Strongest Incubus System

The room remained shrouded in a heavy, almost oppressive silence.

It wasn’t the comfortable silence of a quiet night, nor the respectful silence that accompanies someone asleep. It was something different. Something closer to the stillness of a tomb.

Thick curtains blocked much of the outside light, allowing only a few soft beams of late afternoon light to filter through. The subdued lighting revealed a scene that none of those present could observe for long without feeling a growing tightness in their chest.

Damon remained motionless on the bed.

Too motionless.

The last few days had been cruel.

Brutal.

Ester had already seen cultivators destroy their own bodies due to failures during kingdom advances. She had already seen mages consumed by their own mana. She had already witnessed warriors lose their sanity trying to control forbidden techniques.

But this...

This was different.

Because it didn’t seem like a collapse.

It seemed like a war raging inside a single body. The sheets had been removed up to his waist to allow for constant treatment. Bandages wrapped around part of his chest, shoulders, and arms, but even they couldn’t completely hide his condition.

Parts of his skin had an abnormal coloration.

Not bluish.

Not pale.

White.

A translucent white that resembled compressed ice under layers of flesh.

Frozen veins drew delicate and terrifying patterns beneath the surface of his skin. In some places, they looked like simple crystallized lines. In others, they resembled cracks slowly spreading through glass about to shatter.

His hands were the worst example.

Or at least they had been.

When they arrived at the Arven property, three fingers on his left hand were already completely necrotic.

Not from burns.

Not from cuts.

But simply because they had frozen beyond recovery.

The flesh had lost circulation.

The bones had crystallized internally.

When Esther examined them that first night, she knew immediately that there was no saving them.

Removal had been inevitable.

Now only small bandages occupied the space where her fingers had once been.

But that was far from the most disturbing part.

Her face had changed.

Profoundly.

Her lips remained grotesquely cracked, as if they had spent weeks exposed to the harshest winter in the world. Several times during the last few days, small fissures had reopened, forcing the healers to intervene to stop the constant bleeding.

Her hair was no longer the same either.

The dark strands had almost completely disappeared.

In their place remained only white.

Not gray.

Not partially discolored.

Absolute white.

Like freshly fallen snow.

Like ice.

Like something that no longer belonged to a living person.

But none of that compared to her eyes. Because his eyes remained closed.

And no one wanted to see them open again.

On the second night after arriving at the mansion, Damon briefly awoke.

Just for a few seconds.

Enough time to partially open his eyelids.

Enough time for Ester to see.

His irises were frozen.

Literally.

Tiny crystals had formed on the surface of his eyeballs.

Like frost growing on glass.

She had rendered him unconscious again immediately after that.

Since then, he hadn’t woken up again.

Now, several days later, his body remained motionless while the real battle raged far beyond what any ordinary observer could see.

Ester was sitting behind him.

Legs crossed.

Straight back.

Eyes closed.

Controlled breathing.

His hands rested on Damon’s back as invisible currents of energy slowly coursed through both of their internal channels.

Sweat dripped down her forehead.

The effort was monstrous.

Far greater than anyone in that mansion could comprehend.

Because the problem was no longer just excess energy.

The problem was that Damon’s own spiritual channels had frozen.

Not blocked.

Not damaged.

Frozen.

There was a huge difference.

She could feel each one of them.

Hundreds of energy pathways spread throughout the body.

Meridians.

Nodes.

Connections.

All had been engulfed by a crystalline layer of glacial Qi that simply refused to circulate.

The flow wasn’t stopped.

It was trapped.

Like a frozen river containing a monstrous flood beneath its surface.

And that was impossible.

Completely impossible.

The more Ester investigated, the more terrifying the situation became.

Because the Qi wasn’t just frozen. It seemed alive.

Not conscious.

But active.

Adaptive.

Like something that was learning.

Changing.

Evolving.

Several times during the last few days she had tried to break the crystalline formations using her own techniques.

All failed.

Always.

Without exception.

The ice simply reorganized itself.

Changes shape.

Strengthens itself.

As if it were automatically responding to attempts at removal.

It was like fighting something that shouldn’t exist.

And it was beginning to wear her down.

Deeply.

She slowly opened her eyes.

Her control of the flow had to be interrupted for a few moments.

Exhaustion weighed heavily on her shoulders.

Much more than she would admit to anyone.

Next to the bed were dozens of sheets filled with notes.

Diagrams.

Energy maps. Hypotheses.

Theories.

All failed.

All incomplete.

All insufficient.

She watched Damon for a few seconds.

His chest still moved.

Slowly.

Regularly.

