He called the man his teacher, but it was no normal relationship between master and pupil, and he was forced to spend a childhood steeped in terrible blood.

‘Aaagh! Aaah!’

The black magic he learned and acquired through t*rture inflicted directly on his own body reached toward ever deeper levels of mastery. At some point, Theodore no longer needed a teacher. He had grown weary of the endless experiments and pain.

Time to leave.

On that day, the illegal mage tower became a great pool of blood. Standing before the corpses, pondering where to go, the young demon was met by the Grand Witch, who was said to be able to alter the laws of nature itself.

‘Hello there. You smell good, like blood.’

‘……You are not human.’

He knew the moment he saw her.

She and Theodore were the same kind.

‘Young mage, you carry the bloodline of the demon realm. What a splendid and magnificent shell you have. You will continue to grow and flourish. What do you say, won’t you come with me?’

‘Will it be interesting, going with you?’

‘Of course.’

The hand the witch extended was exceptionally white and fine. It was then that Theodore felt the emotion of being enchanted for the first time. In the moonlight, the witch’s energy visibly rippling was a pleasing sight. He wanted to possess it.

‘All right. Take me with you.’

And so he took her hand without much deliberation. Without even knowing what it meant to become the witch’s assistant, or her shadow.

The witch killed and devoured many people.

She spread despair like a natural disaster and sought to swallow anything and everything to fill the hollow in her chest. She was a mass of desire.

The seed of the demon realm, a Black Mage born wrongly as a human, learned those emotions. Ah, so that is greed. So that is the feeling of wanting to possess something. I too am captivated by that witch’s power.

Then one day.

‘I must go to the imperial palace.’

The witch’s interest fixed itself on the empire’s imperial family.

It was a desire born after she saw the emperor, a magnificent and powerful soul, and the empress smiling beautifully at his side.

It was probably jealousy.

The witch’s curse proceeded in secret.

She brought down the empress, whose constitution was frail, and targeted the gaps in the emperor’s weakened mind.

Theodore lent his hand to that process as well.

When she bewitched and enchanted and recited the words of the curse, it was the Black Mage’s power that made that force real.

He had no interest in what kind of despair it would bring to someone, or how deep a wound it would leave. He only thought that the imperial palace would now become his new home.

And before long, that imagining became reality. The witch, smiling with alluring grace, was now addressed as Her Highness the empress consort.

Theodore hid like a shadow, and at some point was drawn forward by the witch’s hand.

The genius mage the empress consort had brought herself.

Theodore could no longer be called merely a young mage. He was not yet of age, but his frame was already that of an adult.

And so people thought of Theodore as the witch’s lover.

Of course, while she thought of the convenient Black Mage as a tool, there was no affection for Theodore in the witch’s eyes.

Theodore too found that the moments of being captivated by the witch’s power were slowly fading. When the witch left the imperial palace, he had already been thinking of parting from her.

Then one day.

‘……Who is that person?’

‘That is the princess, Iberis.’

‘……Iberis.’

He came to lay eyes on Princess Iberis, the emperor’s bloodline, who had lost everything and been made to suffer as a sacrifice for the witch’s ambition to become empress consort.

Clear silver eyes that did not know how to conceal their anger, and ebony hair.

Skin as white as snow.

Vivid red lips that shimmered clearly.

A small, delicate body.

‘Ah. She’s beautiful.’

Theodore was moved. A sensation like rapture moistened the barren inside of his chest for the first time.

‘There it was.’

The power of a monster, vivid and beautiful, cold and rippling transparently, locked inside her in a way that was hard to believe.

Theodore could feel it clearly. The true bloodline of the dragon was none other than that frail, young princess.

Ah. Beautiful. So beautiful.

I want to possess her. No, I want to be by her side.

The passion he had never properly learned, the longing, the desire that shook his mind to its core, something precious, the wish to draw close, the need to be seen favorably. Love. Love. This is love.

