Each step Mathias took up the stairs was a heavy, deliberate strike, a metronome counting down to an inevitable end. He didn’t rush. He didn’t need to. When he reached the door, he nudged it open with a slow, agonizing crawl of wood against frame that felt like a blade sliding into skin.

The air inside was thick with the stagnant stench of a life coming undone. Elvira wasn’t on the bed. She was a heap of rags and bruised skin on the floor, looking less like a woman and more like something broken and discarded. For decades, she had pulled the strings of the empire, but here, in the wreckage of her own bedroom, she finally tasted a humiliation that no amount of pride could swallow.

Mathias didn’t just enter the room; he occupied it. His obsidian mana flooded the space, a suffocating, lightless pressure that snuffed out her own power like a boot crushing a dying ember. She couldn’t even manage a twitch.

A single tear cut a clean path through the filth on her face.

Mathias let out a jagged, dry sound—a laugh that had gone sour in his throat. "Crocodile tears, Elvira? How terribly uninspired. I expected a more sophisticated performance from a woman who spent her life perfecting the art of the lie."

He moved closer, his shadow stretching out until it bled into her, erasing her from the light.

"Tell me, Miss Tharron," he whispered, leaning low until his breath chilled the damp skin of her ear. "Did you enjoy the role? You’ve spent so long casting others in your tragedies. I thought you’d find it refreshing to finally be the one on the altar."

The insult hit her like a lit match dropped on dry straw. Scrapping together the remnants of a shattered ego, Elvira lunged, a desperate, feral snap intended to spit in his eye. Mathias didn’t even blink. He moved his head an inch, a bored gesture of evasion, and watched the spittle vanish into the churning ink of his shadows before it could stain him.

His reaction was a blur of violence. His fingers hooked into her hair, knotting deep and pulling her scalp taut as he jerked her head back. He forced her to stare into the lightless pits of his eyes, leaving her no room to look away.

"You took everything," he hissed, his voice vibrating with a decade of buried rage. "My son. My sanity. The man I used to be. So mark this: as long as you draw breath, I am the rot in your mind. I’ll be the shadow at the edge of your vision, the permanent chill in your marrow that never warms up."

He shoved her away as if his skin crawled from the contact, discarding her like a piece of infected carrion. With a sharp, disgusted motion, he tore the heavy bedspread from the mattress and twisted it around her, binding her limbs until she was a muffled, helpless heap.

"Touching you makes my skin itch," he spat, the aristocratic veneer of his voice turning razor-thin. "But I’m heading North, and you’re the only piece of trash I’m taking with me."

He hauled her up over his shoulder with a grunt of raw, ugly strength. Elvira, the woman who had once rearranged the stars to suit her whims, was suddenly just dead weight—a silent, shivering bundle of meat.

As he carried her down the stairs like a shroud-wrapped corpse, Elvira’s eyes drifted toward the floor of the hall. The air left her lungs in a sharp, jagged hitch. There they were—the seven men who had broken her, now nothing more than a grotesque, bloody ring of meat on the marble. And in the center, tossed aside like a broken toy, lay the butchered remains of Sylvester.

"Sil... Silvie..." The name came out as a wet, pathetic rattle, a desperate plea wheezed through the weight of the obsidian void pinning her down.

Mathias stopped. He stood right beside the dead man—the taxidermied architect of his ruin—and looked down at the preserved horror with a clinical detachment. "Already missing him, Elvira? How touching."

He didn’t shift his weight, didn’t bother to adjust the bundle of broken pride on his shoulder. He reached out to a nearby wine rack and snatched a bottle. He tore the cork out with his teeth, spitting it onto the floor like a piece of gristle. Then he began to pour. The high-proof spirit glugged out, soaking into Silver’s expensive clothes and preserved skin. He grabbed another. Then another. He was methodical about it, drenching the corpse until the room reeked of cheap booze and old death.

He fished a match from his pocket. With a sharp, practiced flick of his thumb, he brought life to the tip. The tiny orange spark danced in the gloom, a flickering pinprick of light reflected in the void of his eyes.

"Say goodbye, Elvira," he murmured.

A raw, jagged scream tore from her throat as he let the match fall. It arced through the air, a falling star that landed dead center on Silver’s chest.

*Whoosh.*

The fire didn’t just burn; it lunged. It roared to life with a predatory hunger, fueled by the alcohol and the dryness of the room. In seconds, the table was a funeral pyre, the flames clawing at the ceiling and casting frantic, elongated shadows against the walls. The air turned heavy and thick with the cloying, unmistakable stench of burning meat—the smell of a world finally ending.

Mathias tilted his head back, closing his eyes. He drew in a long, slow breath of the toxic smoke as if it were the rarest vintage in the imperial cellar.

