Ancestral Lineage-Chapter 280: Abyssal Ice Knight, Kaldaroth

Some time ago… decades, years ago…

'Kaldaroth.'Ethan's voice rang with quiet authority inside the knight's mind, a ripple through the deep bond they shared.

'My King,' came the immediate response, deep and guttural, the voice of a beast tamed only by loyalty. Kaldaroth's crimson eyes glowed faintly beneath the shadows of his helm.

'Find the Ancestral Seed of Anbord. I don't know where it is, but I have clues. Fragments. Dreams. Memories from others. Find it before anyone else does again.'

'But, my King…'There was hesitation—an emotion that rarely surfaced in the fearsome knight. 'What of you? You are not well. The Sync, the battle… it has drained you.'

'Don't worry about me. I'm just tired. I'll rest a little. That's all.'

'What if your enemies rise while you sleep? What if the world moves too far ahead…'

'Don't you believe me?' Ethan's voice cracked slightly, weighed with unspoken burdens. 'You'll know when I wake. I'll feel your progress. I trust no one else with this.'

There was a long pause.

'Mm. I understand, my King. I will not fail. I will scour the realms until the Seed is found.'

'Just take it easy, Kaldaroth. Don't lose yourself.'

'I cannot lose what was long devoured, but I will carry this mission—until the end.'

'Goodbye.'

'Goodbye, my King.' fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

Present Day…

What is your definition of a dream?

Is it the people you meet?The lands you travel through?Or is it the truths you find, the ones that feel too heavy to be mere illusions?

And what if such dreams were never dreams at all—but fragments of a reality long buried?

A cold wind howled through a dead forest, its trees frozen in twisted agony. Each breath of that wind carried dread, laced with curse and frost. And in the middle of it all, surrounded by mist and silence, stood a towering figure in armor that bled ice and shadows.

Kaldaroth.

His helm tilted upward as if cursing the heavens, then downward again. He raised one gauntleted hand and crushed a boulder to dust with ease.

"My King has returned…" he muttered, the words a blend of awe and guilt. "And I still haven't found it. It's been two whole decades."

His voice thundered across the valley. Trees exploded into powdered ice, disintegrating like they had never existed.

"How could I fail him… How could I let two decades pass like vapor?"

Kaldaroth clenched his fists. The air grew thick with malice. Frost and curse weaved together, coating the earth in withering runes—ancient symbols of his own making, born from despair and duty.

Once, he had been the proud guardian of the Ice Empress. A beast who ruled the Frozen Hells, a creature none dared challenge. But now?

Now he was a knight.

A knight bound by oath, forged in loyalty, and tasked with a mission from the one being who saw past his monstrous shell.

Ethan.His King. His savior. His reason for rising every day for twenty years without rest.

And the Seed—The Ancestral Seed of Anbord—Still lost to time.

He turned, crimson eyes flaring. "No more delays."

He slammed his fist into the earth, shattering the cursed ice in a ripple of blue-black energy. Glyphs spiraled outward, revealing an ancient map buried beneath the terrain.

One final clue had just awakened.

"Forgive me, my King. I will not return until I bring it to you myself. Even if it costs me the last drop of my cursed soul."

Then, like a storm clothed in armor, Kaldaroth vanished into the frost.

Kaldaroth's journey had begun in silence—an oath sworn in the void, between one heartbeat and the next, under a sky fractured by ancient stars. Two decades had passed since his king had fallen into slumber, two decades since the command had been given. The world had changed, its politics reshuffled, its people evolved, but Kaldaroth remained—a relic of an ancient era still bound by duty.

He strode through the Frozen Hollow of Myrgarde, the first of many places where rumors hinted the Ancestral Seed may have touched ground. The land was untouched by time—glacial ice coated valleys, and sharp winds howled like banshees in mourning. His armored feet cracked frozen soil as he moved with purpose. He didn't need rest, didn't need food. His being was carved from discipline, loyalty, and the infernal energy once gifted to him by the Ice Empress before he pledged himself to Ethan.

He questioned old spirits sealed in glacier tombs. Whispered to forgotten ruins that still remembered the march of the Anbord Kings. He shattered a dozen fake artifacts, each laced with enough arcane mimicry to kill a lesser being. But Kaldaroth endured.

