“It is the price of a broken contract, Evendur,” she had whispered one evening, her obsidian eyes shimmering with a terrifying, fractured light. Her green hair, once vibrant as a spring forest, was turning the color of static—a shimmering, translucent grey that seemed to vibrate when the wind caught it.

He had spent a fortune. He had burned through the favors of the Seven Houses, bringing in Harmonic-realmed healers and even a reclusive Eisoron sage. They all said the same thing.

Her Resonance was… Inverted.

The diagnosis only deepened the mystery. Every physician who examined her sought an explanation, yet none could provide one. Despite their vast knowledge, each left his manor more uncertain than when they arrived.

One memory lingered above the rest. The Eisoron’s final words before his departure.

“This woman posseses a purity so absolute… it can only be described as darkness.”

These words left Evendur in a quiet turmoil, but more than confusion, it was the lack of answers that bred something worse.

Frustration.

And every time he felt himself slipping further into frustration and anger, her voice—soothing, low, weakened yet filled with quiet strength—would wash over him, easing those turbulent emotions and leaving behind something deeper… something more primal.

Whenever her tone dropped to that soft, velvety register, and her cold, gentle arms slipped around his neck, his resistance would falter. No matter how much he told himself it wasn’t the time, he would always lose that battle.

And by morning, he would wake to find his clothes scattered across the room and his wife resting peacefully at his side.

Time and time again, he would admonish her for it, warning how such acts would only worsen her condition.

Yet each time he returned—whether from the deepest reaches of the Dwarven nation, the Elven forests, or even the Demon Continent—empty-handed and worn by failure, she would simply draw him into her arms.

And the result… was always the same.

She would carry his child.

The deterioration worsened with each pregnancy.

The sons—later dubbed the War-Hounds for their battle-forged upbringing under the Great Elders in his absence—had already drained much of her vitality.

But it was the daughters who demanded the final toll.

On the night of their birth, the manor hadn’t been filled with the sound of crying babies. It had been encased in a Void Field. The stones of the walls groaned as their molecular weight was questioned by the energy pouring out of her.

“The Ring,” she had gasped, clutching his hand with a strength that cracked his bones. “The children cannot carry this yet… it will erase them before they can speak. Put it in the Ring, Evendur. Hide the hunger there, and never let it out, no matter what.”

He had done it. With the help of the mages he had gathered—men who were now either dead or sworn to eternal silence—he watched as the last of her obsidian light flowed into the family heirloom.

During the following months, Evendur watched with strange emotions as she regained her health. Somehow, stripping her of her very essence of existence was the only thing that kept her alive.

He had expected her to be sorrowful. Regretful. Perhaps even angry at having her power stripped away.

But instead…

She looked free.

Evendur wrestled with that realization for a long time. But after one of their quiet moments together, he finally gave voice to the doubt that had been gnawing at him.

“Why are you so… happy? After everything that’s happened?” he asked, his gaze fixed on the bedsheets.

Silence followed.

Was she angry? Surprised? He couldn’t tell. And he lacked the courage to lift his head and find out.

Then, a soft chuckle reverberated in his ears.

Her hands rose to his cheeks, gentle but firm, guiding his gaze up to meet hers.

The image etched itself into his mind.

Perfectly defined features, Strands of green hair falling lightly across her eyes, and a smile that felt… almost otherworldly.

“Wouldn’t you be happy,” she said softly, “if a burden was lifted from your shoulders?”

Evendur didn’t know what to say, whatever train of thought he’d envisioned had crashed into a soft barrier of love and relief. For the first time, Evendur was the one extending his arms and wrapping them around his lovely wife.

For a few months, the Redwyn Manor was a sanctuary. The Static in her hair vanished, replaced by the deep, lustrous emerald he had first fallen in love with. She walked the gardens, she laughed with the infants, and for the first time since their marriage, the stifling silence of the house was replaced by the mundane, beautiful noise of a family.

But Evendur, ever the strategist, could not stop looking at the Ring.

Within that band of gold and silver, a suffocating weight seemed to echo through his heart. Yet, in those fleeting moments, a strange clarity would surface—an understanding of that so-called purity the Eisoron had mentioned.

And each time… he found himself wanting to keep the ring on his finger.

By then, his first three children had already been sent to the Abyssal Plains—at the insistence of his brothers and sisters, the Great Elders.

That left Daren, Kaelen, and his two daughters, who were still infants at the time.

Afraid of burdening his wife with unforseen circumstances, he decided to leave the manor and find the people responsible for maintaining the ring and possibly get answers.

No amount of preparation in the world would have prepared him for what he would hear and see.

The Harmonic mages he had hired to maintain the internal environment of the Ring began to disappear. Not because they fled, but because they simply… ceased.

One by one, the men who checked the seals would emerge from the vault with eyes as blank as sea glass, their Resonance wiped clean. There was no sign of a physical attack or even a suspected mental assault, the only explanation Evendur could come up with was the fact that their cores of existence had been erased.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep