Strongest Incubus System

Chapter 370: This place is unpleasant.

The old wing of the Arven mansion was quieter than the rest of the house. Not because it was empty, but because even the servants seemed to avoid making noise there. The windows were tall, covered by heavy curtains that let in little light, and the corridor carried that smell of waxed wood, old dust, and expensive perfume that clung to places occupied by people who liked to control even the air around them.

Morgana walked ahead, but not quickly. Ingrivid followed two steps before her, sword drawn, while Elizabeth and Aria came just behind. None of the three commented when Morgana stopped before a double door at the end of the corridor. The dark wood was intact, polished, with golden details along the edges. The lock had a small crest of House Arven, but distorted by private symbols the former Duchess had ordered engraved over it, as if even her husband’s house needed to pass through her seal in order to exist.

Aria tightened the documents against her chest. "This place is unpleasant."

Morgana looked at the door. "She had that talent."

Elizabeth approached the lock without touching it directly. "Is there any active protection?"

"I do not know," Morgana said. "After she died, I had this corridor sealed. No one has entered since."

Ingrivid glanced at her from the side. "You should have told me."

"I know."

"I would have placed guards."

"I know."

Ingrivid did not insist. There was a difference between hiding information out of carelessness and not being able to look at a wound. The knight understood that, even if she did not like it. She merely raised the sword a little higher and signaled for everyone to step back half a pace.

Elizabeth placed two fingers near the lock and released a very thin thread of dark energy. It was not offensive magic. It was a probe, delicate and cold, running through the gaps in the wood and the small cuts in the golden symbols. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then a red line glowed beneath the lock, like an eye opening.

Aria took a step back. "Is that normal?"

"No," Elizabeth said.

"Wonderful."

The red line tried to spread, but Elizabeth suddenly closed her hand. Her dark energy swallowed the glow before it completed the pattern. There was a low sound, like thin glass breaking inside the door. Then silence.

Morgana looked at her. "Was it a trap?"

"An alarm. Perhaps it also would have destroyed some documents if opened without disarming it."

Aria went pale. "That woman was personally offensive."

"Yes," Morgana said dryly. "She was."

Ingrivid pushed the door open slowly. The hinges complained softly, but opened without resistance. The interior of the room was dark. Elizabeth raised a small flame above her palm, illuminating first the marble floor, then the broad desk, the shelves closed behind glass, the divan near the window, and the large portrait of the former Duchess hanging above the extinguished fireplace.

No one entered immediately.

The woman in the portrait seemed to look at them with the same superior calm Morgana remembered far too well. Beautiful, elegant, artificially cold, wearing a pale dress and blue jewels at her throat. The painting made her seem almost gentle. Morgana hated that. The artist had captured the beauty, the posture, the prestige, but not the poison. There was no way to paint the feeling of standing before someone who smiled while destroying a family from within.

Morgana entered first.

Not because she was the safest.

Because she needed to.

The air inside seemed to have been trapped for months. Aria coughed softly as she crossed the door, but soon her eyes found the shelves and her discomfort became concentration. Elizabeth went straight to the desk. Ingrivid examined the curtains, walls, and corners. Morgana stood still in the center of the room for a few seconds, looking around without touching anything.

"She spent hours here," Morgana said. "When I was younger, I thought it was work. Later, I thought it was lovers, blackmail, or poison. Now it seems I lacked imagination."

Elizabeth opened a drawer carefully. "People like her usually do everything at once."

Aria approached a locked bookcase. "May I open it?"

Morgana nodded.

Aria took from her pocket a small set of fine tools, which made Ingrivid look at her with a slow expression of disapproval.

"Why do you carry that?"

"Because locks exist."

"That is not an appropriate answer."

"It is the most honest one."

The lock opened in less than half a minute. Aria pulled the glass door open and found a row of private accounting books, all without titles on their spines. She took the first one, opened it, and immediately grimaced.

"Codes."

Elizabeth glanced sideways. "Complex?"

"Unnecessarily vain. That is worse."

Morgana walked to the desk. On it were a dried inkwell, a broken quill, and a small wooden box. The box bore the Duchess’s personal crest, a stylized flower with thorns. Morgana stared at the symbol for a few seconds before touching it. Nothing happened. She opened it.

Inside were letters.

Many of them.

Tied with different ribbons.

Elizabeth approached immediately. "Classification colors."

Morgana picked up a black ribbon. "Black was for matters she considered urgent."

Aria raised her eyes from the book. "You know her system?"

"I grew up being punished when I entered rooms without understanding what each color meant."

No one answered.

Morgana untied the first set of letters. She read the first line and felt her stomach harden. The handwriting was not the Duchess’s. It was firm, elegant, with long and confident strokes. At the bottom of the page there was only an initial: S.

Elizabeth read over her shoulder. "Seraphine."

