Abroros, however, was born with the ability to foresee the future, a gift said to be a divine revelation. Using this power, he united humanity, drove out the otherworldly beings, and founded a human kingdom.
Abroros married the warrior Ulrica, one of his greatest allies. Their descendants became the royal family of the present-day Rosantium Empire.
The scripture was filled with tales of heroes who, guided by divine revelation, battled monsters and demons for humanity. Abroros, the greatest among them, was said to have reincarnated time and again to guide mankind through chaos. It is for this reason some claim the current crown prince to be his reincarnation.
Beatrice’s finger traced a line of text:
“The other beings fell to the hero’s blade, and he declared: The end of the other beings is near. Bow before the god who guides me.”
Abroros had united humanity and even persuaded some other beings to join his cause, but he was ultimately betrayed. Yet, he did not succumb to despair, forcing the king of the other beings to kneel before him. The scripture praised humanity’s triumph.
Her finger brushed over the last word of the line, then moved down to the next:
“I am the calamity bestowed by the Great Deity. I am the trial they deliver.”
Beatrice read aloud:
“I am the disaster sent by your god.”
Each word seemed to cling to her lips, tongue, and teeth, like a viscous residue.
Could divine judgment truly be wielded by mere mortals? The words she once uttered seemed to echo in her ears. Unconsciously, she let out a small scoff.
If the gods truly granted meaning and authority to humanity as their agents, then she wished they would answer her as well. If they possessed the power to grant the unattainable, she hoped they would use it for her.
Parent of all creation, ruler of the world. If you are truly omnipotent, then strike me down now.
Be it divine mercy or judgment, Beatrice would have accepted either. Yet, as she raised her gaze from the scripture to the cold, unfeeling statue above her, she found no answer.
The eyes of the Great Deity’s statue were intricately carved, but stone remained stone. Those lifeless eyes held nothing.
No response came. Beatrice, having anticipated this, felt neither disappointment nor despair. She turned away from the altar, her footsteps echoing in the vast, white silence.
Passing by Francis, who stood at the entrance with his hands clasped behind him, she opened the door herself and stepped out. The pristine white floors stretched ahead as his following footsteps trailed behind her.
The gods were neither merciful nor harsh. They did not love humanity. The fact that she was alive proved it.
* * *
As Francis watched Beatrice approach the altar and begin reading the scripture, his eyes narrowed. Once again, a vision overlaid itself upon her figure.
In the stark white space of the prayer hall, the image of a woman drenched in vivid crimson superimposed itself over her back. It was as though he was witnessing an unspeakable sin.
The statue of the Great Deity loomed above her, its gaze ambiguous—perhaps merely observing, or perhaps casting judgment.
Though she had her back to him, Francis could envision her expression. The same detached, emotionless look, devoid of hope or feeling, as if she were reading the scripture with no ties to this world.
As though there was nothing in this existence she held dear.
Then her voice echoed through the silent hall.
“I am the calamity sent by your god.”
Unthinkingly, he agreed. He didn’t even question it anymore. After witnessing this vision three times, surprise no longer held sway over him.
Or perhaps, he realized, it was the explanation given by Priest Theodor that allowed him to remain composed. The emotions stirring within him now were neither shock nor confusion—they were something else, unnamed and unresolved.
A question he had yet to ask her lingered in his mind.
“Did you, at that moment, wish for death?”
Even now, he wanted to ask. But as he watched her brush her hand over the scripture, lifting her gaze to the statue of the deity, her reverence was almost tangible. It felt wrong to interrupt her.
She had declared her intent to pray. Though Beatrice did not voice her wishes aloud, Francis could intuit what her silent prayer contained.
When she finally finished and turned away, the vision dispersed with the soft rustling of her dress. Her expression was exactly as he had imagined—utterly indifferent.
As she passed him, Francis followed a step behind, exhaling slowly. He imagined that she, too, must be breathing just as steadily.
With that breath, he affirmed one thing with certainty.
A force that could neither be avoided, nor wholly embraced, nor denied. A calamity that shook him simply by existing.
