Chapter 72: Traitor’s Final Words

CONTENT WARNING:

This Chapter contains graphic descriptions of physical torture and violence that may be disturbing to some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

With a deliberate, chilling detachment, Olivia emptied the contents of the burlap sack onto the wooden board. The heavy iron head of a hammer struck the timber with a hollow thud, followed by the sharp, rhythmic clatter of long steel nails.

“Mmm… mmm…” The maid’s muffled whimpers vibrated behind the gag. Isabella’s eyes grew wide, her lips pulling tight against her teeth as she instinctively recoiled, turning her face away.

Yet, there was no escaping the sound that followed—a high, jagged shriek that seemed to tear through the very stone of the walls.

Olivia seized the girl’s left hand and positioned a nail over the center of the palm. Without a flicker of hesitation, she brought the hammer down.

Bone shattered with a sickening, wet crunch. Blood erupted, spraying across the table and Olivia’s pale fingers. She struck again, then a third time, driving the steel deep into the wood.

Olivia’s gaze remained frozen—dead and steady—while the maid’s features contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated agony, her eyes bulging as if they might burst from their sockets.

“There,” Olivia murmured with a dark, clinical satisfaction. “Now your hands are fixed in place. Now, we can truly begin.”

She tore the gag away. A torrent of sound exploded from the girl—a raw, frantic spill of pleas and desperate sobs. “Please, My Lady! Please—have mercy! Mercy, I beg of you!” Tears streamed down her face, her eyes darting in a wild, animalistic frenzy.

“You know the answer I require,” Olivia said, her voice a calm contrast to the chaos. “So, speak.”

She raised the hammer again and swung. A finger joint splintered under the weight, the bone reduced to a pulp. Crimson seeped into the dark grain of the table. The maid howled, her face twisted into a grotesque mask of torment.

“Hmm, still refusing?” Olivia tilted her head slightly, observing the girl’s convulsions with the same idle curiosity one might afford a writhing insect.

The girl sobbed, her eyelids swollen, her mouth trembling. “I did nothing! I swear to you, I beg—”

Crack. Another strike. Another finger crushed into a shapeless ruin. The maid’s entire body jolted with every spasm of pain.

Olivia remained eerily composed, her expression as serene as if she were merely pruning roses in a summer garden. “I will continue,” she whispered into the girl’s ear, “until you decide that the truth is less painful than the silence.”

With a calculated, chilling slowness, Olivia reached into the burlap sack once more. Her fingers emerged clutching a handful of coarse salt crystals, She began to rain the grains down into the raw, weeping wounds.

The maid’s reaction was a jagged, visceral convulsion. A fresh wave of agonizing whimpers escaped her, her body arching against the restraints as the salt began its agonizing work, searing through exposed nerves and shredded flesh.

“As long as you remain silent, I shall not cease,” Olivia whispered. “Let us see, little rat… let us see exactly how much of this agony you can swallow before your spirit breaks.”

But the maid held. Despite the carnage, she refused to utter Elvira’s name. One finger after another was reduced to red debris. Olivia stepped back, surveying the broken, slumped figure before her. “It seems she’s more stubborn than I anticipated.”

From the shadows, Isabella’s trembling voice cut through the heavy scent of copper. Her eyes were glued to the maid’s mangled hand. “Could it be… could it be she’s actually innocent?”

“Innocent?” Olivia’s eyes flashed with a sudden, searing disdain. “Do you take me for a fool, Isabella? Look at her. She is a traitor to her core. Or have you… found a heart for her now?”

Isabella stammered, her voice weak. “I don’t pity her. It’s just… you’ve pulverized her hand and she hasn’t said a word.”

Olivia reached into her belt and drew a shimmering silver dagger. A cruel smile played on her lips. “If she will not use her tongue to speak, then that tongue has no purpose. I shall silence it forever.”

She forced the girl’s jaw open. The maid thrashed, her eyes wide with a new, paralyzing terror, but Olivia’s grip was an iron vice.

“Very well, my sweet,” Olivia whispered with a terrifying softness. “Since you have no use for this tongue… let me relieve you of the burden.”

Suddenly, the maid’s resolve snapped. Terror overrode her loyalty, and she choked out the words through her blood-slicked teeth. “I’m sorry! I never meant to poison you, My Lady—I swear it!”

Olivia froze. The knife stayed inches from the girl’s mouth.

“Poison me?” Olivia’s voice was a low, lethal hiss. “What the hell are you talking about, woman?”

The shift in the room was instantaneous—the atmosphere curdling from the scent of iron to the stench of something ancient and foul.

