Victoria Mason slowly withdrew the foot she had already set over the edge of the hidden passage.
Her silver hair — that waterfall of pale silk — swept a slightly stiff arc through the air. The ragged, fear-disordered breathing that had seized her moments before was forcibly crushed back down in the space of a heartbeat.
She drew a deep breath. The mask of panic on her face dissolved like the last dirty snow of winter, replaced by something arresting — an elegant, practiced social smile, calibrated to the millimeter.
"You see through everything, don't you, my dearest little sister, Sophia."
Victoria brushed at her skirt, dusting off nonexistent lint with the unhurried grace of someone stepping away from a lavish court ball.
She steadied herself against the edge of the passage opening and rose to her feet. In that instant, the Mason soldiers ringing the room all felt something flicker across their expressions — a look no one could quite name.
It was only when Victoria straightened her spine and stood face to face with Sophia that everyone belatedly registered a fact logic had temporarily overlooked:
This long-fugitive elder sister was nearly half a head taller than Her Majesty the Queen.
The same silver hair. The same golden eyes. The same noble blood.
Sophia's pressure was the kind that was icy, youthful, and faintly mechanical — the aura of an exquisitely wrought porcelain idol.
Victoria, by contrast, carried the fullness and stature that befitted a mature member of royalty. Within those pale gold irises burned a worldly, polished cunning — the kind that only years of navigating the court intrigues of many nations could produce.
Bardess thought to herself: So the Mason royal bloodline does carry height after all?
Looking at that elder sister's build, I'd always assumed Her Majesty's compact frame was a family trait — but now I'm not so sure. Did Her Majesty spend so much time solving equations at the Imperial Capital academy that she couldn't even spare the minutes it took to drink her milk?
Or perhaps... this height difference is a necessary sacrifice Her Majesty made in order to concentrate more processing power into her brain?
Truly, on the path to evolving into the perfect sovereign, even Her Majesty's skeleton growth logic has made way for intelligence.
Victoria paid no attention whatsoever to Bardess and the others staring at her. She merely tilted her head at a slight angle, the polite curve at the corner of her lips as geometrically precise as if it had been ruled onto her face.
"I imagine that since you dismantled Avalon's gate so quickly, General Delilah — that woman with the stubbornness of solid rock — must be more valuable to you right now than any treasure in the world."
Victoria made an elegant "after you" gesture, as though she were the true mistress of this secret chamber and Sophia merely an uninvited guest.
"Don't look at me like that, Sophia. I'm nothing but a fragile woman trying to survive in a chaotic world. And knowing which way the wind blows... that has always been my one and only secret to thriving at the side of all those foolish royals."
Sophia offered no response to that veil of false warmth. Her pale gold irises appeared completely still.
"Lead the way."
Everyone followed the swaying hem of Victoria's skirt into the most secluded, forbidden depths of the palace.
The air changed the moment they entered — heavier, colder, pressing down on the lungs. Avalon's endemic miasma tangled with the pervasive smell of old rust and rot, needling at every nose in the group.
Along the dim corridor, restless tongues of flame guttered in their brackets, stretching everyone's shadows into grotesque, writhing shapes across the pitted stone walls.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Victoria's velvet-soled shoes struck a rhythmic beat on the slick flagstones. She walked and talked at once, gesturing with evident relish at the rust-streaked cells on either side.
"This is Avalon's king's most prized place of quiet reflection. I must say — the Avalonians may be dim, but in the art of designing instruments for human suffering, they have a certain savage aesthetic that is almost Olan in its refinement."
Willow followed close behind Sophia. Those eyes of hers, always so gentle, were quietly brewing something considerably less gentle right now.
I dislike everything about this woman's polished manner. And I find it even more offensive that this filthy dungeon dares leave dust on Her Majesty's boots.
Yet Her Majesty is tolerating this hypocritical chatter.
I understand. Her Majesty is sifting through every worthless word this elder sister utters, extracting the core logical gaps in what she knows about Olan and Avalon.
That composure — the ability to maintain absolute analytical clarity while walking through a corridor that belongs to hell — that is the most captivating thing about the Black Rose.
