MTLNOVEL Chapter 145: [145] The King’s Gaze
The portal screamed open—a writhing vortex of shadow-stuff and raw chaos that made reality hiccup around its edges. Purple energy sparked from her fingertips as she forced the unstable rift to hold, her face twisted in concentration and terror.
"Xavier!" Her voice cracked as the expanding zone of unreality devoured another cobblestone. "I can't hold it!"
Xavier scooped Ashley's convulsing form into his arms. The golden fractures across her skin burned against his coat, but he ignored the pain. Her eyes had rolled back completely now, showing only whites as her mouth moved in silent screams.
"You feel them dying," she whispered, her voice hollow and distant. "Over and over and over..."
"I've got you," Xavier said, though he wasn't sure she could hear him anymore. "Just hold on."
The portal flickered, its edges beginning to fray. Naomi's purple eyes met his across the chaos, and he saw the same desperate calculation he was making—they had seconds at most.
"Naomi, go!"
"Not without—"
"GO!"
She tumbled through the screaming vortex, her form disappearing into shadow-stuff and twisted space. The rift immediately began collapsing, reality trying to reassert itself around the wound she'd torn.
Xavier looked back once at the expanding zone of nothingness, at the perfect circle where existence had simply been... revised. The ancient Knight sat motionless on its throne, watching with those burning blue flames that might have been amusement.
"You interest me, little king," it said, its voice carrying easily across the dissolving plaza. "Few mortals surprise me anymore. But you... you carry echoes of something I knew long ago. Before winter claimed the stars."
Xavier adjusted his grip on Ashley and didn't respond.
"This realm grows tiresome. I think I shall return to my realm. Perhaps we shall meet again when you come to fulfill your prophecy."
Xavier leaped toward the portal as the last of its stability gave way. The vortex snapped shut behind him with the sound of reality tearing, but not before something small and dark whistled through the air.
The shard hit him between the shoulder blades as he fell.
There was no pain. No impact. Instead, a psychic shockwave detonated in his mind—a century of consciousness that wasn't his own, compressed into a single, devastating instant.
A kingdom falling in slow motion, its people crystallizing where they stood.
The weight of absolute solitude, ruling over a field of frozen statues.
The birth and death of stars, witnessed from a throne of ice and bone.
Apathy so profound it transcended emotion—the universe reduced to the twitching of insects.
When it ended, Xavier was tumbling through snow with Ashley still clutched in his arms, the portal's aftershock throwing them both into a drift twenty feet from where they'd emerged.
Xavier rolled, protecting Ashley from the impact, and came up on his knees in the snow.
They were away from the village now, in a small valley surrounded by pine trees heavy with snow. The air was clean, free of that metallic wrongness that had hung over the plaza. Normal cold instead of supernatural winter.
Naomi lay motionless in the snow ten feet away, her purple hair spread like spilled wine against the white. Her breathing was shallow but steady—Essentia depletion, not death. She'd pushed her ability far beyond its limits to get them out.
Ashley was worse. The golden fractures had spread across her entire body now, creating a network of light beneath her skin that pulsed erratically. Her Guardian Covenant had shattered trying to protect the dead, and the psychic feedback was tearing her apart from the inside.
Xavier checked the spot where the shard had hit him. His coat showed a faint pattern of black frost, delicate as lace, but underneath...
Nothing.
He pulled off his shirt, twisting to examine his back in the reflected light from the snow. Pristine skin. Not even a bruise.
His status display flickered to life.
=====ALERT =====
[SYSTEM WARNING: TRANSCENDENT-TIER CURSE DETECTED]
[ANALYZING... SIGNATURE: KING-IN-RIME]
[LONGEVITY PERK ACTIVE]
[PHYSICAL/ESSENTIA CORRUPTION DETECTED... NULLIFYING... NULLIFIED.]
[STATUS EFFECT "SOUL MARK: THE KING'S GAZE" ACQUIRED]
[EFFECT: PERMANENT. NON-HOSTILE. CANNOT BE REMOVED.]
Xavier stared at the display. His Longevity perk had worked perfectly, neutralizing whatever hostile effects the Knight's attack carried. He was physically untouched. Technically unharmed.
The only one who'd come through unscathed.
He looked at Naomi, unconscious from the effort of saving them. He looked at Ashley, spiritually shattered from the trauma of protecting them. Both broken because he had failed.
He was the architect of this disaster. The one who'd led them into danger. The one who'd failed when it mattered most.
And he was fine.
Xavier fell to his knees in the snow, the relief he should feel absent, replaced by something cold and hollow that had nothing to do with the winter air. The Knight's consciousness still echoed faintly in his mind—that vast, cosmic indifference that reduced mortal struggles to meaningless noise.
He closed his eyes and saw Gareth's frozen face. Dalen's outstretched hand. Marta's crossbow falling through crystallized air.
All dead because he'd thought he could stand against something like that. Because he'd believed his borrowed power meant something.
The worst part wasn't the failure. It was the mark itself. The Knight hadn't tried to kill them—it had dismissed them. Tagged them like a researcher marking insects before releasing them back into the wild.
Xavier opened his status display again, staring at the new entry. SOUL MARK: THE KING'S GAZE. Permanent. Non-hostile. Cannot be removed.
The snow continued to fall around them, soft and silent. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the wind moving through the pine trees. Normal sounds. A normal world.
But Xavier Valentine, who had died once with a bullet in his brain and been reborn as something he thought was stronger, simply knelt in the snow between two broken friend and realized he had no idea what that mark meant.
Only that whatever game he thought he'd been playing, he'd never been a player at all.
Just another piece on someone else's board.