The sister he hadn’t seen in years looked so small. She had lost all her vitality and was so haggard that she didn’t even look her age. Her once-plump cheeks were ashen, and her soft coriander hair was loose and in disarray.

“Ah, Ragnar.”

She turned to him and smiled, her fingers outstretched toward him. They’re so skinny her bones show through.

It almost brings tears to her eyes to see him, even in this state of disfigurement. But soon she was looking up at the ceiling like a dreaming girl, singing in a dry voice.

Upon closer inspection, all of her nails were torn off, her body was covered in cuts, and there wasn’t a spot on her body that wasn’t scarred.

A soft cloth was tied around his wrists, which were covered in cuts, and connected to the head of the bed. A churning in his chest boiled over.

He heard a raspy laugh. She sang, then muttered.

“The devil’s seed is in here.”

Her voice was bright, as if she had returned to her childhood innocence, but her words were despairing.

“It’s in here, and it’s killing me, and I have to get it out, and I’ve tried to get it out so many times, but I can’t.”

Her face was bony and skeletal, her eyes sunken in, and her stomach was abnormally large. There was an indescribable madness that flashed in his eyes.

The brother and sister stared at each other for a moment, unable to speak. Creepily slender fingers tickled the back of his hand. Worryingly cold.

“So can you take it out of me?”

He stood frozen in place for a moment, staring at his transgression, unable to move. A million thoughts raced through his mind.

Unable to bear it, he turned to his sister and staggered out. His heart is slowly breaking.

Outside the door, the attending physician was looking down at the floor with an anxious expression and rolling his eyes.

“What the hell…… is going on?”

He squirmed, trying not to offend his young owner.

“We’re risking her life and the baby’s if she gives birth like this.”

Instead of answering, the doctor blurted out something else.

“What did she do to deserve this?”

Ragnar’s voice sounded calm on the surface, but the gentle trembling of his fingertips suggested that he was barely holding back an uncontrollable rage. The doctor simply shuddered and shook his head.

“T, there was no…… way to save a person who is trying to harm herself.”

“So you didn’t even inform me until she was in the throes of it?”

Ragnar’s patience was slowly running out. His chest sizzled with anger and disgust.

“There is no cure for that disease…….”

He repeated that Yudina was gripped by mania and that there was no hope for her. Even worse, there was more to come.

“You have to make a choice …….”

“What do you mean?”

The doctor pursed his lips again and again, then said in a low voice. Ragnar clapped him on the back, unable to contain his momentary surge of anger.

“I was only speaking of the possibilities— if that child is born unharmed, isn’t it precious blood of the royal family…….?”

Hearing that, the bloodthirsty young lord immediately grabbed him by the hair and dragged him to the window.

“Ha, but Your Highness, it is possible that either of them…….”

“It is possible…….”

It didn’t feel good to kill him right away, but he couldn’t bear not to say something, so he lifted his ugly body and hung it against the window.

“Hi, hiiiiik!”

The doctor held on to the window sill to keep from falling, shivering, but still insisting.

“Ha, please…… please, you must save……. Sa, save……!”

Now he was blurting out words he didn’t know whose life he was trying to save.

“Is a doctor who can’t save a single person deserve to live?”

Hearing those death sentence-like words, he sobbed like a child and wet himself. Soon he was falling out of the window with a dull thud, accompanied by screams.

The dead man said no more, but what he did say made perfect sense. The choice to save her life sounded very reasonable. Ragnar washed his face dry.

In front of him, the assistant of the physician, who had just died, stirred. This was Kenneth, the current physician of Argonod.

“Why did you keep her tied up?”

Kenneth sighed.

“Because she kept hurting herself…….”

“Why did they put her in the west tower?”

He asked himself, and quickly shook his head. He didn’t need to hear the answer.

Kenneth paused, unable to find the words to answer his question.

“It was the will of the Regent …….”

It was true. It was pointless to vent his anger on others now; they were merely following orders.

So Ragnar strode to the dungeon. Each step he took was filled with anger, perhaps more directed at himself than at his uncle.

The way down to the basement was dark and dreary. After a long descent down the musty staircase, the prison reveals itself to be filled with moaning and singing. The place was designed to reverberate well, so that the sounds of torture would strike fear into the hearts of the prisoners.

The smell of blood and manure is overpowering, as Tristan’s closest confidants were being tortured.

The deepest cell, the innermost one. There was his uncle Tristan. Ragnar’s men have been torturing him for days now, and his fingernails have been pulled out and his knuckles chopped off.

Tristan looks up, Ragnar wondering how he knew he was near. It’s a long overdue family reunion.

“I’ve been waiting for you. My nephew.”

“Uncle…….”

When was the last time he’d seen him, when he’d pushed him and her sister into the royal family and vowed to rule the North well?

“Why…… did you do that?”

Ragnar couldn’t hold back the rising nausea. He wanted to pierce the man’s throat with the sword at his waist right now.

“What do you mean?”

He asked, not really knowing. Tristan seemed quite relaxed for his imprisonment. He acted as if he had no awareness of his current situation. It was Ragnar on the other side of the bars, and his mind was more disturbed than his prisoner’s.

“Why did you do that to my sister?”

Then Tristan laughed. There was an unrecognizable gleam in his eyes as he coughed up blood and gunk. His laughter rumbled through the halls.