Yet for some reason, she always felt that Her Majesty extended one degree of extra tolerance toward this Princess Victoria.
Deeper in the dim passage, a torch crackled and spat — the wretched cry of cheap tallow struggling against the damp air.
Most of the Mason elites had not entered here; the majority were outside managing the aftermath of the battle and heading to the end of the hidden passage to capture Avalon's king and the Olan envoys. Only Bardess, a small musketeer squad, Willow, and a handful of others followed.
The soldiers' measured boot-steps were amplified in the enclosed space, and the vibrations sent flakes of rust showering from the iron doors of the cells.
The filtered air through their linen masks was cool and steady, keeping them scalpel-sharp and clear-headed even inside this fetid place.
Victoria walked ahead, her red skirt trailing through the dim light like a smear of wandering blood.
She did not appear the slightest bit concerned about the black muskets that might misfire at any moment. She walked with perfect poise, as though this grim dungeon were a red carpet leading her to a coronation.
"Sophia."
Victoria let out a soft laugh. In the silence of the corridor, the sound was jarring — silken and smooth.
"Over this past year, I wandered through three principalities and heard countless stories about you. They say that the moment you became Queen, you stopped pretending to be weak and simply let your tyrannical nature out — that even your blood runs on a fundamentally different set of principles now."
She turned her head slightly. She was still leading the way, but those pale gold irises hunted for Sophia's expression in the shadows.
"So — as the person who set all of this in motion, and as a failure who once slipped out right from under your nose, I'd like to ask on my own behalf: what exactly do you plan to do with me? Send me back to Mason to mine coal in the pit shafts? Or do you have something else in mind?"
Victoria's tone was half-serious, half-mocking, almost as though she were discussing tomorrow's breakfast options.
Sophia's stride did not waver by a single step. Even her breathing rate did not change.
Her face — exquisite as a divine idol — carried a detachment that belonged to something beyond the mortal world, rendered all the more vivid by the flickering firelight.
"Victoria."
Sophia spoke. Her voice was cool and clean, like wind off the far north.
"Rather than my plans, I prefer to collect known variables. After all, within Mason's Order, where any given resource ultimately lands depends entirely on what that resource can actually bear."
She stopped walking. Her pale gold irises fixed steadily on the back of the figure half a head taller than herself, and she turned the question back:
"So then — what would you like me to do with you, Elder Sister?"
Victoria's frame stiffened almost imperceptibly. That standard, near-perfect social smile developed its first hairline fracture.
Willow, who had been quietly thinking that Princess Victoria was really quite clever — having raised every possible scenario except the one where Her Majesty simply had her executed — heard Her Majesty's counter-question and immediately felt a surge of awe.
Her Majesty is extraordinary.
With a single reversal, she's seized total command of this exchange.
Princess Victoria tried to blur her own culpability with jokes, tried to probe Her Majesty's limits using the intimacy of blood. And Her Majesty simply took the power of judgment and handed it straight back to her.
This isn't a question. It's a verdict.
Her Majesty is forcing this slick elder sister to use her vaunted talent for reading situations to put a price tag on her own head.
If the value she names falls short, what awaits her is the coldest kind of disposal that cold logic permits.
That one degree of apparent tolerance Her Majesty showed was never sentiment. It was the calculation of whether Victoria's logical loop still held any exploitable value.
This is what the Black Rose's absolute authority looks like when stripped of every last shred of warmth.
Bardess trailed along at the back, watching the two sisters spar, her gaze drifting involuntarily to the difference in height between their heads.
So this is what they mean when they say presence and stature are inversely proportional?
Princess Victoria is tall, sure — but under Her Majesty's counter-question, that elegant smile is clearly struggling to hold.
Her Majesty is shorter by a bit, but she stands in this dungeon like it's her anchor point — everyone seems to be leaning toward her.
Bardess couldn't help wondering: if Princess Victoria had been the one to ascend Mason's throne instead, would Mason have developed the way it had?
The answer came almost immediately.
No.
Meanwhile, Irene was uncharacteristically quiet.
