his mind.

"Secure him..."

"Louis desires only his head..."

"Tonight... it must be now..."

The voices overlapped, a cacophony speaking simultaneously inside his skull.

Kael felt his breathing grow ragged, and faint, shadowy wisps began to encroach upon the periphery of his vision.

Traitors.

They were all traitors.

He stood amidst a den of wolves.

Commander Baron was the first to discern that something was amiss.

The veteran general, who had served alongside Duke Remont for three decades, observed Kael’s skin turn unnaturally pale, his eyes vacant, his pupils contracting erratically.

After a moment’s hesitation, he took a step forward.

"Young Master," his voice intentionally modulated to a low, weary rasp, "You appear unwell. Perhaps it would be prudent if we..."

Before the commander could complete his sentence, the words had already been twisted into something utterly different in Kael’s ears.

"You intend to murder me?!" Kael’s head snapped up, a near-inhuman shriek tearing from his throat, "You dare to dream of it!!"

Without conscious thought, his hand moved with blinding speed.

His longsword was drawn, its blade tracing a chilling arc through the candlelight, imbued with a gray fighting Qi.

"Thump." The sound was not overly loud, yet it carried a chilling clarity.

The blade plunged deep into Commander Baron’s chest, passing clean through.

The resolute old general stood stock-still, a statue of disbelief.

He glanced down at the rapidly blooming stain of crimson across his tunic, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet Kael’s.

No animosity resided in his eyes, only profound bewilderment.

"Young…" Blood welled and frothed from his lips, "Master…"

He could not utter another word as Commander Baron’s body collapsed backward, hitting the stone floor with a heavy thud.

The council chamber instantly descended into pandemonium.

A chair was overturned inadvertently, others stumbled into their colleagues, a goblet shattered on the floor, its contents spilling across the stone floor’s seams.

Several nobles instinctively retreated to the walls, averting their eyes, as if another direct look would invite further disaster.

But to Kael, the entire situation was recontextualized entirely.

The apparent retreat was, in his perception, a tactical scattering.

The toppled chairs were not incidental, but were deliberately moved to create avenues for assault.

The individuals weaving through the chaos were meticulously blocking any potential path for his escape.

With intense force, Kael pulled back his bloodied longsword, its point scraping against the floor, resulting in a grating sound, as the dark crimson stain expanded.

"Do not approach me!" he bellowed, his voice strained and unnatural, akin to a cornered animal, "I can see every one of you!"

His eyes flickered between the visages before him, swift and disordered, as if tallying the number of adversaries.

"You are all from Red Tide!"

Within Kael's framework of understanding, this was not an onset of insanity, but the irrefutable revelation he had finally uncovered.

The debacle at Meat Gorge was no mere happenstance.

The granary's precise demolition, the early severance of detonation points, every phase of his strategy seemingly anticipated; these were not occurrences attributable to superior strategy alone.

Even before these events, the elusive phantom known as Red Tide had been lurking on the fringes of Gray Rock Province.