Chapter 304: Where Were You?

I swallowed hard, my throat pressing against the cool, firm grip of her fingers.

Sitting on my lap, Cassandra was an absolute wall of suffocating pressure.

Up close, I could feel the intense, terrifyingly refined vibration of her mana core.

Months of brutal, relentless frontline combat had forged her into a deadly weapon. If I handed her a sloppy lie, she would dismantle it in seconds.

Think, Jin. Think.

My mind ran through possible excuses at hyper-speed. Telling her about Yuki, the Debugger System’s Phase 2 assimilation, or high-dimensional predecessor data transfer was out of the question.

I needed a bluff grounded in established spatial mechanics, something that accounted for my sudden reappearance without leaving a paper trail.

I forced my heart rate to stay perfectly flat, letting my eyes meet her icy, unblinking grey stare.

“When the third-floor lecture hall collapsed,” I began, my voice low and raspy, “I was pinned on the landing fighting a high-tier executioner demon. The sheer volume of dark mana detonating alongside the structural collapse violently ruptured the local space.”

Cassandra didn’t move an inch. Her thumb remained pressed against my carotid artery, her cold, sharp gaze calculating every micro-expression on my face.

I didn’t flinch. “A localized spatial rift opened directly beneath us. I got dragged into an isolated pocket of spatial drift, a detached sub-realm created by the collapsing planar gates.”

I paused, letting the heavy quiet settle before continuing.

“Time didn’t function normally inside that void. I was suspended in a state of spatial stasis, completely unable to tear my way out until the regional mana lines shifted enough for a rift to open. When I finally broke back through the boundary… I dropped straight into the subterranean cave system a few miles up the ridge.”

Silence stretched across the command tent, heavy and suffocating.

Cassandra didn’t gasp. She didn’t break composure.

True to her reputation as the unyielding Ice Queen of House Raith, her expression remained a mask of flawless, frigid marble.

As an elite battle-mage, she understood the volatile mechanics of planar fractures better than anyone.

A pocket void stasis was logically sound—it explained why my clothes weren’t entirely decayed, why I hadn’t aged, and why I had materialized in a dead zone without leaving a single footprint.

Slowly, a small, chilling smile curved her pale lips, a smile entirely devoid of warmth, filled instead with a dark, suffocating intensity.

Her fingers didn’t release my neck. If anything, her grip tightened, her manicured nails biting lightly into my skin, asserting absolute, unquestioned possession.

“A spatial drift…” Cassandra murmured, her voice smooth, icy, and dripping with a quiet, dangerous obsession. “How terribly inconvenient for you.”

She leaned in closer, until her cold breath brushed against my jaw. Her stormy grey eyes searched mine, glinting with a dark, obsessive hunger that sent a cold prickle down my spine.

“You have no idea how infuriating it was, Jin,” she whispered, her tone measured, perfectly quiet, yet sharp enough to draw blood.

“To have my most precious possession ripped out of my sight by an uncontrollable tear in reality. To search every casualty report, every fallen sector… and find nothing.”

She brought her free hand up, her cold fingers gently tracing the line of my jaw, tilting my face upward so I had no choice but to look directly into her eyes.

“You vanished from my grasp once,” Cassandra said, her voice dropping into a low, possessive purr that brooked zero argument.

“It won’t happen again. I don’t care if the sky bleeds or the realm burns to ash, from this second on, brother, you belong right where I can see you. Under my command. In my sight. Under my hand.”

She rested her forehead lightly against mine, her icy aura wrapping around us like a physical chain.

“Understand?”

I forced a slow, steady nod, my voice flat and even despite the suffocating pressure of her mana.

“I’m… happy to see you too, Cassandra,” I said, forcing the words out.

Internally, my mind was screaming in total, unadulterated bewilderment.

What the absolute fuck is happening right now?

Before, Cassandra had treated me with nothing but icy indifference. She was the pristine, distant prodigy of House Raith.

Now, she was sitting directly on my lap in a command tent, sealing us behind spatial wards, and declaring absolute ownership over my life with an unhinged, obsessive glint in her eyes.

What had the war done to her? What kind of twisted switch had flipped in her head while I was trapped in that void?

“Cassandra, look—” I began, placing my hands against her waist to gently pry her off me and push her back to a reasonable distance.

“We should probably—”

Before I could even finish the thought, her posture went rigid.

She didn’t yield a single inch. Instead, her grip on the back of my collar tightened like an iron vise, pulling me forward.

In one lightning-fast, merciless motion, she tilted my head back to expose my throat and buried her face into the side of my neck.

CHAMP!

Her teeth sank viciously into the sensitive flesh right above my collarbone.

A sharp, throbbing sting exploded across my skin. She didn’t just nip me to be playful, she bit down hard, with enough cold, ruthless pressure to break the capillaries beneath the skin, forcing a sharp breath to catch in my throat.

“Tch…!” I gritted my teeth, my hand instantly gripping her shoulder, but I held back from using raw force to throw her off.

Slowly, agonizingly, Cassandra loosened her jaw and pulled back just an inch. Her breath felt freezing against the wet, stinging bite mark.

A dark, deep purple-red mark was already blossoming on my neck, right beside my doublet collar, standing out in stark contrast against my pale skin.

Cassandra stared at her work, her stormy grey eyes gleaming with a cold, quiet, and terrifying satisfaction.

She raised her thumb, lightly tracing over the fresh bruise she had just carved into my throat, applying just enough pressure to make it throb.

“A reminder,” Cassandra whispered softly, her voice an icy, dangerous purr that sent a cold shudder straight down my spine.

“So you don’t forget who owns you now, brother.”