My Anime Shopping Tree & My Cold Prodigy Wife!-Episode-843
Chapter : 1685
He told himself he was here because the Golem Heart project needed supervision, because the war effort required constant supplies. And those things were true. But they were not the whole truth.
He was here because every time he walked through the halls of the Ferrum estate, he felt the suffocating weight of his own tangled life. He felt the ghost of his dead maid, Jasmin. He felt the cold, expectant gaze of Rosa. He felt the distant, terrifying pull of Mina.
He pushed the thought of Mina away instantly. He couldn't think about her here. It was too dangerous. If he let his mind wander to the image of her, to the reality of the child she was carrying, his focus would shatter. And Lloyd Ferrum survived by maintaining absolute, rigid focus.
Just keep building, he told himself. Build the walls. Build the weapons. If you make the empire strong enough, maybe it won't matter that the man running it is hollow.
He pulled out his Zippo lighter, flicking the lid open and closed. Click. Click. Click. The sound was a grounding rhythm.
Suddenly, the rhythm of the town changed.
It wasn't something most people would notice immediately. The noise of the hammers didn't stop. The carts didn't stop rolling. But the ambient temperature dropped.
It wasn't a gradual cooling, like a cloud passing over the sun. It was an instant, violent plummet.
The sweat on Master Garon’s brow froze into white crystals. The puddles of muddy water in the street turned to solid ice with a loud crack. The breath of the oxen pulling the carts misted, then turned into thick, white plumes of fog.
Lloyd stopped clicking his lighter. He looked at the flame. It was wavering, shrinking, struggling to exist in the sudden chill.
The hair on the back of his neck stood up. It wasn't the cold. His body could withstand freezing temperatures easily. It was the pressure.
The air pressure in the square plummeted. The sounds of the town seemed to be sucked away, replaced by a high-pitched, screaming whistle coming from directly above.
Lloyd looked up.
The sky, which had been a dull grey-white of industrial smog, was torn open. A blue-white star was falling from the heavens. It was surrounded by a cone of sonic disruption that distorted the light around it.
It wasn't a meteor. It was a person.
"Clear the square!" Lloyd roared.
He didn't use his command voice often, but when he did, it carried the weight of a Sovereign’s will. He pulsed his Void power, amplifying the sound so that it hit the workers like a physical wave.
"Move! Now! Take cover!"
The workers didn't ask questions. They sensed the terror in his voice. They scrambled, abandoning valuable carts, dropping crates of ore, diving into alleyways and storefronts. The goblin assistant dropped the clipboard and scrambled under a heavy iron wagon.
Lloyd stood his ground. He didn't run. He knew he couldn't run. That energy signature was locked onto him. If he moved, it would just adjust its trajectory.
He planted his feet wide, rooting himself to the cobblestones. He channeled his mana into his skin, activating the passive defense of his Steel Blood. His skin took on a metallic sheen. He braced his core.
He knew exactly who was coming. He knew that color of mana. It was beautiful, terrifying, and absolutely lethal.
Rosa.
She hit the ground thirty feet in front of him.
She didn't land softly. She didn't glide to a halt. She slammed into the earth with the force of an artillery shell.
BOOM.
The impact shook the entire town. The cobblestones in the center of the square were pulverized instantly, turning to dust. A shockwave of condensed air, ice shards, and debris exploded outward from the impact point.
The shockwave hit the surrounding buildings, shattering windows and cracking the brickwork. Wooden stalls were blown apart as if they were made of matchsticks. The iron wagon the goblin was hiding under skidded five feet sideways, sparks flying.
Lloyd crossed his arms in front of his face to shield his eyes. The shockwave hit him, tearing at his clothes, whipping his hair back. Ice shards pinged off his steel-hard skin like bullets. He didn't budge. He stood like a statue in the gale, waiting for the dust to settle.
Slowly, the roar of the impact faded, replaced by the howling of an unnatural wind. The cloud of dust and pulverized stone hung in the air, swirling with snowflakes that were dark grey and heavy.
