Rob Beisler’s unease, and his faint sense of dread as he watched Callios, proved to be entirely justified. Was he really going to kill him right here?

Not just anyone, but the former heir to the ducal house.

“Your Grace! We haven’t even conducted a proper interrogation yet!”

But even Rob’s desperate shout didn’t cause the slightest tremor in Callios.

At that moment, something soft and heavy bumped against Callios’s boot. His gaze flicked downward, then drifted back to Pante, whose consciousness was slowly returning.

With a look of annoyance, Callios kicked the corpse aside and gave a curt order to a nearby knight.

“It’s in the way. Burn it.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

It was the cook, his body mangled and soaked in blood. It was the same cook who had been secretly poisoning Rosie under Pante’s orders all this time.

Because of him, she had been unable to carry a child to term and had been humiliated by being branded barren.

His death was more than deserved.

A murderous gleam flickered across Callios’s eyes. None of the men here would be leaving this place alive.

At last, Pante fully regained his senses. Looking around, he began to scream; the gash on his neck was sending excruciating pain shooting through him.

“A—agh! My neck! What—what is this?!”

He seemed equally stunned by the fact that he was bound in a dungeon.

“What is this… what is going on—”

“What else?”

Callios replied dryly, almost amused.

“Men dying because you decided to do something foolish.”

It was the cook, his body mangled and soaked in blood. It was the same cook who had been secretly poisoning Rosie under Pante’s orders all this time.

Because of him, she had been unable to carry a child to term and had been humiliated by being branded barren.

His death was more than deserved.

A murderous gleam flickered across Callios’s eyes. None of the men here would be leaving this place alive.

At last, Pante fully regained his senses. Looking around, he began to scream; the gash on his neck was sending excruciating pain shooting through him.

“Lord Pante!”

“P-please, spare us!”

The captured men wailed, looking only to Pante for salvation.

At that, Pante Benedict began to laugh—wild, unhinged.

“You’ll all—hah—you’ll all die soon! You, and that wom— ugh!”

The moment he uttered an insult about Rosie, Callios’s boot cut sharply through the air. One merciless kick to the gut left Pante convulsing and choking uncontrollably, tears streaming down his face.

Rob Beisler, who had been watching from the sidelines, stepped forward, looking distressed.

“Your Grace, if you kick an ordinary man like that, he’ll die. We still have plenty to extract—”

“If you’re only going to get in the way, step out.”

Callios didn’t even look at him as he issued the cold command.

Rob hesitated, turning back several times before pleading earnestly:

“Please think of the lady, my lord. Our blades are meant only for the battlefield.”

“…You talk too much, Rob.”

“Bloodstains don’t wash off easily.”

Callios paused. As if making an excuse, he murmured quietly:

“She asked me to avenge her.”

“And I doubt the revenge she meant looks anything like this.”

It wasn’t a rebuke; it was a plea not to lose himself. It was a warning that if he became too brutal, Rosie might once again be driven away by fear.

Hearing her name, Rosie, slowly thawed the frost in Callios’s eyes. He clicked his tongue, repeating Rob’s words of caution in his head.

“Pointless meddling.”

Still, the boiling haze in his mind cooled just enough for reason to seep back in.

‘I can’t kill him yet.’

In truth, there was no need to kill everyone here. The people from the Kuhote Kingdom were off-limits — he could not kill them on a whim.

They were not yet at war with the kingdom, and proof of Kuhote agents infiltrating an imperial ducal estate would provide the perfect pretext for war.

If he could use something, he would. War was inevitable — it was better to prepare the most advantageous terms beforehand.

Only then could he return safely.

‘Return? To Rosie?’

A crooked, self-mocking smile tugged at his lips. The idea that he was planning for his own survival just to please her was almost laughable.

He was worthless to her. He would be better off dying in battle.

The stench of burning flesh and stale blood filled his nostrils — a smell that suited him all too well.

Then, half-delirious from pain, Pante spat out something between a threat and a curse.

“Ugh—ggh—! Cough—! You’ll die before you ever spend a day with that woman. Dragged to the front lines, dead before anyone notices. That’s the plan.”

“Right. And?”

“H-how is that not— You’re going to die, I said!”

“And why should that matter?”

Callios treated even his own death as trivial so trivial that he mocked Pante for being shocked by it.

“So you dragged in outside forces… all for that? To kill me?”

“Y-you filth—!”

“If I’m filth, then what does that make you, caught by the same filth without lifting a finger?”

“Urk!”

Tears welled in Pante’s eyes—from humiliation, from rage, from the collapse of his own pride.

Callios let out a low chuckle.

His gaze drifted to a large sack tossed carelessly in the corner, and he whispered with cruel ease:

“I’ve forgotten what mercy feels like. Whenever I showed any, everyone conveniently forgot their own obligations.”

“When did you ever show something like that?!”

“Let me enlighten you. Your only duty was to help Rosie adjust to this house. That one thing. If you couldn’t do that, you could’ve at least stopped your half-wit mother’s nonsense.”

