Chapter 65: A Lie?

Seraphina leaned forward, completely enraptured. "A lie?"

"A big one," Boris rumbled from the floor. "The founder of your lineage, my lady, is the First Duke, Valerius Nacht, who was not a noble. He was not a knight of the realm. He was a vagabond. A nameless, landless mercenary who slept in the mud and fought for scraps of silver."

Seraphina’s eyes widened. "A mercenary? But how did he become a Duke?"

"Because of the Anomalies," Gallahan interjected, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "A thousand years ago, the continent was not ruled by the Emperor. It was ruled by the dark. The entity you saw last night, it was not an isolated monster. It was one of many. Archdemons, Void-walkers, creatures of unfathomable malice that hunted humanity for power. The noble families of the time possessed magic, yes. Arcane fire, holy light. But it was all useless. You cannot burn a shadow, or blind the darkness."

"When the Great War began," Lucas continued, taking over the narrative, "the armies of the Southern kings were slaughtered. Their magic broke against the Anomalies like glass against a mountain. Humanity was pushed to the very brink of extinction, forced to hide behind magically reinforced walls while the world outside belonged to the monsters."

Lucas leaned back, his scarred face illuminated by the golden dust motes dancing in the library’s sunlight.

"And then came Valerius. He did not possess the pristine, refined magic of the high nobles. He possessed something entirely different. Something the scholars of the Capital still do not fully understand. He wielded Spirit Power."

"Spirit Power?" Seraphina echoed, tilting her head. "Is that like my powers?"

"It is related, but fundamentally distinct," Gallahan explained, his tone turning almost academic. "Arcane magic and Holy power are drawn from the physical mana core; you’ll learn what they are when you receive formal education in the estate. They are quantifiable, manipulable energies bound by the laws of physics and nature. But Spirit Power does not come from the body. It comes from the soul. To manifest it, a warrior must undergo what the ancients called ’Spiritual Enlightenment’."

"What does that mean?"

"It means walking to the edge of death, staring into the Abyss, and refusing to blink," Sir Boris growled, his deep voice vibrating in his chest. "It requires a complete alignment of the mind, the will, and the soul. While arcane mages recite incantations from books, a wielder of Spirit Power imposes their sheer, raw willpower upon reality itself. It is the manifestation of absolute intent."

Lucas nodded in agreement. "Valerius Nacht achieved this Enlightenment on a battlefield made of his dead comrades. He realized that to kill the darkness, one could not use light. One had to become a deeper, sharper, more terrifying shadow. His Spirit Power manifested as an aura of absolute death, a killing intent so dense, so perfectly realized, that it could physically sever the souls of the Anomalies from their immortal bodies."

Seraphina gasped softly, the pieces clicking together in her mind.

That was the terrifying, suffocating aura she felt around Kaelus.

It wasn’t just a side-effect of being scary; it was his actual, inherited power.

It was the reason the ghosts fled from him.

He wasn’t just a swordsman; he was a literal, spiritual Reaper.

"The Founding Emperor, a man of great vision but failing armies, saw Valerius fight," Lucas said, a grim smile touching his scarred lips. "He saw a vagabond covered in mud and monster blood doing what entire legions of holy knights could not. The Emperor did not conquer Valerius; he recruited him. He offered Valerius a pact: become the Emperor’s shadow, the executioner of the Anomalies, and in return, the Emperor would grant him the frozen, untamed North as his own sovereign domain."

"Valerius accepted," Gallahan picked up the tale. "He founded the Nacht Duchy. But he did not forget his roots. He did not fill his court with prissy nobles or political sycophants. He sent out a call across the continent. He gathered the other vagabonds, the outcasts, the mercenaries, the people with strange, unorthodox powers who were shunned by the Church and the Magic Towers. He gave them land, he gave them a shelter and titles, and he gave them a purpose."

"The Vassal Families," Seraphina breathed, realizing the depth of the Northern political structure.

"Exactly," Boris grinned, thumping his massive, armored chest. "My ancestors were mountain tribesmen, cast out for our size and our brutal fighting style. The Nachts took us in. Lucas’s ancestors were disgraced assassins who refused to kill children. The Nachts gave them a home. We are not loyal to the Duchy because of political treaties or tax breaks, My Lady. We are loyal because the Nacht family gave the unwanted a place to belong. We are a family of outcasts, bound by blood and the shared duty of keeping the monsters in the dark."

Seraphina sat back against the velvet cushions, her mind reeling.

The novel had painted the North as a den of villains, a harsh, unforgiving place filled with cruel men.

But the truth was so much more beautiful, and so much more tragic.

They weren’t villains.

They were the ultimate defenders, the broken people who stood at the edge of the world so the "shiny" people in the South could live in their peaceful, ignorant sunlight.

"That’s..." Seraphina whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears. "That’s amazing. Papa Duke is the king of the vagabonds."

"He is," Lucas agreed softly, though his expression immediately darkened, the pride in his eyes dimming into a profound, heavy sorrow. "But wearing that crown... bearing the weight of that spiritual legacy... it comes with a terrible, terrible price. A price His Grace has paid more dearly than any of the Duke before him."

The atmosphere in the library shifted.

The epic, heroic tale of the founder dissolved, replaced by a dense, palpable grief that seemed to weigh down the very air in the room.