Chapter4

The elderly mage stared at the ruins of the array, which had turned a blistering blood-red, his voice shaking. "Your Eminence, the prisoner's vital signs are incredibly weak. Her heart meridians are on the verge of snapping. If we continue to pump in mana, she will genuinely die!"

"Die?" Chloe let out a chilling scoff. "I crawled all the way up from a lowly bottom-tier apprentice to become the Chief Disciple of the Grand Mage solely to dig out the truth of what happened that year! From the exact moment Arthur died, she was no longer my family. I couldn't care less whether she lives or dies!"

The terrified mage circle didn't dare defy her again, slotting fresh magic crystals into the machinery. Black lightning, born from raging magical overload, exploded above the formation. Tens of thousands of materialized mental spikes pierced straight through my soul!

"Ahhh—!" My desperate, agonizing scream nearly tore apart the storm clouds above the plaza.

Chloe stared venomously at the frantically flashing screen. "Shatter her barrier!"

Amidst the excruciating pain, I bit down violently on my tongue, my vision going black in pulsing waves. Just as our wills engaged in a deadly standoff, Chloe suddenly took half a step forward.

"Erin... stop struggling..."

The lofty, supreme Grand Mage looked at my blood-drenched face, and suddenly, her composure completely shattered. She collapsed to her knees at the edge of the array, breaking into agonizing sobs.

"Just think about the silver moonflowers Arthur planted with his own hands for you! Can you really bear to let him go to hell without even a whole corpse, wrapped in such an unexplained mystery? We... we were a complete family back then!"

Heavy tears rolled down her cheeks.

Five years ago, whenever the three of us sat together, Arthur always took the middle seat. Chloe leaned affectionately against his left shoulder, while I sat quietly on his right. Once, when it rained, Chloe shivered slightly against the cold. Arthur immediately pulled off his heavy mage robe and draped it carefully over her shoulders. I simply clutched my empty hands tightly inside my damp sleeves.

Driven by an overwhelming instinct, I tried to raise my broken hand to wipe the tears from the corners of her eyes, just like I would have done five years ago.

However, in that singular fraction of a second of emotional weakness—Boom! The heavily fortified memory barrier, which I had forged with my very life, instantly crumbled into dust.

"It's out!"

"It's the Forbidden Forest! Heavens above... the truth is finally coming to light!"

Earth-shattering gasps erupted from the plaza.

The weeping Chloe abruptly choked back her tears, whipping her head around to lock her eyes on the light screen. But the very first moment she saw the picture clearly, her face turned as pale as a sheet of paper.

The projection showed that destiny-altering, stormy night. My sixteen-year-old self was drenched to the bone, gripping a faintly glowing staff and screaming desperately through the torrential rain and thick mud.

"Arthur! Chloe! Where are you?!"

No one answered. Only the howling gale replied.

Suddenly, a deafening crack of thunder ripped open the night sky. Beneath the ghastly pale lightning, a corpse with a fully hollowed-out chest lay haphazardly behind an ancient tree. It was Arthur.

And crouching directly above his mangled body was an extreme, shadowy silhouette completely shrouded in abyssal black energy. In its hand, it gripped a blood-drenched heart that was still faintly beating.

"Ah!"

My past self let out a terrified shriek, my foot slipping as I crashed heavily into the mud. The monster wreathed in black fog heard the noise and spun around sharply. Yet, there was only a momentary dispersion of the thick dark mist, leaving behind nothing more than a bloody profile and a broad back before it leaped swiftly into the endless darkness.

Outside the screen, Chloe froze completely rigid before turning to the mages like a madwoman.

"Where is the face?! Why is there only a back?!"

The mages pumped mana vigorously, desperately trying to dispel the black fog on the massive canopy, to no avail. The old mage, sweating profusely, collapsed weakly against the stone ground.

"Your Eminence... it's not a malfunction with the array. It's because the prisoner never actually saw the assailant's face back then! The monster fled too fast. We can only extract the ultimate, solitary truth currently preserved in her mind!"

Chloe looked as if she had been struck by lightning. For some inexplicable reason, the broad, shadowy silhouette of the monster's back on the screen sent an unprovoked, creeping shudder of familiarity through her very core. She vehemently shook her head, strictly snapping out of her trance.

"Impossible! You're spouting utter nonsense! I do not believe she only saw its back!"

"The magical retracing Arthur left behind plainly proved that Erin was standing less than three steps away from it!"

She pointed a trembling finger at me. The inexplicable terror deep in her eyes was quickly and forcefully suppressed by her manic reasoning, leaving her gaze as cold as solid ice.

"She must be playing tricks!"

"This venomous wretch doesn't want me to see the face even in death! She's using dark magic to deliberately conceal it!"

"Fine. Very well, Erin. Let's see just how heavily you can endure it!"

She shoved past the elderly mage who was desperately trying to stop her, marched straight to the control console, and ruthlessly slammed down on the black crystal representing the Truth Formation's "Extreme Overload."

"If I don't drag that animal into the light today, Arthur's soul will never find peace!" She glared at me, her teeth grinding viciously together. "None of you will stop me!"

Rumble!

Violent, catastrophic mana backflowed savagely into the heart of the array. The images on the light screen spun rapidly like a torrential vortex. However, what the overloaded system forcefully squeezed out next was not the continuation of that rainy night.

The image flashed.

It was a deep night five years ago, inside the academy's infirmary. A younger Chloe lay deeply unconscious on a hospital bed, her face ghastly pale. Her biological father, Bart, leaned over her, drenched in sweat as he carefully applied medicine to a horrific wound directly on her chest. Under the dim, flickering candlelight, just below Chloe's collarbone, a scar revealed a distinct, utterly eerie contour.

It was a golden hexagram totem.

Outside the light screen, Chloe stood completely dumbfounded, frozen like a block of wood.

Because that exact hexagram scar still rested on her chest to this day. And Bart had specifically told her years ago that it was the "Ultimate Guardian Mark" that Arthur had cast from afar, spending all his life potential just moments before he died.