Hot air blew into his ear canal.
The words slammed against his eardrums.
That room on the third floor that was always locked.
The window had been welded shut with iron bars as thick as a forearm.
The door had been secured with three locks from the outside.
The first was a brass padlock.
The second was a hidden lock.
The third was a magic seal.
The clinking sound of metal echoed in the depths of his memory.
Every day at four-thirty in the afternoon.
Footsteps would stop punctually outside the door.
His sister’s voice would drift through the door as she read aloud, word for word, her magic history notes from that day.
He had lain on that one-point-two-meter-wide single bed for a year and four months.
The sheets were changed once a week.
They were always pure white.
He never saw the light of day.
An even deeper layer of memory was forcibly dragged out by her words.
The commoner girl who worked at the bakery in the South District.
Her eyes would curve into crescents when she smiled.
Her fingers always carried the scent of flour.
The promise they made at the market.
The night Cecilia found out.
There had been no questioning.
There had been no argument.
The next morning.
In the white rose bushes of the back garden.
The girl’s head was placed on the edge of the flowerbed.
Her torso had been cut into fourteen pieces.
The cuts were smooth; even the marks where the bones had snapped were precise to the millimeter.
Blood seeped into the soil, staining the roots of the white roses a dark red.
His stomach wall contracted violently.
Acid broke through the cardia, surging up his esophagus.
His Adam's apple rolled up and down convulsively.
A thread of transparent acid spilled from the corner of his lips.
It trickled down his jaw.
It dripped onto his collarbone.
The shackles of wind and earth elements locked his spine and neck in place.
He couldn't even perform the basic movement of turning away in rejection.
The acid choked his trachea.
The capillaries in his face became heavily congested, turning his skin a pale, sickly blue-white from the strain.
Cecilia did not pull away.
She tilted her head.
She pressed against Bell’s jaw.
Her tongue curled upward slightly.
She licked up the transparent liquid mixed with stomach acid.
The sound of swallowing came from her throat.
She did it with the focus of someone tasting the finest delicacy.
“It’s like this every time.”
She murmured softly.
There was a hint of grievance in her words.
She took half a step back.
She raised her right hand.
Her index finger pointed toward the corner of the secret chamber.
Toward where Lilian was.
The fire and lightning elements at her fingertips began to compress.
Emerald green and dark red intertwined.
The energy density rose at an extreme speed.
The air was distorted into layers of ripples by the high temperature.
The Crown of Thorns atop Lilian’s head withered under the radiation.
Petals fell one by one, turning to ash as they hit the stone tiles.
“Kiss me, Brother.”
It wasn't a request.
It was the countdown before an execution.
Once the fire-lightning magic was released, not even ashes would remain of Lilian.
Leon couldn't stop it.
Tia was unable to move from the bottom of the pit.
It was a dead end.
The only solution lay with him.
Bell’s head tilted five degrees.
His gaze fell on Lilian.
Lilian’s legs were trembling.
The fabric on the outside of her knees had been torn by the rubble, and blood was seeping through.
The knuckles of her right hand, which gripped her dagger, protruded sharply.
Her lips parted.
Her vocal cords vibrated.
Before a single syllable could be uttered, it was forcibly pressed back into her chest by the pressure of the five-element mana.
Her jawbone made an overburdened creaking sound.
Bell’s Adam’s apple rolled again.
He swallowed the remaining acid.
He leaned forward.
His lips met Cecilia’s.
Cecilia’s body stiffened.
Her eyes suddenly widened.
Her red irises trembled violently within a tenth of a second.
Her hands snapped up.
She wrapped them around the back of Bell’s head.
Her fingers dug deep into his short black hair.
Her knuckles were strained to the limit.
His teeth were savagely forced open.
Plunder.
All the hunger and thirst accumulated over countless years of lonely loops found an outlet at this moment.
The surrounding air loosened.
The shackles of wind and earth elements disintegrated instantly.
She no longer needed to restrain him.
Fifteen seconds later.
Cecilia’s hands let go.
The two of them separated.
A silver thread stretched through the air.
It tightened.
It snapped.
Cecilia’s chest rose and fell rapidly.
A flush spread from her cheeks to her ears and neck.
She pressed her hands against Bell’s shoulders.
She gave a forceful push.
Without the support of the shackles, Bell’s back slammed heavily against the ruined stone tiles.
A sharp, stabbing pain flared from the old injury in his spine.
Cecilia straddled him.
Her knees pressed against the sides of Bell’s waist.
Her fingers hooked into the edge of her white dress’s collar.
She pulled downward.
The light sound of tearing fabric echoed through the secret chamber.
The pure white cloth slid off.
It piled up around her waist.
Dracula’s shredded flesh hung on the walls.
Valentine’s corpse lay in a pool of blood five meters away.
