Chapter 1215: Roth-Fairchild: The Missing Family

Danton finally reached an opening near the base of the luminous tree and stopped.

Phei narrowed his eyes from where he, Eira and Consort remained hidden farther along the enormous root-covered heights. From here, the tree looked even less like something that should have existed beneath Anarctica.

Its trunk rose beyond sight, broad enough to swallow cities, while blue-white veins of living radiance travelled beneath its dark bark in slow celestial currents.

Each pulse climbed through the branches overhead and scattered into millions of starry lights, illuminating the hidden realm in a soft sapphire glow that reflected across the river, the bridges and the impossible gardens clinging to the cavern walls— as if an entire night sky had been grown rather than built, and somehow still refused to acknowledge that winter ruled everything above it.

Yet Danton had stopped before something remarkably plain compared with all that grandeur.

A wall.

Or at least Phei assumed it was a wall.

The enormous roots had grown together there, forming a smooth vertical surface of dark living wood several hundred meters across.

Sixteen narrow depressions and one larger central depression had been carved into it in a wide circular arrangement, every one fashioned with such precision that the natural grain of the tree flowed around them without interruption.

Sixteen keyholes!

’Wait! Sixteen not Seventeen? What about Derek... Yes Derek and somehow I keep forgetting that bastard, ironically his family’s key hole is not here either!’

Phei wasn’t long, the Roth-Fairchild in all their mysteries, everyone seemed to forget to include them too, and, Phei too didnt know anything about them but Derek their son!

Before his mind could wander deep into the mystery his eyes were greeted to something!

Beneath them rested a round orb embedded deep within the living wood.

It was perhaps twice the size of Phei’s head and glowed with a profound blue, the same celestial color flowing through the tree itself. Thousands of delicate inscriptions surrounded it, spreading outward into the trunk in concentric circles before disappearing beneath the bark— inscriptions that felt less like writing and more like the tree itself remembering every hand that had ever tried to open it.

Phei’s attention sharpened: "So this is the real lock."

Eira nodded faintly beside him.

Danton lifted one hand.

Golden light flashed and keys appeared.

Fifteen keys!

Phei’s brows rose.

They floated around Danton in a slow golden orbit, each one carrying a different shape, aura and ancestral character. Some resembled ordinary keys only if one was exceptionally generous with the definition, while others looked closer to ritual treasures that had merely agreed to possess teeth.

One key immediately distinguished itself from the rest.

It was larger.

And it looked heavier too and its golden body carried six folded wings along the shaft, and the authority flowing from it seemed to make the other keys subtly revolve around it rather than Danton.

The Heavenchild key.

Danton gave a careless flick of his fingers and the larger key floated forward and entered the central keyhole; the instant it seated itself, the entire luminous tree reacted.

A blue-white pulse erupted through the trunk.

Phei’s eyes widened as light raced upward through every vein in the colossal tree, traveling through branches wider than roads before bursting across the enormous canopy overhead. For a single breathtaking moment, every glowing leaf, star-like fruit and suspended mote of radiance brightened together.

The dim hidden realm became day.

The river beneath them turned silver-blue.

The bridges glittered.

Even the distant cavern walls flashed into visibility before the light slowly softened again— as if the tree itself had briefly decided the world deserved to remember what sunlight felt like.

Danton brought his hands together in one sharp clap.

The remaining fourteen keys separated one after another as they floated toward the waiting keyholes.

Phei watched carefully.

He knew enough about the Legacy Families now to recognize several before they even settled into place, while Eira quietly supplied the names his memory took longer to retrieve.

Heavenchild: The central authority.

And the Abram-Manson<anno data-annotation-id="3d7f5e71-3a8a-c131-c0a7-f821726e6c7f" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Maxton<anno data-annotation-id="6a897fa2-6fb7-4952-667f-66d9856089a6" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Montgomery<anno data-annotation-id="bf99bd46-31b5-87fd-727c-ae266a06b31b" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Whitmore<anno data-annotation-id="14538836-21f8-4f1e-d69e-a3445fd7ac0c" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Phei’s gaze lingered briefly on that one.

