Chapter 125: the beast suffered

Roland walked into the room with a confident, rhythmic stride, his fingers gripped around the silver neck of a wine bottle as if he were holding a scepter over a kingdom of ruins. He leaned against the doorframe, draped in that suffocating arrogance that always made the room feel too small. A jagged, cold smirk pulled at his lips.

“Back so soon, my love?” he purred, his voice thick with a cruel vanity. “I knew the silence of this tomb would be too much without my shadow. I’ve brought some wine—bitter, just like the vows we traded. Shall we drink to how we’ve both rotted in this place?”

Silence was his only answer. The air in the chamber was thick, curdled with a sickening smell—a mix of damp earth and old dust. He hadn’t expected a corpse to speak, but a faint sound—a soft, rhythmic rustle of the bedsheets—made the breath freeze in his lungs.

Everything was in its place, yet the very soul of the room felt poisoned. A predatory chill, sharp as a shard of glass, crawled up his spine. A jagged aura of pure malice forced the hair on his skin to stand like needles. The world had tilted; something was wrong, catastrophically wrong.

His casual stroll vanished in an instant, replaced by a frantic, stumbling mess of footsteps. He lunged toward Serene’s bed. A figure lay there, draped from head to toe in shimmering silk—a shroud so perfectly placed it felt like a silent, deliberate accusation.

I didn’t cover her… No one dares enter this room. This is impossible.

With a hollow, guttural cry, he grabbed the silk and ripped it aside. The wine bottle slipped from his paralyzed hand, shattering against the stone floor in a frantic explosion of glass and liquid. The wine sprayed across the floor in a fan of brilliant crimson—a grotesque imitation of fresh slaughter.

Roland’s eyes went wide, his pupils shrinking to needle-points of pure horror. There, nestled in the fine linen, lay a nightmare carved from grey, waxen flesh. It was a blasphemous distortion of his own obsession—a sickening mockery of the woman he had lost.

It wasn’t Serene. It was, beyond any doubt, not her.

“Fa… Father…” The name came out as a mangled, wet rasp, like a dying bird fluttering against a cage of iron. Alvira lay trapped in a disgusting web of obsidian thorns—ink-black chains that coiled around her throat and limbs like a nest of starving vipers. Every shudder of her small body, every desperate breath, made the barbs burrow deeper, tearing through silk and soft skin with a rhythmic, sickening crunch.

“He… Help me, Father…” Her words came with tears that traced burning paths through the crimson smears on her cheeks. Her amber eyes, which once glowed like gold, were starting to dim—turning into a hollow, sickly yellow as if her soul were being dragged into the shadows.

For a second, Roland stood paralyzed, his mind a shattered mirror unable to grasp the horror. Then, a feral roar exploded from his chest. He lunged forward, his fingers—no, his claws—digging into the black thorns with a suicidal disregard for his own flesh. The chains hissed like vipers at his touch, their jagged teeth shredding his palms, but he didn’t even flinch. With a violent, bone-deep desperation, he tore the thorns away, turning the white bridal bed into a churning sea of his own blood.

He gathered her into his arms, his touch frantic and stained. “My angel… my pure, untainted angel,” he crooned, his voice a jagged edge of mounting madness. He cupped her face between his bleeding hands, searching the fading embers of her gaze for a single spark of life. “Who did this? Where is your mother? Where is Serene?”

Elvira choked on a sob, her small, trembling fingers clutching his blood-soaked tunic. “I… I couldn’t see him. He wasn’t a man… he was a beast made of shadows. He… he left a message for you.”

“A message?” Roland’s head snapped back, his eyes sweeping the room like a cornered predator. “Van! Get in here! Now!”

The aide appeared in the doorway, the color draining from his face as he stared at the blood-streaked room.

“Take Elvira. Heal her. If a single scar—even a faint mark—remains on her skin, I will have your head,” Roland hissed. His voice wasn’t loud; it was a low, lethal vibration. As Van gathered the shivering girl and hurried out, Roland stayed anchored to the edge of the bed. The silence of the room began to close in on him like the lid of a tomb.

His bloody fingers, still dripping with the price he’d paid for his daughter’s life, smeared the edges of a parchment left in the middle of the carnage. He read the elegant, mocking handwriting:

“Did the little surprise I prepared for you suit your refined tastes, Roland? Isn’t she… exquisite in her agony?”

