Time itself seemed to slow as the linen fell, unveiling the payment. Alice gazed upon the object revealed by the veil, her eyes reddening with the rage and sorrow the vision brought. It was the single most awful thing, coated in gold and gore—an abomination that only a twisted mind could conceive.
From the legs upward, patches of gold clung to the body like a spreading disease, creeping over the thighs and knees while torn flesh gaped between the seams. The chest was streaked with gilded ribs, strips of skin peeled aside so that bone and metal gleamed together, half human and half relic.
One arm bore the same corruption, veins of gold cracking through muscle, while the other was almost fully claimed, the hand stretched outward in a rigid pose. In that golden grasp rested an object where silver and gold had melted into a single form: a flower. The gesture was frozen as though he were offering it still, waiting endlessly for someone to take it.
Against the ruined torso, the gleam of the outstretched arm and flower formed a grotesque parody of love, protection, and longing, an offering she should have received with joy.
Yet the jealousy lay in the head. Flesh and bone and blood remained. The eyes were missing, the face bruised and battered with such cruelty that it seemed every stroke of envy had been poured into shaping this horrid masterpiece. The features should have been unrecognizable, yet no child could ever forget the sensation of seeing her father’s face when he returned home.
Alice screamed. From her eyes something spilled out. Thick, crimson fluid, heavier than water, the kind that should never have flowed from human eyes. She called out to her gilded father with such rage and sorrow that, had any higher being heard her, it would have smitten the wretch who dared to forge such an abomination.
A black blur whipped past her vision, swept by the wind—Sylvaria, blade in hand, already darting toward the demented artist. It was the same conjured weapon she had summoned the instant her eyes fell on this resurrected ghost.
“YOU SON OF A BITCH!” she roared, bringing the sword down in an overhead slash.
Harmus side stepped, the blade missing his head by an inch.
Another slash came from the right, then the left, followed by a stab.
Her strikes were so fast that even Alice could only see blurs, her mother’s rage made steel. It was how she imagine a mythical Fae dancer performing the climax part of the sword dance. Slashes created by wind accompanied it, movements so precise, fast, and sharp that by logic anyone who had been caught in that flurry of slashes should have been pulverized in an instant.
The dance was so ferocious that Alice thought her mother would finally deliver what the sculpture was owed. She wanted to cheer her mother, do it, do it, kill that demented asshole, and yet, apparently, a higher being or fate itself didn’t want it that way.
Harmus caught her blade between thumb and forefinger, calm as stone, his smile thin and merciless.
His voice fell quiet, yet carried through the hall like a cursed prayer.
“Neidf?den : Fromme Braut” (Threads of Envy : Pious Bride)
Iron wires screeched into being. They didn’t pierce her eyes as the envious suffered in Purgatory, but instead spun outward, lashing through the air like cruel ribbons. For a heartbeat Alice saw them, black strands glinting faintly, winding in spirals around her mother. Then they struck.
The wires bit into Sylvaria’s marble skin, shallow and countless, sewing red seams across her body. Blood spread in thin lines, staining her clothes until she seemed draped in crimson finery — a bride painted by grief and suffering. Her scream burst out, sorrow and rage coalescing into a soul-rending cacophony that tore through Alice’s heart.
Yet Harmus had held the wires back; every cut was meant not to kill, but to wound, to drain, to strip away dignity.
Sylvaria swayed, red rivulets running down her limbs, the image of a pious bride dressed for a grotesque wedding. Then she dropped to her knees before him, gasping, her sword falling from her hand.
“Arghhh!!!!” She roared, agony coalesce with desperation that she couldn’t do much against the one who killed her beloved husband.
“Come on Sylvaria, you never got proper training besides the mandatory service, you think you can do what Edwin can’t?” Harmus laughed while looking at Sylvaria’s fuitile attempt.
“Speaking of Edwin, though…” Harmus grinned, pointing toward Edwin’s hand. “I really should thank that flower he was holding. I suppose it must have meant something precious to him.”
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Clouded by the gilded effigy, Alice only saw it briefly, but as Harmus mentioned it, she looked at the flower again. Despite the gold gild that tainted the silver petal, it was clear from the shape that it was a Silverveil Bloom Edwin had promised for Alice.
The projection shook violently as Alice noticed it, even now Vierna’s body had started twitching, trying to break free from the Ash Gray muteness Leopold had cast on her.
“Achromatische Seele.” (Achromatic Soul) Leopold cast another spell to calm down Vierna’s body.
She stilled the twitching and sank deeper into soul mutism. Her gaze returned to the screen. And now her face—painted by a faint smile. As if, once every emotion had been erased, the natural resting shape of the lips was not blankness, but a smile.
As Lina saw the vision, it was clear this was one of the reasons Vierna didn’t remember her past. Her brain and soul instinctively blocked it so she couldn’t recall the macabrely horrid fate her father had suffered.