Blood flowed along the cracks in the stone tiles, gathering into dark red puddles in the depressions.
The inheritance stone pillar was emerald green, emitting a continuous low-frequency hum.
The sickly green light shone on Cecilia’s back.
It illuminated the Blood Dance Tattoo that spread from her left wrist to her cheek.
This ruin, where flesh and blood flew.
It became her wedding chamber.
She plundered him wantonly.
Bell’s eyes were squeezed shut.
His teeth bit into the soft flesh on the inside of his cheek.
The taste of blood spread in his mouth.
He swallowed it along with his saliva.
He wouldn't look.
He wouldn't listen.
His brain forcibly cut off the sensory connections to the outside world.
He turned himself into a senseless stone.
As long as he could endure it.
As long as Tia, Leon, and the others could survive.
It didn't matter what was done to this body.
Leon’s left arm hung at a twisted angle.
The broken bone pierced through his skin, exposed to the air.
He raised his right arm and pressed it against the back of Lilian’s head.
He pushed her face into his shoulder.
He turned his own head away.
His gaze was fixed on the rubble on the ground.
The muscles around his fracture were trembling slightly.
The heir to the Wolfgang family.
A genius of ice magic.
At this moment, he didn't even have the right to draw his sword.
The gap was too large.
It wasn't about technique.
It wasn't about the total amount of mana.
It was a crushing difference in dimensions.
Rushing forward would only increase the number of corpses on the ground.
He could only stand there, listening to the sound of clothes rubbing together three meters away.
He swallowed the humiliation along with the blood in his mouth.
Lilian’s face was buried in Leon’s shoulder.
Her teeth bit through her lower lip.
Blood flowed into her mouth.
Her dignity was once again trampled into the mud at this moment.
That man had given her a new life.
He had given her a name.
Now that man was being pinned down in the ruins.
And yet, she couldn't even shout a complete sentence.
Cracks appeared in the handle of the dagger she gripped in her palm.
At the bottom of the deep pit.
Tia’s Mithril shell was half-melted.
The etheric conduction lines of her right eye had gone completely dark.
Her only remaining right arm propped her up against the bedrock.
Liquid Mithril writhed frantically at the severed edge.
It pulled out ultra-fine metallic threads.
It tried to reweave the left side of her body.
But the remnants of the fire and lightning elements clinging to the wound continued their destruction.
As soon as the threads connected, they were snapped by electric arcs.
They made a faint, weak crackling sound.
Five metallic fingers dug into the rock.
The scratches advanced three inches.
Stone dust fell from between her fingers.
This was the torso Bell had personally hammered out.
He had carved the runes onto it.
Now, this torso couldn't even crawl out of the deep pit.
Dozens of minutes passed.
Silence returned to the secret chamber.
Outside, the withered husk tide, no longer suppressed by an ancestor, smashed through the northern city walls.
The rumbling sound of collapsing buildings came from far away.
By the time it reached the secret chamber, it was only a dull echo.
Cecilia lay slumped over Bell’s bare chest.
Her golden hair was soaked with sweat, sticking to her cheeks and neck in strands.
Her chest was pressed against Bell’s skin, rising and falling rapidly.
Bell lay on his back.
His eyes were open.
His black pupils were dilated.
His gaze passed through the ruined dome of the secret chamber, staring at the withered World Tree branches above Moon Phase City.
He didn't blink.
His chest rose and fell mechanically.
Aside from the fact that he was still breathing, he was no different from the corpses on the ground.
Cecilia sat up, propping herself against Bell’s chest muscles.
Her hands moved down slowly.
She pressed them against her lower abdomen.
Her lips began to tremble.
The trembling grew more and more pronounced.
The area around her eyes quickly reddened.
Drops of water welled up from the corners of her eyes.
They slid down her face, which was stained with dust and sweat.
They splashed onto Bell’s chest.
They scattered into tiny droplets.
“Finally...”
She sobbed.
Her words broke into fragments.
She covered her face with her hands.
Her shoulders shook violently.
The sound of her crying echoed through the secret chamber, drowning out the hum of the inheritance stone pillar.
“Finally.”
“Brother’s...”
She wailed loudly.
The volume was immense.
It was entirely the way a frustrated child would vent.
Tears poured from between her fingers, dripping onto Bell.
In hundreds of loops, she had killed countless people and destroyed countless worlds.
This was a finish line she had never touched.
She leaned down, burying her face in the crook of Bell’s neck.
Warm tears rubbed against Bell’s skin.
Bell’s gaze remained fixed on the rift in the sky.
His eyes were dry.
A single tear slid from the corner of his eye, seeping into his messy hair at the temple.
Through the rift in the sky, a new withered wooden figure fell, crashing against the edge of the ruined dome and shattering into two pieces.
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