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Translator: penny
Chapter: 8
Chapter Title: Piel (Gore Warning)
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It's warm...
A gentle heat blooming slowly from the pitch-black darkness.
Not the kind that seeped into her skin, but a cozy warmth spreading from deep within her body.
This warmth.
Piel knew it all too well.
The oldest 'home' warmth, the one she could never forget no matter how hard she tried.
—Crackle, pop.
Just like sitting in front of an old cabin's fireplace, listening to the sparks fly.
Yes... this is just like back then.
"Piel, you need to eat."
Her mother's low voice.
The gentle touch stroking her soft fur, accompanied by a smile.
The cabin door rattling every time the wind blew.
And the smell of hot soup simmering over the fire.
"Haha, sitting by the fire again, huh? Must be cold?"
"N-no! I just think the flames are pretty! Hehe... that's why I'm watching!"
The girl was always in that spot.
By the fireplace, on a tiny wooden chair the size of a hand.
The land where fox kin lived was a harsh realm of eternal snow.
Most beastkin relied on each other in their villages to survive, but there were always exceptions.
The sin of loving someone who wasn't kin, even though she was beastkin herself.
There was only one punishment for breaking the village rules.
Exile.
The man Piel's mother loved was human.
For that single reason, the two were driven from the village and forced to build a lonely cabin, weathering the snow and rain.
But... they were poor, hungry, cold, and sometimes unsure if they'd have even the next day's meal. Still, Piel thought those days were the happiest in the world.
Because her family was always there by that fire.
"Piel, Mommy has some good news today."
The aroma of steaming soup filled the room.
Piel's ears perked up as she warmed her hands by the fire.
"...Good news?"
"Yes. In just a little longer... you might get a little sibling."
"A s-sibling?! Really?! I'm... I'm gonna have a sibling?!"
Piel's mouth curved into a wide grin in an instant.
A smile that lit up the room like daylight.
To a fox beastkin, family wasn't just blood ties.
Especially for Piel, who had lived exiled from the village—family was her entire world.
The biting winds of the snow-covered mountains, the reality where you had to hunt to eat, the cold stares from her own kind who wouldn't even glance her way as they passed.
Amid all that, the only constants by her side were her mother and father.
So the news of a sibling wasn't just "adding to the family"—it meant her world was expanding.
Unable to contain her joy, Piel hugged both her mom and dad at once.
Her little arms weren't enough, but she wanted to hold them even a moment longer.
How wonderful it would be if this happiness lasted forever.
That's what Piel thought.
That day, the whole world truly seemed as warm as the flames.
But the little fox didn't know.
That beasts cast out from the pack vanish first in this world.
And misfortune, as always,
comes without warning, mocking you with its arrival.
Beastkin were fewer in number than humans.
That rarity turned them into commodities.
Beastkin born with strong bodies or high intelligence became 'expensive slaves' simply for existing.
That day, too, her mother had gone down to the human market at the mountain's base for supplies after a long time.
She was always cautious, always keeping her distance, never drawing eyes. But that night,
despite all that care.
Thud.
The cabin's rickety wooden door shook as if shoved by some force.
It wasn't the wind.
She smelled people.
Piel sensed it instinctively.
And the next moment—
Bang.
The sound of the door splintering echoed through the night air.
"Honey! Take Piel and run! I'll hold them off here—!"
Her father's desperate cry, as if his heart were breaking.
And then the sound that followed.
Crunch.
Piel would never forget that sound for the rest of her life.
Neither the crackle of the firewood nor the chill wind battering through the door cracks could drown it out.
Her dad, who always put on a brave face and smiled for her sake.
Her dad, who tried so hard to carry her on his weak shoulders.
That dad's head split into two pieces under an axe blade.
Blood sprayed like flames from the hearth. Her mother's scream clung to the cabin walls.
And as the blood pooled across the floor, the men who did it grinned ear to ear.
It wasn't human laughter.
It was worse than beasts—laughter drunk on the scent of blood.
That day, Piel's world crumbled, and hell began.
Years later, Piel learned.
Adult beastkin were strong enough to shake off a few hunters with ease.
So that day... if her mother had been alone, she could have escaped.
But just as her mother had never once abandoned Piel in the snow-swept mountains or their exiled life, she made no exception now.
The price of that choice fell on both of them.
Mother and Piel were captured together.
Strangled together, dragged away together, bound by the same chains in the same cell.
The hell called 'training' that began that day wasn't just for Piel.
When Mom was strapped to the table first, Piel had to watch and wail.
When Piel took her turn on the rack, Mom endured even worse pain in her place.
Flesh torn, bones broken, their screams echoing back to torment each other.
A cramped dungeon without even a sliver of sunlight.
Worms crawled over the damp stone floor, mingling with the stench of festering wounds in the air.
Both of them... slowly broke in that darkness.
Yet even then,
Mom still managed a smile toward Piel from the center of that hellish cell.
"Piel... as long as we stay alive, good things will come our way someday. On a quiet, beautiful day."