“What do you mean by that, girl?” Olivia’s voice cracked like a whip. “Answer me!”

The maid shriveled into herself, her sobs turning into a ragged, desperate keening. “I’m sorry, My Lady… please… I didn’t want to put those flowers in your tea… she threatened my family. I…” Her words splintered, the confession dissolving into a frantic, broken string of terror.

Then, without warning, her body betrayed her.

Her pupils rolled violently back into her skull, leaving only a haunting, milky void behind. A pale, thick foam bubbled at the corners of her mouth. Before their eyes, black veins erupted across her wrists and neck like spiders weaving a web of rot beneath her translucent skin.

It looked like ink leaking into water, a dark mold devouring an old painting from the inside out.

Isabella stumbled back with a strangled cry, but Olivia was faster, seizing her by the arm and dragging her into the far corner of the chamber. They watched in a heavy, disturbed silence as the maid began to convulse.

A low, wet gurgle vibrated in her throat, a sickening sound of drowning—and then, with a sharp, internal crack, her heart simply gave way. A spray of crimson painted the floor, and the room fell into a sudden, deafening stillness as her body slumped into total surrender.

Suddenly, the maid’s limbs gave way, collapsing in a grotesque, disjointed heap—one after another, her joints failed as if an invisible puppeteer had abruptly severed the strings that held her broken frame together. She hit the floor not as a human, but as a discarded doll, hollow and spent.

Olivia stepped back, her eyes narrowing as she sensed a shift in the very air of the chamber. A cold, unnatural shroud seemed to emanate from the corpse.

“Isabella, stay back,” Olivia commanded, her voice lashing out like a whip in the silence. Her gaze remained fixed on the cooling flesh, watching for the telltale shimmer of corruption.

“Do not move an inch closer. I can feel it now… there is black magic woven into the very marrow of her bones.”

Olivia stepped forward, her movements cautious and predatory. She extended a finger, tilting the dead girl’s chin upward. The sight made even her stomach turn. The face had transformed into a monstrous mask; the features were blurred, the skin unnaturally shriveled and grey.

Without a second thought, Olivia pulled a silk handkerchief from her pocket and draped it over the ruined face.

“Why cover her?” Isabella asked, her voice trembling, the curiosity fighting through her shock.

“Because she’s gone,” Olivia replied, her tone flat and devoid of warmth. “There is nothing left to see.”

Isabella stared at the corpse, a sudden, sharp pang of guilt piercing her chest. The weight of the girl’s life, now extinguished, pressed heavily upon her.

Olivia caught the look immediately. “Don’t you dare look at me like that! Do you truly believe she would have survived if you hadn’t brought her here? You don’t know my sister as I do. She would have disposed of this girl sooner or later, with the same cold indifference she showed your father.”

Isabella swallowed hard, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her own dress. “But how? How did she die like that? Did you do something to her?”

“Me? No,” Olivia murmured, her eyes fixed on the black veins. “It seems there was a seal placed upon her heart—a magical tether. The moment she attempted to betray the secret, the seal triggered a fatal surge. She was a living bomb.”

Olivia straightened up, her mind already moving past the carnage to the puzzle left behind.

“But what truly concerns me is what she was trying to say. What tea?

What flowers? What is this poison she was so terrified of?

The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of retching. Isabella doubled over, her stomach finally turning at the sight of the mangled, magical corpse. Kira stood nearby, her head bowed as she pointedly looked away from the carnage, but Olivia remained unmoved.

​Suddenly, a spark of remembrance flickered in Olivia’s eyes. She stepped toward the heap of broken flesh and, without a moment’s hesitation, thrust her hand deep into the chest cavity of the dead girl.

​”By the Gods, Olivia! What are you doing?!” Isabella shrieked in pure disgust, stumbling back.

​”Shut up and let me work,” Olivia snapped, her arm slick with crimson as she searched within the cooling remains.

​After a tense moment, her fingers closed around something hard. “Finally… found it.”

​”Found what?” Isabella gasped, shielding her eyes.

​Olivia withdrew her hand, clutching a small, obsidian-like sphere that pulsed with a faint, malevolent light amidst the gore. She held it up to the flickering candlelight, watching the dark smoke swirl within the crystal.

​”A Soul-Trace Orb,” Olivia murmured. “It’s a remnant left behind by high-level black magic. It contains the magical signature of the caster.”

​”And you can read it?” Isabella asked, her voice trembling.

​”No,” Olivia replied, a cold, calculating smile spreading across her lips. “But I know exactly the right person for this task. It’s time we paid a visit to an old friend.”

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