To him, its name was Beatrice.
* * *
Thursday. Contrary to his original plan, Viscount Paralet headed to his workshop a day early, his footsteps hurried as he entered with his subordinates.
The viscount had recently learned something unsettling from Baron Pulton. While it was well-known throughout the empire that Count Bildrander had been murdered by a dark sorcerer, he hadn’t anticipated that the artifact in his possession could be linked to such malevolence.
The artifact wasn’t tied to dark sorcery—or so he claimed. Though Paralet himself wasn’t entirely unconnected to such illicit dealings, having worked with clandestine groups employing illegal sorcery for capturing otherworldly beings, any hint of association with dark sorcerers would be enough to ruin him.
Baron Pulton had delivered his grim news with a sly smile, offering a proposition:
“I’m helping you for one reason only. Allow me to use your artifact just once.”
For a rookie noble, Pulton was surprisingly capable, a fact Paralet begrudgingly acknowledged.
The artifact, however, was no ordinary item. Paralet himself had gone to great lengths to ensure its existence remained hidden. No one could imagine the truth: the so-called artifact that revealed “truths” was not an item at all.
It was a creature—a monster that devoured humans.
Even as his heart raced with paranoia, Paralet felt secure in the knowledge that this living entity was firmly under his control. He descended to the basement, where the damp, musty air hit him the moment he opened the door.
Ignoring the children in one cell, he turned to another, where the silhouette of a woman crouched in the shadows. The flickering torchlight illuminated her disheveled form.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“How could I not be, with that wretched stench following you in?” she sneered.
“Don’t get cheeky,” Paralet growled. “We’re relocating today. Behave yourself.”
“Relocating? Did they find you out? Figures,” she said, her laughter ringing hollow against the damp walls.
The chains shackling her rattled with every movement, grating on his nerves. Enraged, Paralet kicked the iron bars.
“You filthy beast, know your place!”
She simply chuckled, her defiance cutting through his authority. “And yet, here you are, groveling to me every time, feeding and pampering me like I’m royalty.”
Her mocking tone grated on him, her every word clawing at his pride. How dare this vermin act so insolent! Fueled by rage, he ordered his guard to fetch the whip, intent on reminding her of her place.
The ensuing scene was one of cruelty and horror. The woman’s laughter turned to screams, and the screams dissolved into a grotesque mixture of pain and mockery that echoed through the dungeon.
The children in the neighboring cell clung to each other, trembling. This was hell—a living, breathing nightmare.
“Dispose of them,” Paralet finally ordered, glancing toward the children. His disdain was palpable.
But the woman on the floor, bloody and broken, suddenly spoke, her voice strained.
“Spare them. Give them to me later.”
“Not worth the effort,” Paralet spat. “Street rats like them are everywhere.”
As he crushed her hand beneath his boot, the sound of urgent footsteps interrupted his cruel intentions. A subordinate burst into the room, his face pale.
“Viscount! Outside! There’s—”
The man’s panic was infectious, and though his words were fragmented, Paralet knew something was wrong.
He rushed upstairs, only to freeze at the sight awaiting him.
A woman, clad in a white dress soaked in red, stood amidst the corpses of his guards. Her black hair clung to her bloodied face, and in her hands, she held the lifeless bodies of two men.
With a casual toss, she discarded the corpses and began walking toward him, her delicate steps contrasting with the horrific scene she left behind. Her golden eyes gleamed like molten metal in the dim light.
Paralet stumbled back, shouting for his men to protect him. But all that followed were brief screams, the crunch of bones, and the wet sounds of flesh being torn apart.
Fear consumed him as he fled deeper into the building. The woman’s voice, eerily calm, called after him, her words dripping with quiet menace.
“Running away?”
Unfortunately for the viscount, his secretive workshop had its windows sealed to maintain discretion and security, leaving him with no escape route. Still, like a desperate insect burrowing deeper into a smoke-filled anthill, Paralet ran further into the building.
As he fled, Beatrice followed him, her pace calm and deliberate. The guards and henchmen who attempted to block her path were mere inconveniences.
