“Breathe. Slowly.”

She obeyed, taking a few deep breaths. As the haze in her vision cleared, her gaze finally regained focus.

“Y-Your Highness?”

“Yes.”

“I, I…”

Raylin’s voice wavered as she looked down at the gun in her hands and then at the man lying motionless on the floor. Before she could finish her sentence, Aiger pulled her closer by the waist.

“There’s no need to say anything more.”

Her lips pressed into a tight line as she stared blankly at her own hands—gripping the gun so tightly that they had turned deathly pale from lack of circulation.

‘I… killed someone.’

Even when she had thought her hands were stained with blood before, she had never actually taken a life.

She knew it had been self-defense and that she had no reason to drown in useless guilt.

In fact, she was far more clearheaded now than she had been moments ago when she had been mindlessly clicking an empty gun.

Yet, the sensation of something thick and filthy roiling inside her refused to dissipate, threatening to consume her whole.

Like the characters in countless films and novels, like so many people in reality, the nameless corpse before her would surely haunt her nightmares from now on.

Just as Raylin felt herself sinking into the darkness of her own making—

“Well done.”

Aiger’s voice rang through her mind, clear and steady.

“Well done. You did well.”

His words were simple—too simple. Whether they were meant as comfort, praise, or both, Raylin didn’t know.

But just like that, they pulled her out of the abyss.

Her stiff body finally relaxed, and she let her head rest against his chest.

For a long moment, they remained silent, sharing nothing but each other’s warmth.

Then, after a brief pause, Aiger spoke again.

“Kertan’s sister is safe. There’s no need for you to check on her yourself.”

Raylin let out a soft sigh, a faint smile curling at her lips at his clumsy attempt to reassure her.

“If Your Highness says so, I’ll believe it. Could you send her to Greuga’s estate?”

There was a slight pause before he gave his answer.

“I will.”

Raylin had been preparing to explain her reasoning, but she asked instead, “Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“You said so yourself, didn’t you?”

Hearing her words echo back at her, Raylin felt something warm bloom in her chest. It made her want to explain, even though he hadn’t asked.

“Kertan is in the imperial palace, but I thought it would be better for his younger sister to stay at the Greuga estate. There’s also the issue of bringing a woman into the imperial palace, and—no, it’s not Your Highness that’s the problem, it’s just that…”

Raylin had carefully organized her thoughts just moments ago, yet now her words faltered.

A strong premonition warned her that saying anything more would lead to disaster, so she closed her mouth.

Aiger, looking down at the top of her head, furrowed his brows and let out a soft chuckle.

“I see. If I were to have issues with women, it would put you in a difficult position.”

“Difficult…?”

The words “Not at all” stuck in her throat like a thorn had lodged there.

‘Right. Since I’m Aiger’s fiancée, it would be a problem.’

Even if they had no personal feelings, they were officially engaged, so maintaining at least a minimum level of decorum was necessary.

Raylin quickly accepted this perfectly natural line of reasoning.

As she spun thoughts around in her head, Aiger unwrapped the arm he had placed around her slender waist and got up first.

Since Raylin was no longer in distress, they could no longer sit on the cold ground.

Besides, the blood of the dead man was slowly seeping outward. If they lingered any longer, it would become problematic.

“Let’s get up.”

Raylin tried to grab Aiger’s outstretched hand to rise, but she let out a dry laugh after a few attempts.

“Um, Your Highness… Would you mind carrying me?”

The tips of her ears turned red with embarrassment, and she rolled her eyes away, unable to meet his gaze.

“My legs… I can’t seem to put any strength into them. I think they’ve completely given out.”

When her awkwardly mumbled excuse left her lips, Aiger slid one arm under her knees and supported her back with the other, effortlessly lifting her.

Unlike when they had arrived, she was now being held like a princess. Feeling bewildered, Raylin started to look up at him but quickly lowered her gaze instead.

For some reason, she had a terrible feeling that something would go very wrong if she looked at him now.

Something like… her heart dropping from her chest with a heavy thud.

Holding her breath, Raylin remained still in his arms as Aiger walked out of the building.

