A man’s harsh voice cut through the darkness.

“Stand straight!”

He pressed a gun barrel against Melissa’s back and dragged her out of the carriage. While suppressing her pounding heart, Melissa tried to assess their identities in the darkness.

Despite their bandit disguises, their awkward Altanian accent and the way they handled their weapons and moved suggested they were likely soldiers from Sys.

Could they be deserters? Or perhaps soldiers sent by the Marquis?

“H-huuh, huuk.”

Emerson burst into tears, terrified. The woman with broken glasses raised both hands in surrender and stepped down from the carriage, her body trembling.

She appeared very unsteady, her legs barely able to support her weight.

“Please, just let me check on my mentor for a moment… Just a moment is all I need. She’ll die if we leave her like this! A person will die!”

Emerson pleaded through sobs, but received only the cold response to ‘worry about your own life.’

She kept glancing back toward Lucy’s location while forcing her reluctant feet forward.

“Oh please! I’m begging you, okay?”

The soldiers’ attention shifted to Emerson’s loud protests and resistance. Melissa watched carefully, waiting for Emerson to get closer.

“Huu, uuugh…”

When the sobbing Emerson came right next to her.

Thud!

She shoved Emerson away with her entire body.

Thrown onto the driver’s seat without time to cry out, Emerson jerked her head up. The startled horse stamped its hooves while the soldiers rushed to subdue them.

“My lady!”

The carriage suddenly took off, with Emerson’s cry of ‘what are you doing?’ being the last thing heard. Those trying to climb into the carriage to reach Lucy tumbled down like dominoes.

“Catch them!”

The soldiers fired their guns during the pursuit. This only made the horse, feeling threatened for its survival, run more frantically straight ahead.

‘Thank goodness…’

Emerson could go to town and bring help. Better to let at least one person escape to find a way to survive than have all of them captured.

Though Melissa could have taken the driver’s seat herself, considering Lucy’s need for emergency treatment, she chose Emerson. That was the way to save the most people.

‘It will only be for a little while.’

So don’t worry, little one. I’ll protect you too… Without fail.

Melissa had fallen to the ground after the impact with Emerson. With bound wrists, she couldn’t push against the ground to support her heavy body and get up. She coughed in the dust and brought both hands to her belly.

* * *

The familiar smell of mold and damp air.

The musty odor and cold cement chill of a sealed space without a trace of light seemed to seep into her bones.

Melissa’s eyes flew open.

Was she dreaming?

Or had she returned to the past?

She was imprisoned in Sorbet’s cell.

Had everything until now been a dream?

Or was this the dream?

Unable to discern reality in the darkness, she felt her way along the floor while standing up. Her body felt heavy. Touching her round, swollen belly brought a reassuring sense of reality.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, revealing moving shadows and whispering voices.

“Are you awake?”

The voice from across the iron bars belonged to an unfamiliar woman.

“How much… time has passed? Where is this…?”

“It’s the Marquis’s underground prison. Where that madman keeps women. I’m Ena, and to your left is Laura, to your right is Reina.”

Weak greetings echoed in succession after the woman’s introduction. How many women were imprisoned here?

She’d sensed something was wrong with the Marquis, but she hadn’t imagined he was this deranged. Melissa desperately hoped Emerson would bring help before anything serious happened, and asked about the date.

“It must have been two days? It’s hard to tell when it’s all dark.”

“We thought you were dead. You weren’t waking up at all.”

“It was definitely two days ago, right?”

“Yes, it probably was.”

Several voices chimed in like a chorus of split personalities. Even in Sorbet, the worst prison, there had been light to distinguish day from night, but here the darkness was so complete it seemed capable of driving one mad before escape.

“Can’t we turn on any lights?”

“The Marquis turns them on when he comes in. Just briefly.”

“Or for a moment during meal distribution.”

“That’s when we clean.”

“We only get fed once a day.”

“And even then, it’s often just leftovers. Probably what’s left from their banquets.”

When multiple voices responded to her single question, Melissa felt disoriented.

What initially seemed jarring became clear after a few hours of conversation – they had to keep talking to maintain their sanity. They were all speaking to avoid losing themselves in the darkness.

“Was there anything strange when you were captured?”

“Strange? Well…”

“I was picking mushrooms in the mountains when soldiers suddenly took me away. Said I needed permission since it was the Marquis’s land. Said they’d punish me if I didn’t comply.”