No matter how they thrust their swords, all they managed to do was tear her dress. The marble-like resilience of her body bore only superficial scratches. In turn, she rent their flesh and snapped their bones with terrifying ease, leaving a trail of lifeless bodies in her wake.
Trailing behind her like a shadow, Lily carried a small lantern, meticulously scanning for any trace that might tie Beatrice to the carnage. Beatrice wore a pair of men’s shoes Lily had prepared for this excursion, as did Lily herself.
Following them at a cautious distance were Todd and Mentor, their expressions filled with disbelief as they watched Beatrice’s relentless advance. Mentor held his sword, though he hadn’t had a chance to use it. Meanwhile, Todd’s pale complexion betrayed his growing dread.
“She really did kill that count with her bare hands…” Mentor muttered, his voice tinged with shock.
“Quiet,” Todd snapped. “I’m trying to think.”
He gripped the dagger in his trembling hand more tightly. Todd had initially planned to attack the estate methodically. He and Mentor, along with a team of ten battle-hardened agents from his organization, were ready to storm the place. But Beatrice had disrupted that plan entirely, boldly heading straight to the front door of the viscount’s hidden residence.
Watching Beatrice calmly disembark from a nondescript carriage, Todd felt an overwhelming sense of regret. Trusting his gut instinct about the peculiar aura surrounding her now seemed foolish.
His regret turned into sheer disbelief when she dispatched the estate’s guards with terrifying efficiency, snapping their necks as easily as one might break twigs. Her golden eyes gleamed eerily in the dim light, drawing a chilling line between human and beast.
“Follow me,” she commanded, her voice cold and unwavering.
“Don’t get in my way.”
With that, she resumed her march, slaughtering anyone who dared confront her. Lily followed closely behind, inspecting the scene with an eerie calmness, while Todd and Mentor, still reeling from the brutality of it all, trailed reluctantly.
The viscount’s guards, seeing their comrades reduced to mangled corpses, drew their weapons in desperation. But their blades could not penetrate Beatrice’s alabaster skin. Even when they managed to strike her, their swords glanced off, leaving nothing more than faint, shallow marks that would heal within hours.
One by one, the guards fell. Heads crushed beneath her boots, limbs torn asunder, and torsos twisted into unnatural shapes. When the last of them dropped to the blood-soaked floor, Mentor stood frozen, his sword unused, while Todd’s narrowed gaze fixated on Beatrice’s unyielding figure.
At first, he had assumed it was magic—a spell to deflect blades, perhaps. But the air was devoid of the telltale remnants of mana, and there was no trace of dark sorcery.
“This isn’t magic…” Todd realized, a dry laugh escaping his lips.
He lowered his gaze to the corpses littering the floor. Men reduced to broken heaps, their innards spilling grotesquely from shattered torsos.
Her strength, her invulnerable body, and those predatory golden eyes—she wasn’t human.
“Damn it,” Todd muttered. “I’ve tangled myself up with a real monster.”
As Beatrice stepped over the carnage and continued her hunt for the viscount, Todd’s instincts kicked in.
“Don’t kill him yet!” he shouted after her.
She raised a hand in a half-hearted gesture of acknowledgment, but whether she’d comply was anyone’s guess.
“Let’s look for the artifact ourselves,” Todd said, grabbing Mentor’s sleeve.
“Uh, yeah, okay,” Mentor replied, dazed as he followed Todd.
The two began searching room by room, finding little more than scattered personal belongings and clutter. It was clear that whatever they were looking for wasn’t kept in plain sight.
When they finished combing the first floor, they emerged to find the staircase streaked with blood and littered with bodies, leading upward.
“The viscount ran upstairs,” Todd observed grimly.
“Let’s head up. It’s not here,” Mentor agreed, his voice barely above a whisper as they began their climb.
The two ascended the stairs, finding scattered, mangled corpses along the way. Beatrice had a tendency to kill people in particularly messy ways. While some victims were quickly dispatched with a snapped neck, she rarely left them merely dead; their bodies bore further signs of violence, as if she ensured their fates were irreversible.