She watched Princess Victoria — the woman's every movement and bearing the embodiment of royal pride. But this Victoria, who seemed more archetypally royal by appearance, kept getting thrown off-balance by Her Majesty's refusal to play by any conventional rules.
Irene found herself thinking: if Her Majesty had lost back then, and it was Victoria who had taken the throne — what would have happened the day Victoria discovered Irene quietly making soap and selling it on the side?
Irene stole a glance ahead. The figure up front seemed to sense the look and turned her head slightly, meeting Irene's eyes.
Victoria was smiling. But that sensation — of being watched by an ice-cold viper — sent a genuine chill crawling up Irene's spine.
Irene shuddered.
If it were her on the throne, this smiling snake would have had me burned at the stake without a second thought.
Victoria quickly found her footing again. She let out a sigh that landed somewhere between rueful and self-deprecating.
"What an unlovable little sister... but I suppose that's exactly why you can hold the throne."
She came to a stop before a door that was conspicuously heavier than all the others — a slab of iron sealed with three massive bolts.
The air here had changed again. Mixed in with the rot was something else: a faint, dry scent of meadow grass, familiar to anyone who had spent time near Mason's army. The lingering fragrance of Delilah's sachet — proud and heartbreaking in the middle of all this filth.
"We're here."
"Open it."
Sophia's voice was barely above a murmur — but in Bardess's ears, it rang like thunder.
This door was nothing like the wooden cell doors they had passed. It was forged from cold iron hauled from Avalon's deep mountain ranges — not a single gap, not a crack, nothing to peek through.
That faint dry meadow-grass scent — Delilah's sachet — was seeping through the gap at the bottom of the iron door, thread by thread.
Bardess set aside her stray thoughts and composed herself, exchanging a look with two musketeers at her back.
Since no key could be found, the group had no choice but to use the special metal pry bars Irene had made, working through a teeth-grinding screech of metal on metal to force open the three heavy bolts one by one.
Clang!
The door's own weight carried it forward and it slammed into the stone wall with a gust of cold, damp air.
But the figure they had expected — that fierce red-haired silhouette — was nowhere to be seen.
The cell was empty in a way that felt suffocating. At the far corner, a few broken lengths of chain hung swaying from the wall — the only proof that someone had been held here not long ago.
The dry meadow-grass scent reached its peak in this room. But where the blade that should have been sitting here had gone, only a mess of scattered straw remained.
Ziiing—!
A clean, clear sword-ring cut through the dead silence.
Almost the instant the empty cell registered, Sophia's form flickered like a startled crane in flight.
She did not reach for the expensive black musket at her hip. Instead, she snatched the standard-issue longsword from the scabbard of the nearest Mason soldier in one fluid motion.
The cold blade swept a perfect arc through the air and came to rest, precisely and steadily, against the slender column of Victoria's throat.
"Where is she?"
Each word fell like a chip of ice. The pale gold irises had gone entirely cold — nothing but the most pitiless logical core staring out from within.
Under the weight of that barely-veiled killing intent, the air around them seemed to drop several degrees.
Victoria's standard-issue, near-mechanical social smile finally developed a genuine delay.
She could feel the edge of that blade pressing flush against her vein. One slight tremor of Sophia's finger, and the life of Mason's Third Princess would end here, in this dark dungeon.
"Oh my... this is quite unexpected."
Victoria raised both hands slowly. Even in this moment, her voice carried that smooth, unruffled composure.
"Sophia, you heard it yourself — all that noise just now. She probably ran. When survival instinct kicks in, no Avalonian soldier is going to stop to haul along a heavy prisoner while making their escape."
"Furthermore."
Victoria's eyes shifted, fixing directly on Sophia's.
"You know better than I do what kind of person General Delilah is. The moment that chain gave even one inch of slack, this Avalon palace would have become the one cage that couldn't hold her."
Sophia watched her with cold eyes. The calculations behind those irises were running at full speed.
A moment later, she wrenched the sword back and tossed it onto the ground. The metal rang against the flagstone — sharp and abrupt.
"Take her."
Sophia turned and walked back toward the dungeon exit, her silver cape sweeping a decisive arc through the air.
