Snow drifted slowly across the outer walls of the Dunmore estate.
Not heavy snow. Not the kind that buried roads or halted movement across a territory. Just a steady pale fall that softened rooftops and settled quietly against stone railings and old banners. The sky above the Barony of Dunmore remained grey from morning onward, wrapped in low winter clouds that made the entire region feel older than it already was.
The Dunmore estate suited that weather.
Unlike the brighter noble residences closer to the capital, the Dunmore family manor had never been built to impress guests with luxury. It was large, certainly, and important enough to command respect, but the estate carried an atmosphere closer to a fortress-library than a palace. Dark stone walls rose behind iron fencing. Tall windows reflected cold light across long corridors. Ancient banners hung from high ceilings, their colors faded by generations of winters.
Servants moved quietly through the halls.
The estate had always been like that.
Even the younger members of the family learned early not to raise unnecessary noise inside the central halls. The Dunmores valued restraint almost as much as discipline, and the atmosphere of the manor reflected it in every detail.
Crest moved through one of the upper corridors with a book tucked beneath his arm.
The hall around him was silent except for the faint crackling of distant fireplaces and the muted sound of snow brushing against the outer windows. He wore a dark house coat over lighter training clothes, his steps steady as he made his way toward the oldest section of the family archives.
Most students would have spent the holiday differently.
The academy had only recently entered vacation state, and by now many of his classmates were probably sleeping late, wandering cities, visiting friends, or enjoying the freedom of temporary rest. Crest had no issue with that. The halfyearly examinations had exhausted everyone, and after the dungeon incident the academy itself had felt tense enough to wear people down further.
But rest had never suited him for long.
Especially not after what had happened inside the dungeon.
The assassins.
The strange pressure.
The unease that had settled over the academy afterward.
Crest did not fully understand any of it, and that bothered him more than fear ever could.
So he had returned home and done what he always did whenever something refused to leave his thoughts.
He searched for answers.
The large archive doors stood open when he arrived.
Warm candlelight spilled across the stone floor beyond them, illuminating row after row of towering shelves. The Dunmore archives were vast enough that some visiting nobles joked the family cared more about books than territory. The joke was not entirely inaccurate.
Generations of Dunmores had gathered records obsessively.
War chronicles. Monster reports. Military journals. Expedition notes. Maps from kingdoms that no longer existed.
The scent of old paper and candle wax filled the room.
Crest stepped inside.
A servant seated near the entrance rose immediately.
"Young master."
Crest gave a small nod. "Has anyone moved the western records?"
"No, young master. They remain where you requested."
"Good."
The servant bowed once and returned to his seat.
Crest continued deeper into the archives.
The farther inward he went, the older the shelves became. Some sections carried records only a few decades old. Others held books that had survived centuries. The shelves themselves changed with age too. Newer wood gave way to darker timber reinforced with iron supports.
Near the back of the archives stood the historical war collections.
That was where Crest stopped.
A long table waited nearby beneath several candles. Books already rested across its surface in uneven stacks from the previous days of research. Crest set his current volume down among them and sat quietly.
For a while he simply looked at the titles.
Most of what he had read so far had been disappointing.
Interesting, certainly, but fragmented. Old records rarely preserved complete truths. Wars destroyed information as often as they created it. Names vanished. Locations changed. Entire bloodlines disappeared from history between one century and the next.
Still, there were patterns.
And the deeper he searched, the clearer those patterns became.
The academy had taught history in broad strokes.
The archives taught it differently.
History was not clean.
It was made of missing pages.
Crest pulled another worn volume from the stack and opened it carefully.
The leather binding cracked softly.
Across the first page, faded ink spelled out a title partially damaged by time.
Chronicles of the Black Frontier War
Crest leaned back slightly.
This was the oldest surviving copy he had found yet.
A note near the inside margin dated the original text to nearly a thousand years earlier.
He began reading.
The early sections described chaos.
Not political chaos.
Existential chaos.
The world back then had not resembled the modern kingdoms at all. Borders were unstable. Large regions had become abandoned wastelands. Entire cities disappeared within weeks whenever new sky ruptures appeared.
