Chapter 98: The Silent Grave

The color drained from Olivia’s face, leaving her a ghastly shade of gray. Her hands began to shake with an uncontrollable, violent tremor as the horror took root in her marrow.

“You buried her?” she whispered, the words barely escaping the suffocating grip of her own throat. “You… you buried her alive?”

Elvira’s response was a shrill, ecstatic cackle that grated against the stone walls. “Exactly! Oh, that look—that is the masterpiece I was waiting for! Seeing your soul shatter is far more delicious than any wine.”

Something snapped inside Olivia. The last tether of her restraint frayed and broke. A blind, primal rage took over, and she began to rain blows down upon Elvira with a mindless, mechanical ferocity. She struck until her knuckles were raw, until the rhythmic sound of bone hitting flesh was all that filled the room. Only when Elvira’s body went limp beneath her did Olivia finally stop.

Breathing hard, she pressed a trembling finger to Elvira’s nose. A faint, shallow wisp of air brushed her skin. Elvira was still breathing, though barely clinging to the shores of consciousness. Olivia stood over her, staring down at the mangled map of bruises and blood she had carved into her sister’s skin.

“You won’t die yet,” Olivia hissed, her voice a hollow rasp from the depths of a dark abyss. “Not until I have fed you every ounce of the agony you forced upon me. That is my vow to you.”

She turned to flee, to run toward the graveyard, but the world began to tilt. It wasn’t just the emerald elixir reclaiming its pound of flesh—it was the sudden, crushing weight of a memory. A panic attack, cold and jagged as shards of ice, seized her lungs.

Her breath became a frantic, useless struggle. The air felt like lead, and her limbs turned into unmovable stone. She clawed at the air, her heart thundering with a terrifying, erratic rhythm. She had to move. She had to save Isabella. But she was trapped in the tiger’s den, and her body was failing her.

Then, the heavy silence of the estate was punctured by a sound that made her blood freeze.

The rhythmic gallop of horses. The sharp, authoritative halt of a carriage in the courtyard. And then… the footsteps.

Olivia knew that cadence. She had heard it in her nightmares every night for a decade. It was a heavy, deliberate tread—the sound of a predator returning to reclaim his territory.

Her father had come home.

The Duke’s gaze fell upon the severed head of the head maid, a grisly ornament decorating the pristine hallway. He didn’t flinch; he merely narrowed his eyes in suspicion. To him, this was likely another of Elvira’s manic outbursts, a bloody tantrum he had grown to tolerate. Yet, the audacity of the mess required an explanation.

He turned to a trembling maid huddled against the wall. “Is Elvira in her chambers?”

“Y-yes, Your Grace,” the girl stammered, her voice barely audible.

He strode toward Elvira’s room, his footsteps heavy with the weight of impending judgment.

Olivia heard him coming. She tried to move, to vanish before he found her in this shattered state, but her legs were leaden weights, and her lungs felt as though they were filled with broken glass. Her ragged, frantic gasps were a beacon in the silent hallway, betraying her presence with every agonizing breath.

The Duke’s silhouette loomed just around the corner. Death was seconds away.

Suddenly, a pair of strong hands lunged from the gloom, dragging her into the deep shadows of an alcove. A palm clamped firmly over her mouth, stifling her sob.

“Olivia, shhh…” a voice whispered—low, urgent, and hauntingly familiar.

In her haze of pain and panic, she could barely recognize him. He hoisted her into his arms with effortless strength, moving like a phantom through the secret arteries of the estate until they were safely beyond the iron-wrought walls of the Duchy.

Inside the room, the Duke slammed the door open. The sight that met him shattered his cold composure. Elvira lay crumpled on the floor, her beautiful face a map of gore and swelling. He roared, lunging forward to gather her broken form into his arms, pressing frantic kisses to her bruised brow.

“My angel… my little angel, what have they done to you?” he wailed, his voice a terrifying mix of grief and burgeoning slaughter. “Wake up… My God, I will make them pay in rivers of blood!”

He snapped his head toward the cowering guards at the door. “Fetch the physician! Now! If a single scar remains on my daughter’s face, I will send him to a place worse than Hell itself!” He gestured dismissively toward the bed, “And get that trash off the bed. Burn it.”

The physician arrived like a lightning strike, trembling as he began his work. The Duke watched for a moment, his eyes burning with a dark, unholy fire, before stepping out to face the remaining staff.

“Which rat dared to invade my nest while I was away?” he asked, his voice deceptively calm. He slammed his fist into the stone wall, the masonry shattering under his unnatural strength. “Tell me!”

“It… it was Lady Olivia, Your Grace,” a servant choked out.

The Duke began to laugh—a dry, hollow sound that froze the marrow in their bones. “Olivia? That little whore did this to my daughter? And you… you all just stood by and watched?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He drew his sword in one fluid, gleaming motion. He moved through them like the Harvestman of Death, reaping souls with a silent, terrifying efficiency. One by one, they fell until the foyer was a lake of steaming crimson.

