In that desolate silence that had pitched its tents in the throne room, Alaric was waging his most difficult battle yet—a battle where no swords clashed, but rather the din of poisoned thoughts raged. His body was stiff upon the marble, his golden veins pulsing with a faint glow like wires charged with lightning, while his consciousness was drowning in the "Corridor of Shadows" within his mind.
"Look at them, Alaric..." The voice of Scepter echoed like the hiss of serpents, manifesting before him in the image of that aged vizier striding proudly over the wreckage of the king's memories. "That girl, Elara... did you truly think her shawl would save the city? She is now digging through the graves I dug, and every mine she disables pulls a thread from your soul. You are eroding, and she is exhausting herself for you... isn't this the love that always ends in ashes?"
Alaric closed his eyes within the vision and tried to summon the silence of the "Void Core." He did not respond with a word, for words in this place were fuel for Scepter's magic. He knew that every angry reaction would strengthen the link between his heart and the spiritual mines buried beneath the poor districts' slums.
Meanwhile, beneath the dark alleys of "Ocasia," Elara and Azrael led a squad of the Forgotten Ones through the ancient sewage tunnels. The smell there was a mix of mold and fermented yellow magic. Elara stopped at a wall oozing a sticky, luminous substance and saw the yellow "key" embedded in the foundation stone.
"It beats to the rhythm of the king's heart," Elara whispered, her brow drenched in sweat. "Scepter linked the detonator's fuse to Alaric's pulse. If his heart races from anger or fear, this mass will explode and turn the entire district to dust."
Elara raised her hand and began wrapping the blue shawl around the key, trying to isolate the signal coming from the palace. Azrael's incantations surrounded her like a sonic shield, but the pressure was immense. With each passing second, their bodies shivered; the place teemed with echoes whispering the names of ancient victims.
Inside the throne room, Alaric began to feel the pain Elara was enduring. Scepter, in his vile cunning, transferred the sensation of pain from the tunnels into the king's consciousness. Alaric saw a distorted image of Elara burning with yellow light. He screamed internally, and his physical body in the hall shook violently, the marble beneath him cracking and releasing purple smoke.
"Yes... rage! Defend her!" Scepter shouted with ecstasy. "Explode, O Vapor King, and let this misery end!"
But Alaric, at a moment when the suffering reached its peak, remembered the words of the "Doctor of Law" under whom he had once studied about the "constancy of text and the spirit of legislation." He realized that Scepter was playing outside the laws understood by humans, so he decided to create a new "law" within his mind.
Instead of fighting Scepter, Alaric completely "froze" his consciousness. He summoned the cold of the North Pole, the cold of the death he had experienced at the walls, and turned his inner world into a realm of black ice. Scepter's voice froze, his image stiffened, and the pulse in Alaric's heart began to slow to the point of absolute stillness.
In the tunnels, Elara felt a sudden calm flow through the yellow key. "He did it... Alaric stopped time in his heart."
Elara seized this golden opportunity, and with a single strike from the Dagger of Truth charged with the shawl's energy, she shattered the yellow key. It did not explode; it melted like contemptible wax. She breathed a sigh of relief, but knew that dozens of other keys awaited them.
Alaric awoke in the hall, his eyes exuding a coldness humanity had never known. He slowly rose from his place and looked at his hand, within which particles of dead gold were traveling. He no longer feared Scepter; he had discovered that the "Void" was not only a place of destruction, but also a place for preserving the silence that kills betrayal.
"I am not the vessel, Scepter," Alaric whispered to the empty hall, knowing the traitor heard him through the ether of pain. "I am the prison where your screams will vanish forever."
Chapter Forty-One began with a small victory in the tunnels, but the psychological war deepened. Scepter began losing control over the "keys" and decided to resort to his final card: summoning the remnants of the "Light of Lights" to collide with Alaric's frozen Void, in a cosmic explosion that could erase Ocasia from the map entirely.