The ascent back to the surface was a silent, grueling affair.
When Alden and the girl finally breached the lip of the hidden domain, the Dead Ridges welcomed them back with its usual hostility. The blizzard had not lessened; if anything, the howling winds had grown more violent, tearing across the jagged obsidian peaks like invisible scythes.
Alden didn't pause. He pulled his dark-grey winter cloak tighter, turning his back on the buried ruins, and waded into the knee-deep snow. The girl followed closely, her boots dragging heavily in his tracks.
They marched for two agonizing hours through the whiteout conditions before Alden finally spotted a jagged opening in the side of a massive black monolith. It was a secluded, shallow cave—barely large enough for two people, but completely shielded from the biting wind.
Alden ducked inside, shaking the thick layer of frost from his shoulders.
He walked to the back of the narrow stone enclosure and sat down, leaning his head against the cold rock. The girl shuffled in a moment later, collapsing against the opposite wall. She pulled the heavy dwarven blanket up to her chin, her breath pluming in the freezing air, her luminescent violet eyes fluttering with sheer exhaustion.
Alden ignored her.
He tapped the dark iron band on his finger, and space distorted slightly. The Sovereign's Tear materialized in his gloved palm.
The crystalline, heart-sized teardrop pulsed with a faint, mesmerizing silver light. Millions of microscopic runes swirled inside its transparent surface. It was a mythic artifact containing the foundational blueprints of spiritual domains—a shortcut to absolute mastery.
Alden stared at it, his single crimson eye narrowing behind the slits of his matte-black mask.
'Not yet,' Alden decided, his rational mind shutting down the immediate temptation.
He could feel the sheer, crushing density of the information locked inside the glass. Even with his spiritual efficiency boosted by a thousand percent, his soul was still a newly forged, violently restructured vessel. If he greedily absorbed the Sovereign's complete knowledge right now, the influx of data wouldn't just overwhelm him—it would cause his spirit to literally implode under the weight of centuries of enlightenment.
He needed to organically increase his control. He needed to push his foundational limits first. Only then could he safely swallow the ocean without drowning.
VWOOM!
With a flick of his wrist, he stored the artifact back into the pocket dimension.
"I am Nova."
The voice was quiet, raspy from the cold, but it cut through the silence of the cave like a finely sharpened blade.
Alden stopped. He slowly turned his head.
The girl was looking directly at him. She wasn't shivering quite as violently now, her violet eyes locked onto his masked face. It was the first time she had willingly offered any personal information since he had dragged her half-dead body out of a snowbank.
Alden didn't reach up to pull his hood back. He certainly didn't unfasten the metal mask. Trust was an expensive currency, and he currently had a hundred-billion-gold bounty on his head.
"I am Alden," he replied. His voice was flat, slightly metallic through the artifact concealing his face.
Nova held his gaze. She didn't press him for a surname or a lineage.
"Can you help me release the curse?" she asked.
Alden blinked.
He stared at her, waiting for the rest of the sentence. He waited for a 'please'. He waited for a hint of desperation, a subtle lowering of her chin, or even a basic, transactional bargain.
Nothing. Her tone was completely even, carrying the exact same haughty, aristocratic expectation as someone ordering a servant to pour tea.
Alden let out a short, cynical huff of laughter. His lips twitched beneath the mask.
"Why would I?" Alden asked casually, leaning his head back against the rock.
Nova's jaw tightened.
"Because you have the spiritual sight required to see the bindings. And you possess an energy destructive enough to break them. You are the only entity I have encountered capable of intervening."
"That sounds like a 'you' problem," Alden deflected smoothly.
"Tearing off a high-tier parasite is incredibly dangerous. Why should I risk my own core for someone who talks to me like I'm dirt on her boots?"
"Because if you do not," Nova countered, her violet eyes flashing stubbornly,
"I will continue to follow you. I have nowhere else to go. I will shadow your every step across this frozen wasteland until my core finally collapses."
Alden groaned internally, dragging a gloved hand down his face.
He felt entirely helpless against that logic. She was right. She was insanely, undeniably stubborn. She had already proven she was willing to march herself to death just to stay in his vicinity. If he left her bound, she would just become a permanent, exhausted liability tracking his movements.
"Fine," Alden sighed, dropping his hand.
Nova's shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch.
"But let's get one thing straight," Alden said, his voice dropping into a cold, absolute seriousness as he leaned forward.
"I can't guarantee anything. I am going to try. But manipulating the soul is like performing surgery with a sledgehammer. If your spirit shatters, or if the curse detonates and kills you, it will not be my fault."
He offered her an honest out. It was a massive, unprecedented risk.
"Do it," Nova agreed immediately, completely dismissing the threat of death with a terrifying lack of hesitation.
Alden shook his head. 'Lunatic.'
He pushed himself off the wall and crossed the narrow space, kneeling directly in front of her.
"Close your eyes. Don't resist my intent," Alden commanded.
Nova obeyed, her long dark lashes fluttering shut against her pale cheeks.
Alden reached out, placing his right hand flat against the center of her chest, directly over her sternum. He closed his own eye, instantly sinking his consciousness into the spiritual plane.
The physical world faded.
Nova's soul blazed before his inner eye—a blinding, radiant star of pure violet energy. But wrapped around it, choking the life from it, were the thick, jagged chains of pitch-black, decaying magic.
Alden breathed in slowly, mentally engaging the weaving technique he had ripped from the ancient tome.
