ebookland Chapter 556: Like a Dream within a Dream
Chapter 556: Like a Dream within a Dream
It was a woman who spoke, but it was not Giselle's voice. Lilith looked in the direction of the voice and saw a female elf with sharp features and thin lips. She stared at people like a wolf looking at its prey.
Aryan stopped struggling when he heard Zephirian's name. His eyes kept wandering between several figures that suddenly appeared. Lilith realized that Giselle was not there at the time and Aryan was isolated and helpless.
So when he spoke again, he spoke in the Elvish language that Lilith could not understand.
Zephirion froze for a moment, then pulled back Aryan's hood. Lilith could clearly see the confusion on that tattered face.
This stupid dragon...
Then began a conversation Lilith couldn't understand. The elf who had initially called out to Zephirion stepped forward to negotiate with Aryan. The Elvish language was ancient and elegant, sounding like poetry. After a few probing exchanges, the elf, though still wary, pulled Aryan up from the ground.
The two sides seemed to have reached a consensus and the conflict did not escalate further.
Zephirion was the first to leap back up to the manor's second floor, followed by the others. Through Aryan's gaze, Lilith saw that the manor was shrouded in darkness, save for Leila's room, which still shone with light. The servants and Viscount Freyr's mercenaries lay unconscious on the ground, enveloped in a thick black fog.
Friar Manor had been completely lost, falling into the hands of these elves who had appeared later. Lilith, following Aryan's consciousness, could sense his tension. He seemed to belong to a different faction than these elves, yet they had unexpectedly come to her home...
“No, no no no—”
A man's terrified howl came from the darkness, and Lilith's heart began to beat wildly. She already knew the ending of Viscount Friel and was very nervous about what she was going to see next.
But the elves continued to move forward and came to an unfamiliar corner of a corridor. Lilith had never been here before. There was only one room at the end of the dim corridor. Now the door had disappeared and was covered by a thick, black green mist.
It looked like a magic circle, or perhaps it was some kind of elven magic that she had never heard of before. As Lilith was thinking this, Aryan had already followed the elves into the thick fog.
"I'm going to the doctor, I'm going to the doctor!"
A maid rushed out the door carrying a basin of blood. Aryan wanted to dodge but it was too late. The moment the other party hit him, she disappeared at the door.
...Illusion? Aryan was stunned for a moment.
But Lilith's eyes widened in her consciousness. Although it was just a glance, she was too familiar with that face - in the many years that followed, she was busy with housework and taking care of her own life, her shoulders and back became stronger, and her waist and abdomen became rounder because of giving birth to children, but Lilith still recognized it.
It was Mary! Mary in her youth! Her mother, Lady Shelley's personal maid!
Everything in the dim room was twisting and shaking, except for one thing that was clear and stable - on the four-poster bed in the center, a woman about to give birth was groaning in pain behind the bed curtains.
There is no need to say more about who that woman is...
Lilith never expected to witness this scene. A person who had been dead for many years appeared before her eyes. She stared blankly at her biological mother whom she had never met. There was no portrait of her in the Shelley family. In Mary's words, her mother was smart, beautiful, and full of love for life.
But the woman lying on the bed in front of him, with sunken eye sockets and struggling in pain, didn't look like the mother Mary had described.
"Jamie...help me..."
The woman begged her husband painfully for some support. Her lips were chapped and her eyes were bloodshot from exerting too much force.
"No, no, no, no!" However, her expectations were dashed. The only response from her husband was a series of wails. James Friel was pounding the wall frantically. After discovering that the door behind him had disappeared out of thin air, he fell to the ground in despair, trembling all over.
He seemed to be completely frightened and was unaware of everything around him. Although there were elves standing around him, he seemed unable to see that the elves who looked like priests placed their hands on Viscount Friar's head and whispered to him, strengthening the stability of this memory illusion.
Lilith then understood what had happened here—in Aryan's memory, she had stepped into the memory hidden deep within Viscount Friel's mind... like a dream within a dream.
The dream contains the secret of her birth and the death of her mother, Mrs. Shelley.
Giving birth seemed to have brought great pain to this poor lady. She did not look like a wealthy manor hostess at all. Instead, she looked like the hungry sea dwellers that Lilith had encountered before. Her limbs were just skin and bones, with blue or purple blood vessels clearly visible underneath. Only her bulging belly was round and full.
It was like... it was like all the vitality and energy had been sucked away by this little life that was parasitic inside her...
Although it was just a wisp of consciousness, the intense feeling of nausea and the suffocating feeling as if her heart was being gripped by an invisible hand hit Lilith so realistically.
Save her, oh, who can save her! Lilith cried out silently in despair, but Viscount Friel beside her did nothing, just huddled in the corner, trembling.
"Ah, ah--" The useless man began to howl again. He seemed to know what would happen in the room next and began to struggle in the hands of the elven priest, but to no avail.
Suddenly, there was a slight gasp from the side, and Zephirion in front of her also trembled. Looking over Zephirion's shoulder, Lilith saw -
a woman.
A tall, beautiful woman in a white robe appeared as if out of thin air, emerging from the edge of the black mist in a few steps. She walked to the bedside and gently smoothed Mrs. Shelley's sweat-soaked hair.
Who is that? Lilith looked at the glowing white woman. Although she was a complete stranger, her heart still throbbed.
"What do you think of the name Lilith?" She ignored Mrs. Shelley's panic and helplessness and gently touched her abdomen. "Let's call her Lilith, okay?"
Although it sounded like a discussion, the tone was unquestionable.
Zephirion moved, and he wanted to take a step forward with unsteady steps. The female elf beside him quickly reached out and grabbed him. After just a few pulls, the bed in the mist began to shake.
"Sir!" The female elf hurriedly stopped him, but she closed her mouth the next second.
A violent airflow suddenly arose in the sealed room without any warning, and the gauze curtains around the four-poster bed were all lifted up. At the same time, the tall woman in white dug open her chest with her bare hands and held out a still-beating heart!
All the elves were stunned by the wild, bloody and sacred scene before them and stood frozen in place. Even the female elf who tried to stop Zephirion had an expression of disbelief and horror on her face.
"Eat it, my dear." The woman, with a pale face, stuffed the heart into the mouth of the woman in labor. "You will be fine."
"no no--!"
This time it was no longer James Friel who was shouting. Zephirion seemed to be greatly stimulated. He shook off the elves who were trying to stop him and rushed towards the bed in the center of the illusion, trying to stop the white-robed woman's actions.
"Fustwin!"
Zephirion's voice broke, and he instinctively waved his arms, trying frantically to pick up the bright red heart.
But it was too late. It was just a projection of a memory from more than ten years ago. The entire memory illusion collapsed faster due to his intense emotions and movements. The black fog was shaking and surging wildly, and both Mrs. Shelley on the bed and Fusterwin beside the bed began to dissipate.
The female elf turned around and said something urgently to the priest behind her, but the other party just shook his head, obviously unable to do anything.
"Fustywen!" Zephirian cried out at the top of his lungs. He kept reaching out to support the woman in white robe, but he could only see the last trace of her falling down.
Nothing can be changed, nothing can be stopped.
Lilith was completely stunned. She remembered the ridiculous accusations made by Zephirion when he went crazy.
"You ate Fustwin!"
She really... ate the white dragon's heart.