Rhea felt bad for Ayumu.
She had retreated to the corner like a coward, leaving Ayumu to face Visil's fury alone. But seeing the trembling Ayumu now, silent and broken, Rhea knew she had to intervene.
"I apologise, Your Majesty." Her voice wavered, but she forced the words out. "Lady Ayumu's painkillers are about to lose their effect, and she needs rest."
Rhea was scared—her pulse hammering against her ribs—but she said it anyway.
Visil exhaled slowly, a long breath that seemed to drain the last of his anger from the room. He pushed his dark brown hair back from his forehead with one hand, his fingers lingering there for a moment as if to steady himself.
Maybe I overdid it a little.
"I'm sorry, sister," he said quietly. "For raising my voice."
He didn't take her hand. Instead, he reached for the armrest of her wheelchair—a careful distance, a respectful boundary. He didn't want to overwhelm her.
But to his surprise, Ayumu moved.
Her fingers—still trembling, still pale—reached out and wrapped around his hand. The touch was feather-light, hesitant, as if is still afraid but held on.
Her eyes glistened. Her lower lip quivered.
"I'm sorry… brother."
The words came out broken, barely a whisper.
It was an old habit between them, one carved from childhood. When they were small, whenever one of them did wrong or said something hurtful—they would apologise right away. No pride. No delay. Just I'm sorry, and the other would nod, and the world would feel right again.
For Ayumu to initiate physical contact, even this small, trembling gesture, brought Visil joy. She was getting over her trauma. At least toward him.
He held her hand—gently, carefully, as if she were made of glass.
"Now rest," he said softly.
He rose to his feet and turned to Rhea, his voice firm but not unkind.
"Care for her."
Rhea bowed deeply. "Yes, Your Majesty."
Visil and Kaiser then left the room, the door closing behind them with a soft thud.
The corridor outside was cold and dim, lit only by scattered torchlight. Visil walked in silence for several paces, his boots echoing against the stone. Kaiser followed a half-step behind, his red eyes unreadable in the flickering shadows.
Then Visil stopped.
"Kaiser…" His voice had changed. The gentleness from moments ago was gone, replaced by something low and dangerous—a blade wrapped in silk. "As soon as those men are out of the border… kill them."
Kaiser did not flinch. Instead, a slow, quiet satisfaction crept into his expression—the faintest curl at the corner of his lips.
"If you grant me the pleasure," he said, "of doing it personally."
Visil resumed walking, his cloak sweeping the floor behind him.
"Do what you will."
True to his words.
Three days later, at the northern edge of the empire's border, a battered carriage came to a halt. The door swung open, and four exiled men were thrown out like sacks of rotting grain—onto the dirt, onto the frost-bitten grass, onto the line where the empire ended and the lawless wilds began.
They didn't wait. They scrambled to their feet and ran for their lives.
But they didn't get far.
A shadow passed over the moon. Then the sound—a leathery whoosh of enormous wings, the snap of a heavy tail cutting through the air. The black wyvern descended like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
Its claws came down first, trampling the slowest runner into the mud with a sickening crunch. Then its jaws—rows of needle-sharp teeth—tore through flesh and bone as if they were paper.
Screams echoed across the border, brief and useless.
Within moments, there was nothing left but torn earth, scattered remains, and a dark wyvern shaking blood from its snout.
Kaiser sat atop the beast, his expression calm, almost serene.
He had gotten his revenge.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Visil had given the order: three days of bed rest. No work. No walking about. Nothing.
Ayumu had healed herself completely after just one day. Her energy had replenished, her wounds had closed, and her strength had returned. By the morning of the second day, she was physically whole again.
But the remaining two days became a form of torture she had never anticipated.
She lay sprawled across her bed, staring at the canopy above. Then she turned onto her side, staring at the wall. Then onto her other side, staring at the window. Then back onto her back, sighing loudly.
Rhea tried to help. She brought armfuls of books—histories, legends, poetry, even a few romance novellas she'd borrowed from the palace library without permission.
Ayumu devoured six of them before the sun set.
"I'm bored Rhea," she announced, placing the sixth book gently onto the growing pile.
Rhea blinked at her. "That was seven hundred pages."
"But I already finished it all...Rhea, I am bored..."
Rhea opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. No words came. She looked like a fish trying to perform arithmetic.
She was at a complete loss.
On the morning of the fourth day, the confinement period ended.
Ayumu exploded out of her room like an arrow loosed from a bow. She didn't walk to her duties—she flew. The palace servants stepped aside as she rushed past, her white robes trailing behind her like a banner of war.
She worked with splendour. With vengeance. With the kind of relentless energy that only comes from someone who has been forced to do nothing for three entire days.
She organized correspondence. She drafted decrees. She reviewed supply requests. She answered diplomatic letters that had been sitting in the "pending" pile for a week.
By midday, the mountain of work on Visil's desk—the one that had been growing like an uninvited weed—had been smoothed into a gentle hill.
Visil noticed and it concerned him.
Because this wasn't just diligence. This was making up for lost time. This was someone trying to prove that they hadn't been useless. This was—
"Your Majesty."
Visil looked up from the report he had been pretending to read.
Ayumu stood before his desk, back straight, chin lifted, hands clasped in front of her.
"I humbly ask again to be a part of the expedition."
As expected.
She hadn't let it go. Of course she hadn't.
Visil set down his quill. He pressed his fingertips together and fixed her with the same firm, imperial stare he used on stubborn nobles and recalcitrant generals.
"What makes you think I will be saying yes now, Ayumu? Especially after what just happened." His voice was flat, immovable. "The answer is still no."
Ayumu's expression flickered—just a fraction. A small sadness passed over her face like a cloud crossing the sun.
But then something shifted in her posture.
She looked around.
The emperor's office was empty. No servants. No scribes. No guards. Just the two of them.
She stepped around the desk.
Visil's eyes narrowed. His body tensed. What is she going to do? His mind raced through possibilities. Heal him into compliance? Blow sleeping powder in his face? Summon some white magis binding circle?
He was prepared for the worst but not prepared for what came next.
Ayumu knelt down beside his chair—not a formal bow from a distance, but close, intimate, right at his elbow. Slowly, deliberately, she reached across the armrest and placed her small hand over his.
Visil flinched—a sharp, involuntary jerk of his fingers, as if her touch had carried an electric current.
And then she looked up at him.
Cute. Sad. Pouting. Her eyes wide and glistening, her lower lip pushed out just slightly, her brows drawn together in a perfect expression of wounded hope.
She didn't say a word. She didn't need to.
Visil felt his chest tighten. His heart—that cold, iron thing he had forged through years of bloodshed—melted like wax before a flame. He could feel her trembling, just a little. She was still scared of touch. Still fighting against her own trauma. And yet she was doing this. For the expedition. For him.
"Okay… you can—"
He caught himself.
"Wait. No. NO. NO!"
He almost lost it. He almost gave her permission—just like that, undone by a pair of sad eyes and a trembling hand.
What a dangerous creature.
He yanked his hand back as if burned, though his heart was still racing.
"Who taught you this?!"
Ayumu's pout deepened—this time from disappointment. She rose from her knees, brushing off her robes.
"Rhea said I needed to be more creative." She gestured vaguely toward the books still stacked in the corner of the room. "I read it in the books she gave me."
Visil's jaw tightened. His eye twitched.
That brown magis.
Ayumu tilted her head, still pouting. "Brother, so… the expedition…"
"The answer is still NO."
Ayumu sighed.
But somewhere deep in Visil's chest, a small voice whispered: She's getting bolder.
He didn't know if that made him proud or terrified.
Probably both.