“What’s wrong? You barely touch your meat.”
The voice was wrong—too wrong. Anyone could hear the hunger in it, the twisted lust aimed at a silver-haired girl. But Alice had no strength left to fight. All of it was gone the moment she chipped the gold from her father’s body. Right now she was more like a marionette, pulled by anything else but her will. Her body slumped in the chair, eyes were hollowed like a snuff out star as she yet again need to endure another moment of harrowing mind torture.
In front of her lay a slab of half-raw meat, the kind a beast might tear into. Once, she forced herself to chew it, only to gag later in the bathroom. When she couldn’t vomit, she drove her fingers down her throat until the food came up. But lately, as her mother drifted further away, even that effort seemed pointless. Everything she ate tasted the same: ashes on her tongue, emptiness in her stomach.
“Nothing...”
Every time she mistakenly called Sieg Herr, there was another “punishment” waiting for her—another slab of half-raw meat she had to eat, another rabbit to skin, or another dog to shoot. Yet even so, calling him that word felt repulsive to her, like bile that refused to rise no matter how hard she tried to spit it out.
“Hmmm. Is it about that boy you pushed?”
Of course he knew about it, he knew everything there was about her.
“Yes…”
“Hmm, should I make his parents have accident?”
She lifted her head, what does this man even mean?
“Sorry He-Papa, but what do you mean?”
“Let me tell you something my little cub. His parents won’t settle, not because the boy no, but because his parents hate Edwin. Even when you are kind and altruistic there are still people that hate you. That’s why being kind is useless.” He rubbed his chin. “The only way for you and your mom to be free was to make them die, plain and simple.”
The suggestion was as revolting as the man who made it. The thought of someone offering to kill another human being as casually as offering another bite of meat sickened Alice. Were all nobles like this? When something didn’t go their way, did they simply arrange an “accident” for whoever caused the inconvenience? She nearly vomited at the thought, but she held it in.
“But mother was going to pay them.” She said.
“Ah then she is making a mistake,” Sieg said as he took a bite of the meat. “I am sure that they plan on taking the money and use it to bribe the judge or something.”
“No, but mother said…”
“Listen little cub, women aren’t made for politics,” He said as he chew loudly, “That also include you, that’s why you just need to stay as my little cub, and let me take care everything for you.”
“But… But….”
“Look, I won’t force you to follow my suggestion. I’ll leave those people alone.”
“…”
“But if you change your mind—and you will—you can come to me anytime. I’ll always be here for you.” He grinned, blood running down his teeth as he chewed. “Now eat, my little cub. I won’t have you thin. In fact, you’ll finish another portion today.”
“…Yes...”
After she finished her meal, he dismissed her—because he was “kind,” he said. Alice fled the restaurant as fast as her legs could carry her, dragging her body home though her strength had long since rotted away. Even her Sun had eclipsed; she was withering slowly.
She collapsed before the door, curling into herself. The wind cut her skin like spears. Her silver hair, once a mark of innocence, had gone nearly white, leeched by the world’s madness. The house felt like a mausoleum of sorrow; inside or out, the cold clung to her like maggots to rotten meat, refusing to leave even when unwelcome. In a way, it felt like her own clinging to her mother.
Her bones felt rotten, shattered into a thousand pieces, too weak to carry the cumbersome insufficiency that stank from her soul. She slumped against the door. Even the act of opening it felt too tiring.
Just as she was about to drift off, a whimper stirred her from the haze. Wan. Her only companion left.
She moved her hands weakly, trembling like a leaf on the last day of autumn, and pulled the dog close, hoping for a flicker of warmth. It came, faintly. Something in this world did not reject her love. Even if it was a lesser creature, at least something was there at all.
She held back her tears. What good did crying do? It would not resurrect her father. It would not bring that damned boy back to life. It would not stop her mother from turning into a phantom. There was no need to cry, only to push headfirst into the next day and wade into the same murk.
