Chapter 104: Veil of Denial

The scream that tore through the silent corridors of the Imperial Palace was not one of grief, but of a soul being violently uprooted. It was a jagged, primal sound that announced the end of a world.

Inside the dimly lit chambers, Elvira stood frozen. The air felt thick, tasting of iron and stale lilies. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, stared at the figure on the bed. For a heartbeat, her mind refused the evidence of her senses. This couldn’t be her mother—the radiant, divine Serene. This was a hollow thing, a doll with its strings severed, discarded in a pool of darkening velvet.

“Mother?” Elvira whispered, her voice trembling like a leaf in a gale. She stumbled forward, her knees hitting the floor with a dull thud. She lunged for the body, pulling the cold, limp form into a crushing embrace. “You can’t go. You are mine, Mother. Do you hear me? I haven’t given you permission to leave!”

She began to rave, the words spilling out in a frantic, rhythmic chant. Her tears soaked into Serene’s blood-stained nightgown, but Elvira didn’t pull back. She clung to the corpse with a terrifying intensity, as if she could force her own breath back into those still lungs through sheer willpower. “I won’t allow it. I forbid it! You belong here, with me!”

The heavy doors burst open. Duke Roland rushed in, his heart hammering against his ribs at the sound of his daughter’s agony. He stopped dead. The sight before him was a macabre tableau: Elvira, covered in blood, cradling the lifeless Duchess and whispering to her like a madwoman. His gaze shifted to the bed—to the visceral, crimson stain that had blossomed across the sheets.

“Elvira…” Roland’s voice was a ghost of itself. “What is this? What happened?”

Elvira looked up at him, her face a mask of shattered porcelain. “She wants to leave us, Papa. She’s being selfish. Tell her… tell her I don’t give her soul permission to go. Order her to stay!”

Roland sank to his knees, the weight of the realization crushing the air from his lungs. He crawled toward the bed, his hand reaching out to touch Serene’s cheek. “Serene? My love? My queen?” He let out a choked, hysterical laugh. “Ah, I see. You’re angry because of the restraints, aren’t you? You’re playing a game to punish me.”

With trembling, frantic movements, he pulled a set of keys from his belt. The metallic clinking was the only sound in the room besides Elvira’s sobbing. He fumbled with the shackles on Serene’s feets, his fingers brushing against her cold, grey skin. “There… see? You’re free now. I’ve unlocked them. You can wake up now, Serene. Stop pretending. It isn’t funny anymore.”

But as he touched her ankles, feeling the absolute, icy stillness that only death carries, the truth struck him like a physical blow. The light of his obsession had been extinguished. The goddess he had caged, worshipped, and tormented was gone.

Roland let out a low, guttural growl that escalated into a roar of pure, unadulterated malice. He pulled Elvira toward him, gathering both his broken daughter and the cooling corpse of his wife into a singular, grotesque embrace.

“Who did this?” he hissed, his eyes turning into twin abysses of rage. “Who dared to touch what is mine? Who dared to destroy our beautiful, perfect family?”

He buried his face in Serene’s hair, his voice vibrating with a lethal vow. “I will find them, Elvira. I will find whoever tore this world apart, and I will make them crave the peace of the grave. They haven’t just killed a woman; they have murdered a God. And for that, the entire Empire will bleed.”

Elvira leaned into her father’s shoulder, her fingernails digging into his skin through his tunic. Her voice was a jagged whisper, laced with a poison that surpassed the coldness of the room. “It was her… it had to be Olivia. She’s always wanted what was mine. She wanted to steal Mother’s love, to tear her away from me. I’ll kill her, Papa… I’ll rip her apart with my own hands!”

​Her voice rose into a frantic shriek, her face contorting with a murderous hunger. “I’ll kill her! I’ll—”

​Suddenly, Roland’s hand clamped over her mouth, silencing her with a startling, forceful abruptness. His eyes were wide, vacant, and shimmering with an unsettling light.

​”Shhh,” he hissed, his finger pressed against his own lips. “You’ll wake her, Elvira. Lower your voice. Can’t you see she’s trying to rest?”

