Chapter 64: Great Despair, Part One

Death, death, death, death.

Visible to the naked eye, a despairing death that nearly broke Hitana.

“Why…”

The trembling girl stepped over the thick snow, the cold from her skin and muscles nothing compared to the despair spreading from her soul—not even pain could describe it.

She looked to both ends of the road, where scattered frozen corpses silently spoke of the great terror, the great despair of these three days.

“Why… why didn’t you stay at home… Why did you come out?”

Hitana stumbled forward in a daze.

The frost-covered sculptures, their expressions frozen, were like works of art gifted to the world by the god of death, perfect creations carved by the lord of despair himself.

Look at them—their final moments of hope, fear, yearning for life, their search for salvation, the conviction that they would be saved, contrasted so cruelly with their ultimate fate… how ironic.

Those brittle, ice-crystaled eyes, like glass, reflected the manor revered as a holy place by the people of Chishuang Territory, reflecting the only living person in this silent, dead world.

Hitana could no longer bear such terror. Never, even in the face of death, had she felt the slightest fear, yet now she felt not anger but… terror.

She was afraid.

She didn’t know why, but the silent instinct and the dead stillness of her soul made her sense, in a daze, something… something that made her teeth chatter.

She didn’t know what it was, but for Hitana, who trusted her instincts completely, this feeling was enough to terrify her.

“No… it shouldn’t be like this… Anselm, Anselm!”

Driven by this fear, Hitana roared like a madwoman, turning and running back into the mansion.

“Why are so many people dead?! What’s going on?!”

But the boy who had brought her peace and happiness these past three days did not appear.

Instead, at the doorway stood her sister, with whom she had barely interacted during those days.

Marina, dressed in a heavy black dress, her soft snow-white hair cascading down, looked striking.

A black feather ornament pinned above her ear added an indescribable mystery and nobility to this girl who, not long ago, was a mere village maiden.

She walked out of the manor expressionlessly, passing by the ice sculptures without a glance, as if the pitiful souls who died between hope and despair didn’t exist in her eyes.

Marina calmly stepped onto the street, standing side by side with her sister.

While Hitana faced the manor, Marina looked around at the street.

“Fewer than expected.”

Her muttering sent Hitana plummeting into an icy abyss.

“This is good. I can report this to Mr. Anselm.”

Having surveyed the frozen corpses around the manor as calmly as one might count fallen leaves in the morning, Marina turned to head back inside.

“Marina!!!”

Hitana roared, grabbing her sister’s collar. “What did you just say?! Do you even realize what you’re saying?!”

Marina, slightly lifted off the ground, looked down at the furious young wolf with cold indifference, her aloof and lofty gaze making Hitana’s anger and heartache intensify.

Her sister… When did she become like this?

When did she start treating the lives of ordinary people as nothing, able to say something as heartless as “this is good” in the face of such tragedy?

Hitana glared at Marina, her unbridled fury trying to force some trace of remorse or guilt from her wayward sister.

But she saw nothing.

Yes, Hitana saw nothing in Marina’s eyes.

The sister who once was so weak, who could do nothing when Hitana threw a tantrum, now only responded to her rage with cold indifference.

“Mar—”

“Hitana.”

Marina suddenly spoke, cutting her off.

“You’re angry?”

Hitana froze for a second before shouting, “Seeing you act like such a bastard, how could I not be angry?!”

“No, you’re just hiding.”

Marina, unconcerned that her body was being lifted further off the ground, stated coldly in a voice as icy as this dead realm:

“You’re hiding your panic and fear. You always do this—using your savage, ferocious demeanor to make the world think you’re fearless, never lost.”

“Pathetic,” she sneered coldly.

“What… What are you saying?! What madness are you spouting, Marina?!”

Hitana’s voice grew louder, almost hoarse.

She gripped Marina’s collar tightly, first roaring, then pleading in a weak, fragile tone, as if collapsing into her sister’s arms:

“Don’t say things like that, sister… They… they’re all dead. They were supposed to survive. So many people… all dead.”

“So why are you so afraid?” Marina countered. “Do their deaths have anything to do with you?”

“I—”

The dark-clad girl gave Hitana no chance to respond, delivering her judgment coldly: “You think they don’t, of course you do. But why does your keen instinct tell you that you’ve messed something up again?”

“…”

Hitana’s grip on Marina’s collar tightened, her hands trembling more and more.

Her lips moved, but no words came out.

And Marina showed her sister no mercy.

“Hitana, why do you think Mr. Anselm used his own funds to help those poor people? Why, since taking charge of Chishuang Territory, has he been squandering his own resources?”

Anger welled up in Marina too—anger at Hitana’s ignorance, her failure to understand.

She curled her lips into a scornful smile.

“Even you could think of forcing the nobles to pay for all the coal. So why didn’t Mr. Anselm make them use their resources to transform Chishuang Territory?”

Hitana’s body shuddered, an overwhelming chill and fear spreading through her.

“Hitana, you’re too foolish, foolish enough to believe that everything can be settled with a simple agreement, that signing documents ensures everything goes perfectly.”

Marina, now resolute, began to wield her blade against her sister.

“Let me tell you why—because this city, this territory, has nothing to do with Mr. Anselm. It never belonged to him but to those nobles you and I both despise.”

“Do you know how many nobles are here? Do you know how many years their families have thrived in this place? Do you know the intricate web of their alliances, their exchanges of benefits, their rivalries?”

“Do you know how many processes, how many steps, how many people are affected when Mr. Anselm issues a single decree?”