Crushed beneath the humiliation, Pante bowed his head, sobbing soundlessly.

“So unfortunate for you, If things went wrong, you meant to flee to the Kuhote Kingdom, didn’t you? And yet you failed even to escape.”

Leaving Pante to crumble on his own, Callios turned to the knights.

“Don’t kill the Kuhote men. We’ll interrogate them, leave them alive enough.”

In other words, t*rture was permitted.

The Kuhote prisoners and Pante’s henchmen trembled violently in their chains. They looked desperately to Pante for help, relief, or even just some sign of leadership.

But Pante, consumed by his own despair, refused to acknowledge them.

Moments earlier, Pante had been laughing like a madman, but now he screamed suddenly as if he had been struck by lightning. He still had a sliver of hope left.

“But—some managed to escape! They’ll bring reinforcements—”

Before he could finish, Callios threw the large sack from the corner straight at Pante’s feet. The rope was loosely tied and slipped free, causing severed heads to tumble out across the floor.

One of them, rolling until it stopped right at Pante’s toes, belonged to his most loyal follower.

“Oh. I forgot.”

Callios spoke casually to the now bloodless Pante.

“The ones who ran? I’ve already caught and beheaded all of them.”

There were plenty of others left to interrogate anyway.

Callios lifted one corner of his mouth, deliberately provoking him.

“Reinforcements? And what exactly were you planning with something that pathetic?”

With that final thread of hope cut, Pante completely unraveled. He shrieked like a man possessed.

“AAAHHH! You filthy monster! You demon! You gutter-born rat! Father should have never brought you home!”

Tears streamed down his face as he thrashed violently.

“I curse you, Callios! Die—die!”

“Enough.”

Callios grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up. His face was demonic.

“A man who’s never killed anyone. Running his mouth like that.”

No, Pante had killed her.

His former wife. The child who died without ever seeing the light of day.

Long ago, he had even killed the loyal hound who had followed Callios so faithfully.

Everything precious had been destroyed at the hands of Pante Benedict.

Callios pulled harder, enough to tear hair from the scalp. His black, murderous eyes bored into the writhing man as he issued a quiet warning.

“You’ll suffer more alive. You’ll end up longing for the day you finally die.”

Then he flung Pante’s head aside as though it were an insect.

But Pante was already too far gone to register his words.

Callios found his pathetic flailing almost amusing.

‘You can’t even endure this?’

He had long since become a monster, killing those who begged him for mercy and those who had pushed him to become one. He killed simply to survive.

He wanted to live — to see her and keep her close.

If he didn’t kill, he would die.

From boyhood until now, he had climbed this far on the blood and stolen lives of others. To Callios, Pante’s contorted, venomous face was laughable.

‘Is that all your hatred amounts to? No wonder you’re crushed beneath me.’

Leaving Pante to convulse so violently that the chains rattled, Callios turned and strode out.

He would give his enemy — the one who had taken everything from him — a far more fitting end. Something crueler. Something far more horrifying.

No, he would not kill him yet.

The foul, stagnant air of the dungeon clung to him as he left. Outside, he brushed the blood from his cloak and ordered the attendant trailing behind him.

“Prepare the bath.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He shrugged off the blood-splattered cloak and looked in the mirror. The bloodshot eyes staring back at him looked possessed, as though a demon had taken residence within him.

‘This won’t do.’

He was going to see Rosie.

After becoming a murderer, he couldn’t face her.

Callios dragged a hand across his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, his black irises appeared calmer, colder and more restrained — almost frighteningly controlled.

She didn’t need to see blood, death or hell’s filth. He would bear all that alone.

But then… something strange happened.

He didn’t understand why the lingering stench of blood clinging to his body suddenly felt so exhausting.

This sort of thing had never bothered him before. But today, it wore him down.

All he wanted was to go to her and bury his head in her warm embrace.

In her arms, everything would feel as though it would wash away: Even this loathsome smell of blood, even his sins.

Callios sank his massive body into a tub of steaming water and felt a drowsy heaviness settle over him. White steam blurred his vision in seconds.

‘Just for a moment.’

Leaning his hardened arms against the edge of the bath, he drifted off. Water spilled over the edge of the tub and trickled steadily across the floor.

***

Quite some time had passed when Rosie noticed a servant searching for her with a pale face.

“The duke still hasn’t come out?”

“Yes, my lady. He’s been in the bath for a long while now… We’re worried something might have happened. He isn’t responding.”

“What? Then go inside and check.”

“Well… if we enter while he’s bathing, we’ll be in serious trouble.”

Callios hated showing his body to others. Anyone who had barged in carelessly in the past had suffered harsh punishment.

By now, the water must have gone cold and the servants were shifting anxiously from foot to foot.

Rosie rose from the bed, her expression tightening, and followed them. They all hovered near the bathroom door, unable to bring themselves to enter.

A chill seemed to seep from the space beyond.

Standing before the door, Rosie spoke firmly.

“I’ll go in. Open it.”