But it was too much. Too much for an eight-year-old to shoulder. She slept at last, blanketed by the brown fur of the last being who still wanted her love, the sharp chill of early winter’s wind stroking her to a fitful rest.
She did not know how long she slept before a kick to her face snapped her back to reality. Pain bloomed. She looked up and saw whose foot it was.
Her Sun. Her mother. Kicking her in the face.
She saw those once-bright eyes, vacant now. The same eyes that had once glimmered like sapphires under the moonlight had been hollowed out; their inner radiance scooped away by the obsidian hook of routine and. Her mother’s cheeks had sunken, her face grown gaunt and hollow, ground to nothingness by the shame of selling her own body and by having such disgrace as her own daughter.
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The sight pierced Alice’s heart, rending it open for carrion and flies to feast upon—rotting endlessly beneath the truth that it was her own existence that had drained her mother of her former beauty.
“They took the money, and still suing us.” The voice came out raspy, stripped of its former gentleness. It was a hollow echo of the woman she used to be.
“Is it not enough? Mom I have some saving you ca-“
“I took it already. I don’t know where it came from, but I don’t have strength to even guess anymore.”
“Mom, no, I was-“
“Save it, get out of my face.”
The mother pushed her daughter aside and entered the house. The projection lingered at the doorway, frozen in place as if time itself had paused for Alice to swallow the moment. It caught in her throat; breath refused to reach her lungs, and her blood turned to ice—yet she did not die. Because for her, in this moment, death would have been a gift—a final release from this cursed existence. Death would be kinder than watching her Sun fade away, not in a blaze of glory, but in the slow grind of everyday life. And life wasn’t kind enough to give her such precious gift.
“Is the memory done? Is this what caused her block?” Halwen asked, as though his own stomach could take no more.
Leopold gave no reply. His gaze had shifted to Vierna, who was crying as the image continued. Even the Achromatische Seele could no longer silence her completely. She only smiled through the tears that slid down her cheeks and soaked the thin white gown—a frail garment clinging to her like a shroud of agony, draped over the bride of sorrow.
After a moment that felt like an eternity without water, the projection finally shifted.
Alice moved from where she stood, her steps now frantic—driven by rage and grim certainty. She knew what she had to do to prevent another tragedy from befalling her mother. She couldn’t allow this. She couldn’t let her dimming Sun be imprisoned for the blood she had spilled. No—she couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
If that meant going back and being ravaged, with every speck of purity stripped from her, then so be it. As long as her Sun could rise and set freely in the blue sky.
It was okay for her to rot in the dungeon, under the bear. It was okay. She had rejected the boy’s kiss back then—and now look where it had gotten her.
She was never pure in the first place, and pretending otherwise only hurt people. So she would embrace it.
As she run, Wan padded after her. She wanted to tell him to go back—she was heading to a place where people with dog allergies lived, to beg for the very help she had once rejected. But her voice was gone. So she let him follow.
She stopped before the mansion near the town center.
Even standing across the street, the sight of it pressed against her chest. Its walls were too tall, its windows too narrow—like slits in a mask watching everything but never blinking. The iron gates coiled upward like the ribs of some dead beast, and the courtyard lay in silence, too clean, too still.
Alice’s throat tightened. The air itself seemed thicker here, as if the building drew in breath and refused to let any out.
And then came the smell. She hadn’t stepped inside, hadn’t even touched the gates, yet the stench was already there. Raw meat. Heavy, coppery, clinging to the back of her tongue as if it had seeped through the stone and iron. She couldn’t escape it. Even with her eyes shut, the reek lingered—thick enough to choke. The smell even seeped through the projection, Lina and Halwen gagged as Alice’s psyche intensify the smell which wasn’t there in the first place.
Alice braced herself however, and force march her legs towards the door. She knocked it.
“May I help you, miss?” a maid asked, stepping out.
“Is Herr Sieg here?”
“He’s still at his favorite restaurant.”