"Can you smell that?" he whispered, his voice smooth and terrifyingly satisfied. "That’s my revenge, Elvira. It’s far more intoxicating than anything you’ve ever served me."

The fire took hold with a gluttonous ferocity, devouring the heavy velvet curtains and chewing through the dry floorboards until the hallway was a roaring throat of orange light. Mathias stepped out of the house, his silhouette etched sharply against the furnace at his back.

He didn’t look back. There was no sentiment left in him, only the cold vacuum where a heart used to be. But Elvira watched. She stared over his shoulder, her eyes wide and stinging, fixed on the spot where her lover was being reduced to cinders. Her silent screams were drowned out by the thunder of the collapse as the door to her past—and the house that held it—charred and crumbled into the earth.

Five days passed. Then five nights.

"Where is he, Leon?"

Olivia wasn’t just pacing; she was prowling. She moved like a caged animal whose world had shrunk to the width of a room, her boots striking the floor with a frantic, rhythmic snap. Her eyes were hollowed out by exhaustion, burning with a feverish intensity as she locked onto Leonheart.

"Leon, look at me! You swore he was fine. You said it was handled. So where is he? Is this some twisted game? Where is Mathias?!"

Leonheart shifted his weight, his eyes sliding down to the useless stacks of paper on his desk. He couldn’t stomach the raw, jagged desperation in her voice. Beside him, Isabella stood in a suffocating silence, her heart fracturing for Olivia. She cast a look at Leonheart—a silent, sharp plea for him to find a lie, a truth, or anything at all to stop the girl from falling apart.

"Olivia, please... just sit," Leonheart said, the strain in his voice fraying at the edges. "He told me he had business to attend to. He’ll be back."

"And where is this ’business’?" she snapped, her voice splintering. "Five days, Leon. Five days of silence. Do you have any idea how long that is when you’re waiting for a man who lives with a target on his back?"

"Don’t blow this out of proportion," Leonheart replied, though his own mask was slipping, revealing the hollow worry beneath. "I’m sure he’ll be back by nightfall. I’m certain of it."

Olivia stared at him, her patience finally snapping like a dry twig. "You know what? If I stay in this room with you for one more second, I’m going to lose my mind."

She didn’t wait for his excuses. She turned and bolted, the heavy thud of the doors behind her sounding less like wood on wood and more like a sob caught in a throat.

Back in her chambers, the world shrunk. From high noon until the first bruised shadows of evening began to crawl across the floorboards, Olivia didn’t move. She sat by the window, a hollowed-out version of herself. Food had become nothing more than ash in her mouth; she hadn’t managed more than a few forced bites in days.

The sheer cruelty of the timing gnawed at her. Just when the horizon had started to clear—just when she thought the world had finally grown tired of breaking her—the floor had dropped out again.

*It’s because of me.*

The thought was a cold, phantom hand tightening around her windpipe. If her reckless, impulsive strike against Sylvester had been the spark, then she was the one who had invited the fire. She had kicked the hornet’s nest of Elvira’s madness, and now, Mathias was the one paying the price for the sting.

The thoughts twisted in her mind like a serrated knife, carving out a hollow of guilt. Then, the air in the room died.

A sudden shift. A ripple in the darkness that hadn’t been there a heartbeat ago.

Before Olivia could draw a breath to scream, a hand clamped onto her shoulder. It was so cold it felt like supernatural ice, a freezing weight that seemed to seep through her skin and settle into her marrow. The grip was absolute—a predator pinning a bird. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

Olivia’s lungs seized. Her mind shrieked at her to bolt, to fight, to vanish, but her nerves had been severed by terror. A shadow stretched across the floor, a towering, light-drinking presence that eclipsed the moon.

Then the silence was broken. It wasn’t the ragged, hollow rattle of the dying man she had feared; it was a voice like silk pulled over gravel—low, smooth, and terrifyingly composed.

A wave of hot, humid breath fanned her ear, a jarring contrast to the unnatural frost of his touch. The words were quiet, yet they carried the weight of an abyss.

"Aren’t you going to welcome me back... my dearest wife?"

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​"With our Grand Mass Release just around the corner on May 14th, I can feel the anticipation building for the next Chapter of this dark journey. As we prepare to step into the unknown together, I want to express my deepest gratitude for every comment and every moment you’ve spent with these characters."

​"If this story has found a place in your heart, I would be honored to have your support in reaching a long-held dream of mine—seeing a [Magic Castle] brighten this world. Any contribution through Gifts, Power Stones, or Golden Tickets would be a gesture I’d cherish deeply as we move forward."

​"Thank you for believing in my words and for being the strength behind this story."

​"With love and gratitude,"

Ines