81.

The man, with muscles all over his body, pressed down on me with such force that I felt suffocated.

“Move…”

By “move,” I meant not only the overwhelming body threatening to crush me, but also the oblivious lower half of him.

Thankfully, Norma seemed to have some sense of shame and quickly shifted. Instead, he wrapped his massive arms around my waist and, still red up to his neck, subtly pulled me close. Then, as if feeling guilty, he gently stroked my lower abdomen.

Watching him nervously yet doing exactly what he wanted made me let out a hollow laugh. He then whispered in a soft voice.

“You must’ve been in pain. From today, I’ll try to hold back more. For now, let’s just hold hands and sleep.”

Was that him holding back last night? And more importantly, what did he mean by today?

“Today isn’t even a night we’re supposed to spend together, is it?”

Norma’s eyes widened in shock, and he raised his upper body halfway. With a startled look, he asked me.

“Are you saying you’ll only share a bed with me on the designated nights?”

“…Why else would there be designated nights?”

“Have I not taken good care of you?”

With trembling eyes, as if the world was collapsing around him, Norma mumbled. A few hours ago, he wasn’t exactly a puppy—more like a troublesome dog—but now he really did seem harmless.

Faced with that expression, if I had to judge whether or not he’d taken good care of me—

“Yes, you’ve… taken good care of me… I suppose…”

Of course, it was terribly painful. But it wasn’t only painful. Plus, according to my teacher’s advice, I should be honest about my feelings in bed.

“It was… good.”

As I mumbled, avoiding his gaze, Norma looked a bit surprised. I felt a rush of heat to my face as embarrassment finally overwhelmed me, and I covered my face with my palm.

“You enjoyed it as well, I see.”

I heard his laughter-filled voice. Peeking through my fingers, I saw Norma leaning in toward me. Quickly, I covered my face again, only for him to kiss my forehead, which was undoubtedly flushed.

“I’m very happy.”

Even with his face bright red, Norma managed to say such embarrassing things with ease. But with that blissful expression on his face, who could say anything otherwise?

Still covering my forehead, I waved the white flag again.

“But today… today, let’s really just hold hands and sleep.”

“Yes, Aisa.”

However, after our first night together, there was never a day where we simply held hands and slept.

* * *

The stench of blood exploded into the air as the neck of a man was sliced clean off. The warm blood splattered all over Ophelia’s body.

As the hot droplets fell onto her face, Ophelia slowly closed her eyes. Despite just having decapitated someone, her expression was peaceful, as if she had fallen asleep.

“Twenty-three.”

Ophelia dryly counted the number of heads she had severed. The severed head tumbled and rolled a few times near her feet. The owner of the head had been one of Nyx’s fanatics, hiding in an underground tunnel in the southern corner.

After beheading the last one, she calmly flicked her sword, sending the blood spattering onto the ground.

“Next is the west.”

Ophelia mechanically murmured her next destination as she began to move.

“Ophelia—”

Jack Bains, the second son of the Bains family, a loyal servant of the Diazi family and from a long line of renowned knights, called out to her with a displeased expression. However, she ignored his voice and casually exited the tunnel.

“This is… completely…”

Jack, staring blankly at her retreating figure, eventually frowned and muttered to himself.

“It feels like I’ve gone back ten years.”

He clenched his teeth as he recalled when he first met Ophelia, and he followed her closely, not daring to let her out of his sight.

Last winter, Ophelia had abruptly disappeared, leaving behind only a single note. The entire Diazi household had been thrown into turmoil. Fortunately, she returned before Nicholas could leave Baghdad to search for her.

Just as silently as she had disappeared, she returned, seemingly fine. However, she quickly became much quieter, with a strange, forced smile and an unspoken distance from others. At times, she would clench her fists and stare at the ground.

Jack couldn’t help but remember the time, ten years ago, when he and his lord Nicholas were pursuing Nyx’s trail in the west, and they encountered a ragged, blonde girl.

It was hard to believe now, but there had been a time when Ophelia had been awkward and gloomy just by existing. But that was a thing of the past—something to laugh about now. Over the course of ten years, wandering the continent, she had changed. Or rather, she had slowly revealed her true self.

Thus, seeing her hunt down Alpo’s followers and kill them like this felt… unlike the Ophelia he knew. No matter how fanatical these people were, indiscriminately killing them without considering their individual crimes was too extreme.

“Get a hold of yourself. This isn’t like you.”

When they stopped by the stream to wash the blood-stained hands and face, Jack finally spoke to Ophelia.

He knew he was overstepping, but he couldn’t help it. Ophelia was the woman his lord loved. If Ophelia crumbled, he didn’t know what would happen to his lord, who cherished her more than his own life. Diazi’s love was never ordinary.

Even putting that aside, to Jack, Ophelia was a comrade with whom he had wandered the empire for many long years, surviving countless dangers together. Though he had spent a long time doubting and rejecting her odd, suspicious nature, the camaraderie they built over time had formed a deep bond.

