The Guardian gods Chapter 974: 974

One of the mages took a cautious step forward, his tall figure completely hidden beneath the heavy folds of a thick leather cloak. "We mean you no harm, Princess," he said, his voice muffled by a cloth mask. "This is purely for our safety... and yours."

Lunara's delicate nostrils flared slightly as she drew in a shallow breath. Beneath the sharp metallic tang of ink and damp chalk, she caught a subtle, distinct scent, a faint trace of mountain pine and dried boar blood unique to the northern garrisons.

"Are you one of Petra's?" she asked softly.

The masked figure froze mid-stride, his shoulders locking up tight. He didn't answer. None of them did. Recognizing that even a word could betray them to her sharp senses, the mages fell completely silent, moving back to maintain a vigilant perimeter around the glowing seal.

Trapped within the humming dome of mana, Lunara tilted her head back against the velvet cushion. Left alone with her thoughts while the quiet poison slowly drained from her blood, she allowed herself a rare moment of introspection.

She reflected on the long, winding path that had brought her here, from the beautiful and strict hierarchy of the Wolfling grounds into the deceptive, soft-spoken politics of the human realm.

Why Magnus? she mused, staring up at the gilded moldings of the high ceiling.

Her mind drifted back to Leiko, who understood her the most. Leiko had always seen straight through her, past the dutiful facade of a high-born princess, past the polished grace, into the unyielding ambition beneath. With Leiko, there were no illusions, no clumsy romantic declarations. Just mutual understanding.

Magnus was different. He was charming, genuinely thoughtful, and possessed a rare, unshielded bravery when it came to his emotions, a softness that Leiko would have considered a fatal defect. Magnus was a splendid hunter and an exceptional archer, possessing a natural elegance with his glacial bow that even her people admired.

She liked him. There was a sweet, uncomplicated comfort in his presence. But as Lunara closed her eyes, listening to the muffled thrum of combat drawing closer to her wing, she didn't lie to herself about the core of her choice.

She hadn't chosen Magnus despite his softness. She had chosen him because of it.

He was gentle, naive, and fiercely devoted, which made him absurdly, beautifully easy to sway. In her grand goal to integrate her people into the human realm, Magnus was the perfect key, a willing partner who would hand her the kingdom's gates out of love.

Leiko had felt a pull toward her, too, but it had never blinded his judgment. If anything, it had only made him more resistant, deeply annoyed with himself whenever he felt her influence sway him even a fraction. The moment he recognized it, he would build an impenetrable wall of distance between them.

Unlike Magnus, Leiko had seen right through her ambitions and pushed back hard. He hadn't been morally opposed to her grand designs, but unlike Magnus, he refused to coddle her ideals or entertain her romanticized visions.

It was a stubborn dismissal that reminded her uncomfortably of her brother Wulv, who had always looked down on her with the patronizing affection reserved for a naive, overly ambitious child. That sting, the constant need to shatter Wulv's condescension and Leiko's skeptical distance was a major part of why she had chosen Magnus. She wanted to prove a point to both of them. She wanted to show that her collaborative, soft-touch path could actually work.

Yet, as she sat trapped behind the glowing hum of the sealing matrix, reality felt painfully bitter.

Things had been unraveling for longer than she cared to admit. The war was a slow-bleeding defeat. Most of her people, the proud Wolflings who had initially crossed over into the human realm with her were quietly packing up and heading back home, their faith shaken, unwilling to die in a foreign theater for a cause that was crumbling at the seams.

Her current vulnerability was a testament to how utterly desperate the situation had become. Driven by panic, she commanded her personal guards away, dispatching her elite protectors to shore up a collapsing front line under the flawed belief that their raw power could turn the tide. It was that fatal miscalculation, leaving her exposed with nothing more than a token defense that had allowed Petra's conspirators to slip past her wards and catch her like a trapped animal.