The young demon looked upon that overwhelming power and fell in love at first sight.

That was when it began.

When the desire to approach the young princess began to swell and grow in him.

The wish to somehow find a way to help her survive, away from the witch’s eyes. And the wish for himself to be at her side!

The problem was that the witch was exceptionally perceptive, and showed a vicious obsession with anything she considered her own.

To the Grand Witch, Theodore was her mirror.

An assistant who said only what she wished to hear, who could be commanded with ease, who could be trusted absolutely. A shadow. Her hands and feet. A clear hand mirror that reflected her and showed her exactly as she was.

One day the witch asked, ‘Theodore, Theodore. Who is the most beautiful one in this palace?’

What she meant by beautiful was not a matter of appearance alone.

Latent power, all of it.

The witch wanted confirmation of her own future from the Black Mage, a seed of the demon realm who was drawn absolutely to great power.

That she would reign for a long time in this imperial family she had grown so fond of, commanding the emperor like a paper doll.

That she would claim the great power flowing in the emperor’s blood, bear the child in her womb, and rise from triumph to triumph.

But Theodore said it anyway.

He did not know how to lie.

‘The Snow Princess.’

‘What?’

‘The most beautiful one is not you.’

White skin, deep black hair, vivid red irises like crushed cherries. The Snow Princess, pitiful and wretched, suffering every hardship under the emperor who had grown cold after losing his wife.

He thought of her, growing up truly beautiful, just as people said.

‘Princess Iberis. She is the most beautiful.’

Theodore, still immature and lacking in the emotional realm, did not know what resolve the Grand Witch had come to at the sound of that voice, drunk on passion.

The origin of the problem.

The very first of all the tragedies.

It had been Theodore’s provocation.

The witch killed the emperor. She drew Theodore into that process. She even whispered with a small smile.

‘Listen well, you greedy little demon. Iberis, once she learns you helped kill her father, will never keep you by her side. Whether in death or in life, you have no choice but to be my tool. Do you understand?’

Ah, what a shame.

He had thought that if he killed the witch and welcomed the princess, she might keep him close the way she kept that beloved attendant of hers or that beast of a knight.

Perhaps the witch’s words were right.

Even so, Theodore did not let go of his longing for his love. He knew her cold gaze looked at him with contempt, but he did not care.

It did not have to take the form of love, did it?

If she hated him more than anyone else in the world, that would be enough.

At last the decisive moment came.

Theodore, who had been feigning obedience and following the witch, succeeded in bringing her down.

He could not forget the vivid rush of feeling when he met Iberis’s eyes as she appeared like a thunderbolt, her power so fierce it seemed to tear the air.

‘It is a gift for you.’

‘Your curse remained in my father’s body. You are the witch’s instrument. Why did you do this?’

‘It was all, all for you. I, I, I……’

‘There are countless people who died at your hands, and you dare say such things? How dare you, how dare you! How dare you look at me with those eyes?’

Ah, the witch had been right. Iberis truly had no intention of accepting him easily.

But perhaps because he had helped at the decisive moment, she did not kill him and instead confined him to the tower.

She twisted his power tightly so he could not leave and made him wait for no short span of time.

Yet Theodore knew.

‘You will come looking for me.’

The vicious Grand Witch would not die quietly. She would lay a terrible curse on Iberis, who had brought her down, by whatever means she could. He believed that when that time came, his opportunity would arrive as well.

Perhaps one year.

The beautiful, noble bloodline of the dragon might hold on and hold on for that long before coming to find him. And it had become reality just like that.

‘Ah. You are looking at me.’

It was too wonderful. He wanted to press his fully *rect member against those fine hands right then and there. Whatever form the curse took, if Iberis was suffering beyond endurance, it was surely one that brought about all manner of symptoms.

If the Oracle, as he had predicted, was fulfilled through s*xual contact, then his saliva or s*xual exchange would be of great help in counteracting the energy.

I can touch her. I can hold her.

She will permit me to be at her side.