“Haha.”

At Jack’s comment that this wasn’t like her, Ophelia let out a delayed laugh. Covered in dark red blood, her awkward smile made her look somewhat deranged. Jack furrowed his brows once again.

‘Aisa McFoy, whom Ophelia clings to, is still alive, and Nyx has been sealed away, albeit tenuously.’

Jack couldn’t understand what was driving Ophelia to such extremes.

Ophelia didn’t bother to hide her obsessive behavior—perhaps she couldn’t hide it any longer. She wasn’t particularly good at concealing her emotions, after all.

When Ophelia first appeared, she had been a foreigner, utterly out of place. For years, she behaved awkwardly and strangely, only to become more natural after losing her right arm, as if some barrier had finally come down.

‘Was the kidnapping of the McFoy family head such a huge shock to her? If Nicholas saw her like this, he’d surely cry.’

The forced smile Ophelia let out didn’t last long. Returning to her usual dry expression, she muttered an apology and crouched by the water, hastily wiping the blood from her face.

Jack, feeling stifled, looked up at the innocent sky. The clear sky was framed with lush green leaves. The forest, now entering early summer, was preparing to grow thick with foliage, but his friend seemed trapped in some distant past, stuck on her own.

Hearing Jack’s sigh, Ophelia paused as she washed off the blood. She stared at her reflection in the water, watching her face distort in the ripples before it slowly returned to normal.

“Cursed woman.”

Ophelia habitually cursed at the reflection before standing up without hesitation. Jack, who had been resting on a nearby rock, flinched at her sudden movement.

‘This is why I wanted to go alone.’

Ophelia felt a tinge of guilt toward Jack, but she knew if she voiced it, he would only look more troubled. So, instead of telling him she planned to go on alone, she silently turned her body toward her next destination.

Jack, suddenly stepping in front of her, urgently called out.

“Let’s go to Baghdad. You should be by Nicholas’s side.”

“There’s nothing I can do in Baghdad.”

“The criminals who performed the sacrificial ritual are already dead. There’s no need to go this far—”

“Jack.”

“Ophelia.”

The cold, emotionless look on Ophelia’s face made Jack feel a growing sense of helplessness as he furrowed his brow.

“We can’t leave any embers behind. We can’t afford to make the same mistake.”

“We can’t just kill everyone who knows Alpo’s curse. If you continue like this, you’ll end up having to kill me and Nicholas too.”

It was excessive. Besides, it was nearly impossible to find and kill every follower of Alpo or everyone with knowledge of their curse scattered throughout the empire.

Jack also disliked that his lord had been stuck in Baghdad for over half a year. They couldn’t continue like this indefinitely, and they needed to find a solution.

What was undeniable, though, was that preventing Nyx’s seal from breaking was the most important task for now. Perhaps Ophelia’s extreme methods were the surest way to ensure that.

After all, if there was no one left to try and break Nyx’s seal, and no one knew how to break it, Nyx could never awaken.

“They’ve already broken the seal once. Are we supposed to just sit around and wait until those scattered remnants come together and try to wake him up again?”

“…”

“Jack. Even if we later claim we didn’t know someone was capable of something like that, it won’t undo what’s already happened.”

“…I still think this is unnecessary.”

“…”

“Nyx’s body is in our possession. Without his body, even knowing the curse is useless. You know that.”

“Jack Bains. I’ve already failed twice. No, maybe three times.”

‘Three times?’

Jack could guess that one of those failures was ten years ago, when Nyx was by her side, and another was when Nyx’s seal was broken during the founding festival. But he didn’t know what the third failure was.

“I’m not saying I’ll kill the emperor or anything.”

Ophelia muttered cynically, leaving Jack feeling dizzy at the casualness with which she said such serious things.

Regardless of Jack’s grimacing face, Ophelia felt like killing every person who knew of Alpo’s power and Nyx, including the emperor, if she could.

But she knew there would be no end to it. All she could do was hunt down the fanatics and prevent any accidents before they could happen.

Ophelia felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. She knew she was being excessive. With every group of fanatics she found, she killed them all. Among them, there were surely innocents mixed in.

Everything felt like a mess. Still, the reason she had chosen such extreme measures was simple: she never wanted to face that hell again. Thankfully, for now, it wasn’t hell.

‘Not yet, as long as Aisa is alive. As long as I don’t regain my holy power, it’s not hell yet.’

Ophelia thought this as she closed her eyes for a moment. When she did, she occasionally heard a voice, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes old, sometimes young, echoing through her mind.

“No matter who you are, I can only twist the ‘story’ a little bit. The rest is up to that person.”

That strange voice had certainly told her that. It could twist the story, or whatever it was, just a little.

If the voice had stopped there, Ophelia wouldn’t have felt so anxious. But the last thing it had said was this:

“But remember. What’s destined to happen will happen.”

Ophelia slowly opened her eyes. Her blue pupils trembled precariously, as if she were being chased by something.