But each breath seemed to require effort.

Even unconscious.

Even in a coma.

His body continued to fight.

Fighting against itself.

A soft knock came from the door.

Ester didn’t need to ask who it was.

”Come in.”

The door opened slowly.

Morgana entered.

The last few days hadn’t been kind to her either.

The dark circles under her eyes were evident.

Her face remained tired.

Her aristocratic clothes had been replaced by much simpler garments since the incident.

She looked like someone who had aged years in just a week.

Which was perhaps true. For a few seconds she observed Damon in silence.

Then she turned her eyes to Esther.

”Any change?”

Esther hesitated before answering.

Not because she was thinking.

But because she was tired of always giving the same answer.

”Nothing good.”

Morgana closed her eyes for a moment.

That was answer enough.

She slowly approached the bed.

Her gaze traveled over the white hair.

The bandages.

The frozen marks.

The missing fingers.

Every time she observed that, she felt an unpleasant sensation settle in her stomach.

Because she remembered perfectly.

She remembered the moment he destroyed the Duchess.

She remembered the cold.

She remembered the explosion.

She remembered his expression.

And she remembered, above all, the sensation.

As if something old had awakened.

She had tried to ignore this memory many times. ”Unsuccessfully.

”Did you discover anything?”

Ester slowly exhaled.

Then she got out of bed.

Her joints protested immediately.

Even sitting was becoming difficult.

”I discovered that everything I know about glacial techniques seems useless.”

The answer drew a surprised look from Morgana.

Because that coming from Ester was absurd.

Absolutely absurd.

It was equivalent to hearing a master swordsman claim he didn’t understand how a sword worked.

Even so, Ester seemed completely serious.

”This isn’t normal Qi.”

She walked slowly to a nearby table.

On it were several scrolls scattered.

Extremely detailed energy maps.

All hand-drawn.

”No matter what I do.”

She pointed to one of the diagrams.

”The flow always returns to the same state.”

Morgana observed the drawings.

Even without fully understanding the complexity of it, she perceived the pattern.

Everything pointed to the same place.

The center of his chest.

Near his heart.

”There.”

Ester confirmed.

”There.”

Silence returned.

Heavy.

Unpleasant.

Morgana looked at Damon again.

”So it’s something inside him.”

Ester took several seconds before answering.

When she finally spoke, her voice was much lower.

Much more serious.

”Yes.”

Another pause.

”But I don’t think it’s an illness.”

Morgana immediately felt the discomfort growing.

”Then what is it?”

Ester didn’t answer.

Because that was exactly the question that had kept her awake every night since the incident.

She didn’t know.

And that bothered her deeply.

The following days had revealed something even worse.

Whenever Damon entered deeper periods of unconsciousness, his Qi changed.

Not in intensity.

In behavior.

As if reacting to dreams.

Or memories.

Or something buried far beyond his consciousness.

Two nights ago, for example, the room temperature had suddenly plummeted.

All the windows froze.

The water in the containers turned to solid ice.

And no one had managed to wake him.

The episode lasted only three minutes.

But it was enough.

Because during those three minutes she felt something watching.

A presence.

An impression.

Something impossible to explain rationally.

It still disturbed her.

Very much.

Morgana noticed her expression.

”Ester.”

The other woman raised her eyes.

”What are you not telling me?”

Ester remained silent.

Too long.

Long enough to confirm that something really existed.

Finally she answered.

”I’m not sure.” ”But?”

Another pause.

”But I’m starting to believe this didn’t begin in that mansion.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop even further.

Not physically.

In sensation.

Morgana frowned.

”What do you mean?”

Ester looked back at Damon.

The white hair.

The battered hands.

The face scarred by ice.

All of that seemed like a consequence.

Not an origin.

A consequence.

She spoke slowly.

Like someone organizing dangerous thoughts.

”That explosion didn’t create something.”

Her voice became almost a whisper.

”It only awakened something.”

The silence that followed lingered in the room for several seconds.

Neither of them seemed particularly interested in breaking it.

Because both understood the weight of that possibility.

And because neither of them liked it.

Not one bit. Outside the window, night was slowly beginning to fall over the lands of House Arven.

The mansion remained standing.

The survivors were alive.

The wounded were receiving treatment.

The Arven lineage was trying to rebuild what remained of its existence.

In theory, everything should be improving.

But inside that room...

Nothing seemed resolved.

Nothing seemed safe.

And as Ester slowly closed her eyes again to plunge once more into Damon’s frozen canals, one certainty remained absolute in her mind.

The battle at Arven Manor was over.

But what had awakened within him was only just beginning.