Investing in My Yandare Villainess Fiancée:Each Reward Fuels My Growth

Chapter 69: Investment 69: What the Orchard Kept

Mira found him.

That was the detail Elliot couldn’t shake for the rest of the day—not the grim, ritualistic arrangement of the twelve chickens, not the pallor of Old Harmon’s still face, not even the faint, unnatural chill that seemed to cling to the small clearing at the orchard’s edge long after the body had been found. It was that Mira, who’d woken early and slipped out to practice the stance Elliot taught her before anyone else was up, had been the one to stumble upon it.

By the time Elliot reached her, drawn by her scream, she was already on her knees in the grass, practice sword forgotten beside her, face white as bone.

"Mira." He dropped down beside her, pulling her against his chest before she could see any more of it than she already had, one hand cradling the back of her head. "Don’t look. I’ve got you. Don’t look."

She didn’t cry, not at first—she simply shook, small tremors running through her entire body, the kind of shock too deep for tears to reach yet.

"He was just—he always—" she stammered against his shirt. "Old Harmon always waves. Every morning. He always waves."

"I know." Elliot held her tighter, his own jaw clenched hard enough to ache, fury and grief tangling together in his chest in a way that left little room for anything else. "I know, Mira."

Seria arrived moments later, Cassian and two estate guards close behind her. She took one look at the scene—the precise, deliberate circle of dead birds, Old Harmon’s body positioned at its center with an unsettling care that made it clear this wasn’t the work of any ordinary predator or bandit—and her expression hardened into something cold and lethal.

"This wasn’t random," she said quietly, crystal-blue eyes scanning the clearing with clinical precision despite the horror of it. "This was a message."

"A message saying what, exactly," Cassian said, voice tight with barely restrained rage as he knelt beside the fallen groundskeeper, gently closing the old man’s eyes with two fingers.

"That they can reach anyone on this estate, at any time, without being seen or stopped." Seria’s gaze swept toward the tree line, toward the exact spot Elliot had described seeing a shadow the day before. "And that whoever’s watching wants us to know it."

"Get Mira inside," Cassian said to one of the guards, voice clipped. "And send for Priestess Aldwen from the village chapel. Old Harmon deserves proper rites."

The guard nodded and gently coaxed a still-trembling Mira away from Elliot’s side, though she clung to his sleeve until the very last possible second, eyes wide and haunted in a way no ten-year-old’s should ever be.

Once she was safely out of earshot, Cassian rose slowly, his usual composed authority replaced by something rawer, more dangerous.

"I want to know," he said, voice low, "exactly what kind of enemy we’re dealing with. Now. No more careful diplomatic guessing."

Elliot exchanged a glance with Seria.

"The organization behind Entoma and the Bug Lords," Elliot said carefully. "It has to be connected. This kind of ritualistic cruelty—it’s not random violence. It’s the same pattern. Sacrifice, message, intimidation."

"But why here?" Cassian’s hands curled into fists at his sides. "Why us? House Reingard has no particular quarrel with dark cults or Dungeon anomalies. We’re not the royal family. We’re not even particularly influential beyond our own territory."

"Unless there’s something about this family they want," Seria said slowly, "that has nothing to do with politics or influence."

All eyes turned toward Elliot.

"The relic," he said, the word settling in his chest with sudden, uncomfortable weight. "The old man. In the farmland dimension. He called me the successor of Skion."

"The Sky Father," Cassian said, voice suddenly very careful. "You told us that part of the story last night. I confess I thought it was simply a metaphor. A title given by whatever strange spirit you encountered in your near-death vision."

"What if it wasn’t a metaphor," Elliot said slowly, a cold certainty settling over him even as he spoke the words aloud for the first time. "What if there’s something here. On this land. Something tied to that title, that this family has been unknowingly protecting for generations."

Cassian went very still.

"Father," Elliot pressed, watching something flicker uncomfortably behind his father’s eyes. "Do you know something?"

For a long moment, Cassian said nothing, staring out toward the orchard’s edge, toward the old, gnarled trees that had stood on Reingard land since long before any of them had been born.

"There’s a story," he said finally, voice quiet, almost reluctant. "Passed down through the family for generations. About something buried beneath the old cellar, sealed by our ancestors long before House Reingard held any noble title at all. My father told it to me as a child, the way his father told it to him—as a bedtime story, nothing more. A superstition to keep the younger children from wandering into the cellar unsupervised."

"What kind of story," Seria asked, voice tight.

Cassian’s gaze finally settled on Elliot, heavy with a weight that made the younger man’s stomach twist uncomfortably.

"That something ancient sleeps beneath this house," he said. "Something our family swore, generations ago, to guard and never wake."

The wind through the orchard seemed to still entirely at those words, the morning’s earlier warmth replaced by something colder, older, and infinitely more patient.

"I think," Elliot said slowly, "it’s time we found out exactly what our ancestors were guarding."

Cassian’s jaw tightened, grief and dread warring visibly across his features as he glanced back toward the manor, toward the cellar door he’d walked past a thousand times without a second thought.

"Then may the Sky Father help us," he murmured, "because I suspect whatever’s hunting this family already knows precisely what’s down there. And they’re not simply here to intimidate us into silence."

"They’re here to take it," Seria finished grimly.

Overhead, the sky—clear and untroubled only moments before—had begun, almost imperceptibly, to darken.