The heavy iron door groaned, a low, desolate shriek echoing through the corridor as Matthias pushed it open. Serene stepped into the dim, suffocating stench of the dungeon, a foul mix of decay and stale blood that instantly clawed at her throat. The moment her eyes adjusted to the gloom, her knees nearly buckled.

​There, in the dampest corner of the cell, was Elvira.

​She no longer looked human. Bound tightly by thick, rusted chains anchored deep into the stone walls, she resembled a rabid dog left to rot. Her body was a broken, twisted wreck; parts of her limbs had already been crudely severed and discarded, left on the stone floor like scraps of spoiled meat.

​Instinctively, Serene slammed her palm over her mouth, choking back a violent gasp before it could escape. The brutal, naked reality of Matthias’s vengeance laid itself bare before her. Her eyes flicked toward him in sheer horror, but the Duke stood there like a statue carved from pure malice. His features were entirely unbothered; his eyes held no regret, no hesitation. He was drinking in the ugliness of it.

​At the heavy thud of their footsteps, Elvira painfully lifted her ragged, blood-matted head. Her bloodshot eyes strained through the darkness until they locked onto the familiar silhouette she had been praying for.

​"Mama?!"

​A desperate, manic hope flared in Elvira’s voice, cracking through her split lips. "Mother... you are here! Unlock these chains, please, Mother! Get me out of this hell!"

​Serene’s fingers twitched involuntarily. Her hand instinctively moved forward a fraction of an inch toward her daughter, but Matthias’s heavy arm instantly shot out like an iron bar, blocking her path with an unyielding grip.

​Elvira stared at the restraint, and in a single heartbeat, her frantic hope soured into a bitter, venomous realization. She glared at her mother, her voice breaking into a ragged, piercing shriek. "Don’t tell me you are with him?! Speak to me! Damn you, speak!"

​"She is with me," Matthias intercepted. His voice was low, cutting through her screams like a scalpel slicing through fresh meat. "And what does it matter to you? I only brought her here so she could catch one final glimpse of the piece of filth she birthed before I permanently take care of you."

​Elvira’s face contorted with pure, unadulterated venom as she locked her crazed gaze back onto Serene. Saliva flew from her mouth as she screamed, "So you are still defending that vile, pathetic wretch, Olivia?! I will kill her! I promise you, the moment I break these chains, I will rip her apart limb from limb with my bare hands!"

​At those words, Serene’s hovering hand stopped trembling.

​Slowly, deliberately, her fingers curled into a tight, hard fist. Every lingering ounce of a mother’s pity instantly drained from her expression, hardening into a terrifying, dead winter coldness—a hollow void completely devoid of life.

​"Elvira," Serene spoke, her tone chillingly flat. "I am going to ask you one question, and I want an absolute, honest answer from you. Because I never dared to ask you before, and I have lived in the shadows of doubt for far too long."

​"What?!" Elvira spat, thrashing against her chains, sending a harsh, metallic rattle echoing off the damp stone walls. "Free me first, and then I will tell you whatever the hell you want!"

​"I will ask first," Serene countered, her voice deadpan and unmoving. "And based on your answer, I will decide whether you ever leave this room alive."

​"What is it?!"

​"Were you truly the one who murdered Olivia’s child?" A microscopic tremor shook Serene’s voice, though her eyes remained locked. "Is it true? Is that what you were trying to accomplish with your filth?"

​A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the cell before a sudden, manic burst of hysterical laughter erupted from Elvira’s throat. It was a terrifying, echoey sound that bounced vilely off the walls.

​"And what if I did?!" Elvira shrieked, her eyes wild with insanity as she glared at Matthias. She began to sway her broken body back and forth, singing in a mocking, sickeningly childish cadence. "Yes! I buried him alive! I buried your precious son alive, Matthias! Alive! Alive under the dirt!"

​Matthias’s blood instantly boiled. His jaw clenched so hard the bone groaned, and the veins in his neck throbbed with a lethal, overwhelming urge to end her life right then and there. But before he could take a single step forward, Serene moved first.

​With blinding, violent force, Serene closed the distance and delivered a stinging, thunderous slap across Elvira’s face.

​The sheer force of the blow snapped Elvira’s head back, silencing her mad singing instantly. The cell fell into a dead drop of silence.

​Serene hissed, her chest heaving as sparks flew from her eyes, staring down at the monster that had crawled out of her own womb. "This slap... is to satisfy my own soul... the soul that utterly failed to raise a mentally diseased creature like you."

​Then, without a second’s hesitation, Serene raised that same hand again—and slammed it violently across her own cheek.

​CRACK.

​The sharp sound echoed through the darkness.

Matthias froze in his tracks, his eyes widening in a rare moment of stunned silence.

​"And this slap," Serene whispered, her own cheek instantly blooming into a harsh, deep crimson, "is to prove to myself what an absolute, wretched fool I was... to ever believe for a single second in my life that you could become a decent human being, rather than a mindless monster."

​"Serene..." Matthias finally spoke, his harsh tone softening with an unfamiliar tinge of shock.

​"It is fine, Matthias," Serene interrupted, her voice hollow, completely devoid of tears. "I deserved it."

​Slowly, with a deliberation that made the skin crawl, she leaned down toward the trembling Elvira. With a brutal, merciless yank, she seized the silver earring from her daughter’s earlobe and tore it straight out, ripping through the skin and drawing a sharp hiss of agony.