He didn't immediately attack the chains. The soul was a volatile, hostile thing. By its very nature, spiritual energy constantly sought to escape the physical vessel. The only reason living beings died from physical wounds was because the soul, inherently rejecting the mortal shell, refused to sustain it during moments of extreme vulnerability.
To operate on her safely, Alden had to lock her spirit in place.
His supreme spiritual efficiency flared. He expertly wove an intricate, invisible net of pure intent around Nova's violet soul, forcibly stabilizing it, preventing it from wildly expanding or collapsing during the procedure.
Once the anchor was set, Alden began to draw upon the Chaos energy in his own chest.
He couldn't just blast the curse. The chains weren't merely wrapped around her mana core—the core was just the superficial, outer projection. The curse was hooked directly into the absolute center of her soul. If he flooded her with his destructive element, he would erase her entirely.
'I have to bridge the gap,' Alden analyzed.
He pushed a localized thread of his own spiritual essence forward, forcing it to react and merge with her violet soul. He essentially hijacked her spiritual frequency. By harmonizing their souls, he could use her own spirit as a harmless conduit for his devastating power.
Hiss…
Alden funneled the Chaos element down the newly formed spiritual bridge.
The destructive energy flowed over Nova's soul without burning it, striking the black chains.
Alden focused with surgical, terrifying precision. He attacked the microscopic links first, burning the tiny, parasitic hooks that dug directly into her essence. The Chaos energy aggressively devoured the foreign magic.
Nova's physical body violently convulsed against the cave wall, a breathless gasp escaping her lips.
"Hold still," Alden warned through gritted teeth, pushing his spiritual control to its absolute limit to shield her fragile essence from the resulting shockwaves.
He intensified the burn. The microscopic links melted away.
With the roots severed, Alden didn't hold back anymore. He flooded the conduit with a massive, concentrated surge of destructive intent.
CRACK! SHATTER!
The thick, jagged black chains violently exploded. The curse was entirely, utterly incinerated, reduced to harmless ash that quickly faded into the spiritual ether.
Alden instantly severed the spiritual bridge, snapping his consciousness back to his own body. He ripped his hand away from her chest and threw himself backward, skidding across the rocky floor of the cave.
"Gasp!"
Nova's eyes snapped open.
The moment the curse vanished, a terrifying, localized vacuum formed inside the tiny cave.
FWOOSH!
The ambient mana of the Dead Ridges—wild, freezing, and dense—violently rushed into the enclosure from the blizzard outside. It formed a visible, swirling vortex of blue light that funneled directly into Nova's chest.
Freed from its restraints, her core acted like a starving leviathan. It drank the atmospheric mana greedily, replacing the reserves that had been choked off for god knew how long.
Alden raised an arm, shielding his masked face from the sheer wind pressure of the mana storm.
The absorption lasted for several minutes, the air crackling with heavy static.
Slowly, the vortex thinned out. The blinding violet light radiating from her body began to stabilize, sinking back beneath her skin.
As the glow faded, Alden slowly lowered his arm.
He stared at the girl sitting against the opposite wall.
She had changed. The suppression of the curse hadn't just been hiding her aura; it had been actively concealing her true form.
Her beauty no longer looked merely aristocratic; it carried an eerie, breathtakingly otherworldly elegance.
Long strands of silky black hair flowed down her back like liquid night, swaying softly despite the lack of wind inside the cave. Soft bangs framed her delicate face, drawing absolute attention to her eyes. The violet irises were impossibly deep and luminous, glowing faintly like polished amethyst under moonlight, holding a quiet, ancient intensity that felt incredibly dangerous.
Her skin was pale and flawless, smooth as porcelain, giving her an ethereal, untouchable presence that seemed entirely divorced from the dirt and blood of the mortal world. The gentle curve of her lips rested in a calm, entirely unreadable expression, as if she carried secrets far older than the mountains surrounding them.
But it wasn't her face that made Alden's breath catch.
Rising elegantly from the crown of her head, parting her silky black hair, were a pair of dark, slightly curved horns. Their surfaces were smooth near the base but edged with jagged, crystal-like protrusions toward the tips. Faint, pulsing violet light shimmered deep within the crystalline horn cores, as if pure, arcane energy flowed through their marrow.
Her long, dark eyelashes cast delicate shadows over her glowing eyes as she looked at her own hands, flexing her fingers as the sheer, overwhelming power of her true lineage rushed back into her veins.
Every subtle movement she made—whether a slight tilt of her head or a shift of her gaze—carried a quiet, overwhelming, regal grace. She looked less like a human noble and more like a being born entirely from shadows and starlight.
Alden sat frozen against the rock wall.
He stared at the horns. He felt the sheer, crushing density of the aura now rolling off her effortlessly.
'A dragon,' Alden realized, his crimson eye widening behind his mask as all the pieces violently clicked into place.
She wasn't a spoiled human noble. She wasn't an arrogant runaway.
She was a mythical beast in humanoid form.
Suddenly, her haughty tone, her absolute refusal to beg, her demanding presence, and her sheer, unshakable belief in her own superiority made perfect, undeniable sense. It wasn't human arrogance. It was the innate, absolute pride woven directly into the DNA of the most powerful race to ever exist on the continent.
Nova slowly raised her head, her luminescent violet eyes locking onto Alden.
The silence in the cave stretched, heavy with the weight of her revealed identity.
Alden let out a slow, deeply exhausted sigh, leaning his head back against the stone.
"Well," Alden muttered, his voice dry and completely deadpan.
"That certainly explains the attitude problem."