Chapter 147: A Beauty of The Pond
The water began to rise slowly.
Max felt strangely drawn in for some reason, his body unable to move even an inch as the glowing surface trembled before him. It was not fear that held him in place, nor simple curiosity. Something deeper had wrapped around him, something soft and invisible, pulling at his mind with a gentleness that made it even more dangerous.
The forest around him had gone quiet as well. No leaves moved, no insects sang, and even the whispers of the Daerfaen seemed to hold their breath as the pond slowly rose before him. Max tried to move his fingers first, then his wrist, then even the mana inside his body, but everything responded a little too late, as if his own body had been submerged in water long before the pond ever touched him.
That made his eyes narrow.
This was not simple beauty. This was not charm either. Something inside the pond had caught him before he understood it, wrapping around his will so gently that even his instincts had failed to scream danger.
A silhouette of something, or perhaps somebody, shone at the very bottom of the pond, in a depth that felt endless. Max caught a glimpse of a pair of pearly, soft eyes glowing far below.
They were blue.
So blue, in fact, that they outshone even the radiant pond water around them. Those eyes locked onto his, studying him in silence as the water continued to rise unnaturally.
There were shapes behind those eyes as well, shadows moving in the blue depth, too unclear for Max to grasp fully. For a moment, he thought he saw branches. Then clouds. Then the outline of a small hand reaching for someone who was no longer there. It all vanished too quickly, swallowed by the glow of the pond, but it left behind a strange ache in his chest, as if the water had shown him a memory that did not belong to him.
Then, from both sides of the pond, two separate pillars slowly crawled upward toward Max, their forms shifting with every moment.
Those pillars turned into arms.
Then hands.
Then fingers.
Max felt their soft embrace on his cheeks, gentle and cold, as if a long-lost lover had finally found the face of the one they had been waiting for. The touch was not violent. It did not grip him or force him down. It only held him with terrifying tenderness, and that alone made his chest tighten.
A face began to take shape deep within the water, slowly rising to meet his. It was a woman. Her beauty stole Max’s breath.
He had seen many beautiful women in this world, women with ancient bloodlines, divine features, and bodies that could ruin the sanity of ordinary men, but this was different. She looked too perfect, too refined, as if she had been crafted by the most talented sculptor in the world and then polished by something beyond human hands. No mortal artist could have created such beauty. No human mind could have imagined it completely.
Max’s heartbeat rose sharply, skyrocketing beyond his control.
A deep desire, the raw instinct of a man craving impossible beauty, began to drown his common sense. No matter how much he fought it, no matter how many times he told himself that this situation was dangerous, that nothing rising from an ancient magical pond could ever be simple, his body refused to listen. He could not move. Not even an inch.
The water rose from the depths of the pond, and the woman’s face finally met his. They were only inches apart now, their lips almost touching as the glowing water trembled between them.
"You’re not him... but you look just like him." Her voice was silky, as though she had been blessed with the most melodic voice in existence. It was neither childish nor elderly. It rested somewhere in between, soft and mature, yet her words carried an unimaginable sadness, a kind of devastation Max had never had the luxury of understanding.
"I might not be him, but I freed you from the forest floor," he said softly.
The woman smiled brightly, like the first rays of the morning sun.
For some reason, that smile did not feel like seduction. It was too broken for that. Too relieved. It was the smile of someone who had waited so long that even a mistake felt like salvation, and Max, who had seen women look at him with lust, fear, greed, and worship, could tell that she was not looking at him like a woman who wanted to possess him.
She was looking at him like someone who had finally stopped drowning.
Without warning, she pulled him closer. The cold water enveloped his body, freezing him, but strangely, it did not steal his breath. The hands that had been holding his face slid to his chest, wrapping around him and embracing him with the desperate strength of someone who had finally found the person they had lost.
"Perhaps you are him after all, just not in his life. Only he could have freed me. Only my lover could have ever spoken like that."
Her voice reverberated through the pond, sending ripples across the glowing water. Max could feel it surrounding him from every direction, slipping into him in a way he could not explain. It was an indescribable sensation, gentle and painful at the same time, as though her longing had become part of the water itself.
He did not resist. He allowed her to pull him wherever she wished.
At this point, with the strength he possessed, Max no longer feared others so easily. He believed that if this woman, whether she was alive, dead, or merely some fantasy born from the pond, truly intended to kill him, he would have sensed danger from her.
But he did not.
There was no killing intent. No malice. Only cold water, her arms around him, and a sorrow so ancient that even Max could not bring himself to dismiss it.
So he let the water carry him deeper.
