I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1235: The Wickedness Of The Mist

Northern looked around the area of the table they were arranging, surveying the precise placement of silverware and plates.

”Right. Well. The table looks... adequate.”

Eisha laughed through her tears.

”Still can’t accept affection gracefully, I see.”

”I accept it fine. I just don’t know what to do with my face.”

”Your face is perfect.”

Northern groaned.

”Please stop.”

The dinner was a peculiar affair.

The hall had filled with both Seraphae and Arethamine, their golden wings catching the fading light through the windows. The two groups mingled with practiced ease—centuries of cohabitation, Northern supposed.

The food was... strange.

Delicious, but strange.

Fish that glowed faintly blue on the plate, luminescence pulsing in rhythm with something Northern couldn’t quite identify. Fruits that tasted like sunlight *felt*—warm and bright and impossible to describe. Bread that seemed to float slightly before you bit into it, defying gravity with the casual indifference of essence-infused matter.

Everything infused with essence from the mist, from the ascending waters, from this impossible place.

Northern sat between his mother and Sael, with Anike at the head of the table on a slightly elevated seat—clearly ceremonial, though she ate with the same small, serene smile as everyone else. The position of honor, he noted. The symbolic center of authority, wielded with typical Seraphae understatement.

Judgment sat nearby, silent and looking mean as always. Northern was beginning to suspect that was just the woman’s face.

There were identical twins that sat across from him, moving in perfect synchronization as they ate, even chewing at the same time.

It was hypnotic.

And slightly disturbing.

’Are they doing that on purpose, or is it automatic?’ Northern found himself wondering. ’Some kind of twin bond, or just theatrical performance?’

Further down, a woman with bright orange hair was laughing too loudly at something, drawing annoyed looks from her neighbors. Nessa, someone had called her. She seemed determined to fill every silence with noise, as if the quiet itself was offensive.

The conversation flowed around him—light, pleasant, carefully avoiding any topic of substance.

Northern contributed minimally, content to observe and eat the admittedly excellent food. He’d learned long ago that people revealed more when you said less. Right now, everyone at this table was performing. Playing roles. The question was why.

Eisha kept glancing at him, as if making sure he was real, that he wouldn’t vanish. It was simultaneously touching and uncomfortable.

”Lord Northern,” Sael whispered, leaning close. ”Is it just me, or is everyone being... deliberately cheerful?”

Northern had noticed the same thing.

The laughter was too bright. The smiles too practiced. Underneath the pleasant veneer, there was tension—the kind that came before battles, before executions, before moments when everything changed.

’They’re preparing for something.’

”The long night,” Northern murmured back. ”Anike mentioned it. No one’s explained what it actually means.”

Sael frowned. ”Should we be concerned?”

Before Northern could answer, Anike stood.

The hall fell silent immediately.

Not the gradual quiet of conversations winding down, but the instant, complete silence of soldiers snapping to attention. Northern’s eyes narrowed. ’Interesting.’

”The sun has set,” she said simply, her soft voice somehow carrying to every corner of the room. ”The veil will soon shift.”

Northern felt the temperature drop.

Around the hall, every Seraphae’s expression changed. The warmth drained from their faces like water from a broken vessel, replaced by something harder. Colder. More ancient.

Even his mother’s smile faded.

”What—” Northern started.

”The mist keeps us safe during the day,” Eisha interrupted quietly, her hand finding his under the table. Her grip was tight. Too tight. Her fingers digging into his palm with the kind of pressure that spoke of fear. ”It shows hostile visitors their own violence. It turns them away.”

”I know that.”

”But at night...” Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. ”At night, the mist doesn’t show them their violence.”

Northern’s eyes narrowed.

’Then what—’

”Then what does it show them?”

Eisha’s hand trembled in his.

But it was Anike who answered.

”Ours.”

Before Northern could process that—before he could begin to unpack what that single word meant, what it implied about these peaceful, serene women—the temperature plummeted.

His breath misted in front of his face, crystallizing in the suddenly frigid air.