The humiliation pressed heavier on her than the binding matrix ever could. All she could picture now was Wulv's face, those terrifyingly calm, unfeeling eyes staring down at her. He wouldn't rage. He wouldn't even waste his breath berating her mistakes. That hollow, silent gaze alone would say everything "I told you so"

She had accomplished nothing. No grand integration, no prosperous union, only a body count. Proud Wolfling warriors who had trusted her vision were lying dead in foreign dirt, slaughtered in a human war that was never truly theirs to fight.

She had the strength to break the seal, to shatter the barrier and tear these mages apart. But the spirit was gone. The raw, burning conviction that had carried her across the border had turned to ash, leaving her hollowed out and indifferent inside her glowing cage.

Suddenly, a massive surge of frost mana pulsed through the stone walls, thick and suffocating.

The mages surrounding her instantly went rigid, drawing weapons and shifting into combat stances as the ambient temperature plummeted. Lunara recognized the distinct signature of the magic bleeding toward them. Rather than bracing herself, she slowly let her eyelids flutter shut, refusing to witness the final act of her own failure.

The reinforced masonry of her chamber wall disintegrated inward. Stone, shattered marble, and clouds of frost powder sprayed across the room as a bloodied figure was hurled through the breach, crashing heavily onto the polished floorboards.

Magnus stood there, gasping, his condition drastically worse than it had been only minutes before. His armor was split wide open, deep frostbite blackened his exposed skin, and his icy bow was pitted with cracks.

The cold steel of the broadsword bit deep through Magnus's armor and into the stone behind him, pinning him to the shattered masonry like a broken specimen. Another convulsion wracked his frame, and a thick, dark spurt of blood choked his throat, spilling over his lips.

Slowly, painfully, Magnus dragged his gaze across the ruined chamber. Through a haze of red agony, he spotted her sitting within the translucent ring of the sealing matrix.

"Lunara..." he wheezed, the name catching on a ragged breath.

Inside the seal, Lunara's eyes fluttered open. A fragile, melancholy smile curved the edge of her lips, while heavy tears welled up and spilled over her eyelids, cutting a clean path through the dust on her cheeks.

Heavy footsteps echoed across the threshold. Petra strode through the hole in the wall, his expression carved from stone. Following close behind him came Einar, grimacing heavily, dragging his right leg as a massive, jagged hole of crystallized dead flesh gaped through his thigh, a reminder of the price he had paid during the chase.

Petra didn't glance at Einar, nor did he spare a single look for the mages trembling in the corners. His eyes were fixed entirely on the wall where Magnus hung. Without a word of warning, Petra gripped the hilt of the embedded sword and yanked it violently free.

A raw, deafening roar of agony ripped from Magnus's throat as the jagged steel tore free from flesh and bone. He collapsed forward, hitting the blood-stained floorboards in a boneless heap, clutching his ravaged chest.

Stepping casually over his twitching brother, Petra walked up to the edge of the gleaming magic circle. He brushed a speck of stone dust from his leather jerkin, his posture shifting into one of mock courtesy.

"Forgive my disheveled appearance, Your Grace," Petra said, his voice dropping into a smooth, unbothered cadence. "I fully intended to greet you in proper, formal attire, but..." He glanced back with a cold smirk at Magnus, who was weakly writhing on the floor. "...circumstances changed."

Petra gestured casually toward the masked mages, who knelt nervously along the perimeter of the room. "I hope they haven't been overly rough with you during all this unpleasantness?"

Lunara glared at him in complete silence, offering no response to his mocking words. Petra let out a slow sigh and shook his head at her quiet defiance.

He turned away, walking back towards Magnus. He leaned down toward the semi-conscious Magnus, reaching out to grip the crown atop his brother's head. With a casual, cold motion, he pulled it free and held it securely in his armored arm. Then, without missing a beat, Petra delivered a heavy kick straight into Magnus's ribs, sending him skidding back into the stone wall. The impact wrung another guttural scream of pain from the fallen prince, followed by a harsh, wet cough that painted the stone with blood.