"Keep the criminal Third Princess under close watch. She is not to contact anyone. Everyone else — scatter immediately. Turn this Avalon palace upside down if you have to. Find General Delilah."
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
Bardess and the musketeer squad answered in unison, their voices shaking the corridor walls.
As Victoria was led away by two soldiers, Bardess quickened her pace to fall in behind Sophia, watching Her Majesty's retreating back as she murmured to Willow and Irene beside her:
"That scared the life out of me. But — why did Her Majesty use a sword just now when she was interrogating the Third Princess? She's got that most exquisite, highest-powered black musket Miss Irene made tucked right there on her person. If she'd actually wanted to finish the job, one shot would've been a lot faster than a sword."
Willow, walking on the other side, only smiled and said nothing, gently smoothing her sleeve.
Irene rolled her eyes and gave Bardess a light poke in the arm, keeping her voice low:
"Are you dense?! Bardess, do you use all your instincts on actual work and save none for thinking? It's obvious Her Majesty had absolutely no intention of killing the Third Princess — but what if the gun misfired? At close range, a musket that powerful can shatter bone."
Irene grinned, sapphire-blue eyes glinting with the smugness of someone who believed she had seen straight through Her Majesty:
"A sword can frighten without committing. The force is controllable. Her Majesty was using the most ferocious gesture available to leave the Third Princess the most stable path to staying alive. After all... that is her blood sister."
Bardess scratched her head, her expression caught somewhere between half-understanding and not understanding at all.
Strange. Truly, deeply strange.
The way Her Majesty looked at the Third Princess — it was exactly like looking at the most irritating weed on the roadside, with a revulsion that ran all the way down to the marrow, the kind that wanted it uprooted and gone.
But Miss Irene and the others say that viciousness is actually about keeping her alive?
Is the royal family's way of expressing care really to hold a sword to someone's throat and catch up on old times?
I used to think working eight jobs a day was hard. Now I realize Her Majesty's emotional logic is the single most unsolvable equation in all of Mason.
This contradiction — despising someone down to the bone yet still making sure they survive within the rules — that's probably the kind of tangle only the sun itself could have.
Sophia walked at the head of the group. The damp air of the dungeon stirred her silver hair.
Her face was composed and cold. But the fingertips at her side — slightly, barely perceptibly clenched — betrayed the true turmoil beneath.
Avalon is still too chaotic right now.
In this fog where logic hasn't yet taken hold... where has her Delilah gone?
Inside the main hall of Avalon's palace, the opulent chamber that had once been swathed in fog and shadow was now, under the high-intensity torches lit by Mason's soldiers, rendered rather absurd and shabby-looking.
Sophia found a long couch draped in thick deerskin and sat down. Her silver cape slid down the back of the chair, its folds carrying a cold, heavy weight.
One hand propped her temple. The index finger of her other hand tapped the armrest in a steady rhythm — a crisp sound that resonated through the silent hall, like a final countdown tolling over some crumbling era.
"Reporting!"
A mud-splattered elite scout strode into the hall and dropped to one knee, voice carrying the unmistakable relief of a mission accomplished:
"Your Majesty, the exit at the end of the hidden passage has been cut off. The King of Avalon and three Olan officials have all been captured!"
"However..."
The scout paused, his tone growing heavier:
"The three Olan officials swallowed poison the instant they were surrounded — concealed between their teeth. The movement was swift and absolute. They have barely a breath left in them and likely won't last a quarter of an hour. The King of Avalon is still... alive, though his condition is not particularly dignified."
The finger tapping the armrest paused, briefly.
No ripple crossed Sophia's pale gold irises. She spoke simply, without inflection:
"Bring them in. Alive, dead, and nearly dead alike — bring them all."
The soldiers did not understand, but in this country, Sophia's word was the supreme logic.
Before long, several figures were dragged roughly into the hall.
At the front was the man who had once styled himself the Lord of Mist — Avalon's king.
His resplendent gem-encrusted robe had been torn to rags during the flight. His crown was nowhere to be found. His fleshy face was a portrait of the grotesque distortions that came with extreme terror.