​The madness in his tone was more terrifying than any roar of anger. He turned away from his daughter, his movements becoming fluid and hauntingly gentle. He reached for Serene’s limp body, lifting her with an agonizing tenderness as if she were made of the thinnest glass. He rearranged her on the blood-soaked pillows, smoothing out the silken covers and pulling them up to her chin, concealing the gruesome wound on her chest.

​He leaned down, pressing a lingering, reverent kiss to Serene’s cold forehead. “Sleep well, my love,” he whispered to the silence.

​He then turned his gaze back to Elvira. His expression was calm—too calm—but his aura had transformed into something suffocating and dark, a predatory energy that seemed to drain the very air from the room.

​”She’s just sleeping, isn’t she, my little one?” he asked, his voice tilting into a pleasant, conversational tone that didn’t match the carnage around them. “She would never truly leave us. She knows she belongs here. Tell me, Elvira… she’s only sleeping, right?”

The terrifying and powerful aura of his energy shattered all the glass in the room, and from its weight, Elvira’s body froze completely until sweat poured from her.

​Her breath hitched. Her tears stopped as a cold shiver of pure, unadulterated dread raced down her spine. She had lived her whole life witnessing her father’s obsession, but this—this refusal to acknowledge the boundary between life and death—was a new kind of nightmare. For the first time in her life, she felt a paralyzing fear of the man standing before her.

​She looked at her mother’s pale, waxen face, then back at her father’s hollow eyes. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and whispered, her voice trembling, “Yes… she’s only sleeping, Papa. She’s just… sleeping.”

​Roland smiled, a thin, ghost-like curve of his lips. “Good. Then we mustn’t let anyone disturb her. Especially not that pest in the other wing.”

“What do you mean by psychological pain? How is such a thing even possible?” Mathias demanded, his voice a jagged whisper of disbelief.

​Leila sighed, her gaze lingering on the closed door. “It means the mind has its own way of retreating when the world becomes unbearable. Perhaps she witnessed something she cannot reconcile, or perhaps guilt has woven a veil she isn’t ready to lift. You are her husband, Mathias—you should know her heart better than I. Regardless, I am leaving. Do not breathe a word of this to her; knowing the cause will only bind her further in that darkness.”

​She began to walk away, then paused, casting a sharp, knowing glance over her shoulder. “And try to exercise some restraint. She is fragile, not a conquest. This is hardly the time for…” She trailed off, leaving the implication hanging like a heavy fog.

​Mathias found no words to counter her; he simply stood there, flushed with a stinging embarrassment that burned hotter than any fever.

​Once Leila had vanished into the shadows of the corridor, he returned to the bedside. He stood at a distance, his eyes fixed on Olivia’s pale, composed face. She sat perfectly still, yet the silence between them was vibrating with tension.

​”Why do you stand so far away?” Olivia asked suddenly, her voice cutting through the quiet. “Ever since the two of you were whispering over there, the air has changed. Is there a problem?”

​He moved toward her, his footsteps heavy, and sat on the edge of the bed. “It is nothing.”

​Olivia reached out, her hand finding his chest, her palm resting directly over the erratic thrum of his heart. “You are a spectacular failure at lying, Mathias. Your heart betrays you.”

​He gently caught her hand and pulled it away, his voice stiff. “My heart has nothing to do with this. You simply need rest, nothing more.”

​A sharp, rhythmic pounding at the door shattered the moment. Mathias stiffened, a cold instinct of danger washing over him. He stood abruptly and stepped out, closing the door firmly behind him to shield Olivia from whatever—or whoever—was waiting.

​He found himself face-to-face with a mask of frozen stone. The Duke of Tharron stood in the hallway, his usual veneer of artificial charm stripped away to reveal the predator beneath.

​Mathias didn’t bother with pleasantries; his eyes burned with a raw, defensive hatred. “Welcome, Duke Tharron. What brings you to my door at such an hour?”

​The Duke didn’t offer his customary smirk. His voice was as cold as a winter grave. “I have come to see my beloved daughter. Is there a problem with a father visiting his child?”

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