By the time they reached the stairs to the third floor, a streak of blood had begun to trail upward. Her once-white dress was now thoroughly soaked in crimson.
Todd and Mentor resumed their search on the second floor, while Beatrice, accompanied by Lily, climbed to the third. With each encounter, Beatrice’s arms and dress became more saturated with blood.
Lily carefully brushed away the splatters of blood on the lace hem, her hands stained red, though she seemed unfazed. Her gaze, however, lingered on the shallow cuts on Beatrice’s skin with a simmering anger.
“Urk… ggh,” one of the men caught in Beatrice’s grasp writhed, struggling briefly before going limp. Lily thought the man looked like a crushed insect in the hands of a careless child.
Beatrice moved methodically, ending lives as though checking tasks off a list. She didn’t bother counting her victims or pausing to reflect. The viscount, meanwhile, had fled to the farthest room on the third floor, leaving his subordinates to buy him time.
Beatrice’s movements were neither hurried nor slow as she walked toward the final room, her every step steady and deliberate.
Inside the room, the viscount, trembling with desperation, barked orders at his remaining henchmen.
“Block it! Block the entrance now!”
The viscount cursed his own foolishness for running to the third floor of a building designed with sealed windows and no alternate exits. It had been modified to prevent anything—or anyone—escaping from the basement. Now, that very decision was his undoing.
His trembling hands clawed at his lips as he muttered, “What do we do? What do we do?”
“Viscount, who is she?” one henchman asked nervously, his voice barely above a whisper.
The viscount didn’t know. The woman was a stranger, clad in what seemed like a noblewoman’s nightgown. But what noblewoman hunted people like vermin?
The image of her glowing golden eyes in the darkness resurfaced in his mind, and a cold shiver ran down his spine.
“Could she be connected to that… thing in the basement?” the guard ventured hesitantly.
The viscount’s eyes widened as the question sank in. The creature in the basement—the source of his illicit fortune, the strange being he’d stumbled upon by sheer luck—was it possible that woman was related to it?
The guard, who had spent the most time overseeing the creature, elaborated.
“They’re not identical, but there are similarities,” he stammered.
“Like what? Tell me!”
“Strength,” the guard said. “Not nearly as strong as her, but that thing in the basement was far beyond an ordinary woman’s capabilities.”
The guard recounted other traits—the creature’s unnaturally tough skin, its resistance to injuries that would incapacitate any human, and its glowing eyes in the dark.
“It’s like… she’s an evolved version of it,” the guard concluded, his voice barely audible.
The viscount’s thoughts raced. The creature had come from a remote village in the northern forest, a place where rare beings supposedly lived. He had obtained it by sheer chance, bullying a pair of hunters for information and stumbling upon a child—an anomaly, not quite human.
He had assumed it was a unique mutation, a one-off phenomenon. But what if it wasn’t? What if the creature wasn’t alone?
The resounding ‘bang’ of the barricaded door interrupted his thoughts, the noise reverberating through the room like the tolling of a death knell.
The barricade—mere furniture hastily piled against the door—shuddered with every strike. The viscount, along with his two remaining henchmen, threw themselves against the door in a last-ditch effort to hold it shut.
A crack echoed, and part of the door splintered. Through the gap, a pale hand shot out, unerringly grabbing the face of the henchman in the center.
Crunch.
A grotesque sound followed as the hand crushed his jaw, painting the pale skin red. The henchman screamed—a sound abruptly cut off as his body convulsed and collapsed.
The viscount froze as another horrific crunch filled the air. The sound of snapping bones and tearing flesh echoed in the confined space, each noise a chilling reminder that there was no escape.
The viscount’s body jerked helplessly as the chair he was bound to rattled and creaked with every tug and bump down the stairs. Beatrice gripped it casually with one hand, dragging it behind her without care for his comfort—or his cries of pain. The rhythmic thud of the chair against the steps and the viscount’s stifled groans echoed in the otherwise silent corridor.