Morgana continued reading. "She is speaking about the need to accelerate Arven’s administrative deterioration. She says Albert was resisting more than expected, but that the emotional influence over him could be reinforced using guilt tied to my mother’s death."

Ingrivid slowly turned her face.

Aria completely stopped moving the books.

Morgana’s expression did not change, but her hand tightened around the letter. "She knew. Seraphine knew what my stepmother was doing to him."

Elizabeth carefully took the letter before the paper tore between Morgana’s fingers. "More than knew. She guided it."

Morgana breathed through her nose. The rage came cleanly, without shouting, without trembling. Perhaps that scared her more. Before, the Duchess had been the center of the rot. Now, her stepmother was beginning to seem like only one piece of something larger, a cruel woman, yes, but also fed, instructed, and perhaps used by people even farther away.

"Keep searching," Morgana said.

They continued.

In a few hours, the private room became a map of crimes. Aria found private accounts tied to payments for mine administrators. Elizabeth discovered a drawer with a false bottom containing receipts signed by Darius Kelm. Ingrivid tore loose a plank behind the Duchess’s portrait and found a metal tube with three rolled maps. Morgana opened the first map over the desk.

It was of the northern mines.

But not like the official maps.

There was a fourth layer drawn beneath the third mine, with lines descending far deeper than any known tunnel. In the center, a circle had been marked in dark blue ink. Beside it, written in small handwriting, appeared the name Havelock had mentioned.

Underground Heart.

Aria leaned so far over the map she almost touched her nose to it. "This is not a metaphor."

Elizabeth touched the side of the drawing. "Are these containment markings?"

"They look like reinforcements," Aria said. "But here... these lines are not tunnels. They are natural veins. As if something in the center had branches through the rock."

Morgana read the notes along the edges. "Temperature decreases upon approach. Rhythmic sounds every nine minutes. Blue crystals growing after prolonged exposure. Three miners with cold fever. One dead."

Ingrivid let out a low curse.

Aria became serious in a rare way. "Cold fever?"

Elizabeth answered, still looking at the map. "The body freezing from within while the skin remains warm. An unstable magical reaction."

Morgana turned over another map. This one was older, drawn on thick paper, with symbols she did not recognize. The central circle was there again, but this time there was a drawing inside it: a shape resembling a mineral heart, surrounded by roots or crystalline veins. Beside it, a short phrase in an ancient language had been translated by hand by the Duchess.

"That which pulses beneath the earth chooses the cold that does not die."

The silence was immediate.

Aria looked at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth looked at Morgana.

Morgana closed her eyes for an instant.

"Damon," she said quietly.

Ingrivid was the first to react. "We do not know if this refers to him."

"No," Elizabeth said. "But we know his root reacted to the name."

Aria ran a hand through her hair, causing the quill stuck there to finally fall. "This seems very bad."

Morgana opened the last letter tied with black ribbon. The handwriting was Seraphine’s again. The tone was more direct, less polished, as if patience had run out.

"If Arven’s experiment does not produce a compatible host, it will be necessary to resort to external alternatives. The Heart cannot be removed by common men, nor by tools. It responds to lineages, adapted bodies, and cores of deep cold. The Duchess must continue the tests until a solution emerges."

The letter seemed to burn in her hand.

Not with fire.

With meaning.

Morgana read it again, more slowly, because part of her did not want to understand.

Arven’s experiment.

Compatible host.

Continue the tests.

Elizabeth went very still. "The rituals."

Morgana raised her eyes.

"The research into blood, spiritual control, lineages, and resistant bodies," Elizabeth continued. "The Duchess was not merely looking for power. She was trying to create someone capable of accessing the Underground Heart."

Aria spoke quietly. "Damon became that after the coma."

"Not because of her," Morgana said immediately.

The force of the sentence surprised even her.

Elizabeth looked at Morgana carefully. "No. Not because of her. But perhaps her interests, Valcair’s, and Damon’s awakening crossed in a way no one planned."

Morgana dropped the letter on the table as if touching it were unbearable. "I need to tell him."

Ingrivid approached. "You need to breathe first."

"No."

"Morgana."

"No," she repeated, firmer. "He needs to know before someone else uses this against him."

The door opened before anyone could answer.

Damon was in the corridor.

Ester stood behind him, with an expression that clearly said she had tried to stop him and failed only because he had not run; he had walked slowly, which technically respected half of the orders. Damon looked at the room, at the scattered letters, at the open map, and at Morgana. His face was tired, but alert.

"Before anyone yells," he said, "I felt it."

Ester closed the door behind them. "The root reacted."

Morgana went quiet.

Damon entered slowly, his eyes fixed on the map. The closer he came, the colder the air became. Not because of uncontrolled leakage. It was an automatic response, a tension of the body. Ester placed a hand on his back, not pushing, only reminding him.

He stopped before the table.

Read the name.

Underground Heart.