Crest paused briefly at that phrase.
Sky ruptures.
The text described them as enormous fractures that opened across the heavens themselves. Some lasted hours. Others remained for months. Through them came storms of distorted mana and creatures the old records struggled to classify.
The illustrations helped little.
Most were rough sketches drawn by battlefield witnesses.
Winged serpents larger than fortress towers.
Humanoid entities without faces.
Massive armored creatures descending through storms of blackened clouds.
One passage described them simply as:
"Beasts not born beneath mortal skies."
Crest frowned slightly as he continued reading.
The war against those creatures had lasted decades.
Kingdoms collapsed during the early years. Trade routes vanished. Entire territories were consumed by skyborne invasions before organized resistance properly formed.
Then the noble alliances began.
Not kingdoms.
Families.
The great bloodlines of the modern age first rose to prominence during that era.
The Dunmore ancestor had served as a battlefield strategist according to the records, directing large defensive formations across several northern fronts.
The Voss ancestor became famous for mountain campaigns against massive aerial predators.
The Ravenhart bloodline led mobile knight divisions across collapsing territories.
And the Velkros family—
Crest stopped reading for a second.
The page before him carried darker stains than the others, as though exposed to fire long ago.
Several lines were partially damaged.
Still, enough remained readable.
"Among the allied commanders stood the swordsman of the Velkros bloodline, possessing jade-green eyes and white hair reaching the middle of his back."
Crest's eyes moved lower.
"Where his blade passed, the skyborne hordes fell in numbers beyond counting."
Another section read:
"Entire battlefronts stabilized after his arrival."
Crest leaned slightly closer.
The details grew more dramatic from there.
Hundreds of creatures slain in moments.
Frontline soldiers unable to follow the movement of the blade itself.
Skyborne entities large enough to blot out sunlight cut apart before fully descending.
The records described him less like a noble and more like a natural disaster aimed at the enemy.
Crest exhaled softly.
"So the founders really were monsters themselves…"
The words left him quietly.
Not fear.
Admiration.
The modern noble houses carried prestige because of territory and politics now, but reading these records made the old bloodlines feel different. Ancient. Earned through survival rather than inheritance.
He turned another page.
The illustrations became darker.
One sketch showed enormous cracks splitting the sky above burning plains while thousands of soldiers gathered below in formation. Another depicted armored aerial creatures descending through storms while human mages fired upward from collapsing towers.
The war looked apocalyptic.
Crest read for over an hour without noticing time pass.
The archive remained silent around him.
Only candles burned quietly beside the pages.
Eventually he reached a section describing the Crimson Plains.
The battle there had apparently lasted eleven consecutive days.
Over two hundred thousand soldiers had died.
The records claimed the ground remained stained red for decades afterward, and survivors reported hearing voices across the battlefield during the night.
Crest stared at one damaged sketch for several seconds.
The drawing showed countless corpses beneath a shattered sky.
Even simplified by age, the image felt heavy.
He continued.
The farther into the chronicle he went, the stranger the war became.
Some passages mentioned entire coastlines vanishing after clashes against unidentified skyborne entities. Others described storms where gravity itself distorted across battlefields.
One page had almost completely blackened with age, leaving behind only a single surviving sentence:
"The heavens remained broken for seven days."
No explanation followed.
Crest rubbed lightly at his forehead.
The academy histories had never described the ancient era like this.
Those lessons made the past sound heroic.
These records made it sound horrifying.
He reached another damaged section near the later part of the war.
The title above the page was barely visible.
The Last Defense Beneath the Broken Sky
Several pages were partially burned along the edges.
Crest carefully turned them one by one.
Then he saw another reference to the Velkros ancestor.
"The white-haired swordsman stood alone upon the fractured ridge while the sky opened above him."
The following lines were harder to read.
"The descending swarm darkened the horizon itself."
"And yet the blade did not retreat."
The next page had been damaged heavily by fire.
Only fragments remained.
"...hundreds fell..."
"...jade-green eyes..."
"...the skyborne ceased their descent..."
Crest stared quietly at the ruined section.
No ending survived.
No explanation.