Around the hall, golden wings began to glow—not with warm light, but with something cold and sharp. The kind of light that cut rather than illuminated. Northern recognized that quality. He’d seen it before, in places where violence had become so concentrated it took on physical properties.

Outside, a sound began to build.

Low at first, then rising.

Screaming.

Not human screaming.

Something worse.

The ascending waterfalls—Northern could hear them changing. The gentle rush of upward-flowing water was becoming a roar, a thunderous cacophony that shouldn’t have been possible from water defying gravity. The mist that had parted so peacefully for him earlier was thickening, and through the windows, he could see it.

It was turning red.

Anike’s expression remained serene, but her voice carried an edge now. The kind of edge that suggested the serenity was a choice, not a limitation.

”The night reveals truth. During the day, we are peaceful. We are kind. We reflect only what violence is brought to us.”

The screaming outside grew louder.

Northern stood slowly, his combat instincts screaming warnings his conscious mind was still processing. Around him, every Seraphae was rising, shields appearing on their arms like they’d always been there, wings spreading to their full terrible glory.

Even Nessa had stopped laughing.

”But at night,” Anike continued, walking toward the massive doors of the hall with measured steps, ”we do not reflect what comes to us.”

The doors flew open.

Beyond them, the mist had become a churning mass of crimson fog, and within it, Northern could see shapes.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

Forms made of red mist and golden light, twisted and screaming, fighting each other in an eternal, horrific dance. The movement was frenzied, chaotic, but with a terrible repetition—the same strikes, the same deaths, over and over in an endless loop of violence.

”At night,” Anike said softly, ”we reflect what we have taken.”

Northern’s Shingan activated involuntarily, drawn by the sheer concentrated essence of the scene before him, and he saw them clearly.

*Every person who had ever attacked the Sanctum with killing intent.*

Every warrior who had entered the mist seeking to harm the Seraphae. Every murderer, every conqueror, every fool who thought pacifists were weak and mistook patience for powerlessness.

They were all there.

Still fighting.

Still dying.

Still experiencing their own violence in an endless loop, trapped in the moment of their transgression like insects in amber.

Every single night.

For eternity.

Northern felt something cold settle in his chest.

’Oh.’

The mist didn’t just turn attackers away. It didn’t just make them forget. It didn’t even just kill them and be done with it.

It kept them.

Eisha’s voice was hollow beside him, and for the first time since he’d arrived, Northern heard something in her tone that matched the woman she must have been before he was born. Before peace became performance.

”We are pacifists, Child of Prophecy. We do not seek violence. We do not strike first. We endure all things with patience and grace.”

The red mist pressed against the hall like a living thing, and within it, faces pressed against invisible barriers—faces twisted in eternal agony, mouths open in soundless screams that would never end.

”But we never said,” Anike continued, her amber eyes reflecting the crimson horror outside, ”that we forgave.”

Northern understood now.

This was the cost of attacking paradise. This was what happened when you brought violence to those who had foresworn it but never forgotten how to wield it. The Seraphae didn’t fight back. They didn’t need to.

They just kept you.

Forever.

Anike turned back to the hall, her small smile unchanged.

”Welcome to the long night, child. I hope you’re hungry—dinner will last until dawn. After all...” She gestured to the nightmare beyond the doors, to the sea of tortured souls experiencing violence without the mercy of death. ”We wouldn’t want to go outside.”

Northern stared at the churning mass of red mist, at the women with golden wings standing calmly beside him, at his mother’s peaceful expression that now seemed less like tranquility and more like restraint.

And for the first time since arriving at this place, he understood.

’This is what they feared.’

Not the warriors. Not the defensive capabilities. Not even the mist itself.

This.

What truly made this place infamous wasn’t its defenses. It was its memory. The Seraphae didn’t forget. They didn’t forgive. They simply endured—and collected. Every act of violence against them became eternal punishment, reflected back with the patient cruelty of those who had all the time in the world.

This was what mercy looked like when it ran out.

And the night—the long, terrible night—had only just begun.