The root pulsed.

This time, everyone felt it.

The map trembled slightly on the table, as if a current of air had passed beneath it. The crystals in the dried inkwell gained a thin layer of ice. Aria moved half a step away, holding her papers against her chest.

Damon closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

The cold stabilized.

"This is not good," he murmured.

Morgana picked up Seraphine’s letter and handed it to him. "You need to read this."

He read.

No one spoke while his eyes moved across the lines. Damon’s expression did not change much, but Ester, close enough, saw his jaw harden. When he finished, he remained staring at the word host for a few seconds longer.

"So they were looking for someone like me."

Elizabeth answered carefully. "Perhaps not exactly like you. But someone capable of surviving whatever exists down there."

"And Valcair now knows I exist."

Morgana tensed. "Probably."

Aria raised a finger, timid for the first time that night. "Technically, many people know you exist. The worrying part is them discovering that you react to the Heart."

Damon looked at her.

"I know. That did not help."

"No, it was useful," he said. "It means we need to control the information."

Elizabeth nodded. "No one outside this room knows about your reaction, except perhaps Havelock, and he is imprisoned."

"Havelock noticed," Damon said. "Not completely, but enough."

Morgana placed both hands on the table. "Then he cannot speak to anyone."

Ingrivid nodded. "I will double the guard."

Ester looked at Damon. "And you are not going to the mines."

He was silent.

Ester realized before he answered.

"Damon."

"I am not going now."

"That is not what I said."

"I know."

"You are doing it again."

Damon looked at the map, at the veins drawn descending toward the blue circle. "Ester, something down there answered me. Or I answered it. Ignoring that does not make the problem disappear."

"And running to a cursed mine does not either."

"I did not say running."

"You thought of walking fast."

Aria, even nervous, murmured, "He thinks loudly."

Damon took a deep breath and looked at Morgana. "You decide."

Morgana frowned. "What?"

"They are your mines. Your duchy. Your house. I am not going to act on impulse and drag everyone into a hole because my chest reacted to a name. You decide the next step."

The room went quiet.

Morgana stared at Damon as if he had said something more dangerous than a threat. Perhaps because it was rare for him to hand the decision to someone else when he believed he could act. Perhaps because, after weeks of trying to stop everyone from treating her like someone about to break, he recognized her as the authority in the one moment when it would have been easy to take control.

Elizabeth noticed that.

So did Ester.

Morgana breathed slowly. The map was before her. Seraphine’s letters, the Duchess’s records, the names of unknown dead, the Underground Heart, and Damon, all placed on the same table. The obvious choice would be to send a team immediately. The prudent choice would be to wait. The political choice would be to use the evidence against Valcair before touching the mines. None was safe.

"First," Morgana said, "Havelock remains isolated. Second, Aria copies all these maps and searches for the list of dead miners. Third, Elizabeth sends the accusation to the Council without mentioning the Heart. Fourth, Ingrivid prepares a small team for reconnaissance of the mines, but no one descends to the lower layers yet."

Ester looked at Damon. "And him?"

Morgana held his gaze. "Damon trains. Rests. Learns to control this bond, if it is a bond. When we go to the mines, it will not be because we were dragged. It will be because we chose to go."

Damon nodded slowly.

"Right."

Ester seemed surprised for the third time that day, which had to be a record.

Aria released the air. "That was... mature."

"Do not spread it," Damon said.

Morgana picked up the map and began rolling it carefully. But her hands were firm. Not happy. Not relieved. Firm. That room had belonged to the woman who destroyed her family, but now the evidence she left behind was being collected, organized, and turned into weapons against those who still thought themselves untouchable.

Before leaving, Morgana stopped before the portrait of the former Duchess.

She looked at it for several seconds.

Then turned to Ingrivid. "Take that off the wall."

Ingrivid did not ask.

She pulled the portrait with both hands and tore it from its support. The painting fell sideways onto the floor, raising dust.

Aria blinked. "Are we keeping it?"

Morgana looked at the fallen painting.

"No."

Damon tilted his head. "Burn it?"

Morgana thought.

Then answered coldly.

"Later. When we no longer need the frame to search for hidden compartments."

Aria smiled slowly. "That was very satisfying."

Elizabeth agreed. "And practical."

Ester looked at Damon. "Do not use this as inspiration to destroy furniture."

"I cannot promise that."

"Damon."

"I promise not to destroy furniture today."

"Better."

Morgana passed through the door carrying Seraphine’s letters. As she left the room, she did not seem smaller for having entered that place. She seemed tired, yes, and wounded in an old way. But she also seemed to have taken something back. Not peace. Not yet.

Control.

Damon remained for one moment longer before the rolled map.

The elemental root pulsed once more.

Far away, in the northern mountains, something seemed to be waiting.

He placed a hand over his chest.

This time, he was not afraid of the answer.

He simply did not like the invitation.