---
The bells didn't stop.
They rang like screams, echoing across mountains and valleys — carried by wind, magic, and fear. Word was spreading faster than any army: The Dead Legend had awakened.
Paul stood alone in the frozen temple ruins, watching the horizon shift with distant movement. Smoke rose from the far-off city. Birds scattered in unnatural patterns. The very world seemed to flinch.
He stepped down from the altar, robe trailing behind him like black fire.
The three corpses he left behind were already crusted in frost. He didn't look at them. Their deaths weren't a choice — they were proof.
Proof that the fear was justified.
---
Outside the ruins, the forest had grown quiet. No animals. No birdsong.
Just the whisper of the wind... and then, silence.
Paul stopped walking.
Something was wrong.
He felt it — like a sudden vacuum in the air. His senses — newly sharpened to godlike levels — screamed danger. He looked up slowly.
A figure stood above him, balanced perfectly on a tree branch, completely still.
Wrapped in white cloth from head to toe, like a monk. Their face hidden. No aura. No heat. Not even a heartbeat.
But Paul could feel it.
Murder.
The figure whispered:
> "Paul of Earth.
Soulbrand.
Legend of the Dead Dead.
By decree of the High Radiant Church,
you are sentenced to be erased."
The figure leapt — faster than lightning.
Paul raised a hand — too slow.
CRACK!
A shockwave exploded from his side as the figure's silver spear rammed through his ribs and out the other side.
He didn't even see it coming.
---
Paul dropped to one knee, blood already soaking his robe.
Pain.
Real pain.
But not fear.
He looked up, grinning through the blood.
> "That was fast. But you made two mistakes."
The assassin didn't reply. She vanished, blinked to his back again — spear spinning.
Paul's mind ignited. Time slowed.
His 99.9% IQ activated like a firestorm.
He analyzed her movement in a fraction of a second. Air pressure. Trajectory. Particle vibration on the spear's surface.
He snapped his fingers.
The moisture in the air solidified into a shield of diamond-hard ice.
CLANG!
The spear hit — and shattered.
Paul turned, eyes blazing cold.
He stood slowly, still bleeding, but straightening like a god unfolding from rest.
His blood pooled beneath him — and then, with a thought, rose.
It wrapped around his hand, hardened, and formed a jagged crimson blade of living metal.
> "First mistake," he said.
"You assumed I didn't want to bleed."
"Second mistake…"
He blinked forward — teleportation via mana-surge.
Behind her now.
> "You came alone."
---
The assassin turned — too slow.
The blood blade pierced her shoulder and froze instantly, trapping her arm in ice.
She tried to speak a prayer — Paul snapped his fingers again.
Airless silence. She couldn't breathe.
The world bent around his will.
She collapsed to her knees.
Paul walked past her, voice low.
> "Tell your Church.
The legend isn't just alive…
It's watching."
With a gesture, he allowed her to breathe again. Her body hit the ground, coughing, gasping.
He vanished into the trees — his mana already regenerating like a river with no end.
---
From the shadows above, unseen by both of them, a pair of golden eyes narrowed.
> "So... the Cold One has returned. And he's already bleeding."
> "Good," said a second voice.
"That means he's not invincible."
---
[End of Chapter Three]