Trailing her, Todd muttered under his breath, wiping the sweat from his temple. He was mentally calculating the risks of what lay ahead. The viscount’s whispered confession about the hidden underground prison had only deepened his suspicion about the grotesque horrors they might encounter. Beside him, Mentor gripped his weapon tighter, the tension evident in his stiff posture. Even Lily, who rarely betrayed any emotion in her stoic servitude to Beatrice, seemed more rigid than usual.
The group reached the first floor and stopped in front of the concealed entrance to the basement. A false panel disguised as part of the wall concealed the descent into the depths. It was clever—almost too clever.
“Viscount,” Todd said, turning his attention to the beaten man still bleeding and bound to the chair. “If you’ve sent us on a wild chase, I’ll ensure your suffering has only just begun.”
The viscount could only gurgle in response, his body trembling uncontrollably. Todd, unimpressed, signaled for Mentor to search for the mechanism. With a bit of fumbling and a well-timed pull of a nearby lever, the hidden door groaned open. A wave of putrid air rushed out, thick and oppressive, forcing them to cover their noses.
“By the gods…” Mentor muttered, stepping back instinctively.
Lily coughed into her sleeve but quickly composed herself, her expression hardening as she moved closer to Beatrice. Todd glanced at the entrance, visibly perturbed, before gesturing to Beatrice.
“You first,” he said, half-joking.
Beatrice didn’t bother responding. Her golden eyes gleamed faintly in the dim light as she stepped through the threshold without hesitation. The others followed, descending the steep staircase into the suffocating darkness.
The further they went, the stronger the stench became—blood, rot, and something more sinister. The air was damp, and the oppressive silence pressed in from all sides, save for the occasional creak of the viscount’s chair being dragged behind Beatrice.
The bottom of the stairs revealed a sprawling, dimly lit chamber. Rows of crude cells lined the walls, the bars rusty and bent. Inside the cells were emaciated figures—adults and children alike—huddled together, their hollow eyes staring out at nothing. The flickering torchlight revealed bloodstains on the floor and walls, a grim testament to the horrors that had occurred here.
Beatrice stopped, surveying the room with cold detachment. Lily, standing beside her, looked visibly shaken but kept her composure. Todd, however, muttered a curse under his breath as he took in the sight.
“This…” he said, his voice low and trembling. “This is monstrous.”
Mentor, standing a few paces behind, tightened his grip on his weapon. “We should end it all—burn this place down.”
“Not yet,” Beatrice said simply, her tone devoid of emotion. She turned her head slightly to Todd. “Find it.”
Todd nodded reluctantly, motioning for Mentor to follow him as they began searching the chamber. Beatrice, meanwhile, walked forward, her boots squelching against the blood-soaked floor. The viscount’s chair scraped along behind her, the sound grating against the eerie silence.
She stopped in front of one of the cells, her golden eyes narrowing as they met the gaze of the creature inside. A pale, humanoid figure huddled in the shadows, its limbs unnaturally long and thin. Its glowing yellow eyes mirrored hers, flickering with an animalistic hunger that sent chills through anyone who dared to look too long.
The viscount, sensing the creature’s presence, began thrashing in his bindings. “N-no! Not that! Don’t open it!” he choked out, his voice barely a whisper through his mangled jaw.
Beatrice ignored him, reaching out and gripping the rusted bars of the cell. With a sharp pull, she ripped the door from its hinges, the metal screeching in protest. The creature within stirred, its movements slow and deliberate as it crawled forward, its gaze locked on Beatrice.
“What is it?” Todd called out, his voice echoing from across the chamber.
“Something useful,” Beatrice replied, her lips curving into a faint smile as she stepped aside to let the creature emerge. It moved with a predatory grace, its eyes darting between the viscount and the others in the room.
The viscount’s muffled screams filled the chamber as the creature advanced toward him, its elongated fingers reaching out hungrily. Todd and Mentor exchanged uneasy glances but made no move to intervene.
Beatrice stood silently, watching the scene unfold with the same cold detachment she had displayed throughout the night. For her, this was not cruelty—it was simply inevitability.
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