Roland’s teeth sank into his lower lip, tearing the flesh until the sharp, metallic taste of his own blood filled his mouth—a bitter, grounding nectar. He didn’t just crumple the parchment; he crushed it in his fist, his knuckles turning a skeletal white against the crimson stains of his daughter’s blood.

Then, the heavy silence of the room snapped. It started as a low, discordant chuckle—a sound stripped of everything human—before spiraling into a jagged, frantic peal of laughter. It was the sound of a mind finally breaking under its own darkness.

“So…” he whispered, his voice a low, lethal vibration that seemed to make the very shadows on the walls cower. “Someone truly believes they can play the predator in my garden. Someone wants to dance with the devil? How… how exquisitely charming.”

He stared at the blood-soaked silk of the bed, his golden eyes burning with a feverish, unholy light. “The full moon is still a distant ghost in the sky. I have plenty of time to entertain my ’guests’ before the true hunt begins. It’s been an eternity since my blood felt this… electric. Since my rage tasted this sweet.”

A slow, predatory grin stretched across his face, revealing teeth stained dark with his own blood. The transformation was complete; the man was gone, leaving only the monster behind.

“I think I’ll burn a few souls alive tonight,” he mused, his words falling like heavy stones into a deep well. “A pyre of human meat to soothe this ache in my chest. I want to hear them shriek—to listen to their undoing—until the sound mends the cracks in my soul.”

Mathias walked into the safehouse with a heavy, leaden tread—the gait of a man who had left his soul in the shadows and returned with nothing but his sins. In his arms, he cradled Serene’s waxen, haunting body as if she were a piece of shattered porcelain. His face was a blank void; the fire of vengeance that had kept him going was out, leaving only a cold, ashen crater where his humanity used to be.

He moved toward the bed, lowering her onto the sheets with a chilling, clinical precision.

“Dammit, Mathias! Have you lost your mind?” Leon’s voice cracked through the silence like a whip. “You brought the Duchess of Tharron here? A corpse? Have you finally gone insane?”

Mathias didn’t say a word. Instead, he moved like a blur. In one predatory lunge, his fingers clamped around Leon’s throat, slamming him against the jagged stone wall with a force that nearly cracked the masonry. Mathias’s eyes were pits of obsidian, stripped of any recognition—flickering with a lethal instinct that didn’t belong to a man.

“It’s… it’s me…” Leon wheezed, his face turning a bruised, suffocating purple as he clawed fruitlessly at the iron grip on his neck. “It’s Leon… your brother. Look at me, Mathias! Come back!”

For several agonizing seconds, Mathias stayed frozen like a statue of death, his thumb digging into the soft hollow of Leon’s windpipe with the cold indifference of a vice. Then, a spark of recognition flickered in his dark gaze—a slow, painful return to reality. He let go, allowing Leon to collapse onto the stone floor in a fit of ragged, hollow coughs that echoed off the damp walls.

“Mathias… for God’s sake, what have you done?” Leon managed to gasp, his fingers trembling as they traced the bruises beginning to bloom on his throat.

“I know you have questions,” Mathias interrupted, his voice a low, lethal vibration that left no room for argument. “But I don’t have the energy for your interrogation. Leave me in the silence.”

“Just one,” Leon persisted, his eyes drifting to the woman on the bed—a figure of terrifying, perfect preservation. “How? How is she still like this? It’s been weeks since she died.”

Mathias gave a shrug of chilling indifference. “Ask that lunatic, Roland. He’s the one who turned his home into a shrine for the dead, not me.” He let out a long, exhausted breath, raking his blood-stained fingers through his hair as if trying to scrub away the madness. “I’m going to Olivia. If Isabella is still there, make her vanish. Now.”

Once Leon had left and the heavy oak door groaned shut, Mathias turned back to Serene’s waxen face. He walked to the bed with the slow, heavy steps of a man entering a tomb. Reaching for a sheet of fine linen, he pulled it up, covering her face with a tenderness that felt like a prayer. Then, he sank onto the edge of the mattress, his body sagging under the weight of his grief.

Forgive me, my Princess,” he whispered, his voice a low, broken rasp in the hollow silence. “I know that taking you from your rest and hiding you in this hell is a sin. But I’m a man drowning in my own desperation. I need you to understand.”

​He bowed his head, the shadows of the room swallowing him. “I can’t watch Olivia suffer anymore. I can’t watch her wither away in a world that won’t even acknowledge you’re gone. I won’t let her break, Serene. I just can’t.”

​He reached out, pressing a ghost of a kiss onto her cold, marble hand before standing up. The grieving nephew vanished, replaced by the hollow soldier in a heartbeat, though his eyes remained haunted.

