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

Chapter 78: Investment 78: Ward and Fire

Elliot burst back into the courtyard to a scene that had shifted considerably in his absence—the mercenary line thinned but not broken, bodies scattered across the reinforced wall’s breach point, and Seria at the center of it all, breathing hard, ice mana visibly straining as she fought to hold a defensive line alone against a cluster of six remaining attackers.

"Seria!"

Her head snapped toward him, relief flooding her exhausted features for just a fraction of a second before a mercenary’s blade forced her attention back to the fight.

Elliot closed the distance in seconds, Skion’s fragment humming with fresh, golden warmth as he engaged the nearest attacker, sword meeting steel with a clarity of purpose he hadn’t fully possessed even moments before facing the cellar intruder. There was no hesitation in him now, no lingering uncertainty about whether the fragment would answer his need in time—only the steady, growing certainty that it would, that it already had once, and that trusting it further was no longer a leap of faith but simply the truth of what he now carried.

[Primordial Ward: Active. Duration and cooldown parameters still calibrating.]

The ward flickered protectively around him as he fought, absorbing what would have been a crippling strike from a mercenary’s spear before he cut the man down, and for the first time since the siege began, Elliot allowed himself a flicker of genuine hope.

"Where were you?" Seria demanded between strikes, freezing another attacker’s boots to the courtyard stone.

"Someone broke into the cellar. A decoy—not after the fragment, since it’s already bonded to me. I think they were buying time for something else." He cut down another attacker, breathing hard. "Where’s my father?"

"There." Seria gestured with her chin toward the far end of the courtyard, where Cassian fought alongside two remaining guards, driving back the last cluster of organized mercenary resistance with grim, exhausted determination.

Together, Elliot and Seria pushed forward, clearing the remaining attackers from the breach point with brutal efficiency—the ward absorbing blow after blow that would have otherwise forced Elliot into a far more defensive posture, buying him the openings he needed to end each engagement quickly. For the first time since the fighting began, he felt less like he was scrambling to survive and more like he was actually winning.

Within minutes, the last of the mercenary line had either fallen or fled back toward the tree line, abandoning the assault as swiftly and unnaturally as it had begun.

"They’re retreating," one of the surviving guards called out, disbelief evident in his voice. "Sir, they’re actually retreating!"

"Too easily," Seria muttered, lowering her hands slowly, ice mana still crackling faintly along her fingertips despite the apparent end of the fight. "Fifty men don’t break formation and flee just because they lost a dozen or so of their number. Not disciplined ones, anyway."

"You think it’s another distraction," Elliot said, the dread from the cellar still sitting heavy in his chest.

"I think," she said slowly, scanning the retreating mercenaries with narrowed eyes, "that everything about this entire siege has felt like exactly that. A distraction layered on top of another distraction."

Cassian lowered his sword slowly, chest heaving, gaze sweeping across the ruined courtyard—bodies, both familiar and foreign, scattered among churned earth and shattered stone.

"Casualties," he said grimly, voice tight. "I want a count. Now."

As guards began the grim work of assessing the aftermath, Elliot made his way toward his father, Seria close beside him, the adrenaline of battle slowly draining into a bone-deep exhaustion that made his legs feel unsteady beneath him.

"You’re hurt," Cassian said immediately, gaze snapping to the torn fabric along Elliot’s side where the messenger’s blade had first connected before the ward activated.

"It’s shallow," Elliot said. "The ward stopped most of it."

"The what?"

"The fragment," Elliot clarified. "It finally gave me something. A defensive barrier. I think—I think it activates automatically when I’m in genuine danger, though I’m still not entirely sure of the limits."

Cassian’s relief was palpable, though it didn’t fully erase the tension still visible in his shoulders. "That’s good news. We’re going to need every advantage we can get, given what just happened."

"There’s more," Elliot said, and quickly relayed the encounter in the cellar—the decoy attack, the messenger’s unsettling calm, their cryptic warning about waiting for something the initial siege hadn’t yet accomplished.

"They said they were waiting for something," Elliot added, the memory surfacing fresh dread even as he spoke it aloud. "I assumed they meant the fragment. But I already had it by the time they broke through."

Cassian’s expression darkened further with every word, his gaze drifting instinctively toward the manor’s entrance. "If this entire assault was a distraction—"

A sudden, panicked shout cut through the courtyard’s uneasy quiet.

"The Baroness! Where’s the Baroness and Lady Mira?!"

Elliot’s blood turned to ice.

He and Seria bolted toward the manor’s entrance where Lyra and Mira had been stationed throughout the fighting, Cassian close behind, dread mounting with every step. The courtyard’s earlier relief evaporated entirely, replaced by a cold, familiar panic that Elliot recognized instantly—the same helpless dread he’d felt watching Seria vanish into Ru’s dark energy weeks earlier, except this time it was his mother and his little sister on the other side of that fear.

"Please," he heard himself murmur, barely aware he was speaking aloud. "Please, not them too."

They found the entrance guards unconscious but breathing, the heavy doors standing wide open, and the entryway beyond eerily, unnervingly empty.

Lyra and Mira were gone.

For one horrible, suspended moment, none of them moved, the enormity of it settling over the entryway like a physical weight. Then Cassian’s voice broke the silence, hoarse with a fear Elliot had never once heard from his father in seventeen years.

"Search the grounds," he barked at the nearest guards, already moving, sword still drawn despite the retreat of the mercenary force. "Every room, every outbuilding, the orchard, the stables—now!"

Elliot was already moving too, Seria at his side, both of them driven by the same singular, desperate need to find some trace, any trace, that would tell them where the two most important people left in this house had gone.