The room’s light dimmed and softened soon after, leaving only a single amber wall lamp to wash the space in a warm, intimate glow.

Aurora, dressed in nothing but a soft undergarments, slipped into the bed with the quiet grace of a cat.

Wrapped in the gentle bedding, with warmth radiating from the body beside her, Aurora found herself in trouble.

She looked at Pandora. Her brow furrowed. Her mind started going places.

She was a full head taller than Elsa, Pandora’s personal maid, and had a larger frame besides.

Would that much size make My Lady uncomfortable in her sleep?

And since reaching the Second Rank, her muscles had grown noticeably denser. The lines were still elegant, but the firmness was a different thing entirely.

Would My Lady feel like she was pressed up against a wall?

She was beginning to consider whether she should shift farther away—

Then she stopped thinking entirely.

Something soft had attached itself to her like a particularly determined octopus.

Pandora, apparently following warmth in her sleep on pure instinct, had found her. Both arms wrapped around Aurora’s arm. Her cheek nuzzled against Aurora’s shoulder. From her lips came a small, deeply contented murmur.

“Mm...”

Time stopped.

Every drop of blood Aurora possessed launched itself toward the top of her head at once.

Her entire body became a very large, very human-shaped copper kettle that had just been put on to boil.

“WHEEEEE—”

Invisible steam practically hissed from her ears.

Full-body thermal meltdown.

So this... this was what it felt like to have My Lady hold onto her!!!

..................

Hunger.

Profound, all-consuming hunger.

That night, Pandora had a very strange dream.

The dreamworld was a void of white. Soft clouds drifted everywhere, floating lazily in every direction.

She moved through this sea of clouds, stomach gnawing at itself, a persistent invisible hand scratching at the inside of her gut.

The clouds looked like enormous puffs of cotton candy. But every time she stuffed one in her mouth, it was dry, flavorless, and hollow. Not good at all.

Then, by luck, deep within a cluster of pale gray-white clouds, she found something else.

A giant white loaf of bread.

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It was white, and large, and soft-looking. When she discovered it, it was actually trembling—shivering slightly, like some kind of living thing.

Starving and entirely past the point of asking questions, she lunged at it.

“Crunch.”

It looked like white bread. It felt like white bread.

It was harder than year-old black bread.

The bite she took almost shattered her teeth. The “bread” didn’t react at all. Just sat there, hard and immovable.

Then, near the end of the dream, the previously cold, hard loaf suddenly became searing—like a furnace. Then it began to expand, swelling outward, and it seemed like it was going to swallow her whole.

She tried to run. Her legs turned to jelly. No strength in them whatsoever, like she had also become a cloud.

Until she threw her whole body into one desperate struggling surge, fighting against the smothering warmth around her—

And woke up.

“My Lady, you’re awake?”

A familiar voice rang out beside her ear.

Pandora’s eyes snapped open. Her vision was still a little hazy. Aurora’s refined face was right there in front of her, wearing a soft smile.

Something was different about Aurora today, though.

Her face—her neck—was flushed. Patches of faint but unmistakable pink. She looked a little... odd.

Pandora blinked.

Then her gaze drifted, almost involuntarily, to the pillow.

Well.

One corner of the pillow had a set of clearly defined teeth marks pressed into it. Right next to a rather generous wet patch.

Pandora’s brain flatlined for one full second.

Then it rebooted, and immediately connected the “impossibly hard white bread” from her dream to the Second-Rank knightess lying beside her with the slightly rigid smile and suspiciously pleased expression.

The heat that climbed into Pandora’s face outpaced Aurora’s blush by several degrees.

GRRRUMBLE.

Her stomach took that exact moment to lodge a loud, indignant complaint.

The sound rang out with startling clarity in the quiet room. It had a quality of urgent protest about it.

Her attention snapped back to the present. The grinding hunger that had been quietly eating her alive made itself known all at once—demanding, impossible to ignore.

She nodded quickly. Any further examination of the morning’s embarrassing details would have to wait.

She had barely eaten the entire day before. She had been critically injured on top of that. The potions and her bloodline had burned through enormous reserves of energy repairing her body.

If she didn’t eat right now, she was going to actually starve.

..................

The restaurant was on the twenty-second floor.

When the elevator opened, Pandora found a space that felt completely different from the private residential floors above.

This was closer to a full social and lifestyle hub.

The lobby reception functions appeared to have been relocated downstairs. Up here: a spacious open-plan dining room, a vintage-style bar that wasn’t yet open for the day’s business, and a section marked “Spa Center.”

On the way to the dining room, Pandora quietly ran another assessment of her own condition.

The hunger this morning was abnormal. Borderline out of control.

But the energy hadn’t been wasted.

Her body’s Witch bloodline had commandeered every available resource and put it to work on the serious internal injuries.

The results were striking.

The broken ribs that had felt like shattered glass yesterday were no longer painful. Only a faint, completely manageable pull came with deep breaths.

The dull throb from her internal organs had nearly vanished. Essentially fully recovered.

“But...”

Pandora pressed her fingertips lightly to her temple.

“The anemia still feels pretty severe. Blood loss doesn’t seem to recover as quickly...”

The intermittent darkening at the edges of her vision, the faint floaty sensation in her body—they were still there, following her around like a shadow.

She was still turning this over when Aurora guided her through the dining room entrance.

Warm, gentle lighting. Spotless tables and chairs. Their seats were beside the window, looking down over Eden’s residential district where tiny figures moved like ants far below.

The ambiance was genuinely pleasant.

It was also deeply unsettling.

In the enormous dining room, there were plenty of uniformed attendants. And exactly two guests.

Which meant every single attendant was, with varying degrees of subtlety, watching them.

The Live Iron Golems were doing their best to conceal it, moving and standing with professional precision, just like real servers.

But somehow that made it worse. The sensation of being watched by a dozen pairs of eyes that betrayed nothing only made the uncanny atmosphere thicker.

“This is the one drawback to living here.”

Aurora noticed Pandora’s expression and gave a wry, slightly helpless smile, keeping her voice low.

“Too quiet. Too clean. It starts to feel strange after a while.”

But Pandora stopped noticing the strangeness fairly quickly.

Because the service cart had arrived, and the food coming off it smelled like everything she needed.