Chapter 44: Silencing the Threat

Jack was sitting perfectly still in his high-backed chair, his eyes closed. But his mind was miles away, deep in the freezing, snow-covered forest.

He was looking through the dead eyes of Elias Varna.

A few moments ago, Jack had seen the human weapons embedded in the poached snow boars. He had realized the bandit remnants were still alive and operating right on the edge of his territory.

“Track them,” Jack commanded down the thin mental thread.

What happened next deeply fascinated Jack. If he had given that command to Bones or Rusty, the skeletons would have simply started walking in a straight line, looking blindly in all directions until they bumped into an enemy. They had no brain, and therefore, no problem-solving skills.

Elias was entirely different.

The dead mage did not just start walking. He crouched down beside the massive boar carcasses. His muscle memory and years of elite combat training took over automatically. Elias reached out with a hand and brushed the loose snow away from the edge of the clearing.

Jack watched through Elias’s vision as the dead man found exactly what he was looking for. There were deep, clumsy footprints leading away from the kill site. The bandits had taken the best cuts of meat and dragged them away. Furthermore, there were faint drops of blood scattered across the white snow, marking their path.

Elias stood up and began to follow the trail.

He moved with a silent grace. He did not trudge heavily through the knee-deep snow like a peasant. He stepped carefully, placing his boots in the tracks already left by the bandits, minimizing his own noise. He kept close to the thick trunks of the trees, using the shadows to hide his approach.

Back in the castle, Jack let out a slow breath. He leaned his head against the back of his chair, evaluating the physical toll of his magic.

The mental cost was practically non-existent. Jack was merely a passenger in Elias’s mind. He didn’t have to think about lifting Elias’s legs, or balancing his weight, or scanning the tree line for movement. The preserved brain of the mage handled all the complex physical tasks autonomously. The “thin thread” from Jack simply provided the overarching goal.

However, the magical cost was a completely different story.

Forcing mana down the tether to keep Elias’s preserved muscles moving and his joints from freezing was a constant, demanding drain on Jack’s Iron Core. It felt like holding a heavy bucket of water with one arm; it wasn’t complicated, but his energy was steadily leaking away, causing a deep exhaustion to settle into his own core. Because Elias was drawing so much of Jack’s raw mana just to operate, Jack knew he could not freely command his other skeletons while the mage was deployed. The Night Shift would have to remain completely dormant until Elias returned.

For nearly an hour, Elias followed the winding trail of blood and disturbed snow. The path led away from the village, moving higher up the rocky, treacherous slopes of the mountains.

Suddenly, Elias stopped moving. He pressed his back flat against a large boulder.

The thin thread in Jack’s mind gave a gentle pulse. It was a signal.

Jack focused his attention fully. Through Elias’s eyes, he looked around the edge of the boulder.

A few dozen yards away, tucked beneath an overhang of jagged rock, was a partially collapsed cave system. A faint, weak orange glow flickered from within the entrance. A small fire.

Elias crept closer, moving from boulder to boulder without making a single sound. As he neared the cave entrance, the smell of roasting meat became distinct.

Jack ordered Elias to peek inside.

The cave was shallow and damp. Huddled around a smoky, pathetic fire were twelve men. They looked absolutely miserable. Their clothes were little more than filthy rags held together with bits of twine. Their faces were hollow and gaunt from months of starvation. Several of them were missing fingers to frostbite.

Jack listened closely through Elias’s ears.

“It’s not enough,” one of the bandits rasped, tearing a small chunk of tough, half-cooked boar meat with his dirty teeth. “We killed three boars, and we only managed to drag back one leg before the cold nearly took our toes. We can’t survive out here much longer.”

“I curse the day we ever followed Kael,” a third bandit spat, clutching a ruined cloak around his thin shoulders. He stared bitterly into the weak fire. “He swaggered into our camp, claiming he used to be an Iron Core mage from some grand noble family. He promised us easy plunder and warm beds. And what happened? We got our teeth kicked in by peasants! We had to run for our lives from a sickly boy-lord and his two silent mages.”

“I hope the beasts ate Kael,” the shivering man muttered. “We should just go back south. Try to make it through the mountain pass.”

“You idiot, the pass is still blocked by tens of feet of snow,” a larger man snapped. He had a deep scar across his cheek and seemed to be the leader of these survivors. “We go south, we freeze and die on the road. The only way we survive the spring is the village.”

Jack’s grip on his chair tightened.

“The village?” the shivering man asked, looking terrified. “You saw what happened last time! They slaughtered half our crew in minutes.”

“That was weeks ago,” the scarred leader argued, pointing a dirty finger toward the valley. “I’ve been watching from the ridge. Have you seen any armored mages patrolling their walls lately? No. I’ve only seen peasants chopping wood. I bet those two warriors were just hired mercenaries, and the boy lord couldn’t afford to keep them.”

The leader grabbed another piece of meat from the fire, his eyes filling with desperate greed.

“And look at the village now. They have a massive wooden wall. They have endless coal. And the smoke, lads. Did you smell the smoke today? They are curing meat. They have sheds full of it. They have enough food to last years.”

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The other bandits stopped chewing, their hungry eyes turning toward their leader.

“They are just weak peasants hiding behind a wooden fence,” the leader said, standing up and grabbing an iron broadsword leaning against the cave wall. “We wait a few more days. Let them finish butchering the beasts. Then, we strike the gatehouse at night. We kill the guards, open the gates, and we take the smoking sheds. We kill the boy lord, and we take his warm castle for ourselves.”

Back in his bedroom, Jack’s expression turned incredibly cold.

There was no pity in his heart for these men. They were a direct threat. Giles, Old Miller, Karen, Barnaby—the people who had worked themselves to the bone to build the village would be slaughtered in their beds if these bandits managed to sneak past the guards.

Furthermore, if the bandits escaped and spread rumors to the southern merchants about the strange, silent mages, it could bring the Holy Church directly to Jack’s doorstep.

Jack could not allow them to leave this mountain.

He sent a cold, simple command down the thin thread to his flesh-bound mage.

“Kill them. Do it silently. Do not use your fire magic. I do not have the mana to spare.”

Outside the cave, Elias’s frozen face did not change. He simply reached to his hip and drew the weapon Jack had equipped him with before he left the crypts—a perfectly balanced ancestral sword forged from high-quality steel.

Elias stepped out from behind the boulder and walked directly into the cave entrance.

The scarred leader was still talking, holding his rusted sword up. “We just need to hit them before the spring merchants arrive, and then we—”

He stopped. The firelight flickered, casting a tall, imposing shadow against the cave wall.

The bandits turned around. They saw a man standing in the entrance, wearing a dark cloak. His face was pale, his eyes were dull and empty, and he held a sword that gleamed in the dim light.