"Really...? Even... even locked up like this?"
"Of course."
Mom's voice was still warm.
Even covered in blood, even missing teeth, even with ragged breaths—she never let go of hope.
"There's a saying from the far east: 'Better to roll in shit than die.' It's hard now, but... good days will come, for sure."
"...Okay."
Mom always shared stories of hope.
Tales of princes rescuing princesses.
Stories of the unjust finding salvation.
Tales of spring arriving at the end of snow-covered mountains.
But Piel could sense it.
The rotting smell from Mom's body each time she returned.
Her loosening teeth.
Legs that could no longer stand properly.
And... Dad had died long ago, yet her belly swelled more each day.
Still, Mom said,
"Piel. As long as you're alive... good things really will happen. So don't give up... you, or the sibling yet to be born."
In the darkness, those words lingered like an ember, guarding some corner of Piel's tiny heart.
Without them, she would have shattered already.
And one day,
that 'small hope' seemed on the verge of returning at last.
"Hey, kid. Special meal today. Heh heh..."
A grating laugh like scraping metal, and a metal bowl clanged onto the cell floor.
Piel looked up.
Steaming stew.
To Piel, who had subsisted on hard bread and muddy water, it was food from dreams.
And it was packed with 'meat'.
Piel's hands trembled as she scooped a spoonful.
A body-temperature warmth spread in her mouth.
It was warm. Delicious.
Maybe... good things really were happening.
"Mom should... eat some too..."
Half the stew remained in the bowl, but Piel deliberately ate no more.
She wanted to give the first spoonful to Mom when she returned.
Clutching the bowl tightly in her small hands, she waited in the dark, smiling quietly.
But—
The second spoonful reached her lips, and Piel's fingertips quivered faintly.
"Huh...?"
It was tasty... but something was off.
Was her tongue numb from starvation?
Or was it just because warm food had been so long?
But chewing again, the soft, tearing texture of the meat brought a familiar 'feeling' to her mouth.
A feeling she shouldn't recognize...
A faint metallic scent, like blood, rose from the stew.
"What... is this taste...?"
Piel cautiously lifted the bowl.
Small chunks of meat floated amid the steam, but one shape was oddly strange.
Fishing it out, it was faintly round, like a human finger joint.
Piel swallowed hard.
But with a 'what if' lingering, as she tilted the bowl again, something clinked against the bottom.
Metal.
With shaking hands, Piel flipped the bowl.
Splash—
A ring.
The wedding ring Mom had clung to like her life, the one from Dad.
"...Mom?"
Piel's voice shook like cracking ice.
That was the moment.
From beyond the bars, a wet, rotting laugh oozed in.
"Still don't get it, kid?"
The darkness held its breath, and the man whispered low.
"That stew you just scarfed down so tasty? That was your mommy's flesh... and the brat in her belly."
"...Huh?"
Piel's eyes trembled.
It took time to grasp the meaning, but the words pressed on mockingly.
"They say beastkin meat gets tender the more kin you feed it. Used in medicine, too. Client specially requested a firm, soft one."
Piel heard nothing.
Cannibalism, medicine, client—none mattered.
Only one thing choked her heart.
Then... Mom is...?
Mom, captured because of me.
Mom, who couldn't escape because of me.
Mom, who took my pains instead.
I ate that Mom?
Refusing to believe, she bolted up reflexively.
The bowl slipped from her hand, stew spilling across the floor.
In her dazed vision, someone grabbed her head.
Slam—!
Her face smashed into the ground.
And amid the scattered stew,
a single gleam rolled out, revealing the impossible reality.
Orange.
The color that had always felt like 'home', warm and loving.
Mom's eyeball.
Piel's breath hitched to a stop.
"You fucking bitch, why waste it? Eat it all!"
"W... waaaaah—!"
"This little shit?"
She vomited up the bile surging in her mouth.
But the humans forced her head up and shoved the puke back into her mouth with their hands.
"If even a drop leaks from your mouth again, your eyeball hits the floor before it does. Ears are bonus."
But she vomited again.
Her throat rebelled, her body screamed.
In the end, they acted on their warning.
They ripped out her own eyeball to swallow instead of Mom's, tore off her ears.
No screams came.
She'd lost too much; even the strength to cry was gone.
Years later, Piel learned.
The one who tried to turn her into medicine was caught but barely escaped being torn apart.
But it meant nothing.
She was already broken beyond repair.
Piel thought,
'Mom... you said good things come if we just stay alive. But no.'
There was no blessing in survival.
Better to die than roll in shit.
So the day she was sold to her new master, Argent, Piel decided to end it herself.
Hope, life, even warmth.
Her breath grew ragged, blood spurted, vision shook.
As cold death reached out, Piel mumbled through her trembling body.
"Mom... coming soon...!"
The cold, black darkness drew near.
It terrified her, but she lied to herself it would end in an instant.
And then.
Instead of death, what came was—
"...Warm."
The warmth of that oldest 'home', the one Piel thought she had forgotten.
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