The Ice Age Came And I Just Got Married - Chapter 53

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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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Chapter 53
And in that same moment, countless images flooded into Eve’s mind.
Snow-covered farmland and wheat fields rippling with green, a newborn child, an ancient man with white hair, and people aging, their youth slipping away.
Fragmented memories whose origins she couldn’t fathom swept through her like a storm.
Then the enormous Violet Stone shattered into countless pieces, transforming into thousands of purple particles that hung suspended in the air—like stars scattered across the night sky.
And all of them were drawn into Eve’s body.
The moment the last particle vanished, a flash of violet light passed through the depths of Eve’s eyes before disappearing just as quickly.
Silence settled over them.
Logan studied her for a moment before speaking.
“…Are you all right?”
Eve looked down at her own hands, then nodded.
“Yes.”
Though he heard her answer, Logan’s unease didn’t fade.
A soft drip of blood.
He drew out a handkerchief and wiped away the blood trickling from her nose.
She continued to absorb the suspicious Winterstone into her body, yet aside from the nosebleed, there were no other side effects.
Logan felt relief at her growing strength, but at the same time an endless doubt gnawed at him.
Was everything really all right?
Did her family truly know something, as she claimed?
But when Eve’s eyes met his, whether she sensed his thoughts or not, her face broke into a bright smile.
“Should we head out now? Everyone’s in the Common Hall, right?”
Logan opened his mouth as if to speak, words visibly on the tip of his tongue, but ultimately he said nothing and closed his lips.
He nodded slowly and rose from his seat.
* * *
Sel Haven Shelter’s Common Hall.
Claire stood wordlessly, her gaze fixed on the center of the hall. There, Countess Winterdin and her subordinates—brought in by Logan and Eve—knelt bound by ropes.
The decision of what to do with them fell to her.
She walked slowly toward them.
There was no hesitation in her steps.
When she came to a stop before Countess Winterdin, Claire looked down at her in silence.
A soldier does not aim a gun through emotion.
But the woman before her had committed countless crimes as a human being.
Claire turned to Eve.
“Are you truly prepared to leave this to me?”
“Why?”
“I have no confidence that I can set aside my personal feelings.”
She paused for a moment, her gaze turning cold.
“Why should I set aside personal feelings? It’s simply recovering what was stolen.”
At Eve’s words, Claire’s eyes turned to ice.
As a soldier, she shouldn’t be like this toward a civilian…
But her heart was racing at Eve’s words. Even as her mind insisted she maintain composure as a soldier, there was a thrill to it.
The residents of Sel Haven Shelter remained quiet.
They simply held their breath, watching to see what Eve would do with Countess Winterdin.
As expected, there was no resistance.
Most of them had lived in fear of becoming sacrifices to Countess Winterdin, of having their Youth stolen away.
Among the residents were those who had taken the Youth of others, only to pretend innocence and blend in.
And remarkably, Eve identified them with eerie precision, pulling them forward.
Each time, her eyes would briefly turn violet before returning to their normal color.
“Fifteen years.”
Eve pointed to a man.
“That’s the time you stole from someone else.”
Eve then pointed to a girl who appeared to be in her teens.
“Twenty-two years.”
And then the next,
“Eight years.”
And the next,
“Eleven years.”
With each number Eve spoke, the faces of those who had been brought forward grew pallid.
Logan stood with his arms crossed, his fingers drumming anxiously as he watched the scene unfold.
His eyes never left Eve, as though he would not tolerate even a moment where danger might befall her.
Eve slowly raised her hand. Violet particles scattered from her fingertips.
“I’m returning them to their original state now.”
Her voice was calm.
A low hum filled the air.
The air itself seemed to vibrate.
Violet radiance spread from Eve’s body like ripples, engulfing the entire Common Hall.
At the same moment, violet wisps of essence began to unravel from the bodies of those who had been pulled forward, thin as threads.
It was not mist, but something closer to the Remnant Radiance of Soul.
“Ah……! No! Please!”
“Aaah! My body……!!”
Terror painted their faces.
Conversely, from the back of the crowd, several figures stumbled forward as if they had been waiting for this moment.
An elderly man with a hunched back, a middle-aged man whose hair had turned white, a woman whose skin had grown lined—
These were the people who, when Eve’s group first visited Sel Haven Shelter, had been locked away in the storehouse and could not come out.
Eve reached out toward them.
The violet particles flowed smoothly into the bodies of the elderly.
Their wrinkles faded, their bent spines gradually straightened, and dark hair began to grow between the white strands.
Eve had simply returned to their rightful owners what the Countess Winterdin and her associates had stolen.
Yet those who witnessed it regarded it as a miracle.
“A… is that actually a person?”
Someone muttered words to that effect.
“There’s something sacred about it, like…….”
Another person ventured to speak, and though their words trailed off, everyone in the hall understood what they meant.
Claire fell into thought as she heard them.
Some called Eve a witch. Others felt she was holy.
But Eve paid no heed to any of these judgments. She was like someone pursuing some grand, distant purpose.
Someone for whom everything else but that goal held no interest whatsoever.
There was no wavering in her.
Now that Claire thought back, she could scarcely recall seeing Eve unsettled by anything.
She always assessed situations calmly and acted accordingly.
As a soldier, Claire found this quality of Eve’s deeply worthy of emulation.
In the meantime, those from whom the stolen Youth had now been reclaimed aged rapidly. A man who had appeared to be in his late forties became seventy; a woman who had seemed a girl returned to middle age.
None of them could protest. That Youth had never been theirs to begin with.
When at last the final light found its way home, silence fell over the Common Hall.
Claire gazed at the hunched elderly woman before her—the Countess Winterdin, her face wreathed in wrinkles—with a troubled expression.
Watching the fate of the woman who had tormented her in so many ways during childhood, Claire felt both a grim satisfaction and a troubled heart.
This pitiful creature had caused her such suffering.
What pride of station was worth it.
And because of this, Claire had carried trauma her entire life.
“It’s your turn now, Lieutenant.”
Eve called to Claire.
Claire stood before the Countess Winterdin, wrestling with herself.
Caught between her principles and her personal hatred.
She had asked Eve to leave the matter of the Countess’s judgment to her own discretion.
But now that the moment had come, Claire found her resolve had crumbled.
She could not set aside her personal feelings.
Yet she did not want to abandon her principles as a soldier and execute the Countess Winterdin while driven by private vengeance.
Claire shut her eyes firmly, then opened them, and came to a decision.
“…… I apologize for the change of mind, but might I ask you to leave the final judgment to the Countess herself?”
To Claire’s request, Eve simply nodded without objection.
She turned toward the residents of the shelter. Eve began to speak, slowly and clearly.
“It seems to me that it is not our role to decide the fate of these people.”
Eve stepped aside. Now the group of Countess Winterdin, bound in the center, came fully into view.
“Whether you forgive these people or make them pay for their crimes—that decision is yours.”
As she spoke, dawn began to break.
Faint sunlight filtered through the frozen windows. But silence still reigned within the Common Hall.
No one spoke.
Some clenched their fists; others stood with bowed heads, lost in thought.
Then the Countess Winterdin opened her mouth.

The Countess Winterdin’s gaze blazed with a fierce, cutting light as she surveyed the assembled crowd in the Common Hall.
“Speak…… tell me now.”
Her voice came rough and fractured.
“Without me, you vermin would have frozen to death long ago.”

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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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