Supreme Spouse System.

Chapter 476: Alina!! [Part-2]

Alina!! [Part-2]

Leon’s voice was calm, smooth as polished steel. "You wore the mask well, but even the strongest masks crack when pressed too long.

The night seemed to hold its breath. Smoke curled indolently across the ruined courtyard in the pale light of the fractured moon. The ground was strewn with the detritus of battle: shattered blades, splintered spears, the dying sparkle of doused embers. Around them, soldiers stood like statues, their faces smeared with ash and exhaustion, armor dulled beneath the dust of war. No one moved. The air was so still it felt as though even the darkness itself was listening.

Nova’s heartbeat thundered against her ribs, a deafening sound in her own ears. Each breath reeked of smoke and iron. The world beyond-the chaos, the screams, the ruin-faded away, swallowed by the quiet gravity between the two who now faced each other. Under the wounded sky, a man who saw too deeply stood opposite a woman who had spent her life hiding behind shadows and silence.

Alina’s jaw clenched. A flicker of unease broke through the hardened lines of her expression, shattering the calm she always wore like armor. Her fingers twitched to the hilt of her weapon, not from fear but from instinct-the kind born of too many years surviving in a world that never forgave hesitation. For a heartbeat, she appeared to be ready to draw her blade-or disappear into the smoke itself. Instead, she spoke-her voice low, hoarse, carrying the weight of disbelief.

"You knew..."

Leon’s golden eyes caught the faint light of the moon, shining with silent certitude. His lips arced-not in mockery, not in victory, but in something softer, more perilous. A smile so still that it saw right through everything.

"Yes," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Since you spoke to me, I had a feeling that it might be so.

There was no accusation in the words-just quiet certainty, like a blade drawn with deliberate grace.

Alina’s breath caught. The mask she’d worn for so long-the stoic knight, the loyal servant-felt suddenly fragile. She could feel his gaze cutting through every layer she’d built around herself.

Leon didn’t say the rest out loud, but the thoughts trailed off in his brain behind a mask of composure. He had known the moment the system had confirmed it-the faint signal, the hidden trace embedded in her aura. Her true identity had never been beyond his grasp.

Now, before her in the faint light, he surveyed her through the system’s vision, every detail unfolding with clinical precision, yet it was not the data that caught him. It was her eyes. There, behind the calm surface, he saw it—a flicker of something ancient, wild, and painfully familiar.

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[Name: Alina – dressed up as Aden]

[Age: 80]

[Cultivation Realm: Grandmaster Realm (Peak Level)

[Race: Human]

[Talent: High]

[HP: 100/100]

[STR: 55/100]

[AGL: 55/100]

[VIT: 55/100]

[STM: 55/100]

[INT: 41/100]

[DEF: 55/100]

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He remembered her in battle-how she moved like a storm behind a still sea. Every strike was measured, silent, deliberate. She never wasted a motion, never faltered, never showed the storm beneath that composure. And yet, every swing of her blade carried a weight that made lesser fighters falter.

The first time he saw her, she seemed like anyone else: just another soldier in dull armor, her face hidden beneath the grim mask of the rest. But when the clash began-when steel roared and the sky burned-she changed.

There was too much grace in her violence. Too much control in her chaos. She wasn’t fighting to survive-she was remembering. Each movement held a memory, a truth buried beneath the years. The world around her seemed to bend in quiet recognition, as though it knew exactly who she was, even if she didn’t want to be known.

Her black-and-gray hair fell loose across her face, strands glinting faintly under the torchlight. Her eyes—those steady, haunted eyes—held something that made him forget to breathe. Power, yes. But also exhaustion. The kind of weariness that came not from battle, but from carrying a secret too long.

Even battered and bruised, she stood with a silent command-a quality no title could bestow and no injury could remove.

Within Leon’s mind, the voice of the system stirred for the first time in a long time—low, deliberate, almost cautious.

[This one. she carries something strange inside. She must be placed under your command. Observe carefully.]

Leon’s gaze stayed on her, inscrutable. The whispered words themselves lost, but their echo seemed to cling to him. He didn’t know what she was hiding, or why his chest tightened every time their eyes met.

Yet Leon knew deep down, this was no coincidence; she wasn’t just another warrior who crossed his path.

She was a fragment of a story he’d forgotten to remember.

He had never spoken of it-not to Nova, not to his soldiers, not even to Aden. This truth was something he kept buried, hidden beneath his calm exterior. At first, it had been a quiet calculation-a way to understand her, to use that knowledge if needed, to make her more obedient, more predictable. But now, as she stood before him, placing her own impossible condition on the table, he realized he no longer needed to play that game.

If she wanted to test him with her terms, then maybe it was time he rebelled against them. Maybe it was time to deal with the real her—not the mask, not the rank, not the proud façade of a seasoned warrior, but the woman herself.

And that wasn’t all.

The silence of days broke, the system stirring. Its voice was almost amused, low and resonant in his mind.

"You’ll need her in the future," it said. "She’s too good to lose. That’s why you’re drawn to her."

Leon’s jaw clenched. Perhaps it was. Perhaps that was why he had urged her to join him in the first place, why some part of him knew her value when reason said otherwise. He had met so many individuals-rulers, generals, clever nobles-but this woman... she was something else. She had, in her heart, that which made a true ruler. Not a puppet, not some figurehead-someone who could rule the world, should she so desire.

But then,