Wiping the spray of hot blood from his cheek, he looked at his aide over a sea of corpses. “Hire new servants,” he commanded, his voice “Competent ones this time. And as for Olivia… I will peel the skin from her soul.”

Outside the oppressive walls of the Duchy, the man threw back his heavy hood, the moonlight catching the sharp, worried lines of his face. He knelt beside her, his movements frantic yet controlled.

“Hey! Stay with me. Breathe… damn it, Olivia, breathe! Drink this.”

He pressed a canteen to her lips, forcing the water past her teeth. She coughed, the liquid spilling down her chin, but slowly, the rhythmic gasps began to subside. The air finally found its way back into her lungs, and the world stopped spinning. As her vision cleared, she looked up into the piercing, metallic gaze that was impossible to mistake—eyes like polished steel under a winter moon.

“Leon?” she wheezed, her voice a fragile shadow of its former self. “Is it… is it really you?”

Leon didn’t offer a comforting smile. Instead, he stood, crossing his arms over his chest as he loomed over her, his expression a mask of grim frustration.

“Who else would it be?” he snapped, though the tremor in his voice betrayed his nerves. He looked her up and down, taking in the crimson splatters on her tunic and the hollow, haunted look in her eyes.

He leaned down, his face inches from hers, his silver eyes burning with an intensity that demanded the truth. “What the hell happened in that palace, Olivia? Why are you drenched in blood like a butcher’s apprentice?” His voice dropped to a dangerous, low vibration. “And most importantly… where is my wife?”

Olivia stared at him with hollow eyes, her mind a fractured landscape where the echoes of Elvira’s hysterical laughter still clawed at her sanity. She whispered, her voice a jagged tremor, “I… I am not entirely sure. But I must see for myself. I must know if her words were poison or the wretched truth.”

​She lunged forward, gripping his cloak with desperate, gore-stained fingers that left dark, blooming smears across the fabric. “Take me on your horse. Now! I will show you the way, but we must fly… Dear God, Leon, we must hurry!”

​The sheer, visceral terror in her eyes silenced any protest he might have voiced. Leon simply nodded, his heart hammering against his ribs like a chaotic drum. He understood nothing of the madness unfolding, but his soul was consumed by a singular, burning directive: find his wife.

​The ride was a blur of biting wind and shifting shadows. Olivia clung to him, her heart thumping behind her ribs like a trapped bird beating its wings against a cage. Every passing second felt like an eternity carved in ice. When the jagged, silhouetted teeth of the cemetery rose from the dark, the words choked in her throat.

​”Stop!” she shrieked. “Here!”

​Leon wrenched the reins, the horse skidding and rearing in confusion. “The graveyard? Olivia, what madness is this? Why are we—”

​But she didn’t wait for his confusion to clear. She slid from the saddle, her legs feeling like dead weights of lead beneath her, and scrambled toward the plots. She caught a fleeting, soul-piercing glimpse of her son’s headstone, but time was a blade at her throat. She lunged for the adjacent plot, where the earth had been freshly turned—a dark, raw wound torn into the green velvet of the grass.

​Olivia collapsed to her knees, her breath escaping in ragged, broken gasps. Without a word, she began to claw at the dirt with her bare hands, her movements feral and frantic.

​”Isabella… please, just hold on a little longer,” she whimpered. Her fingernails tore against the grit, ripping away from the quick as she dug, leaving the soil stained with a mother’s desperate blood.

​”Olivia, stop! What are you doing?” His voice was thick, weighed down by a suffocating, mounting dread. He watched as she dug her broken nails into the frozen earth, her actions devoid of reason, fueled only by madness. “Please… please don’t tell me she’s in there. I beg of you!”

​Olivia looked up at him, her face a mask of filth and pure, unadulterated despair. “Help me dig!” she choked out, her voice cracking. “Help me!”

​In that heartbeat, Leon’s world shattered. The realization hit him like a physical blow, turning his blood to ice. He commanded her with a voice that vibrated with a terrifying, raw power: “Get back.”

​As she stumbled away, Leon unleashed his strength—a primal surge of energy that made the very earth groan. With a violent explosion of soil and grit, the dirt sprayed upward in a chaotic cloud. The deep pit lay exposed instantly, revealing the grim, dark grain of a wooden casket.

​He lunged into the hole, tearing at the timber with his bare hands and the heavy hilt of his sword. Splinters of wood sliced through his skin, but he was numb to the sensation. With one final, agonizing heave, the wood groaned and splintered, the lid giving way with a sickening crack.

​The pale moonlight spilled into the darkness of the box, illuminating the still, ghostly figure resting within. Isabella lay there, her skin the color of winter marble, draped in the terrifying silence of the grave.

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