Chapter 296: Winter

Lillian was already a Practitioner.

But in this hall, whether you were a Practitioner or a Minor Adept made no difference.

Until you sat in a chair, you were just a shadow whose face no one could see.

You picked someone already at the table and dragged them out of their chair.

The chair they left empty became yours.

The defeated became heads hanging in the dark expanse of the ceiling.

Whether they were challengers who failed or seat-holders dragged to their deaths.

As long as someone died in this hall, their head would rise to hang from the ceiling.

Naturally, they were not mere decorations.

The man in the high chair, Loki, and the queen of the dead seated just below him...

Both could draw power from those heads.

That was why Loki never stopped anyone from fighting for a seat.

He actively hoped for it.

If the challenger won, a new face arrived at the table for his amusement.

If they lost, another head hung above, adding to his power.

Ms. Holloway had said that sometimes he would even stoke the flames himself, secretly goading people into action.

Once a slaughter ended, a head was bound to fall into his net.

It was a guaranteed profit.

Standing in the corner, Lillian mentally reviewed her strategy.

She was going to challenge Baldr.

In this hall, challenging Baldr was no different from seeking death.

Everyone at the table knew about his protection, the Oath of All Things.

Fire would not burn him, iron would not cut him, water would not drown him, and poison would not touch him. No one dared challenge his chair.

Lillian dared, because she gripped something no one else had.

Ms. Holloway had long known two of the figures in this hall.

Because of that connection, the token had been passed down the line into her hands.

Ms. Holloway had revealed the whole truth about Baldr to her.

The one at the head of the table dreaded this golden, ever-smiling fellow most of all.

A man sitting at the table whom no one could touch was a thorn in his side.

Loki excelled at laying traps, but how could you plot against a man impervious to fire, iron, water, and poison?

Sitting in that chair, he had accumulated enough power to brush the edges of a Major Adept.

If Baldr truly broke through to Major Adept, Loki would be even less able to suppress him.

Hela found him equally annoying. She claimed all the dead at the table, yet this man alone could never fall through her gate.

Both wanted this thorn pulled, yet neither wanted to do it themselves.

And so, through Ms. Holloway's connection, the task was handed to the most inconspicuous person available—a girl brought in only months ago.

If she succeeded, they would gain an excellent head to draw power from and lose a major threat.

If she failed, it would just be one more inconsequential head on the ceiling.

Ms. Holloway had given her one final piece of advice.

"Pick any other seat, and killing its owner will be for nothing," the woman had said, tapping Baldr's name.

"But if you kill this one and take his seat, you will inherit the power he has hoarded... and it can patch you up."

Lillian knew exactly what needed patching.

The Path of the Abyss offered rapid ascension, but the toll it exacted was brutal.

In just half a year, she was losing her sense of warmth and taste—things it normally took people decades to lose.

Worse still, her very foundation was rotting inch by inch.

Baldr, however, was the most pristine figure in the hall.

Protected by the Oath of All Things, he was the most favored among the gods. Fire, iron, water, and poison could not leave a mark on his body.

Radiant, whole, and completely unmarred.

Inheriting even a portion of that power would perfectly fill the voids the Abyss had eaten into her foundation.

This was the key reason Ms. Holloway had chosen Baldr for her.

And it was the reason Lillian herself had willingly agreed to be the blade.

As long as a blade could still be thrust forward, it proved it still had value.

Preparing for the displacement battle, the girl was in no rush to reveal her Divine Name.

The rules of the hall dictated that before a challenge, a candidate could first ignite their Divine Name.

They could borrow a sliver of recognition steeped in centuries of history to bolster their strength.

But a Divine Name was a double-edged sword.

Every name had its origins. Along with its glory came its inherent flaws.

By revealing the title, you gained its power, but you also exposed its weaknesses.

Baldr was the perfect example.

He had revealed his Divine Name, flaunting his total invulnerability to everyone.

But that sprig of mistletoe no one ever paid attention to was now hanging right above his head.

Lillian did not plan to win this fight with borrowed power.

She would rely on her signature artifact and her own two hands.

"Tonight, someone seeks a seat."

In the high chair, Loki lifted a finger, pointing across the massive hall at the shadow standing in the corner.

"A newcomer who has watched for an entire summer wants to sit down tonight."

Lillian offered a slight bow toward the high chair.

"To sit, someone must give up their seat."

Loki's voice pressed down from all directions, slow and languid. "She has chosen one of you."

"Speak. Who have you chosen?"

Lillian spoke.

"Baldr."

The hall fell silent for a moment.

Then, a muffled laugh escaped from beneath Fenrir's wolf mask.

Tyr turned his iron-gray mask toward Lillian.

Hela's face—half living flesh, half dead—remained expressionless.

In the last chair, Freyja's finger paused where it had been dipping into a dish.

Beneath her dark gold mask, the woman's eyes grew colder.

Years ago, the third chair had been hers. Baldr was the one who dragged her out of it.

By the rules, the defeated were supposed to be hung from the ceiling as a head.

But her divine authority over love, war, and witchcraft was far too important.

It would have been a waste to make her a head. A living witch at the table was far more useful to the man in the high chair.

So Loki broke his own rule.

She had not died, but she was shoved down to the last chair.

Since then, she had been hoping.

Hoping for the day that the golden figure who tore her from her chair would become a head on the ceiling himself.

Baldr himself froze for a second before bursting into laughter.

"Me?" He uncrossed his legs, his golden hair swaying.

"You? Someone who doesn't even dare reveal her name wants to sit in my chair?"

His laughter was genuine, completely free of anger.

"You've been standing there so long, I haven't even gotten a good look at your face."

Baldr stood up, bathed in golden light. "Do you even know what my Divine Name means?"

