The Husband I Thought Was Dead Has Returned - Chapter 98

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Husband Who Should Have Died Returns Episode 098
A stench assailed her nostrils—something was terribly wrong.
Countess Yotlrey had come to the Temple because she’d heard that Cassian hadn’t returned for an entire week.
This time, she’d sought out Cassian to use him as leverage to gather the noblewomen. The Prayer Assembly where Cassian recited prayers was the only venue where Countess Yotlrey could demonstrate any influence.
Being exploited and discarded by both sides had long since become Countess Yotlrey’s daily existence.
Countess Yotlrey squeezed herself through the gap between the ruins. She knew Cassian came and went from this place. She didn’t ask what he did here.
‘Why bother being curious? He’s such a gloomy creature anyway. Why would he even come to a place like this?’
Countess Yotlrey kicked at the stones clinging to her shoes as she walked deeper inside.
‘What in the world is this horrible stench?’
Light was seeping from the Sacred Relic Chamber. Golden light. It had been a bluish hue before, but the color had changed entirely.
Countess Yotlrey furrowed her brow.
As she threw open the door, what lay within revealed itself.
A Servant of God in perfect form. Not a trace of the damage that had marred it before remained.
Dong, dong, dong. The bell was ringing. Countess Yotlrey stared at it with her mouth agape.
“…A bell.”
She’d known it would restore itself, but she hadn’t expected it to happen this quickly. The enormous bell, wrapped in a transparent barrier, rang ceaselessly as if compensating for all its silence.
Countess Yotlrey’s gaze slowly descended. Golden lines spread across the floor like veins. And she could see where those lines led.
Cassian lay at their end. His face, wrapped in golden threads, appeared peaceful.
Countess Yotlrey approached as if entranced.
“Cassian?”
Countess Yotlrey collapsed to her knees before him. With trembling hands, she grasped his shoulders and shook him. The fingertips that touched him were ice-cold.
“…Cassian?”
Countess Yotlrey’s voice cracked.
Cassian was dead.
Only then did she see it—the golden lines were draining his life force. They were wound around him with horrifying precision, as if refusing to let a single drop of blood escape. Countess Yotlrey raised her head and stared at the bell.
“God, you call yourself God!! You call yourself God!!”
Countess Yotlrey tried to tear the golden threads from Cassian, but her hands found nothing to grasp. Tears streamed down her face.
“You, you killed a person… you killed a person to….”
The sacred bell’s chime that reached her ears sounded like a demon’s whisper. It was so horrifying that her body trembled. Yet paradoxically, Cassian appeared peaceful even as he surrendered his very life force.
Deep down, she had always known. That Cassian was tormented by guilt. That the weight of his crimes was crushing him. Countess Yotlrey had known this all along.
“Foolish child.”
Countess Yotlrey collapsed beside Cassian’s corpse, tears flowing freely. Emotions tangled within her trembling breath. Before the solemn tolling of the bell that protected the Southern Region, the Empire, and the world itself, Countess Yotlrey too crumbled.
“Uhhhhh….”
With Cassian’s death, Countess Yotlrey lost everything as well. The deed to the Beltria Textile Merchant had been seized from her long ago.
Damn Borgus. He’d enchanted her with honeyed words, and it was he who had ultimately stripped away all her authority.
“What am I to do? What, what am I to do!”
Cassian had escaped from everything, but Countess Yotlrey remained bound.
It was pitiful and bleak. Before it all, she was utterly powerless.

* * *
At that very moment.
Wills noticed it first—the color.
The sky was opening. The crimson light was fading from above the horizon.
“Sir Wills. Something is wrong with the sky.”
Wills glanced to the side. It had been nearly a year since the Duke vanished from sight. The iron chain fastened around Cherez’s waist—he who had charged in so boldly to root out the source—swayed gently in the air.
That remained unchanged, yet the sky had begun to transform some time ago.
Wills fixed his gaze upon the crevasse above the sea. The Gate of the Other Side was narrowing steadily.
The crimson moon was descending. As the blood-red hue drained away, the moon sank below the horizon for the first time in years. The cries of demons tore through the air.
“Look at that!”
The demons lingering on the coastline were moving. They were retreating—toward the crevasse.
“They’re being pulled in! The Gate of the Other Side is drawing the demons inside!”
The demons were torn from the sand and sea, flying as if wrenched away. Black masses surged above the water’s surface before being sucked down into the depths.
The Knights stood transfixed, watching the scene unfold.
The crevasse was closing. That gate which had seemed it would never seal was shutting at last. The violet pulse that had throbbed from within grew faint.
The final demon was pulled inside. Six eyes blazed toward the shore, yet its body could not resist the current. It vanished into the crevasse with one last roar—the final cry of the demons in this war.
The crevasse sealed completely.
“Ha… ha… Is it over? Is it truly over?”
Beneath the sealed crevasse, only the sea churned with violet light. The Knights drew breath. Battered and broken, they stared at the water.
In that instant, a crimson vortex erupted from the sea.
Wills’s eyes widened. Within the crimson maelstrom, he glimpsed a familiar silhouette. A human form floated within the spinning light.
Wills bolted toward the sea. His feet sank deep into the sandy beach as he ran, yet he felt no strain. The weight crushing down upon his entire body went unfelt.
Wills cried out, as though coughing blood.
Toward the one bound at the end of that chain.
“Your Grace!!”

* * *
Even further back than before.
Time itself seemed to have no meaning in this place. I couldn’t tell if days or weeks had passed within these walls.
Cherez simply fought on endlessly.
The iron chain wrapped around my waist was nearly corroded away. Each link was oxidized and half-severed. The air in this place devoured metal itself.
The Demon Lord was like immortality incarnate.
Whenever I carved a wound, the gaping flesh sealed shut in an instant. I rose again and again, even as blood spilled from my lips.
There was only one reason I could keep rising.
I wanted to return.
To those who waited for me. To Hayden and Roana. To the embrace of happiness I had never fully savored.
I was not alone. Because I was not alone, I could endure.
Then it happened.
The moment my blade pierced the surface, my vision inverted. The violet hue before my eyes vanished, replaced by something else. I couldn’t tell if it was a hallucination or a memory.
Cherez was there. My broken form lay sprawled in shattered armor. Blood spread across the sand, and my open eyes held no focus.
‘General! General, please, this cannot be!’
Wills gripped my collar, tears streaming down his face.
‘You cannot return like this!’
With Wills’s cry, the memories of the past flooded in—fragments of recollection I had left behind.
This was meant to be my end. Cherez Bereidan, falling in battle on the Battlefield.
‘Wills… protect Hayden. That child… protect him.’
Cherez Bereidan, who could not even save Hayden, who ultimately fell to defeat. That was who I was.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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