Chapter 144: The Guardians

Lara returned to the royal mausoleum, which the netizens called “The Lost Era.”

This time she did not arrive as a grieving relic of a lost throne.

She arrived as a witness.

Her face was composed, her movements measured, her eyes sharp and analytical—the gaze of someone dissecting history, not drowning in it.

She stood inside the burial chamber and studied it as a detective would a crime scene.

Not Lara the empress.

Just Lara.

She moved from sarcophagus to sarcophagus, fingers hovering inches above ancient stone, tracing inscriptions without quite touching them.

The tombs held the remains of her great-grandchildren—names she once knew as laughter, as tiny hands clutching her robes, as futures she had believed were secure.

Now they were carved in cold permanence.

Ten generations of Kromwels lay here.

Ten generations… and then silence.

No records. No continuation. No explanation.

It was as if the bloodline had been cut clean off the world.

What happened to Hevenfort after I was gone?

Her jaw tightened as she turned to the frescoes lining the walls—vast, luminous scenes depicting each monarch’s reign in triumphant color.

Victories. Coronations. Cities gleaming under banners. Armies marching like rivers of steel.

But beneath the glory, she noticed fractures. Subtle shifts in tone. Battles growing more desperate. Crowds thinning. Smiles becoming rigid masks.

Something had gone wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

Beside her, Ares was equally absorbed, head tilted back as he studied the painted ceiling. Torchlight flickered across his features, giving the illusion that the warriors above them were moving—charging forever into battles already lost to time.

The frescoes didn’t just celebrate Calma’s golden age. They immortalized the Norse generals who had stood like a wall against foreign invasion—men whose names still carried weight centuries later.

Liam, Logan, and Lucas had practically moved into the chamber since its discovery. They came every day, drawn to the towering images of their ancestors locked in eternal combat. Boys seeing themselves in legends.

“Dad, look at this one,” Logan called, voice echoing off the stone. He pointed excitedly at a coastal battle scene. “This is the fight at the shores of Westalis. See this general? He looks like great-grandpa.”

Lara turned at the sound of familiar voices and saw her godfather stepping into the chamber with his sons. The torchlight framed them like figures walking out of the past.

“His name is Percival Norse,” Liam said, squinting at the inscription. “Must be one of ours.”

Lara approached them quietly, footsteps barely audible on the ancient floor.

“He is,” she said, her voice soft but certain. “The sixth son of General Odin. He is the youngest.”

Four heads snapped toward her at once.

Ares turned too, brows knitting.

“Sis… how would you know that?” Lucas asked, suspicion and awe tangled in his tone.

Instead of answering, Lara walked past them toward the wall behind the raised dais. Several archaeologists had already cleared away centuries of dust there, revealing a massive fresco that had only recently come to light.

General Odin stood at the center, broad-shouldered and unyielding, flanked by six sons in full battle regalia. Helmets tucked beneath their arms. Weapons grounded but ready. Their eyes—every single pair—fixed not on an enemy…

…but on the emperor’s tomb.

Memory surged through Lara so sharply it almost knocked the breath out of her.

She had commissioned that painting herself when Alaric was laid to rest.

A promise cast in pigment.

The Norse men would stand vigil over the empire—and its emperor—for generations to come.

Guardians not of land… but of legacy.

“Look,” she said quietly, nostalgia threading through her voice like a ghost. “This painting explains everything.”

…

At the chamber’s entrance, Yannis Fenn stood just beyond the threshold. He didn’t step inside. Didn’t speak.

He simply watched.

He watched the way Lara moved through the mausoleum with unspoken authority… the way her posture straightened near the dais… the way the air around her seemed to shift, as if the room itself recognized her.

Like a queen returning to a throne no one else could see.

And for the first time, Yannis wondered if the past wasn’t just something they had uncovered—

but something that had been waiting for her to come home.

He stepped fully into the chamber this time, the echo of his shoes against stone cutting through the hushed reverence of the place. Without hesitation, he walked straight toward Lara—toward the raised dais, toward the black-veined coffin that housed an emperor.

Toward her.

Ares noticed immediately. His brow furrowed, posture sharpening as if an invisible line had just been crossed.

Yannis stopped a respectful distance away, hands loosely clasped behind his back, his expression composed but intent.

“Good afternoon, Miss Reyes,” he said, offering a courteous smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Doctor Fenn,” Lara replied, equally polite, equally guarded.

Up close, the air felt heavier, thick with the scent of old stone and something older still—history pressed into silence.

Yannis studied her for a beat, gaze flicking briefly to the coffin before returning to her face.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked gently.

The question landed harder than it should have.

For a moment, Lara had no answer.

Not because she had nothing to say—but because there was too much. Memories clawing at the back of her throat.

Grief she had already buried once. Rage that had survived centuries. The unbearable intimacy of standing inches away from a man the world called a long-dead emperor… and she had once called something else entirely.

Her fingers curled slightly at her sides.

“I…” She stopped, composure slipping for the briefest fraction of a second.

How do you explain that you’re staring at a coffin that feels less like an artifact and more like a wound?

Her gaze dropped to the stone lid, tracing the carved name without touching it.

“Just thinking,” she said at last, voice quieter now, stripped of its usual steadiness. “About how something this… important could vanish from history as if it never existed.”

It wasn’t a lie.

It just wasn’t the truth he was asking for.

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