The Reaper speaks, his voice scraping through the silence like tectonic plates grinding together—an ancient, heavily creepy, and deeply exhausted sound that echoes from the very dawn of creation:
"Well? Aren't you going to beg me to take you this time?"
Luan lets out a hollow laugh.
Not the forced laughter of the curse.
Not the painted laughter of a jester.
Just exhaustion.
Luan looks up at the towering entity of death, his voice cracking with a centuries-old exhaustion. "I have been begging you for centuries... even if I say it, it is not like you would ever fulfill my wish."
The Reaper does not strike a menacing posture. Instead, his stance is heavy, slumped slightly with the unimaginable weight of millions of years of collecting souls. When he speaks, his voice is ancient and deeply tired, but there is a quiet, weary understanding in his tone.
"You speak without jest," the Reaper murmurs, the blue flames flickering softly within the shadow of his hood. "And I see you have finally been granted a name... *Luan*. What a bright name."
He lets out a slow, exhausted sigh. "You have been constantly dying in the living world, so you will be here with me for quite a while. Tell me, how do you feel? Now that you have finally found someone who saw behind your painted face...
That Princess is quite extraordinary. Even the gods are looking down in curiosity, wondering what she will do next."
Luan slowly lowers his head, his phantom fingers tightening against his chest as the agonizing weight of reality sinks in. "I don't understand. After centuries... after all these decades... I finally found someone who saw me. Someone who saw beyond the paint. And now, she's gone too."
The Reaper watches the broken jester, his expression hidden, but his tone completely devoid of malice. "Indeed... love is the most twisted curse of all, after all."
Luan's grip tightens over his heart, tears forming in his eyes. "Is this the new punishment from the gods and the heavens? I don't understand it. After I found the only person who saw me, who saw behind the paint and the curse... they took her away too.
Or is it me? Are the lines in my hands cursed, so that whoever I try to hold, they just rot and die? I want her to live happily, but I can't even imagine losing her.
I wish I was one of her tears, so I could be born in her eyes, run down her cheek, and finally die on her lips."
The Reaper remains quiet. Across eternity, he has watched kings burn entire kingdoms to ashes for love.
He has watched saints abandon their sacred faiths for love, and conquerors kneel in the dirt for it. Yet, the sight of an already heavily accursed jester getting destroyed by the weight of a human heart stirs a profound, weary pity within him.
"It's time," the Reaper says softly, his voice gentle but firm.
"It's time for you to go back."
With a fluid, unhurried motion, he swings his massive scythe, cleanly slicing the dark world in two. The infinite black ocean begins to sweep into his tattered robes, dissolving the void until everything vanishes.
Luan snaps back into the physical world with a violent gasp of pure agony.
He is chained to the stone floor of a pitch-black cell. The brutal, agonizing reality of his immortality is happening in real time—his severed head is actively knitting back onto his torso.
Muscle fibers, veins, and nerves writhe like bloody threads, fusing together with a sickening, wet friction.
Fresh blood covers his face as the bright jester paint aggressively bleeds back out through his pores, recreating his forced smile.
Outside the cell, heavy, methodical footsteps approach. The yellow, flickering glow of a lantern cuts through the dark, revealing Viktor.
He looks down at Luan's twisting, reforming flesh with a wicked, entirely heartless smile.
"No matter how many times I see it, it's truly magnificent," Viktor purrs.
Luan lets out a raw, choked scream of pure torment as his vocal cords violently stitch back together.
Viktor's smile vanishes into cold disgust.
Without a shred of hesitation, he drives the heel of his heavy, mud-stained boot straight into Luan's open, bloody mouth, crushing his jaw ruthlessly against the stone.
"Bite on it, you freak. Don't yell," Viktor hisses, grinding his heel down until Luan's teeth creak under the pressure. "I've been killing you for days repeatedly, every single second, using raw ivy poison to liquefy your veins and even dismembering your body once in a while. You are truly exactly what I needed."
Viktor forcefully kicks Luan directly in his newly fused ribs, laughing aloud as the bone snaps back apart. "The fun is just about to start. I'll make full use of you."
Viktor hangs the lantern on the wall and turns, walking calmly toward the stone stairs. As he climbs, Luan's muffled screams of agony grow distant below.
Viktor reaches the top, pulling open a thick, reinforced metal door. The air in this upper room is completely freezing. Laid out on long stone tables are the pale, lifeless bodies of several people—both men and women—completely stripped of life.
Viktor grins into the cold darkness, his eyes glinting with pure evil. The dead are useless.
But an immortal corpse? That's priceless.
"At last a subject i can dissect forever."
⟣ Meanwhile, At Aval ⟢
Out on the bloody, open plateau of the goblin colony, the terrifying pressure of Sylvie's presence has completely faded. Henry remains sitting on the dirt right beside Leonard, his body still trembling from the evolutionary terror.
