### Chapter 97: The Puppet's Thread
In the quiet, ruined heart of the garden, Silas stood unmoving.
Around him lay a landscape of utter devastation—pulverized stone, uprooted flora, and air still heavy with the lingering, superheated scent of ozone and burnt earth. Yet, as he stared into the destruction, an eerie sense of familiarity washed over him. His breathing slowed to a barely perceptible rhythm. His posture relaxed, his mind drifting into a deep, meditative trance as he stood amidst the garden like a stoic monolith, completely detached from the passage of time.
*SWOOSH!*
The abrupt shadow of a falling figure cut across the sky, snapping Silas out of his self-induced reverie. A split second later, a heavy impact detonated at the edge of the clearing.
*BOOM!*
The force of the landing rattled the fractured tiles beneath Silas's boots, sending spiderweb cracks rippling across the ground and kicking up a thick cloud of dust. As the haze slowly settled, the tall, sharp silhouette of Zerav emerged.
Zerav stood tall, his stance guarded. For a brief, suffocating moment, their eyes locked—Silas's gaze utterly flat and lifeless, Zerav's burning with intense scrutinization.
Zerav was the first to break the stare. His eyes swept across the central clearing, taking in the sheer scale of the decimation. The polished, pristine stone paths of Silas's prized sanctuary were completely demolished, as if a localized calamity had torn through the grounds. Anxiety gnawed at Zerav's gut, his instincts ringing with silent alarm bells.
Then, the metallic, iron-heavy scent of fresh blood caught his nose.
Zerav snapped his head to the left. A short distance away lay a distinct, human-shaped indentation smashed deep into the shattered stone—the exact crater where Lyra had been slammed down with absolute, merciless force. Crimson liquid pooled in the fissures of the stone. Although much of the blood had already soaked into the dry earth, the sickeningly potent scent hanging in the air told Zerav that the girl had suffered severe, near-fatal trauma before being moved.
A dark shadow fell over Zerav's face as he turned back to Silas. The Grandmaster's expression remained entirely blank, his eyes dull and devoid of warmth, like an empty vessel staring back at him.
"What happened here?" Zerav demanded, his voice low and tight.
"Nothing you need to know," Silas replied smoothly, his tone flat and unbothered.
Zerav let out a long, heavy sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose as a dull headache began to throb behind his temples. "If you won't tell me what happened, at least tell me *why* you did all this."
"And what makes you think I have a reason?" Silas countered softly.
"Because you *always* have a reason," Zerav snapped, his eyes narrowing. "That's the whole point with you. Nothing you do is ever straightforward. It's always a piece of some twisted, grander scheme."
"You talk as if you know me, Zerav."
"I don't need to read your mind to know you're up to something," Zerav said, taking a step forward, his voice dropping into a stern, unyielding register. "Tell me. You owe me that much."
Silas stared at Zerav for a long, quiet moment. The silence between them stretched, thick and suffocating, until Silas gave a subtle, almost imperceptible nod.
"Very well then."
The moment the words left Silas's lips, a soft, spatial ripple expanded outward from his feet. Before Zerav's very eyes, the pulverized earth, shattered stone tiles, and uprooted foliage began to distort. The fractured ground reweaved itself in a silent, fluid motion, the cracks vanishing as the central courtyard seamlessly restored itself to its former, pristine perfection. Within seconds, all physical evidence of the battle was erased.
Zerav watched the display with an uneasy frown, his guard remaining sky-high.
"You felt it earlier, didn't you?" Silas asked, breaking the silence.
Zerav kept his mouth shut, listening closely.
"That rage," Silas continued, his voice dropping into an unsettling, rhythmic whisper. "That malice... that unadulterated, primal level of menace capable of striking absolute terror into the heart of anyone who crosses its path. That power did not belong to Lyra. It belongs to her father—Alastair Rose, the Crimson Devil."
"Yes," Zerav replied cautiously. "I felt it. What does that have to do with your little exercise today?"
"You see, on the surface, it appears as though she inherited almost nothing from her father," Silas explained, pacing slowly along the freshly restored stone path. "Not his distinct features, not his specific brand of martial magic. She possesses a larger mana reservoir than an average girl her age, yes, but that alone is nowhere near enough to approach the realm of the man her father is. If not for her father's physical resemblance, one might even go as far as calling her a bastard."
Silas stopped, turning his head slightly to glance at Zerav sideways.
"But I refused to believe that. I intended to seek her out myself to verify my theory... though it seems she had the exact same idea and sought me out first."
"Or you subtly manipulated her into coming here from the very beginning," Zerav cut in, his face hardened with deep skepticism as he glared at the older warrior.
"Perhaps. Or perhaps not," Silas mused, a faint, chilling twitch touching the corner of his lips. "Whichever perspective you choose to believe is fine by me. I have never cared much for human perception"
Zerav caught that microscopic flicker of a sinister smile, and his blood instantly ran cold. The hair on his arms stood on end as a sudden, sickening realization struck him.
"What..." Zerav whispered, his hand clamping onto the hilt of his sword. "What did you do, Silas?"
Silas turned his full body to face Zerav, his dark eyes gleaming with a disturbing, academic fervor. "Directly confronting a force like Alastair Rose in open combat would be nothing short of suicide. And since I have recently confirmed that he's an Overlord... I was forced to take a far more nuanced approach."
"Which is?" Zerav demanded, his knuckles turning white against his scabbard.
"You saw that power. That wild, untamed killing intent—it was a direct reflection of her father's soul imprint embedded deep within her " Silas said. "And that gave me an extraordinary idea."
Silas raised his right hand, slipping his fingers into the inner pocket of his coat. When he withdrew his hand, he held a small, ominous object between his index and middle fingers.
It was a hand-sized, crude wooden puppet doll, carved from dark, blood-stained wood and bound with delicate black threads.
"There exists an obscure, forgotten spell—one from my private, restricted collection," Silas murmured, holding the doll up into Zerav's line of sight. "By utilizing an *Animus Doll* and fusing it with the blood of a target, a faint, sympathetic link automatically forms between the individual and the vessel."
As Silas spoke, the smooth stone beneath his boots began to seep. A thick, dark crimson liquid—Lyra's blood, harvested directly from the crater—rose from the floor in smooth, unnatural droplets, defying gravity as it coiled around the puppet doll like striking vipers.
"However," Silas continued, his voice laced with a cold, terrifying authority, "a standard blood link is fundamentally flawed. Blood alone creates a fragile, temporary connection that easily breaks under strong mana pressure. Blood binds the physical frame... but it lacks the spiritual weight required to truly anchor an entity."
Silas's lips curved upward into a wide, dark grin that sent a shiver straight down Zerav's spine.
"The link needed a binding agent. A catalyst of raw, concentrated identity."
"Which is...?" Zerav asked, his breathing shallow, his instincts screaming at him to destroy the doll immediately.
Before Silas could answer, the ambient air pressure in the garden plunged violently once more.
Zerav gasped as a familiar, suffocating pressure descended from the sky directly above them. He snapped his head upward, his pupils shrinking in absolute horror.
Floating down through the air, bathed in a sinister, dark-red glow, was a small, crystalized jewel. It hummed with a terrifying, violent vibration, radiating the exact same malicious, blood-red aura Lyra had unleashed during her frenzy. It wasn't just blood—Silas had forcibly harvested a fragment of her awakened aura during the height of her rage, compressing her dormant Valerius malice into a solid, physical core.