“Because your sister is carrying the crown prince’s seed. You should be grateful to me that your nephew, who is otherwise incapable, has been blessed with a royal hand. I saved your sister from harming herself to death.”

“……thank you?”

Ragnar shuddered with rage. Tristan’s laughter was unrelenting, like a sneer at his slowly contorting face.

“Damn it, if only this hadn’t gone so wrong…….”

Tristan swore harshly as he continued to utter unintelligible words, looking like a lost man.

He was understandably distraught, as he hadn’t had a sip of water in days and had been having his limbs chopped after another.

Then Tristan suddenly leapt up and clung to the bars, his limbs bound by chains that prevented him from moving any further.

“That sword, if only I had it…….”

“The sword?”

“Yes, the sword. If only I had it……. Haha, hahaha…….”

Suddenly, at this point, the sword. Ragnar and Tristan’s eyes met. A glimpse of a madman. He was already not in his normal state.

The strange thing was that the Tristan Ragnar remembered was a more determined and strong-minded man, and it was hard to believe that such a man could be broken by this level of torture.

“Don’t let him die, but continue the treatment. We need to find out who is behind this.”

With that, Ragnar turned and left the dungeon. It was a relief to be out of the stifling underground air.

Ragnar made his way to the center court, hungry for oxygen. It was summer. In the glasshouses, the artificial gardens of Wishus Castle, the roses that the gardeners had tended so carefully were in full bloom.

Lunar silver, a rose with hints of silver and blue. It was his sister’s favorite flower.

Before the gardener could say anything, he grabbed the stem. The vicious spikes stretched out and stabbed his hand without mercy.

“M, my lord!”

It was his closest aide, Mervin, who stopped him. But Ragnar repeated the act despite his protests.

He wanted to punish himself in that way, and if the shedding of blood could atone for his crime, he wanted to stab himself all over to make amends.

“My sister likes…… this flower.”

There was no way for him to know if seeing this flower would make him want to live a little longer, so that he wouldn’t have to feel this much pain.

* * *

Ragnar tended to Yudina with great care, and yet she was literally withering away. Her life force was slowly draining away, like the leaves of a lifeless plant.

Her new doctor, Dr. Kenneth, scoured the countryside for the best remedies, but there was no relief.

And he had a mountain of work to do. It was still summer, but winter would soon be here. Northern winters are harsh. Moreover, Tristan’s tyranny had caused food shortages. At this rate, there would be civil unrest everywhere, so Ragnar had to be very busy. Even ten bodies were not enough.

The situation was not good; it was like being trapped in a dark cave with no end in sight. Sharp thorns tore at his flesh and festered wounds as he trudged barefoot through a place without the slightest glimmer of hope.

As soon as Yudina regained the slightest bit of strength, she cut herself. All he could do to stop her was to restrain her limbs.

Now he understood why they had tied her up like an animal. His mind had broken many times before he could comprehend such a thing.

Ragnar now found it difficult and overwhelming to breathe. His beloved sister didn’t even have the will to live, so what was he doing breathing?

Each inhalation and exhalation eroded his chest as it passed through his lungs. Holes were punctured all over, ravaged by despair. Every exhalation, every ragged breath, cuts. Every rush of air was painful and unbearable.

All the servants who served his sister are dead. He had no way of knowing exactly what had happened to her.

The truth was revealed when a letter arrived from the palace, announcing that the crown prince, Elio, would soon be picking up the crown princess.

He couldn’t hide the news from Yudina, and when he told her, she rebelled.

“No!”

She screamed, clutching her head.

“That devil is going to take me, and he’s going to take me to that room again…….”

She rolled her eyes, disgusted, and repeated the words over and over again.

“He’s going to take me there…… and do it to me.”

It was then that he realized for the first time what kind of atrocity Eilio had committed. And how the dead servants had met their end.

He had a room of his own in the northern citadel of the royal palace. Normally closed and under strict surveillance, it was only opened on the day of his union with the Crown Princess.

The first thing Elio touched was the canary she kept at the castle. The sensation of crushing a small, helpless creature to death in his grasp gave him incredible pleasure.

Gradually, he moved on from small animals to larger ones: cats, dogs, sheep, and horses. But soon there was a limit: He could no longer take pleasure in the act. This was too tedious.

What he wanted was life-threatening tension and fever. Now the target was a beast. Naturally, he enjoyed the hunt. Plunging a knife into the throat of a charging beast gave him a new pleasure he had forgotten.

The nobles who sought to please him were busy offering him pedigreed hounds and hunting grounds on their estates.

Taxidermy was a beautiful thing. The beasts he killed were beautifully taxidermied and displayed in the castle’s great hall.

But one day, the beast was no longer enough. Boredom set in again, and he turned his attention to humans. And a new world opened up.

Hunting humans held endless possibilities. Their screams and cries sent shivers down his spine. His collection of unseen objects grew.

Scandalous rumors about the crown prince spread like wildfire through the capital, making their way up and down the lips of the wealthy. However, the content was so sordid that it actually discredited him. The Unification War had strengthened the royal power, and no one wanted to upset Eilio, who was being eyed as the next emperor.

So he stored the collection in the northern citadel. He tended to the human taxidermy, embalmed to prevent decay, and spent time remembering their last days.

He had no interest in the living. It was always the dead and stuffed that he admired. To possess complete death, that was the act he desired.