"Mercy! Your Majesty the Queen, mercy!"
The moment he stepped into the hall, this king crumpled like wet mud at Sophia's feet.
His forehead struck the cold hard flagstone with a dull, meaty thud.
"It was all Olan! Olan coerced and bribed us — they said if we helped them trap that general, Avalon would become the commercial center of the north! I was deceived! I am also a victim!"
Behind him, the three Olan officials who had been carried in were silent in a far more final way. Their faces had taken on a horrifying bluish-purple hue. Black foam continued to ooze from the corners of their mouths, and each breath was accompanied by the violent bellows-rasp of failing lungs.
Evidently, the poison they had swallowed was not merely lethal — it was catastrophically destructive.
Willow stood at Sophia's side, watching the wreckage on the floor. The slight furrow in her brow slowly eased, and something that looked like dawning comprehension moved through her eyes.
Why does Her Majesty want to see these people who are nearly dead?
To ordinary minds, this might look like humiliating the defeated.
But on Her Majesty's chessboard, humiliation is far too low an emotion — a waste of energy.
Her Majesty is observing the method of suicide the Olan men chose, in order to deduce how tightly that massive empire exercises logical control over its subordinates. The more decisive the self-destruction, the more absolute the will behind Olan is. She is using these pieces of wreckage to rehearse the resistance she will face when Mason confronts Olan directly.
As for the Avalon king groveling on the floor... in Her Majesty's eyes, he holds even less research value than the vials of poison.
Her Majesty's silence right now is the sound of her calculating how to fold every last inch of Avalon's territory, every trade route, into Mason's dominion at maximum efficiency.
Bardess rested a hand on the musket at her hip, glanced at the Olan men already rolling their eyes back, and shuffled closer to Sophia with a slight grimace, murmuring:
"Your Majesty, these people look like they couldn't tell you their own grandfather's name at this point. Why did we bother dragging them all the way over here? We could've just dug a hole in the woods and buried them — saved ourselves some fertilizer next year."
Sophia did not turn her head. Her gaze remained on the tear-streaked, sniveling Avalon king. Her tone was one of someone answering a question, or perhaps just thinking aloud:
"Bardess. Dead men still provide data."
While everyone was still wondering what Sophia intended to do, she spoke again:
"Daphne. Revive them."
The instant Sophia's words — "revive them" — landed, the hall that had been filled with dead silence and desperate pleading went strange and quiet for one suspended moment.
Bardess slapped her thigh hard enough that her armor rattled, and the look she turned on Sophia filled instantly with self-reproach and fervor.
I deserve to be flogged. How could I have applied a mortal's logic about life and death to measure Her Majesty's unfathomable foresight?
I thought when she said dead men still provide data, it was some cold form of consolation. But Her Majesty actually intends to physically haul these people back from Death's door!
We have Miss Daphne in Mason — the Saint whom Her Majesty personally discovered and holds as a priceless treasure, the one and only Magical Girl on this entire continent.
With her here, as long as there's one breath left in a body, isn't that just a living dossier waiting on Her Majesty's desk to be reviewed?
And here I was thinking about digging holes to save fertilizer. I've insulted Mason's administrative efficiency.
Willow's fingers, folded serenely in front of her, pressed tighter together. A smile edged with helplessness and boundless indulgence pulled at the corner of her mouth.
Outpaced again.
Her Majesty keeping these Olan officials was never merely about analyzing the composition of some poison.
She intends to pry open the intelligence firewall the Olan Empire considers impenetrable — using these mouths that are almost shut forever.
This total, saturating extraction — using lives to their absolute limit — that is Her Majesty's ultimate logic when dealing with enemies.
Under the Black Rose banner, not even death may serve as an excuse to escape judgment.
Looking at Princess Victoria's expression right now, I imagine she has finally grasped that the power her little sister commands has long since exceeded the bounds of anything normal.
Daphne, having received the order, walked forward slowly. Her pristine white magical robes were entirely out of place in this dank, grim Avalon palace.
