Chapter : 777
He watched the war play out on the lord’s face. He saw the flicker of pure, instinctual rage—the fury of a king whose most sacred sanctum had been breached. He saw the cold, calculating fear of a politician who understood the catastrophic consequences of this secret being revealed. He saw the pride of a man whose entire lineage was built upon the lie that their power was one of martial prowess and shrewd investment, not a lucky accident of geology.
But all of those powerful, worldly emotions were at war with the one, primal, unstoppable force that now governed him: the love of a father for his dying son.
He looked from Lloyd’s calm, expectant face to the small, frail, still form in the great bed. His son. His blood. The future of his house, the culmination of a dozen generations of Qadir ambition, was lying there, being extinguished, breath by shallow breath. And this strange, impossible man from the slums, this seer who could perceive the invisible, was telling him that there was a key, a single, miraculous key that could unlock the door to his son’s survival. And that key was the very secret he had sworn on his life to protect.
It was a perfect, inescapable trap. A choice between two different kinds of death. He could protect his family’s secret, and in doing so, condemn his own son and his entire lineage to a final, tragic end. Or, he could save his son, and in doing so, risk the very foundation of power that his family had spent centuries building.
His gaze settled on Lloyd, and the look in his eyes was one of a man being flayed alive. It was a look of pure, unadulterated agony. The silence in the room stretched, becoming a thin, screaming wire of tension. The fate of a great house, the life of a child, and the success of Lloyd’s entire, audacious mission, all hung in that single, terrible, profound moment of a father’s choice.
The checkmate was absolute. The humble doctor, with his gentle voice and his impossible theories, had brought the most powerful warrior in the kingdom to his knees without ever raising his hand. Now, all he had to do was wait for the king to concede the game.
Lord Timur Qadir was a man who had spent his entire life in a fortress. Not just the physical fortress of his magnificent estate, but the psychological fortress of his own power, his own certainty. He was a man who gave orders, who shaped the world to his will, who understood the clear, brutal calculus of strength and weakness. He had never before encountered a problem that could not be solved by the application of overwhelming force, immense wealth, or ruthless political maneuvering.
Until now.
Now, he was faced with an enemy that could not be bought, that could not be threatened, that could not be outmaneuvered. He was at war with biology, with the quiet, inexorable rebellion of his own son’s cells. And in this war, his entire arsenal of worldly power was useless.
He looked at the man before him, this ‘Doctor Zayn’. The man was a ghost, a cipher. He had appeared from nowhere, from the city’s most wretched district, and had, in the space of a single hour, dismantled Lord Qadir’s entire reality. He had diagnosed a disease that was supposed to be invisible. He had proposed a cure that was supposed to be impossible. And he had made that cure dependent on a secret that was supposed to be inviolable.
It was a sequence of events so perfectly, brutally logical that it felt like the work of a god, or a demon.
Lord Qadir’s mind, the sharp, strategic engine that had won him a dozen border wars and a hundred political battles, began to turn, slowly and painfully, in this new, unfamiliar landscape. He analyzed the situation, not as a father, but as a general.
The risk of revealing the mine was catastrophic. If word got out that House Qadir was sitting on the kingdom’s only active source of high-grade Lilith Stones, they would be besieged. The other great houses would form alliances against them. The Mage’s Guild would demand a share. The King himself would be forced to intervene, to nationalize their asset for the ‘good of the kingdom.’ The foundation of their power, which was rooted in the perception that their wealth was finite and hard-won, would be exposed as a lie. They would become a target, a fat, juicy prize for every hungry wolf in the kingdom.
Chapter : 778
But the risk of inaction was absolute. The death of his son, Tariq, was not just a personal tragedy; it was a dynastic catastrophe. He had no other sons. His younger brother was a feckless drunkard, his nephews ambitious but incompetent. Tariq was the future. Without him, House Qadir would begin a slow, inevitable decline, consumed by internal power struggles and external predators. In a generation or two, they would be a memory.
He was trapped between a potential, political death in the future, and a certain, biological death in the present.
His stormy eyes flickered to Sumaiya.
He looked back at Lloyd. The doctor’s face was a mask of serene, scholarly patience. There was no greed in his eyes, no cunning, no hint of a hidden agenda. There was only a quiet, profound compassion. He looked like a man who genuinely, with all his heart, wanted to save a child’s life, and was simply stating the necessary, if impossible, requirements for the task.
And it was that, in the end, that broke him. The sheer, unadorned sincerity of the man. Lord Qadir was a master of deception; he knew a liar when he saw one. And this man, this impossible, miracle-working slum doctor, was not lying. He truly believed what he was saying.
The general surrendered. The politician retreated. All that was left was the father.
He let out a long, shuddering breath, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of two hundred years of secrets. It was the sound of a fortress gate groaning open for the first time in centuries.
“The oath of silence you have all sworn,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp, his gaze sweeping over the terrified physicians and the alchemist, “is now bound in blood. If you break it, I will not just ruin you. I will erase your entire families from the pages of history. You will be a lesson that is never forgotten.”
The three men nodded frantically, their faces slick with a cold sweat.
[Author Note: If bro knew, he’d realize his whole nation doesn’t even measure up to Ferrum. Even their(Ferrum) personal army has S-class void users and commanders at the Transcend rank.]
He then turned to his wife, his expression softening into one of pure, aching love. “Zira,” he said softly. “It is time.”
She looked at him, her haunted eyes wide with a mixture of terror and a dawning, fragile hope. She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
Finally, he faced Lloyd. The decision had been made. The checkmate had been conceded.
“You shall have your stone, Doctor,” he said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. “But you are correct. A stone of such purity cannot be chosen lightly. Its energy must be… compatible. You will have to select it yourself.”
He turned to the wall behind the great fireplace, a massive, seamless expanse of polished black marble. He placed his hand on a specific, unmarked point on the cold stone. He closed his eyes, and a faint, silvery light began to glow from beneath his palm. There was a low, grinding sound, and a section of the massive wall, a piece ten feet high and five feet wide, began to retract into the floor, revealing not a hidden chamber, but a dark, descending stone staircase that spiraled down into the very foundations of the earth.
A gust of cool, dry air, carrying the faint, metallic scent of ozone and ancient stone, washed over the room.
“Follow me, Doctor,” Lord Qadir said, his voice a hollow echo from the newly revealed passage. “I will show you the source of my family’s power. And you will choose the tool you need to save my son.”
He turned and began his descent into the darkness, a king leading a humble doctor to his most sacred, secret vault. The game was over. And Lloyd had won.
The staircase was a descent into the deep, silent heart of the earth. It spiraled down, a tightly coiled serpent of worn, ancient stone, plunging far deeper into the bedrock beneath the estate than any normal foundation should have gone. The air grew cooler, cleaner, the heavy, grief-choked atmosphere of the sickroom left far behind. The only light came from a single, glowing crystal that Lord Qadir held in his hand, its cool, white luminescence casting long, dancing shadows on the rough-hewn walls.