​"I am taking this," Serene declared, clutching the piercing, blood-slicked metal tightly in her palm. "Let it remain with me as a permanent reminder of how utterly useless I was as a mother—both to you and to Olivia. I couldn’t raise you right, and I couldn’t protect her from your malice."

​Turning her back on the wreckage of her family, Serene walked toward the iron door with rigid, unyielding steps. Behind her, the armor of insanity finally shattered, leaving Elvira to face the reality of her abandonment. Her frantic screams dissolved into pathetic, weeping terror.

​"Mother!... Mother, please!" Elvira wailed, her heavy chains clanking violently as she tried to crawl on her stomach toward the exit. "Mother, don’t leave me here! Please, Mama!"

​A single, heavy tear finally slipped down Serene’s cheek as she pushed the iron door open. Without turning around, she wiped the moisture away with a hand as cold as ice, casting one final, invisible glance into the dark room.

​"My daughter died at this very moment," Serene whispered into the shadows. "May God have mercy on your wretched soul."

​With that, she stepped out into the corridor and vanished into the darkness, leaving her agony behind.

Present Day...

​Inside her locked, silent chambers, Serene pulled her gaze away from the empty space before her and stared back down at the sharp silver earring resting in her palm. Her fingers traced the cold metal, the sharp edges digging into her skin to ground her in the pain, while her expression returned to that dead, unreadable calm.

​"You will remain here, little relic," she whispered to the quiet room, her knuckles tightening around the piece until it nearly drew blood. "A permanent reminder of just how useless I have been... and how my failure became the destruction of so many lives."

-------

​On the other side of the estate, Roland was vibrating with a lingering, manic rage. The violent pulse in his veins still throbbed with a hysterical urge to kill after his tense encounter with Serene. He slammed the heavy mahogany doors of his private study open, letting them crash against the stone walls with a deafening bang.

​He expected the room to be empty—a dark sanctuary to nurse his failures—but the moment the doors swung back, the blood in his veins turned to ice.

​Sitting in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk, enveloped in the dim, flickering candlelight, was Cedric.

​Roland’s hand instinctively drifted toward the hilt of his concealed blade beneath his coat. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice a dangerous, low gravel, like stones grinding together.

​Cedric didn’t look up immediately. He slowly rolled a silver signet ring between his fingers, watching its movement with unsettling focus, before finally leveling a cold, unyielding gaze at him. "I came to discuss a certain matter with you."

​"What matter?" Roland spat, taking a guarded, defensive step forward.

​Before the question could fully leave his lips, Cedric blurred across the room. With a violent, animalistic burst of speed, Cedric slammed into him, pinning Roland against the solid stone wall.

​The air left Roland’s lungs in a sharp gasp as Cedric’s fingers locked around the heavy fabric of his collar, twisting it until the seams strained and his breath hitched.

​"Did I not explicitly tell you," Cedric hissed, his teeth clenched so hard they threatened to crack, his eyes burning with a lethal promise, "to keep your filthy, wretched hands off Olivia?"

​Roland let out a sharp, mocking laugh despite the grip crushing his throat. He raised his hands defensively, a sickening smirk tugging at his lips. "I didn’t do anything to her. What on earth are you losing your goddamn mind about?"

​"Do not play the fool with me, Roland!" Cedric snarled, tightening his grip until Roland’s breathing turned ragged. "I don’t care if you burn that entire Duchy to ash. I don’t care if you butcher every single servant in Locron. But the agreement was the agreement. Olivia belongs to me."

​"And as I just told you, I had nothing to do with it!" Roland barked back, his own arrogance flaring as he shoved Cedric’s hands away with a violent jerk. He straightened his ruined collar, his chest heaving. "Besides, she is perfectly fine. Why are you acting insane?"

​Cedric stared at him for a long, silent, terrifying beat. His eyes analyzed every micro-twitch of Roland’s face, searching for a lie, before he finally released his tension and stepped back into the shadows of the room.

​Roland exhaled sharply, massaging his reddened neck as he crossed his arms. "Did you break into my private study just to pick an idiot fight?"

​"No," Cedric replied coldly.

​"Then what is it?"

​Cedric leaned against the edge of the massive mahogany desk, his expression darkening into a mask of pure, unadulterated paranoia. "Roland... I highly doubt we actually disposed of Matthias."

​Roland’s pupils instantly dilated, his entire posture freezing as if the air had been sucked out of the room entirely. "What?"

​"I returned to the site," Cedric delivered the blow with a chillingly calm, deliberate slow cadence. "I went back to look for his corpse myself. But there isn’t a single trace of that son of a bitch’s body left behind."

​Roland swallowed hard, his throat dry as his mind raced to find an alternative, comforting explanation to quiet the cold dread creeping into his chest. "Perhaps... perhaps the beasts ate it," he muttered, trying to shrug it off.

​"No, that’s impossible," Cedric snapped, his tone cutting through Roland’s denial like ice. "If it were beasts, there would still be remains. Bones. Torn clothes. Traces of blood in the dirt. But the clearing is completely clean... it’s as if he simply vanished from the face of the earth."

​Roland stared at him, the heavy weight of reality settling over his shoulders like a crushing stone. "So, you mean...?"

​"Yes," Cedric interrupted, stepping closer until they were eye-to-eye. "I believe that bastard is very much alive. But more importantly... I suspect there is a spy feeding him information. And that spy is operating right here, inside this very house."