The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family

Chapter 362: The Seal Beneath the Ice (2)

The air in the guest chamber was still and cold, smelling faintly of preserved ice and linen. Klaus materialized in the center of the room with a soft pop of displaced air. The transition was seamless, leaving no ripple of mana for any external sensors to detect. He stood there for a moment, letting the silence of the room settle over him after the tension of the pub. The bell above the door had chimed behind him, but here, there was only the quiet hum of the preservation runes etched into the walls.

He walked to the bed and sat down, his back straight, his hands resting on his knees. The luxury of the room meant nothing to him. The silk sheets and carved ice furniture were just objects. What mattered was the information he had gathered and the threats he had yet to identify. Helene had confirmed his suspicions about the Ice Palace being a seal, but she had withheld the specific reason why her death was the key. That meant there was another layer to this puzzle, something even she was not fully aware of.

Klaus closed his physical eyes. He did not need sleep. He needed clarity.

He reached inward, diving into the vast expanse of his mind realm. The darkness behind his eyelids transformed into a void of swirling energy. Within this space, five massive eyes opened in unison. They were not physical organs but constructs of pure consciousness, each one representing a different aspect of perception granted by the Ten Eyes Mantra. The first eye saw mana. The second saw structure. The third saw intent. The fourth saw distance. The fifth saw truth.

He focused on the fourth eye, the one that allowed him to transcend physical limitations of sight. He pushed his consciousness outward, passing through the walls of the guest chamber, through the layers of the Ice Palace, and out into the night sky above Iskandriel.

His vision expanded rapidly. The city below looked like a circuit board of blue and white lights. He could see the energy signatures of every living soul within the walls. Most were dormant, sleeping in their beds. But there were clusters of bright red signatures moving with purpose. They were converging on the northern gates.

Klaus followed them. His consciousness rode the wind, moving faster than any bird or magical beast. He passed over the outer walls of Iskandriel, leaving the safety of the city behind. The landscape beyond was dark and jagged, dominated by the Frostfang Peaks that gave the region its name. The snow here was deeper, untouched by human footprints until tonight.

He found the source of the disturbance near the base of the highest peak. A fissure had opened in the ground, not unlike a rift, but there was no blue light. Instead, a thick, oily black mist was pouring out of the earth, coiling like smoke against the white snow. From this mist, shapes were emerging.

Klaus zoomed his perception in, focusing on the creatures forming from the mist. They did not look like the chitinous beasts from the blue rift. They had no solid form. They were humanoid in shape but featureless, composed entirely of that same void-like blackness. They looked like specters, shadows given malice and intent.

Below them, a contingent of Stark family soldiers had engaged the enemy. Klaus recognized their uniforms. They were the elite guard of the Stark family, warriors trained to handle high level threats. He watched as one soldier swung his sword, the blade glowing with a cyan aura. The sword struck the black specter squarely.

There was no sound of impact. The blade passed through the creature as if it were made of air. The soldier stumbled, his momentum carrying him forward. The specter did not recoil. It simply flowed around the blade and reached out with a clawed hand of smoke.

The soldier screamed. It was not a scream of physical pain but of something deeper. Klaus saw the soldier's life force draining rapidly. The cyan aura around the soldier flickered and died. The man collapsed, his body turning gray and withered in seconds. The other soldiers shouted, trying to regroup, but their weapons were useless. Spears, swords, and axes passed harmlessly through the black forms. The monsters did not bleed. They did not break. They only consumed.

Klaus felt a chill that had nothing to do with the northern climate. He had seen this before. Not in this life, and not in the life of Klaus Zagerfield. He dug deeper into the archives of his soul, searching through the fragmented memories of Tomas Veil.

Tomas Veil had been a scholar, a man who spent decades studying the anomalies of the world. He had accessed forbidden libraries, read texts that were supposed to be destroyed. He had cataloged entities that defied the standard classification of beasts or demons.

Klaus sifted through the mental dust of those memories. He saw the candlelit archives. He felt the brittle parchment under Tomas's fingers. He saw the drawings. Sketches of black, featureless figures draining the life from warriors. The text beside the drawings was written in an ancient cipher that Tomas had spent years decoding.

The classification was not Grade 3 or Class 5. Those categories applied to physical beasts with mana cores. These things had no cores. They had no physical mass. They were void entities that fed on existence itself. Physical attacks were futile because there was nothing physical to hit. Mana attacks were dangerous because they only fed the creatures more energy to consume.

Klaus watched as another soldier fell. The man's skin turned to ash, his armor collapsing into an empty pile. The black specter grew slightly larger, its form becoming more solid as it consumed another life. The Stark soldiers were retreating, panic setting in. They were trained for war, not for extermination of concepts.

The memory in Klaus's mind sharpened. Tomas Veil had written a warning in the margins of that forbidden text. He had written that if these entities ever appeared in quantity, it meant the seals were failing. He had written that they were the immune system of the void, coming to cleanse any breach in reality.

Klaus pulled his consciousness back from the peaks. He retreated through the sky, back over the walls of Iskandriel, back into the Ice Palace, and finally into the guest chamber. He opened his physical eyes.

The room was exactly as he had left it. The silence was heavy. He could feel the residue of the black mist in his senses, a stain on the fabric of reality that lingered even after he stopped observing. The Stark soldiers would not be able to hold the line. They needed weapons that could damage the void, or they needed to seal the fissure before the creatures multiplied.

But the name was what mattered most. The classification that Tomas Veil had discovered. The knowledge that had been buried for centuries to prevent panic. If the Ice Palace was a seal, and these creatures were pouring out, then the seal was not just weakening. It was bleeding.

Klaus stood up and walked to the window. He looked out toward the north, toward the Frostfang Peaks. He could not see the battle from here, but he could feel the death occurring in the distance. Each death was a flicker in the energy web of the world.

He remembered the prophecy Helene had mentioned. A messenger would claim her life. But these creatures were not messengers. They were scavengers. They came after the damage was done.

Which meant the real damage had already happened. The seal had been breached by something else, and these things were just the aftermath. Or perhaps they were the cause, eating away at the seal from the outside until it gave way.

Klaus placed his hand against the cold glass of the window. His breath fogged the surface. He needed to tell the ice queen. He needed to tell the Starks. But would they believe him? Would they listen to a boy who claimed to know ancient secrets?

It did not matter if they believed him. It mattered if he was right. And he knew he was right. The feeling in his gut, the resonance with Tomas Veil's memories, it was undeniable. These were not random monsters. They were a specific classification of entity that should not exist in this era.

He whispered the name into the empty room, the word carrying the weight of a forgotten history.

"Hollows."