Through the haze, a figure stood up.
Chapter : 1686
She was standing in the center of a crater that was ten feet deep. The ground around the crater was flash-frozen, covered in a layer of jagged, blue ice.
Rosa walked up the slope of the crater. She moved with a disjointed, eerie grace. She was dressed in travel leathers of deep blue and silver, but the fine fabric was rimmed with frost. Her silver hair was loose, alive with static electricity, floating around her head as if she were underwater.
She stepped onto the level ground of the square. The temperature dropped another ten degrees. The blood in Lloyd’s veins felt sluggish.
She looked at him.
Her face was a mask of porcelain perfection, but it was cracking. There were no tears, but her eyes were red-rimmed and wild. The blue of her irises was glowing so brightly it illuminated the gloom. It was the gaze of a predator that had finally cornered its prey.
The town was silent. No birds sang. No machines hammered. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, afraid to interrupt.
Lloyd lowered his arms. He dropped his hands to his sides, the clipboard he had been holding lying forgotten and shattered on the ground. He looked at his wife. He saw the rage radiating off her in waves of visible heat distortion—cold heat. He saw the betrayal etched into the lines of her mouth.
He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't summon a spirit. He simply stood there, exposed, and met her gaze.
He knew, with a sinking feeling in his gut that felt heavier than any stone, that the game was up. The careful web of lies, the strategic silence, the protective distance—it had all failed. The truth had arrived, and it had arrived at supersonic speed.
"Rosa," he said. His voice was calm, steady, cutting through the whistling wind. "You are far from home."
She stopped ten paces from him. The ground beneath her boots turned black as the ice corrupted the stone. She tilted her head slightly, a gesture that was both inquisitive and menacing.
"Home?" she repeated.
Her voice wasn't a scream. It was a whisper, but it was amplified by the wind, carrying to every corner of the square. It sounded brittle, sharp, like glass grinding against glass.
"I have no home, Lloyd," she said, taking another step. "You made sure of that."
She raised her hand. The air around her shimmered, and a dozen spears of solid ice materialized out of nothingness, floating in the air behind her like the plumage of a deadly peacock.
"I went to see my sister today," she continued, her voice trembling with a terrifying suppression of emotion. "I went to bring her gifts. Silks. Spices."
Lloyd’s expression didn't change, but his heart hammered against his ribs. He felt the trap closing.
"She is glowing, Lloyd," Rosa said, her voice dropping to a hiss. "She is sick in the mornings. She is hiding in her room. She is drinking herbal tonics for nausea."
She took another step. The ice spears angled forward, aiming directly at Lloyd’s chest.
"Tell me I am wrong," she screamed suddenly, the control snapping like a dry twig. The sound echoed off the ruined buildings, a raw, human sound of agony that contrasted sharply with her magical aura.
"Tell me I am crazy!" she shrieked, tears finally spilling over, freezing instantly on her cheeks. "Tell me you didn't plant your seed in my own sister's womb while I was waiting for you! Tell me you are not the father!"
Lloyd looked at her. He looked at the woman who had saved his life. He looked at the woman he had married to save the world.
He could lie. He could try to deny it. He could say it was a misunderstanding, that Mina was sick with something else. He was a master strategist; he could spin a dozen plausible explanations in a second.
But looking at Rosa, seeing the absolute devastation in her eyes, he knew that a lie would be the ultimate insult. It would be a desecration of everything they had been through. She deserved the truth, even if the truth was a blade that would kill them both.
He took a deep breath. The air tasted of ozone and winter.
"You are not wrong," he said quietly.
The words hung in the air, final and absolute. And in the silence that followed, Lloyd Ferrum watched the last remnants of his wife dissolve, replaced by the Sovereign of Winter.
The words hung in the freezing air, heavier than the storm clouds gathering above, more solid than the ice that crusted the cobblestones.
You are not wrong.
Episode-843
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