The record simply continued afterward as though part of history itself had vanished.
Snow tapped softly against the archive windows.
The room had grown darker without him noticing.
Several candles near the far shelves had already burned low.
Crest leaned back in his chair slowly.
The founders of the great noble houses had lived through an era far harsher than the current world.
That realization settled heavily in his thoughts.
The modern kingdoms felt stable compared to what these people endured.
He glanced again toward the damaged passage about the Velkros ancestor.
Jade-green eyes.
White hair.
A swordsman capable of changing battlefronts alone.
The image stayed in his mind longer than expected.
Not because he connected it to anyone.
Simply because it sounded impossible.
Yet the old records repeated the same descriptions often enough that exaggeration alone seemed insufficient to explain it.
Crest closed the chronicle carefully.
For a while he sat in silence while snow continued falling outside.
Then his eyes caught one final line written faintly near the bottom edge of the final damaged page.
The ink was nearly invisible.
He leaned closer.
"And when the jade eyes looked toward the broken sky, even the beasts ceased their descent."
Crest stared at the sentence for several quiet seconds.
Then he slowly closed the book.
Outside the windows, snow continued drifting through the darkening evening.
Far to the north of Dunmore Barony, the mountains of Voss County stood beneath a colder sky.
The terrain there was harsher.
Sharper.
Dense forests climbed frozen slopes while stone watchtowers overlooked narrow roads winding through the valleys below. The region carried a military atmosphere even during ordinary days. Patrol banners moved through the snow-covered paths regularly, and fortified settlements dotted the mountain routes like defensive scars carved into the landscape.
Caelum Voss stood near the edge of a rocky ridge overlooking a partially collapsed cavern entrance.
Smoke drifted upward from below.
The suppression operation had lasted most of the day.
Soldiers moved through the lower slope in organized groups, dragging monster corpses away from the ruined dungeon entrance while mages reinforced temporary barrier stakes around the area.
The cold wind carried the scent of stone dust and burned mana.
Caelum tightened his grip slightly around his sword.
His breathing remained steady despite the exhaustion settling through his body.
The dungeon itself had not ranked particularly high by military standards, but mountain dungeons rarely needed overwhelming strength to become dangerous. Terrain alone complicated everything.
Visibility became unreliable.
Formations broke easily.
Retreat paths vanished beneath snow or collapsed rock.
That was why the Voss family handled such incidents personally whenever possible.
A soldier approached from behind.
"Young master. The southern passage has been cleared."
Caelum nodded once. "Any survivors from the third unit?"
"Minor injuries only."
Good.
He looked back toward the cavern entrance.
The dungeon suppression squads continued moving efficiently despite fatigue. Unlike academy exercises, there was no unnecessary movement here. Every soldier understood exactly what needed doing.
Efficiency mattered in real operations.
Mistakes carried consequences.
Caelum had learned that quickly over the past several days.
The academy trained combat.
Voss County lived it.
Below him, a heavy armored creature was hauled from the cavern by chains.
Its body resembled a wolf twisted together with jagged stone plating, black mana still leaking faintly from wounds across its torso.
Caelum remembered the fight clearly.
The creature had nearly broken through the second formation line before he and another squad intercepted it near the northern tunnel.
He still remembered the impact running through his arms when his sword first struck the creature's armor.
Real monsters fought differently than training constructs.
They did not follow patterns cleanly.
They adapted.
A second soldier climbed the ridge path toward him.
"Lord Voss requests your presence."
Caelum sheathed his sword immediately.
"Understood."
He followed the soldier downhill through the snow-covered terrain.
The temporary command camp sat near the forest edge beneath several reinforced tents. Voss soldiers moved between supply crates and field tables while mages documented dungeon readings nearby.
At the center stood his father.
Lord Voss examined a tactical map spread across a wooden crate while several officers reported casualty numbers around him. Tall and broad-shouldered, he carried the same composed severity Caelum remembered from childhood.
He looked up once Caelum approached.
"Report."
"The western tunnel network has been secured," Caelum said. "Remaining resistance collapsed after the armored alpha was eliminated."
Lord Voss nodded once.