Murderer, murderer, murderer. The room echoed with Vierna’s own guilt, the sight of the Silverveil Bloom confirming it: her father had been killed because she requested something. At least, that was how she saw it.
“Kill me.” Sylvaria whimpered.
As she heard the words, Lina’s gaze went back toward the projection.
Alice looked at her deranged uncle, his twisted gaze fixed on Sylvaria with an emotion that had no place in the circumstances unfolding.
Lust.
“Mom…” Alice said faintly, as if to remind her mother that she was still there.
“What? No,” Harmus said. “I am not a sick man who would kill the love of my life.”
Sylvaria’s gaze fixed on Harmus’s visage. The half of his face, the side completed by absorbing another human being, had begun to wane away again, giving back to the mannequin-like structure beneath. Not completely, but enough to be seen.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? KILL ME!” Her voice screamed with a desperate tone that shook even her child.
Alice didn’t know what to do. The weight of guilt now bound both her hands and legs.
If only I hadn’t asked for the flower, she thought.
And as her mother told Harmus twice to kill her, the words cemented Alice’s guilt even further. Her mother didn’t even want to continue living. How could she? When her stupid daughter had caused her beloved husband’s death, how could she still love such a bothersome, defective child?
Not only had she been born with the alleged Faintborn’s Blessing, she had also asked for the flower that got her father killed. No wonder her mother wanted to die now. It was too much.
“Sylvaria, please behave yourself. It was not that bad. But if you keep begging for death, then I will TURN ALICE INTO ANOTHER PIOUS BRIDE.”
She froze, then turned toward Alice. She covered her mouth, her eyes brimming with tears that shimmered like diamonds sprinkled with water.
“Look, I went overboard again, but sometimes you really know how to yank my damn buttons.”
Harmus snapped his fingers. Sylvaria’s wounds closed, and her clothes shifted into a black-green dress, the same color as the one Harmus wore.
“Sylvaria, all of my debts to you are settled,” he said, his voice as serene as calm water. “And now for the good news. Since I am very generous, I will give you a chance to settle what you owe me. A chance to completely love me, without Edwin swaying you away.”
Harmus exclaimed, giving his hand as if he was proposing for something.
“Sylvaria, join my flock. Be my bride once again.”
As he spoke, half of his face had started to vanished, leaving him the half-mannequin man he had once been.
“...Sick fuck,” Halwen muttered as the projection unfolded.
Both Alice and Sylvaria looked at Harmus in disbelief. Was his brain really so damaged that he thought someone would join him after he had killed her husband?
“I would even allow Alice to join too, since I am the most generous man.”
The word settled into a hollowed hall. It echoes as if carried the mockery even towards the home itself.
“Heh… heh heh heh,” Sylvaria laughed, her voice sharp and ragged. “YOU FUCKING BRAINLESS IDIOT, SHOVE THAT PROPOSAL RIGHT UP YOUR ASS!”
Harmus looked at her for a moment. Alice caught it briefly—a line of drool slipping from the deranged madman’s lips, which he licked away. Yet he did not snap this time. He was calm, watching her as if she were dancing in the palm of his hand.
“Haha… ahhh, honestly your disobedience has become more of a guilty pleasure for me. Seeing you hurt, scream, even trying to kill me—it excites me like nothing else. Not even killing Edwin thrilled me the way watching you like this does. Honestly, you are the most perfect woman for me.”
He stepped closer, his voice dipping into poisonous intimacy.
“But let me make it simple for you, Syl. I know your condition. This house is mortgaged, and Edwin spent a fortune buying his early retirement.”
“You can’t go back to dancing—that’s what you told me” He continued. “And you’ll never be remarried. No one wants a bitch who spawned a kid with Faintborn’s. You’ll be thrown back into poverty, just before I so generously saved you. That’s what happens to people who don’t pay what they owe.”
He grinned, voice almost tender.
“I’ll be there, watching every step you take, every mistake you make, until your pride crumbles. And when you have no way out of poverty, you’ll come back to me. And don’t worry—I won’t hold a grudge. Because I am the most generous man alive.”
“...”
“Ahhhh, what a lovely night this is,” Harmus said, looking out the window, completely disregarding the mother and daughter whose man he had just robbed.
“To overstay my welcome would be to owe you, and I dislike being in debt—especially to my dear Ex-soon to be wife again.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll leave Edwin’s golden corpse here. It isn’t just gilded; the gold part is solid gold, I made sure of it. So who knows? Maybe you’ll survive for a while. But when poverty claims you, remember this, Syl: you are the one who rejected my generosity.”
He bowed mockingly. “So, Leb wohl… and I honestly can’t wait for the day you kneel, face pressed to the floor, ass high up in the air.”
Harmus slashed Edwin’s head clean off, and with it in hand, he vanished. No smoke, no distraction—he was simply gone, as if he had never been there at all.
What should Sylvaria and Alice do after this?