Lillian did not answer.

"All things have sworn an oath to me." Baldr extended his hand, palm up.

He enunciated every word:

"Nothing in this hall can leave a mark on me.

Fenrir cannot bite me. Tyr cannot cut me. Not even Freyja's witchcraft can pierce my skin."

As he spoke, his gaze swept across the faces at the table.

No one chimed in, nor did anyone think this match would be worth watching.

Finally, Baldr dropped his gaze back to the pale gray shadow.

"What will you use to touch me?"

Lillian still did not answer.

The voice of Loki drifted down from the high chair once again.

"You all know the rules."

Loki's voice held only the mockery of someone watching a good show.

"The match does not end until one of you is dead. We do not tolerate losers walking out alive."

"Begin."

Lillian quietly hid her needle in her palm.

The needle gleamed with an indescribable pallor, its eye wrapped in green.

This was her signature artifact, a relic passed down from her mother.

The Path of the Abyss, combined with the Scholar path, granted her an ability that was both "to create" and "to bestow."

Once signed, the supernatural item allowed her to strip the "essence" from an object and cultivate it inside the needle.

Lillian had spent an entire summer nurturing this needle.

She knew Baldr's sole weakness: that single sprig of mistletoe left out of the oath.

But she also knew that merely possessing mistletoe was far from enough.

Over the years, more than one person had tried to test Baldr with mistletoe.

In response, Baldr had layered thick, invisible armor specifically to guard this weakness.

Whether ordinary mistletoe was carved into darts or ground into arrows, it could not even pierce his outermost armor.

And so, every single one of them had failed.

But Lillian was different. She had spent the whole summer honing her needle.

This needle now possessed two qualities: piercing power, and the fully integrated essence of "mistletoe."

Watching his opponent stand completely still, Baldr grew slightly impatient.

"Since you refuse to reveal your name, so be it. You brought this upon yourself."

He reached a hand out toward Lillian.

A beam of light bore down on her, meant to blow her and her veil away completely.

The beam was lazy and casual.

He did not even plan to truly kill the candidate yet... humiliate first, execute later. It was a game he was used to playing.

In the high chair, that figure quietly added fuel to his fire.

He was a deceiver. Under his influence, Baldr was completely blind to Lillian's true depths.

He could not sense her killing intent; he only saw an overconfident Practitioner.

From the last chair, Freyja's witchcraft seeped over silently.

Baldr had his invulnerable body from the Oath of All Things. It was the power granted by his Divine Name, but the price was hidden within it.

The longer he held the title, the deeper the concept of "no need to defend" was engraved into him.

In this moment, Freyja deepened that very compulsion already engraved in his bones.

Now, Baldr did not just fail to dodge... he actually leaned into the strike.

On the other side, the girl twisted, letting the beam of light graze her shoulder.

She had rehearsed this dodge countless times.

She did not dodge completely. Her shoulder and arm were charred black, and a spike of agony shot up through her circuits.

She thrust the needle toward Baldr.

Just like sinking the final pin into a specimen, her attack met the invisible armor covering his body.

The needle's tip paused for a fraction of a second.

Then, it pierced through smoothly and effortlessly.

Wrapped within the needle was the singular essence that had never sworn him an oath.

A body full of oaths held no sway over it.

Baldr stopped.

The hand he was about to swing froze in midair.

Lillian gripped the needle, refusing to let go.

The moment the needle pierced him, it began its true work... making things stop.

The light radiating from Baldr began to solidify, starting from his chest.

Light that no longer flowed was no longer light.

The golden brilliance faded into an ashen gray, spreading outward from the puncture on his chest.

The man stood before Lillian, still frozen with his hand raised.

But he would be frozen in that moment forever, exactly like every specimen she had ever pinned.

The match was decided, and the entire Hall of False Oaths surged to life.

Fenrir tensed, locking his eyes on the victor.

Freyja licked her finger clean, her shoulders trembling as she fought back a laugh.

Tyr stroked his chin, finding the outcome just as surprising.

Baldr's golden head slowly detached itself from his body.

It floated up into the impenetrable darkness of the ceiling, becoming the brightest head in the collection.

Loki and Hela both reaped the rewards.

But the power Baldr had painstakingly accumulated while sitting in that chair for so long did not ascend with his head.

Standing perfectly still, Lillian felt as though something impossibly dense and heavy had been shoved into her chest.

Ms. Holloway had been right.

The backflow of power surged down her circuits, filling every hollowed-out void the Abyss had eaten away.

She had ascended faster than anyone.

But tonight, this influx forcibly shored up a foundation that had been on the verge of collapse.

Only then did an invisible hand finally pull away the veil draped over her.

As the veil lifted, her Divine Name was projected.

It was a patch of unmelting snow, hovering quietly in the air.

Beneath the snow lay thick boots meant for treading the drifts and a hunting bow.

Divine Name—Skadi.

The Goddess of Winter and the Hunt.

She dwelt in mountains of everlasting snow, a place so cold that even the sunlight froze solid.

Skadi's power seeped into Lillian strand by strand, following the name.

The cold and the hunt, settled over thousands of years, began to gather upon her.

She grew a measure stronger than she had been just moments before.

"Come and sit down, Skadi," Loki said, having seen enough of the spectacle.

With the God of Light fallen, the long winter had arrived.

In this moment, Skadi, the Goddess of Winter, took her seat in the Hall of False Oaths.

Lillian folded her hands in her lap, taking what had once been the brightest seat in the room.

Her burned hand was cold, and her other hand was cold too.

She could not feel the chill, and from this day forward, she would probably never feel warmth again either.

In the corner, the space where the candidates stood was now empty.

The seventh phantom chair sat empty once more, waiting for the next batch of candidates.