Knights in the Nightmare (3)

Overnight, Viscount Katon's entire household was wiped out.

Viscount Katon's castle—the splendid white castle—had been burned black. The vast farmlands belonging to Viscount Katon, that golden world, had also been reduced to ash in a single blaze.

Ashes from the wheat drifted across the skies of nearly half of Volga Province. For the next few days, there would likely be no clear skies.

This horrifying scene provoked both rage and shock, but it frightened the nobles even more. A viscount's family had been completely exterminated in a single night. Not only the viscount himself and his bloodline, but every servant within the castle—there had not been a single survivor.

Most of the bodies had turned into charred black lumps. A small number had died in exceptionally horrific ways. Some passing transcendent beings speculated that their deaths had taken as long as three minutes.

Some people did not understand and humbly asked for an explanation. They were then told that it meant people who had been doomed to die three minutes earlier had struggled for three full minutes before finally losing consciousness.

That made it even more terrifying.

And as more details were revealed, further aspects of the Katon family's extermination caused panic.

"Every one of their hearts bore the name Meyers. Th-this is a curse. A dreadful curse."

People were terrified. How could every person's heart bear the same surname? It was simply inconceivable.

"Even the most powerful mage could not use magic to carve a name into the hearts of so many people, unless he had enough time and extraordinary control over his mana."

In an instant, the nobles' eyes once again fell upon the Mayers Grand Ducal Family, which had recently been enjoying great prominence.

The Meyers surname could not have appeared for no reason after Viscount Katon's