"Mana usage?"
"Within acceptable range."
"You overextended during the second engagement."
Caelum remained silent briefly.
"Yes."
"The creature baited your forward movement intentionally."
"I realized that afterward."
Lord Voss folded the map slowly.
"Real combat punishes delayed realization."
Caelum accepted the criticism without complaint.
His father studied him quietly for a moment longer.
"Your timing improved compared to last winter."
Coming from Lord Voss, that qualified as praise.
Caelum inclined his head slightly. "Thank you."
One of the nearby officers glanced between them with faint amusement before returning to the reports.
Lord Voss continued.
"You rely too heavily on direct reinforcement during prolonged combat."
"I'll adjust."
"Do so."
The conversation ended there.
That was normal.
The Voss family did not communicate affection openly. Respect came through instruction, correction, and measured acknowledgment.
Caelum preferred it that way.
It kept expectations clear.
A sudden shout echoed from farther uphill.
Another suppression unit emerged from the forest carrying the remains of several smaller monsters across reinforced sleds.
The soldiers looked exhausted.
One had blood running down the side of his face despite healing bandages.
Caelum watched them quietly.
The academy rarely showed this side of combat.
Not the exhaustion afterward.
Not the logistics.
Not the constant movement required even after victory.
Real suppression work never ended cleanly once the fighting stopped.
Someone always needed to secure the area.
Someone always counted the dead.
Someone always remained awake longer than everyone else.
The cold wind intensified briefly.
Snow swept across the camp.
Lord Voss looked toward the mountains.
"We move again at dawn."
One officer frowned slightly. "The dungeon core already destabilized."
"There may be secondary nests in the upper caverns."
The officer nodded immediately. "Understood."
Caelum glanced toward the dark ridgeline above them.
The mountains stretched endlessly beneath the storm clouds.
Harsh territory.
But strangely calming compared to the academy's recent atmosphere.
No whispers here.
No hidden tension beneath conversations.
Only survival, orders, and discipline.
Night settled fully by the time the final suppression teams returned.
Large fires burned across the temporary camp while soldiers rested beside supply crates and repair stations. Some cleaned weapons. Others treated injuries or quietly shared food beneath heavy cloaks.
Caelum sat near one of the outer fires sharpening his sword carefully.
The rhythmic sound of stone against steel remained steady.
A younger soldier nearby watched him briefly.
"You fight differently from the academy students I've seen."
Caelum glanced up once. "How so?"
"Less movement."
Caelum looked back toward the blade.
"Movement wastes energy."
The soldier laughed quietly. "Spoken like Lord Voss."
Caelum said nothing to that.
Farther across the camp, his father continued speaking with officers beneath the command tent.
The fire crackled softly.
For the first time in weeks, the academy felt distant.
No crowded halls.
No constant rumors.
No strange pressure hanging beneath every conversation.
Just mountains.
Snow.
Steel.
And the quiet exhaustion following battle.
Yet even there, one memory still lingered unexpectedly.
Zynar's eyes.
Caelum paused slightly while sharpening the blade.
The image returned clearly.
Not glowing.
Not dramatic.
Simply heavy.
The kind of gaze that made rooms unconsciously tense.
He still remembered the atmosphere inside the academy after the dungeon incident. The silence in the halls. The way students lowered their voices without realizing it.
Caelum exhaled slowly.
Then he resumed sharpening the sword.
The mountains remained silent around the camp.
Hours later, after most of the soldiers had settled into temporary rest rotations, Caelum climbed partway up the nearby ridge alone.
The snowfall had weakened.
Below him, the suppression camp glowed faintly against the dark terrain while smoke drifted upward through the cold air.
Far beyond the mountains, the distant lights of Voss settlements flickered faintly across the valleys.
Caelum stood there quietly.
The cold wind pushed against his coat.
The academy felt very far away now.
Yet the memory of it remained.
The dungeon.
The pressure.
The strange atmosphere left behind afterward.
He narrowed his eyes slightly toward the horizon.
Then he turned and began walking back toward the camp as snow continued falling softly across the mountains of Voss County.
[End of Chapter 40]