She paid no attention to the frenzied, salvation-seeking look the Avalon king was directing at her. She simply crouched down, extended her pale palm, and held it hovering over the chest of the Olan official closest to death.
Hmmm—
A soft, translucent mass of jade-green light bloomed from Daphne's fingertips and in an instant enveloped all three officials lying crumpled on the floor.
Within that light lived the vitality of new growth — a force that forcibly suppressed the ghastly blue-purple death-energy the poison had been spreading through their bodies.
"Your Majesty."
Daphne's brow furrowed slightly. Her jade eyes tracked the poison's struggle against the magical suppression, and when she spoke, her voice was soft but steady:
"Olan's poison logic is extremely cunning — it operates by dismantling the body at the cellular level, and the poisoning has already gone deep. I cannot guarantee I can fully purge the toxin and save them completely, but before my magic power runs out, buying them one or two quarter-hours of life, enough for them to speak... that much I can do."
Sophia settled back into the deerskin couch, her posture elegant to the point of cruelty.
She inclined her head slightly. In the green glow, her pale gold irises looked at once alluring and dangerous.
"That's enough."
Sophia's voice was level — not a tremor of inflection in it.
"I have no interest in the rest of their lives. I only want the variables in their heads that haven't yet had time to rot."
One of the Olan officials, who had already slipped into his final moments, felt Daphne's magic pour into him. The violent bellows-rasping in his throat gradually stilled.
He wrenched his eyes open. In those bluish-purple depths burned a hunger for life — and a profound, bone-deep terror at the Divine Miracle he had just witnessed.
"You... you people..."
He trembled as he forced words out. Black foam still clung to the corners of his mouth, but he could now barely manage sound.
Sophia tapped the armrest with one fingertip and looked straight at this man who had just been dragged back from the edge. She did not bother with any formal interrogation preamble:
"You should be able to feel it — your life is in my hands right now. Every breath you draw is an extra grace I am granting you."
"Tell me: where is Delilah?"
The Avalon king, seated nearby, stared as allies who had been certain to die moments ago were forcibly dragged back. The sight was so terrifying he forgot to keep crying. He could only hunch behind a stone pillar and tremble like a quail.
Princess Victoria stood not far away. That standard polite social smile had completely given out now.
She watched the green light in Daphne's hands — the light that could command the boundary between life and death — and then looked at Sophia, seated in the high position, calculating everything down to its last variable. A chill crept up Victoria's spine that she had never felt before.
Insane... Sophia has truly gone insane.
She won't even let the dead keep their mouths shut. Has she started keeping a Witch?
At this speed and with these methods — utterly unreasonable, unstoppable — does that pack of old foxes in Olan really think sending a few deathsworn soldiers will be enough to hold her back?
And furthermore... she let her Saint display her abilities in front of all these people. Is she not afraid word will reach the Imperial Capital...
No. Wait.
Victoria caught herself. Everyone present, save for the dying, was Sophia's trusted inner circle. Naturally she had nothing to fear.
Watching that magical light, Victoria finally understood: Mason's Order was not built on mercy. It was built on this — an absolute dominion so complete that even Death was made to stand aside.
It seems the price she sets for herself will have to go up. Otherwise...
Victoria was afraid she might truly become the kind of worthless scrap she'd heard Sophia describe.
"Heh... cough cough..."
The lead official let out a broken, bellows-wheeze of a laugh. His eyes locked onto Sophia, and within them flickered a kind of crazed, fanatical piety.
"Little Queen of Mason, you do have some... peculiar tricks. But Olan's will is not something a Tyrant like you — who got here through opportunism — could ever understand. Delilah? You mean the one with the spine of iron?"
"She probably died in the chaos of battle long ago. As for the plan, you will never kno..."
Sophia did not wait for him to finish.
She did not even produce a flicker of reaction in her eyes. She simply raised her left hand slightly and let one elegant index finger drop in the empty air — the casual motion of someone brushing a spent piece off a chessboard.
On the flank, Bardess — her calloused hand already resting on her sword hilt — saw the signal. Without hesitation, without so much as a twitch of her brow, she moved like a dark streak of lightning and cut straight into the green light.
Zing.
