It looked, at a glance, like he was soothing her. His large, hot hands moved steadily over Karin’s drained body. And before long, his breath came to her.

His heat mingled into her still-unsteady breathing. He pressed his lips to hers just barely, and let through only the smallest amount of air. Just enough for her to take in.

A damp sound spread through the bathroom, fitting for the space. With only touch and hearing to rely on, what she had seen moments ago felt like a lingering afterimage. She could breathe somewhat more easily now.

“Haa……”

As the fear gradually thinned, every sensation touching her body sharpened into clarity.

His arm wrapped around her waist. Their bodies pressed flush together. The heat radiating from him, and Feron’s desire moving softly through her mouth.

Karin was about to push away the hand covering her eyes.

“Not yet.”

A voice unmistakably Feron’s resonated from within her mouth.

But she had to see.

Whether what she had seen just now was real or a hallucination. Whether the man pressed against her was truly her husband. Whether he was at least human.

But he did not pull back. He pressed deeper and moved down toward her nape. He seemed to be grazing the skin with his teeth, then sank them into her shoulder.

“Agh!”

The pain sent the world spinning before her eyes.

“Are you insane? That hurts!”

She grabbed his hair and yanked with everything she had, and managed to pull Feron away.

She touched the shoulder he had bitten, and felt dampness. She did not need to look to know what it was. Red blood had spread across the corner of Feron’s mouth.

“What are you even……. Why did you suddenly……”

He stood exactly where he had been pushed, motionless, and slowly raised his head.

Between the disheveled black strands of hair, the ash gray eyes she had seen before came into view.

‘No? Did I see wrong? Right now they look like Feron’s…… No, they’re back again.’

So they kept overlapping. Without Feron even blinking, his normal eyes and those monstrous irises were alternating in front of her.

Watching this up close, Karin let out a shaky breath.

‘I must be losing my mind.’

The idea that something had gone wrong with her own head was less terrifying than accepting that the Feron in front of her was a monster.

Karin pressed down the pain rising from her shoulder as best she could and forced her stiff body to move.

“Karin.”

She tried to get out of there quickly, and he grabbed her arm.

Karin did not turn to face Feron. She only twisted her wrist. Feron let her go without resistance, releasing her as she tried to flee.

If there was any comfort to be found in a situation like this, it was that the voice calling her name sounded no different from the Feron she knew. And that, in the end, he had not truly harmed her.

But there was no stopping the fear that surged at the sight of something so wrong. Karin barely made it out of his room and dragged her unsteady legs back to the office. Her pounding heart refused to settle.

***

“This is insane. This is absolutely insane!”

It was a roar more than a shout. Furious, heavy footsteps shoved through a narrow corridor.

‘That monster b*stard is alive? That can’t be right.’

Golden hair that shone bright yellow even beneath the sparse torchlight. Elwin, his hair in wild disarray, stormed down a spiral staircase.

He had now confirmed Feron’s survival from both Karin and the emperor himself.

“D*mn it! What the h*ll is going on? I checked, I made sure!”

He entered the laboratory sealed behind an iron door and kicked a nearby flowerpot out of spite. It broke with a thud. He crushed the pieces underfoot and came to stand before a cluttered table.

He swept aside the haphazardly piled documents, and what appeared beneath was a square box.

The kind that looked like it might hold fine desserts.

Twist open the interlocked clasp, lift the lid, and seven compartments appeared. Inside each one sat a shriveled piece of wood.

No. Mummified fragments that only looked like wood.

The essence of an ancient monster passed down among the Romantus.

He had used the essence of “Devouring L*st,” said to be the most powerful among them, the essence of “the Devourer,” to kill Feron!

Bang.

He slammed his fist down on the table, and the remaining fragments inside the box rattled.

Six fragments remained, excluding Devouring L*st.

The activation condition for an essence was the blood of a sacrifice to serve as its prey.

He had gone on a hunt with Feron and shot him with an arrow. He had tried to obtain his blood under the pretense of treating a misfired shot, but the monster of a man had dodged the arrow even from that distance.

After several more attempts, he had finally managed to get blood on an arrowhead.

He could still remember the expression on that b*stard’s face as he kept insisting it was an accident.

Did he smirk? Yes. He probably did.

Just thinking about that day made his blood boil. No. Going back even further, there had been no shortage of infuriating things.

Like Karin’s marriage, for one.

That man had the nerve to ask for Karin, someone who had no business being with him, and refused to back down even after his warning.

He had locked Karin away in that gloomy Valstar estate and driven a wedge between her and himself. Karin was supposed to be with him, and some worthless nobody had gotten in the way.

And his father, clinging to that beggar for whatever gain he thought he could squeeze out of it.

The sight of him scrambling to keep hold of the emperor’s crown was no better. With his sight failing him, it made no sense why he kept delaying his own son’s marriage.

Did he want to hold onto that throne for that long?

Everything he had said to Karin was the truth.

He had wanted her, and circumstances simply had not allowed it. So he had tried to remove Feron, and yet……

“Why is he still alive?”

These were objects he had obtained with great difficulty by digging up the tomb of the Romantus chieftain.

He had combed through historical records again and again to confirm that the essences were real.

On top of that, he had watched with his own eyes as Devouring L*st activated.

He remembered vividly the moment the black smoke slipped out of the laboratory and latched onto that foreign b*stard.

Just the sight of it had sent chills crawling across his entire body, and he had not slept for days afterward. That was how ominous it had been.

‘Maybe I’ll try this one next.’

If that b*stard had not died from Devouring L*st, he could simply send a different monster. And if he survived that too, he would just use another essence. That was all.

Again. As many times as it took. Until that b*stard died, as long as the curse held.

Karin had always been his. She was someone who only shone at his side. So he would take her back.

“The arrowhead……”

It was absolutely unthinkable for the crown prince of the great Girian Empire to have something taken from him. An outrage that must never be allowed to happen. All the more so when the one responsible was some foreign nobody who had crawled in from who knew where.

“Ah, here it is. Good.”

He took out the parasitic creature’s mummy and moved to press the arrowhead stained with Feron’s blood into it.

But a sudden sting at his fingertip made Elwin’s expression freeze.

‘……Blood?’

A thin red line cut across his index finger stood out clearly.

A scene surfaced in Elwin’s rapidly turning mind.

The moment he had shoved aside the scattered papers on the cluttered table to find the box.

Surely not.

He set the mummy down on the table and moved quickly to press the arrowhead into it.

He was trying to send the parasitic creature to Feron before it could latch onto him instead.

“Ugh! Aaaargh!”

But before he could drive the arrowhead down, the mummy’s shell cracked apart.

It transformed in an instant into a plump white larva and burrowed into his nostril.

He tried to pull it out, but it only pushed deeper inside.

“Ngh…… Ghk!”

The only sharp thing in his hand was the arrowhead stained with Feron’s blood.

Elwin thrashed and drove it into his own nose.

Once was not enough, so he stabbed it in again and again, grinding it in.

But what came next was darkness.