He kept a sharp eye on their surroundings as they descended from the second floor to the first and then stepped outside.

As expected, there was no one left alive.

Just as he had sensed on his way up to the third floor.

This meant the man who had been sprawled at Raylin’s feet had already been dead—or at the very least, was moments away from dying.

But how had he managed to crawl from the second floor to the third if that was the case?

His body should have already been at the point where it could no longer move, to the extent that Aiger had deemed him a corpse not worth finishing off.

A sickeningly greedy and insidious voice echoed in Aiger’s mind like a thunderclap at that moment.

“You mean to say you can create a potion that revives even the dead?”

Aiger had first heard about it when he sneaked into his father’s bedchamber one night when strands of gray had started appearing at the emperor’s temples.

Back then, he had dismissed the emperor as a wretched man, enslaved by power, driven mad enough to view even his son as a political rival to be eliminated.

‘A potion that could bring back the dead?’

You’d only read about it in fairy tales or novels.

But then, he saw it on a day when he was fleeing an assassin’s trap.

Dozens of mages, long since reduced to useless husks. Alchemists who, by every account, seemed suspicious beyond belief. Renowned scholars of the empire, declared missing, were now bound like criminals and herded toward some unknown destination.

At the time, he hadn’t known where they were being taken. But in the following days, he witnessed bizarre events throughout the imperial palace.

Then, Aiger realized the emperor had gone mad with his pursuit of eternal life.

Even after that revelation, gathering further information was difficult. The experiments were conducted with such extreme secrecy that even Aiger could only catch occasional, fragmented reports.

According to the most recent intel…

“They temporarily reanimated a corpse?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what they said. It’s only temporary, but they did, in fact, bring the dead back to life…”

But Aiger quickly shoved the memory aside.

No, that was absurd.

A miracle drug born from the emperor’s top-secret, nightmarishly concealed experiments wouldn’t possibly end up in the hands of some lowlife thug from the backstreets.

It was far more plausible that the man had ingested or injected some unknown drug—a narcotic, perhaps—to dull his pain and push his failing body into motion.

And yet… the possibility that the emperor’s so-called elixir had entered the underworld wasn’t zero.

“Hah? Where the hell would you even find such a ridiculous potion? Hah? And if it did exist, how would you test its effects? The only way, of course, would be to feed it to a corpse. The more test subjects you use and the more results you observe, the better you can understand the drug’s efficacy and side effects, right?”

The man had an atrocious way of speaking, but his skills were undeniable.

Any drug, no matter what it was, required test subjects.

And the more, the better.

If the emperor’s elixir had yielded even a fraction of successful results, then even outside of war, the perfect testing ground would be the slums—where dozens, if not hundreds, of people died every day, unseen and unknown.

A fierce, icy fire blazed in Aiger’s deep blue eyes, colder than the steel of winter.

The likelihood was slim, but it was worth investigating.

As they stepped outside, the midday sun poured down upon them.

The oppressive darkness of the backstreets, which had weighed on them inside the dimly lit building, melted away like snow in spring.

Raylin lifted her head and breathed deeply, exhaling heavily like someone surfacing from underwater.

By the time the thick scent of blood, more potent than the metallic smell that had lingered at the tip of her nose, had somewhat dissipated…

“Hoo… The body on the third-floor stairs— Never mind. It’s nothing.”

Aiger’s subordinate started to mention the bullet-riddled corpse at the end of the third-floor staircase but quickly shut his mouth under Aiger’s gaze and changed the subject.

“She briefly opened her eyes but soon lost consciousness again.”

While dealing with the back alley fixer, Kertan’s younger sister neither screamed nor attempted to escape.

That was because she had already lost consciousness.

At a glance, she appeared to be asleep, but considering how she remained unresponsive despite the clashing of blades, the deep indentations forming on the floor and walls, and the overwhelming scent of blood, it was more accurate to say she wasn’t merely in a deep sleep—she was in a state where she couldn’t wake up at all.

As Raylin craned her neck to get a better look at her, Aiger asked,

“Are you alright now?”