“In this long, complex chain, even with all his intentions, Mr. Anselm cannot possibly control every detail of this tangled network. For someone who brought only a maid and Saville, the butler, it’s impossible to make every step, every detail, every single thing align perfectly with his will.”

“Do you understand that?”

Hitana’s eyes were filled with confusion. Looking at this utterly unfamiliar sister, she trembled helplessly. “What are you saying… Marina, what are you even saying?!”

“…Look, Hitana. Even when I’ve explained it so clearly, you still can’t see.”

Marina ignored Hitana’s pleading fragility. “Why, being so foolish, do you insist on being so willful, so arrogantly thinking you can change everything?”

“Then let me give you the answer.”

“Mr. Anselm is paying a price,” she said calmly, staring into Hitana’s near-breaking eyes. “Only by paying a price will the nobles behave. If he only issued orders without expending any resources or effort, leaving everything to the nobles to handle, making them bear all the costs—”

“Then, no matter how much they fear him, these families who have thrived in Chishuang Territory for decades or centuries have a hundred ways to thwart Mr. Anselm’s will.”

Marina’s expression and words grew colder, more ruthless. “Now, do you understand why Mr. Anselm spent his own money to provide coal for the poor?”

“Because with such an enormous cost, no one dares to make a move. No one dares to skim even half a copper of Mr. Anselm’s money. All they can do is obediently follow his plans and arrangements, procuring and distributing the coal.”

This was what Anselm had foretold to Hitana that day.

Attack their strategy first, their alliances second, their soldiers last.

And Hitana, in the end, chose the most brutal, most thoughtless “soldiers.”

“But you, Hitana.”

“No… it’s not like that. It can’t be like that…”

“You arrogantly thought you could do what even Mr. Anselm couldn’t.”

“No, no…”

“Making the nobles bear all the costs meant their networks could operate freely—because Mr. Anselm paid no price, there was nothing to make them absolutely fear him.”

“…It wasn’t me.”

“Cutting corners, negligence, deliberate oversight… They would pay a price because it’s Mr. Anselm’s will, but the size of that price is entirely in their hands.”

“It wasn’t me…”

“They’re afraid? They’ll be afraid, but that fear doesn’t outweigh their greed and stinginess.”

“…”

“Yes, Mr. Anselm can decide their life or death, but so what? Can Mr. Anselm, alone, control everything in Chishuang Territory? Would they not think that?”

“Even if Mr. Anselm holds them accountable, they have countless excuses, countless reasons to shift the blame to the insignificant cogs in their vast network.”

“This is how nobles survive.”

“Yes, many of the poor, at least in Chishuang City, could have absolutely survived this cold wave under Mr. Anselm’s plan.”

“But you, Hitana.”

This long trial finally reached its end.

The sisters, now seemingly on divergent paths—one as the judge, the other as the sinner—stood in this howling, despair-filled silence.

Marina, released by Hitana, pronounced the sinner’s guilt without mercy or hesitation:

“You killed them, Hitana.”

“You killed them all.”

“It wasn’t me!!!”

Hitana screamed in madness and collapse, shoving Marina into the thick snow. “It wasn’t me… it wasn’t me! It was the nobles, like you said! The nobles killed them! Not me!”

“But they could have lived. Every one of them could have lived,” Marina said softly, her eyes closed. “They all could have lived.”

The unbearable sadness and pain in her voice reached Hitana’s ears.

“…”

Hitana let go of Marina’s collar, staring at her trembling, nearly numb hands.

“It’s not like that… it’s not…”

The girl, teetering on the edge of collapse, her eyes unfocused, hugged herself, muttering as if to deceive herself: “No, this isn’t right…”

“Are you still lying to yourself, Hitana?”

Marina opened her eyes, her face full of scorn. “Let me tell you, this is reality and not just Chishuang City. If Mr. Anselm had truly paid the price to save all the poor in Chishuang Territory, countless lives would have been saved, but—”

“But guess what,” she whispered softly.

“Beyond Chishuang City, in so many cities, so many villages, so many people.”

“How many hells were born because of you?”

“Ah… ah…”

Hitana’s throat let out meaningless wails.

She… suddenly felt something watching her.

Who was it? Anselm? No, Anselm wouldn’t look at her like that. Who was it?

Then, slowly raising her head, she saw herself in the eyes of those frozen corpses.

Every corpse, every brittle, crystallized, lifeless eye reflected her figure.

Silently pleading—

[I want to live.]

“Ah!!!”

A piercing scream shattered the glass of Anselm’s manor, causing Marina, pinned to the ground, to groan, blood trickling from her ears.

The utterly broken wolf howled in madness: “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me… don’t come near me! It wasn’t me… it wasn’t me!”

She frantically struck at the air, the terrifying sound of her fists splitting the void proving each blow was delivered with desperate force.

The wolf stumbled to her feet, screaming hoarsely, her fierce exterior hiding her inner weakness, attacking the nothingness around her indiscriminately.

Only when exhaustion from such violent, hysterical effort overtook her did she stop, trembling, looking at her hands.

A pale, delicate hand, reddened by the cold but still strikingly beautiful.

Red, red… red?

In a daze, Hitana felt a viscous, sluggish, slippery sensation on her hands.

Drip.

Drip.

She shuddered, lifting her head to look around.

The ground was littered with shattered, bloodless, fleshless remains—so clean, so beautiful, like works of art… severed limbs.

“Ah!!!”

With another scream… the wolf fled in madness.

Fled from this hell she lacked the courage to face.

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