As the suffocating malice lifts, he forces his shaking hands to move, turning his focus to the leonard slumped heavily against the rock next to him. The black-iron throwing dagger is still buried deep in Leonard's shoulder, the metal gleaming dully against his skin.
"Hold still," Henry mutters, his voice shaking. He plants his boots, takes a firm, two-handed grip on the dagger's hilt, and wrenches it out with a sharp tug.
Leonard clenches his jaw so hard his teeth grind together, a ragged, suffocating gasp escaping his lips as a fresh torrent of dark crimson blood wells up from the puncture wound.
Gritting his teeth through the blinding pain, Leonard weakly catches Henry's wrist, his grip desperate. "This stays between us. Every word. You understand me, Henry?"
Henry nods hesitantly, his throat completely dry. He quickly uses a discarded strip of cloth to press tightly against the bleeding wound, stanching the flow as best he can.
He then moves over to the unconscious captive women, gently shaking them until they start to wake up.
Once the women are conscious, the two blood-drenched warriors begin the grueling task of escorting them back down the mountain, taking a long, careful detour away from the steep cliffside to ensure their safety.
From afar, the incomplete wooden walls of Aval slowly come into view. The local townsmen working on the fortifications freeze, dropping their hammers and logs. Through the midday haze, they spot the group approaching.
Henry and Leonard are completely shirtless, their bare chests caked in a horrific mixture of thick grime and dried black monster blood, having given their cloaks and shirts to the naked, traumatized women.
Panic instantly ripples through the workers. Guards grip their rusted spears, their faces pale with fear, assuming monsters or bloodthirsty bandits are marching upon the gates.
But as the group gets closer, the shivering figures of the missing women emerge from the dust behind them.
The initial fear shatters into chaotic confusion. A small child breaks from the gathering crowd, sobbing hysterically as he screams, "Mama! Mama!" and throws his tiny arms around one of the rescued captives.
The woman collapsed to her knees and wrapped both arms around the child, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.
The reception from the rest of the town, however, remains deeply divided. While a few families weep and offer frantic prayers of gratitude, a heavy blanket of unease settles over the crowd.
People shrink back as Henry and Leonard pass, eyes wide with suspicion and fear. Loud, tense whispers break out among the men near the wall.
"Look at the state of them... they look like demons themselves," a woodcutter mutters, crossing his arms.
"You expect us to believe *two* men wiped out an entire colony?" an older farmer sneers softly to his neighbor, shaking his head. "They probably just snuck in and dragged them out. They're going to bring the rest of the horde right down on our heads."
Henry ignores the pointing fingers and the cynical murmurs, keeping his eyes locked straight ahead as he supports the staggering leonard through the muddy streets.
They push open the heavy wooden door of the inn where they have been staying.
The lady behind the counter looks up, and her eyes instantly widen in shock and immediate recognition. "Heavens... what happened to you two?!" She takes one look at Leonard's grotesquely swollen, broken face and the heavily bleeding wound on his bare shoulder, and she instantly takes charge. "Take him upstairs to your room! Go, I'll be right there with the bandages and ice!"
Henry hooks his arm deeper under Leonard's shoulder and hauls him up the creaking wooden stairs, navigating the narrow hallway until they reach their room. He carefully lays the dazed, groaning mam down onto the mattress.
A moment later, a hurried knock rattles the door, and the inn lady rushes in, carrying a jar of clean water, fresh linen, and soothing salves.
She kneels by the bedside, immediately setting to work with practiced efficiency. She cleans the deep, jagged puncture wound on Leonard's shoulder where the dagger had been, pouring an antiseptic wash over the tear that makes the veteran flinch.
She packs the wound and binds the shoulder tightly with fresh linen to completely stop the bleeding, before applying a cooling salve over his cracked, heavily bruised ribs.
Throughout the treatment, she works in a tense, worried silence. Once the bleeding is contained and the bandages are securely tied, she gathers her bloody cloths. She casts a quiet, pitying look at the two battered men, nods tightly to Henry, and quietly leaves the room, closing the wooden door behind her.
The room falls into a heavy, suffocating silence. Henry stands over the bed. He takes the clean cloth from the table, wraps it securely around a handful of the ice, and gently presses it against the severe, purple swelling on Leonard's face.
Leonard lets out a low, ragged groan of intense pain, his eyes remaining fixed on the wooden rafters above.
Unable to hold back the burning question any longer, Henry looks down at him, his voice tight, raw, and trembling and remembering the way Sylvie was beating him.
The way Leonard never once raised his sword against her.
"Who... who was that dangerous woman?"
Leonard stares blankly into the shadows of the ceiling for a long, painful moment, the cold melting ice mixing with the fresh tears that finally cut clear paths through the blood on his cheeks.
"Someone who has every reason to hate me."