“I was working at the Border Commander’s house, hanging laundry when suddenly…”

“Border Commander?”

Were they all complicit?

Melissa’s brow furrowed deeply. That would mean the Imperial army in this region was in collusion with the Marquis, so even if Emerson asked for help in town, there would be no one to assist.

Melissa’s head began to burn. She couldn’t have merely slept for two days; she must have been feverish and unconscious. She worried about the baby’s wellbeing. Without medicinal herbs, the brand on her arm stung like a fresh burn.

“Hah…”

Melissa closed her eyes, leaning against the wall with exhaustion etched on her face. Just then, the door opened with a clang.

“Meal time!”

When a woman shouted, everyone crowded against the iron bars. What happened to all that talk about cleaning? Her mind felt hazy. Then, instead of a servant, Marquis Allonde himself appeared.

“Only good children get bread. I wonder who’ll be the best today?”

While some deliberately hid without moving, those who seemed to have been imprisoned here longer reached out their hands, smiling like trained dogs.

Melissa’s face drained of color at this sight. This was sick, twisted entertainment. She couldn’t have imagined such horrors existed in the world.

Finally, it was Melissa’s turn. She sat in front of the iron bars and quietly looked up at the man holding the mixed food. When she shot him a contemptuous look, his smile twisted grotesquely, resembling black ink dissolving in clear water.

“Me-Melissa Grey.”

He excitedly put down the food and crawled forward on his knees.

The man grabbed the iron bars of Melissa’s cell with both hands and stared at her with reverence.

“To think I could get my hands on you – it truly was heaven-sent! You look just like him. It’s uncanny how much you resemble your grandfather!”

The man spoke excitedly, shaking the iron bars with all his might, unable to contain his rising emotions.

His eyes revealed complete insanity. Though she didn’t want to speak with such a person, she needed to stay calm to gather information.

“…So you met my grandfather.”

“Of course I did! When the Duke was around, we nobles had it so easy. It was a world where we could bring in and kill a hundred women like these and no one would bat an eye.”

Stay calm.

“Now it’s such a hassle having to set traps.”

Stay… calm.

“Such things couldn’t possibly have been tolerated even then.”

“You really don’t know your grandfather, do you? Well, I suppose the ‘noble’ young lady only saw the pretty and beautiful things growing up.”

She couldn’t deny that was true. Melissa’s hell began with her family’s downfall, and all the filthy afterimages she saw started from then.

“The Duke would permit anything the nobles did. Even things like… this.”

Melissa got up and stumbled toward the iron bars. The dim light revealed the women with unkempt hair one by one. Unlike their normal conversational state, they were skeletal thin with sunken eyes. Their hair hadn’t been cut deliberately – it seemed to have fallen out in clumps from malnutrition.

When they scratched their unwashed heads, matted hair and blood scabs stuck to their fingers. The sight struck Melissa like a massive hammer to her head.

She thought she knew.

That her grandfather’s unforgivable actions had led to justified revolution.

She thought she knew that. A hundred, a thousand times in her head…

She knew… She definitely knew.

“Now that the revolution has happened, you’re the first noble I’ve captured. So you’re like, a treasure! A treasure bestowed upon me who only collected commoners!”

The Marquis’s words corroded Melissa’s heart like acid.

As he rambled on, seeing the women who must have been trapped in this hell longer than her three years, her legs gave out and she collapsed.

Her grandfather would often go down to Bayern claiming business matters. The nobles and military officers of this region must have been the ones attending to him then.

Would her shrewd grandfather really have been unaware of this man’s atrocities?

And this was just a rural border region.

Just a small village where traces of the old Sys remained, untouched by the winds of revolution.

But thinking of the people who must have lived without being treated as human beings even in such a small village, Melissa realized she too was guilty for having lived ignorant of these facts.

There was a vast difference between merely knowing information and truly understanding it.

The truth hit her like a physical force – similar to suddenly grasping deep in your bones a maxim you’ve memorized a hundred times to never forget. The truth was harsh, cruel, and dragged her down to rock bottom by the ankles.

Melissa.

Grey.

That inseparable name.

She realized.

That trying to live as just ‘Melissa’ was nothing but an evasion of responsibility.

Tears welled up in Melissa’s red eyes.