Chapter 59: The Shadows Maliciously Moving Outside the Winterborne Estate

After leaving the room, Magna turned down the maid’s offer to bring food to him and decided to walk to the kitchen himself.

Part of the reason was that Faye was still sleeping inside, and he didn’t want to disturb her. The other part was that he had been cooped up in the room for so long, he felt stiff all over and needed to stretch his legs.

As he walked, his eyes drifted toward the wide sky through the corridor windows, taking in the huge, deep blue moon hanging in a sky that was strangely empty of stars.

Beyond just being bigger and blue in color than the moon back on Earth, there was something oddly comforting about it too, something that seemed to relax his whole body just when he looked at it.

As he kept walking, another view caught his eye through the window, the training grounds outside.

And standing there under the moonlight was a strange, rectangular structure made of ice, glowing faintly.

"An ice coffin? What’s it doing out there?" Magna stopped and leaned closer to the window, squinting for a better look.

Once his eyes adjusted, he finally made out the figure trapped inside the ice.

’Isn’t that Titus? Is he dead?’ At first he was surprised and curious why the psychotic father was locked up in there. It didn’t take him long to figure out the answer.

"Ha, serves him right." He chuckled, satisfied at the sight.

But the satisfaction on his face didn’t last long. A moment later, his eyes caught a few shadows moving within the garden walls.

From where he stood, it was hard to make out exactly what they were, but he could clearly see their human silhouettes.

They appeared to be jumping over the garden walls, sneaking into the mansion grounds.

Only an idiot would fail to see they weren’t there with good intentions.

’I need to tell someone.’ Magna thought quickly, spinning around, only to feel a presence approaching from around the corner.

His eyes darted around, searching for somewhere to hide, assuming it might be one of the intruders. But the moment the figure rounded the corner and came into view, he realized he didn’t need to worry after all.

It was Celeste, walking gracefully down the corridor in her white nightgown, her blonde hair flowing loosely behind her.

The moment she spotted him, surprise flickered across her face, quickly followed by a warm smile.

"What are you doing wandering around this late?"

But Magna had no time for small talk. He pointed straight at the window. "I saw some people moving around outside. They look dangerous."

Celeste didn’t seem the least bit surprised or alarmed by that. She just chuckled, relaxed as ever. "Don’t worry, I’m aware. They’re scouts from another family."

Seeing the confusion on Magna’s face, she walked closer and patted his head with her cold hand. "Remember when I mentioned we’re at war with a neighboring alliance? Our Winterborne territory shares a border with a family from that alliance. They send scouts onto our land now and then to gather information."

Magna had more than enough experience with kingdom war games to be familiar with this kind of tactic.

Even kingdoms that weren’t actively fighting still regularly sent scouts into neighboring territories, just to stay informed about their potential enemies’ progress.

What actually surprised him was how relaxed Celeste seemed about the whole thing.

"Aren’t you going to do anything to stop them?"

Normally, if scouts completed their mission and made it back to their king, or whatever leader this world used, with useful information, it would make the Winterborne family look weak, unable to protect their own land or maintain a proper intelligence network.

"Well, that’s usually Titus’s job. Let’s leave it to him." Celeste said calmly, glancing out the window at the bulky figure still trapped inside the block of ice.

He hadn’t moved an inch since being frozen.

Whether he could even hear or sense the scouts at all was questionable, let alone whether he was even still alive in there.

Not long after, as Magna kept watching closely, cracks started to spread across the surface of the ice coffin.

Then, before long, the ice shattered completely, and Titus stepped out casually, rolling his shoulders and stretching, as if he had just woken up from a nap.

A new layer of frost began forming over his body almost immediately, completely different from the transparent look of the ice coffin, this one thicker and much denser.

It spread across his entire body, from his feet all the way up to his neck, forming a full suit of frost armor. Finally, it covered his head too, wrapping around his whole face except for a T-shaped gap left open around his eyes, forming a helmet.

"Is that a spell?" Magna asked, seizing the chance to finally get an answer to something he had been curious about for a while.

"It’s an artifact unique to our family’s Shadows. It works similarly to a spell, but it activates much faster and draws its mana from its own internal reserve. If you ever become one, you can have it too." Celeste answered right away, smiling, clearly noticing the boy’s interest.

Magna found it genuinely interesting, but he wasn’t about to be won over by just that.

He kept watching, hoping to catch Titus actually casting a real spell, and before long, he finally got his chance.

After scanning the area for a moment, seemingly trying to pinpoint the intruders’ exact location, Titus slowly raised his hand to chest height, palm open.

Then, all at once, a thick mist began spreading around him, filling the space inside the garden walls, thick enough to fog up the very window they were looking through.

"That’s a spell, right?" Magna asked again, wiping the fog off the glass with his hand.

Unfortunately, no matter how much he wiped, the mist outside was far too dense. His view was completely blocked.

"Yes. That’s an ice mist spell. It’s usually used to block an enemy’s vision and slow them down by freezing their movements."

Magna suddenly remembered seeing this same spell once before, back when he had been with Faye inside the ice dome.

The same kind of mist had surrounded the lizards that day, though comparing it to what he was seeing now, that one had been much weaker and covered a far smaller area.

Noticing the disappointed look on Magna’s face now that he could no longer see outside, Celeste raised her hand and began to chant.

"O Vein of the Living World, River that has flowed since before the First Dawn, Silent Mother of Rain and Sea... Grace the sky, let your gentle rain clear the earth."

The moment her chant ended, a soft pitter-patter sound reached Magna’s ears, raindrops tapping gently against the window.

Within seconds, all the mist outside cleared away completely, restoring his clear view.

"How’s that? Can you see better now?"

Magna turned to her, momentarily stunned, surprised that she had just casually sabotaged Titus’s own spell and canceled it out with one of her own.

He then turned back to look at the bulky man in frost armor, who was glancing around in obvious confusion, clearly not expecting this at all.

Titus had planned to neutralize the intruders with a single spell, since the scouts were just ordinary people, none of them Shadows or Witches.

But now that his plan had been washed away, quite literally, by the sudden rain, he was going to have to chase them down one by one instead.