Maddie’s family, the key twisted slightly as it entered and came the others.

Price<anno data-annotation-id="cc65ada6-7f62-9b5d-8bd4-a7ffabe679c7" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Castellano<anno data-annotation-id="34c1efd9-ef20-e525-1cd0-30860ac56f2d" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Park<anno data-annotation-id="e3a24c7e-7f48-96a2-1a27-784e5caaefc8" data-title=".">.¹</anno>That one caught his attention immediately, so the missing Park key Eira had told him had finally been taken after all the rest belonged to the:

Sinclair<anno data-annotation-id="adda8cda-9e3b-94b6-7c2b-4b68d03aaef7" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Romano<anno data-annotation-id="3be1f9d0-cb34-8476-9f8d-cad24c095854" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Moreau<anno data-annotation-id="4c6f8cfb-588d-3dd3-3494-21bddf7c8540" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Tanaka<anno data-annotation-id="d533742b-7d54-ea54-9226-496a58f80ef4" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Kapoor<anno data-annotation-id="422287d7-cce5-e73e-efe6-1745b2ae83ea" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Howard<anno data-annotation-id="30cdec9c-89fb-d3f5-5fbe-cf88b7d63cec" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Preston<anno data-annotation-id="a7b613dd-aef2-a6d4-a0b3-cfe67a3e60c6" data-title=".">.¹</anno>

Phei counted again.

Those were Fifteen families and Fifteen keys; his eyes moved across the enormous circular arrangement and then stopped... One keyhole remained empty.

His expression changed.

"That has to be the Ashford give the inscriptions." Could’ve been the Roth-Fairchild but he knew the Ashford house inscriptions.

Beside him, Consort gave the smallest shrug imaginable.

Just a shrug delivered with the confidence of a woman whose family had apparently looked at an ancient collective treasury requiring sixteen ancestral authorities and decided they would contribute precisely zero cooperation to tonight’s burglary.

Phei almost smiled.

"Oh, it seems like your Master really did ruin the Maxton’s collection."

Consort’s mouth curved faintly but Phei’s amusement vanished.

Wait.

’How was Danton supposed to open the Coffer?’

Everything Eira had uncovered said the same thing: Each Legacy Family possessed an ancestral authority over the treasury. The Coffer could not simply be opened because the majority agreed. All the authorities had to gather.

Every key. Every family:

That was the entire point.

So if the Ashford key was missing...

Phei’s brows slowly drew together.

"How is he going to..."

Danton moved as his hand extended toward the eleven Chained standing several paces behind him.

One of the elves stepped forward.

Phei’s eyes narrowed further.

Unlike the five starved elves Eira had discovered beneath the Heavenchild estate, this woman carried herself with considerably more stability, though the ancient chains around her wrists and throat still drank from her power with each movement. Her pale hair shifted behind her as she raised both hands.

Something rested between them.

A glass vial.

Inside it was blood.

Dark crimson with nothing unusual happened while the vial remained several meters from the lock. The elf approached the glowing blue orb beneath the keyholes and the blood moved.

Phei went still.

The liquid began swirling inside the vial without being shaken, first slowly, then faster, gathering into a miniature vortex that pressed itself toward the side of the glass nearest the orb— as if the blood itself recognized the call of something older than the woman who carried it.

Danton glanced toward the elf: "Are you certain?"

The woman bowed her head. "Yes."

Her voice was quiet, worn by captivity but still carrying the refinement of something ancient.

"The blood belongs to a child of the Ashford family. Her blood remains sufficiently pure despite her mixed birth. She still remains Damien Ashford’s daughter and carried the Ashford ancestral bloodline in her!"

Consort froze.

Phei felt the change before he looked at her.

Her eyes had widened.

Then the woman standing beside Phei disappeared beneath bloodlust and anger.

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