A clean, bright sword-note rang through the silent hall.
Three streams of blood nearly fused into one as they sprayed outward — then were locked in mid-air, unnaturally, by that strange jade-green magic.
Three neatly severed arms hit the cold floor with heavy, muffled thuds.
"AAAHH—!!"
A shriek that seemed to shake the rafters tore through the hall. The already poison-weakened officials, slammed by the violent shock of raw agony, had eyes that nearly burst from their sockets with the extremity of pain. Every muscle in their bodies seized in convulsions.
"All that, and you're already breaking?"
Sophia's voice was utterly dispassionate.
Just as the three officials were on the verge of losing consciousness from pain and blood loss, about to fall into a permanent dark, Daphne's jade eyes brightened. She pressed her hands together. Denser green light flooded the wounds like a tide.
"Life Repair."
Under the horrified stares of everyone watching, the gushing blood stopped in a way that was genuinely wrong. The flesh at each severed stump began to granulate wildly under the magic's catalysis — rapidly scabbing over, sealing shut.
The lost arms did not grow back. But for the time being, they would not bleed to death.
They could even feel their hearts — hearts that should have stopped beating from massive blood loss — being seized by some overwhelming force and compelled to go on pumping violently in their chests.
Wanting to die. Unable to die.
Wanting to lose their minds. Consciousness forcibly maintained by magic at its most lucid, most pain-receptive state.
Bardess watched the three men. Her own expression was entirely empty.
She had always thought "a fate worse than death" was just a figure of speech.
Watching the three Olan men now, she finally grasped that within Her Majesty's logic, being permitted to die easily was a mercy and a liberation.
As long as they had not given up anything of value, Her Majesty would use magic like a net — holding their souls locked inside their ruined bodies, refusing to let them go.
This absolute dominion — the kind that makes even Death take a number and wait for Her Majesty's approval — this is Mason's hardest law.
Following the Qubi old man around, I used to think I was just drifting through the days. But now I realize — Her Majesty is taking us along to define what Divine Miracles are.
Those Olan officials probably never dreamed that one day, dying would become the one luxury they couldn't have.
Victoria Mason stood at a distance, her silver hair trembling slightly in the firelight.
She pressed her hand against her own left arm, instinctively. That sensation — as though a venomous snake had fixed its gaze on her — shot straight up from the base of her spine to the crown of her skull.
This isn't just interrogation... this is desecration of existence itself.
Sophia is no longer governing this country with a monarch's mind. She is patching the logic of the world with the cold detachment of a creator.
Before her, even the final dignity of self-destruction has been stripped away.
Watching those three pieces of wreckage — unable to live, unable to die — Victoria finally understood: when Sophia turned that question back on her — what do you want me to do with you? — she was giving her one last chance to save herself.
If I cannot demonstrate a utility value that vastly exceeds the worth of these three lives, then the next one lying on that floor, being dismantled piece by piece, will absolutely be me.
If she could do it over, Victoria would still have run.
She had known that the Sophia who had schemed and killed their father and both elder brothers had grown into something beyond her ability to control. But she had never imagined that the rule she would impose after taking power would be this kind of tyranny.
If she had stayed back then and not fled, she would likely have died for some other reason not long after anyway.
So — what now?
How does she save herself now?
Sophia stepped down from the couch, the sole of her boot grinding over bloodstains that had not yet dried, and came to stand before the lead official.
The man's mouth hung wide open. Saliva mixed with black foam dripped from his chin.
The madness that had blazed in his eyes moments ago was gone. All that remained was the most primal fear — of the unknown, of the entity called "Sophia."
"Second chance."
"Tell me: Delilah's whereabouts. And Olan's true shadow network deployed here."
"Don't... please don't..."
The official's voice had gone so hoarse it was nearly unrecognizable. He had believed self-destruction was the last fortress. But now that fortress — before Mason's magic and Mason's blades — was as fragile as a bad joke.
"I'll talk... I'll tell you everything... I only beg the Queen to make it quick. Let me die."
On the edge of that abyss — unable to live, unable to die — the so-called honor of the Empire did not manage even a single second of resistance.
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