​”I give you my word, Aunt,” he whispered into the stagnant air. “You’ll have your dignity. I’ll give you the burial you deserve—just give me a little more time. Be patient with my madness.”

​With one last look at the shrouded body, he turned away. His boots struck the floor with a hollow rhythm as he followed Leon toward the room where Olivia waited in her sightless, silent fury.

In the next room, Olivia sat with the unnatural stillness of a statue carved from graveyard marble. She didn’t speak; she didn’t cry. She just existed in the oily darkness that had become her world—a void so thick it felt like a physical weight on her brow.

​”Oh, Olivia… you lost your sight, not your soul. Why must you sit there like a funeral monument?” Isabella’s voice cut through the gloom, sharp with irritation.

​Olivia didn’t answer immediately. Her head remained tilted at a haunting angle, her blind eyes fixed on nothing—a private abyss only she could see.

​”Shut your mouth for a moment,” she finally whispered, her voice a jagged thread of frost. “I’m thinking.”

​Isabella arched a brow, a mocking smirk on her lips. “Thinking? Or just rotting in your own thoughts? Are you pining for your monster, Olivia? Does your heart ache for the shadow of Mathias?”

​”I told you to be silent. Do it,” Olivia snapped. Her words were dripping with a sudden, pure venom that seemed to freeze the air between them. “This isn’t about ’missing’ him. It’s about rage. Pure, unadulterated rage. He dumped me here yesterday morning and vanished like a thief in the night. It’s the second night now, and he’s still gone. The thought of him leaving me here… it’s a weight on my chest. It’s suffocating.”

​She gripped the heavy silk of her skirts so hard her knuckles turned a skeletal white against the fabric.

​”When he comes back… the price he’ll pay for this silence will be steep. More than he can afford.”

​Mathias didn’t say a word. Instead, he moved like a predator. In one sudden lunge, his fingers clamped around Leon’s throat, slamming him against the stone wall with a force that nearly cracked the masonry. Mathias’s eyes were pits of obsidian, stripped of any recognition—flickering with a lethal instinct that didn’t belong to a man.

​”It’s… it’s me…” Leon wheezed, his face turning a bruised, suffocating purple as he clawed fruitlessly at the iron grip on his neck. “It’s Leon… your brother. Look at me, Mathias! Come back to us!”

The suffocating tension between the two women snapped when a frantic rapping hit the door. Leon burst in, his breath hitching, his eyes darting between them in a panic.

​”Forgive me,” he managed, “but Isabella—I need a word. Now.”

​”She’s staying with me,” Olivia countered. Her voice was a flat, cold blade.

​”Olivia,” Leon pleaded, his tone softening. “Mathias is almost here. Isabella has to come with me. You won’t be alone; he’ll be standing right here in a matter of seconds.”

​Something dark flitted across Olivia’s blind face—a shadow of a ghost. “So,” she murmured, the word falling like a stone into a deep well. “He’s finally back.”

​”He is.”

​”Then go. Get out,” Olivia dismissed them with a sharp wave of her hand. “I need to prepare myself for a husband who thought it was fine to dump me in the dark for two days.”

​”What?” Leon stammered, flinching at the ice in her voice. Isabella leaned in close to him, her voice a terrified hiss. “She’s possessed, Leon. Let’s go before the storm breaks and the walls come down on us.”

They retreated just as Mathias crossed the threshold. He moved with a heavy, visible exhaustion, his silhouette framed by the dim light of the corridor. The ring was back on his finger—the silver band acting like a cold anchor, trying to hold his fractured soul inside his skin.

​Olivia’s lips curled into a thin, mocking line. “How remarkable,” she drawled, her voice dripping with acid. “It seems you finally remembered you have a wife. A true miracle of memory.”

​Mathias offered no defense. He drifted toward her, ignoring the jagged edges of her words until he stood close enough to feel the heat of her rage.

​”What now?” she snapped, sensing his shadow looming over her in the dark. “Have you lost your tongue along with your manners? How charming.”

​Instead of an answer, Mathias’s arms suddenly snaked around her with a desperate, crushing intensity. He pulled her into a fierce embrace, his strength nearly lifting her off her feet. He buried his face in the hollow of her neck, breathing her in—trying to drown out the smell of blood and iron with the familiar scent of her skin.

​”At last,” he whispered against her throat, the words sounding like a prayer of the damned. “At last, I am home.”

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