“Thank you.”
Alice dragged her feet to the place she already dreaded, the restaurant where half-raw meat was forced down her throat. She slipped past the stares of the patrons and entered the booth that had become her cage.
The bear was waiting, as if he had known she would return. She knew what she had to paid for asking this big of a favor, after all Sieg said that everything was a transaction. And the cost for this favor was something that once taken couldn’t be returned again.
As Alice tried to open her mouth, like being inside her head, Sieg speak.
“I’ll make the arrangement,” he said.
“Thank you…”
“But I want something in return.” He spread a map before her, tapping a spot nearby. “Meet me here. You can read a map, can’t you? Of course you can. My cub isn’t some blind idiot.”
“Yes....”
“Wear the black dress I gave you last week.”
“Yes…”
“Yes what?”
“…Papa.”
“Good, good. You’re doing a noble thing, helping your mother.” His grin widened. “After this, I’ll visit your home formally. I’ll marry your mother, and you will truly be my cub.”
Alice stared in silence.
“Well?”
“…Thank you, Papa.”
“Very good.” His grin broke into drool he could no longer contain. “Now go home and prepare yourself.”
She nodded and left, each step heavier than the last—like the steps of a dead man approaching his own coffin.
But this coffin was not meant for her death. No, it was meant for her purity, her humanity, and everything else within her that still held value. She would live, yes—but after what was about to happen, could that even be called living?
She went home. Passing through the door, she climbed the stairs and walked past her mother’s room. The door was half-open, and she glanced inside.
Her mother sat on the bed, staring blankly at the wall as if something invisible waited there. Her eyes were hollow, stripped of both rage and compassion—like those of someone who had long since surrendered to emptiness. Her shoulders slumped, her hands lay motionless upon the sheets. Her lips trembled, as though whispering a silent prayer—perhaps a prayer that her daughter would finally die, and stop being the shackle around her weary legs.
You made her like this, Now do something to make it right
The voice was right, she thought. So she went to her room and prepared herself. She put on the silk dress Sieg had mentioned. Despite being the softest fabric, it felt like it bit into her skin, tearing at her soul as she slid into it.
She looked into the mirror, but her face was still blurred, unreachable. She only made sure she looked decent—decent enough that Sieg would help her.
She walked on, Wan padding after her, but she ignored him.
It felt as if the moon were being swallowed by dark clouds. The road clung to her feet, as though her father’s hand were reaching from the grave, desperately trying to stop his daughter from doing the unimaginable.
And yet she pressed on, dragging her mangled heart, leaving a trail of blood with every step she took.
It was necessary—she told herself that over and over, like stabbing a corpse already long since rotted.
This was the only worth left for someone like her.
At last she reached the place marked on the map.
It was just a house, plain and ordinary, tucked in the middle of the slums. Yet something was wrong. From its cracks and windows seeped a faint, purplish darkness, like light turned inside out. Alice wasn’t sure if the light was truly that color, but that was how it appeared to her.
She knew, that if she stepped inside, she would not leave as a human again.
But the guilt pressed down on her, heavier than the fear. This was her fault. It was only right that she should be the one to mend it.
So she opened the door and entered.
The room was simple: a bed against the far wall, a desk beside it, and across from them the same door she had entered through. Odd, she thought. Why would a house begin with a bedroom instead of a living room? Perhaps because this place served only one purpose.
No one was inside, and with nothing else to do she sat on the bed.
The door creaked open and the bear stepped in, half-naked, wearing only his pants.
“Good. It looks good on you,” he said.
Alice only nodded.
“Whose child are you?”
“Edwin…”
A slap cracked hot across her face. She knew it was both the right and wrong answer, but not the one he wanted.
“WHOSE?!”
“I am your child… Papa Sieg.”
“Good.” He said, “Now… close your eyes.”
She obeyed. She could feel it—his presence moving closer, his rotting breath corroding her skin.
What would happened in the next chapter?
