Chapter 196
A world of darkness and winter lay there.
It was a pitch-black frozen wasteland stretching endlessly beyond the horizon, its limits unknown.
But filling that world even more completely was a single castle towering over it.
Simultaneously, tentacles of indescribable magnitude coiled around the castle like ancient tree roots, alive and breathing. These jet-black tentacles had taken root throughout the fortress, both indoors and out.
Dale and the Wandering Sword were inside that castle, in the gloomy Great Hall, built in the Gothic style of Flamboyant architecture.
Seated upon a towering black-gold throne, with a faintly glowing brazier at his back, the Shadow Lord was there.
Wrapped in armor forged from the chill of doom and the darkness of primordial times, become the lord who reigns alone in the fortress of solitude.
“Ah, what a truly solitary empire this is.”
“Beyond these walls lies nothing but cold and darkness.”
The Shadow Lord spoke thus, waving his arm. At that, an entire wall of the Great Hall vanished, and the endless cold of the frozen wasteland beyond seeped in. The brazier behind the throne began to flicker wildly. Like a candle flickering out in a storm, it was fleeting.
But the Shadow Lord waved his arm once more, and the castle walls rose up, blocking the cold.
She wrapped Shuv’s tentacles around herself and embraced the cosmic winter within her body. After that, what the Shadow Lord displayed within the realm of thought was power approaching that of a god.