Decades had not been kind. He bore scars—visible and unseen. The Curse of Hunger that had taken root in the desolate plains of Haral'ar still gnawed at his soul. The memory of fighting a hundred cursed wraiths in the Tomb of the Severed Crown still echoed in his mind, their death cries a broken hymn that returned in quiet moments.

Yet he pressed forward.

In the Ebon Depths of Ryvellon, he encountered the Order of the Hollow Flame—an ancient cult claiming to have glimpsed the Seed during one of their apocalyptic visions. They refused to share their knowledge. They believed the Seed was a key to remaking the world in fire.

He destroyed them.

Not out of anger, but necessity.

From their remains, he extracted a name: "Silvalis." An old druid city in the Ruins of the Verdant Sea—now overrun by feral Worldroots and plant-like guardians born from corrupted life essence. There, Kaldaroth fought not with brute strength, but with precision—ripping open vines the size of castles, evading spores that could erase memory, enduring poisons that caused hallucinations of Ethan begging him to give up.

But he never stopped.

In the center of Silvalis, he found a mural—fractured and moss-covered—but the carvings were unmistakable. It showed a seed—glowing, golden, encased in a cocoon of light—falling from the sky during a great battle. Surrounding it were beings—primordial in form—some kneeling, some shattered into dust. The Seed had changed the world once. It would again.

And then the trail went cold.

He wandered, traversing realms and demi-planes. He crossed the Borderline of Dreams, where only the mad dared to walk—where echoes of possible futures whispered lies and half-truths. He met a future version of himself there: older, rusted, and kneeling before a grave etched with the name Ethan Smith. He didn't let it stop him. Dreams were not fate.

And now, present day, his king had returned, yet the mission remained incomplete.

Kaldaroth stood before a vast canyon carved not by erosion, but by sorrow—The Shattered Vale of Mourn. Somewhere, deep within its endless crevices, the last clue awaited. He could feel it—a tug in his essence, something resonant.

"I am not done," he muttered, voice rough like grinding glaciers. "I will not return until it is found."

He pressed onward, his massive armored form leaping down into darkness, the ground rumbling beneath each landing. The frost curled around his frame like a second skin. His crimson eyes burned with renewed determination.

The Ancestral Seed of Anbord still lay hidden.

But Kaldaroth was no longer just a knight or beast.

He was Will. He was Memory. He was the Frozen Flame of Oath.

And he would find it.

...

The descent into the canyon was treacherous.

Darkness grew denser with every step, not the absence of light, but a tangible force — as though the void itself pressed against Kaldaroth's armor, testing his resolve. The walls of the chasm pulsed faintly with veins of blue crystal, humming with ancient energy, like a buried memory refusing to die. At times, the silence was broken by distant echoes — not wind, not stone, but voices long since dead.

Kaldaroth pressed onward.

After hours — or perhaps days — of descent, time losing meaning, he came upon a bridge. It was old, impossibly old. Made not of stone or steel, but woven roots calcified by time and glowing faintly with a silvery luminescence. Beneath it flowed not water, but a stream of pure aether — raw, liquid magic, shifting colors like a dream half-remembered.

On the other side stood a gate.

Massive. Monolithic. Carved into the rock itself. Covered in sigils — some dwarven, others elven, and many older than language itself. His hand trembled, ever so slightly, as he touched the cold surface.

Suddenly — visions.

A city made of glass and golden spires… a tree whose branches held up the sky… a great war in which gods bled… a single seed, glowing, beating like a heart, cradled in the roots of the World Tree…

Then nothing.

The gate rumbled, reacting to his presence, and slowly opened.

What lay beyond was not a cavern.

It was a memory made manifest.

A grove — lush, serene, untouched. At its center stood a tree unlike any Kaldaroth had ever seen. Towering. Primal. Bark dark as night, leaves like molten emeralds, and roots that stretched into the very bones of the world. Floating above the roots was a sphere of golden light, throbbing softly. It pulsed in rhythm with the beat of the world.

The Ancestral Seed of Anbord.