The sweet, heavy scent of wild berries filled the quiet room, but it did nothing to mask the stench of blood beneath my linen wraps.
When I first met the bronze maid on a quiet morning, she had done little more than glide across the floor with a basin of water. Wearing sheer, revealing silks that left little to the imagination, she spoke in low, syrupy tones, keeping her distance while I lay helpless, staring out the window at the beast man instructing recruits below. Shortly after she slipped away, Nea entered carrying a silver dish of sweet, crimson fruit. She sat on the edge of my bed, offering a silent, tender smile, and gently pressed a piece of fruit straight into my mouth with her soft fingers before carefully checking my chest bindings.
Nearly a week passed before I saw the maid again. In that time, the old castle doctor tended to my ribs, smearing bitter herbal pastes over my skin, while Valen dropped by to check on my progress. But when she returned on another crisp morning, her approach shifted into something far more intrusive. The maid stepped close to the mattress, leaning over me under the pretense of fluffing the pillows. Her skin trailed a deliberate, suffocating heat across my bare shoulders, probing my weak points while I lay completely immobilized. When Nea arrived moments after the woman departed, a cold realization settled in my chest. How do they keep missing each other? The timing was too clean. Nea silently set down a bowl of warm broth, sitting beside me and pressing her forehead gently against my knuckles to reassure me.
Another week slipped by in quiet recovery. My fractures slowly began to knit together under the constant care of the healers, giving me just enough strength to brace my weight against the pillows.
on a foggy morning near the end of the third week. When she entered the room, she carried no basin, no towels, and no pretense of cleaning.
Without a word, she glided past the bed and walked straight to the window, leaning her upper back against the stone wall beside the glass so she could look out over the courtyard where the recruits were training. Still keeping her gaze fixed on the yard below, she began to hum a low, dark, swaying rhythm; a slow, hypnotic cadence she whispered was the "Prayer of the Sin of Lust."
As the dark melody filled the silent chamber, her hands moved beneath the thin, revealing silk of her dress. With deliberate, unhurried movements, she began to touch and stroke herself against the cold stone, her fingers tracing her own body while her breathing shallowly synchronized with her humming. I lay completely immobilized in bed, forced to watch as she used her own body to perform the ritual right in front of me.
Before slipping back out into the corridor, she finally turned her head, her dark eyes locking onto mine with a cold, lingering offer: "Join us, strategist... regain what was carved out of you." When Nea entered right behind her, I rasped out a weak question, asking if she had seen the maid in the corridor. Nea reached out, her fingers moving in three swift, simple signs pointing upstairs toward Valen, making a heavy pressing motion over her chest, and tracing a swift circle over her heart to show her deep unease.
By the time the maid returned on a quiet morning near the end of the month, I was finally able to sit upright on my own. It was during this fourth encounter that the full trap unraveled. Sitting on the edge of my mattress, the maid laid out her terms in a venomous whisper. Chaos had lost its entire army fighting Yeh-KOON and his allies; their legions were dust, and she needed me to help tear down the Holy Land. But as she spoke, the missing pieces in my shattered mind clicked into place with sickening clarity. The slave pits. The whips cracking over bare backs. The frozen bodies carried away on carts. The Sin of Lust was the exact force responsible for my friends dying in the mines.
I looked her dead in the eye and refused.
The final confrontation came on the last morning of that long month. Through my windowpane, I could see Valen escorting Nea across the courtyard to watch the Imperial Knights spar. Knowing she could never reach me at night while Nea slept at my bedside, the maid chose this precise morning window to strike.
"You are so remarkably stubborn, Lord Amaduce," she purred, stepping to the bed.
Before my healing body could fully react, she swung a leg over my waist, straddling my hips with terrifying force. Her bronze fingers slammed my wrists into the headboard. Seconds later, the door swung wide. Nea stood on the threshold, catching us in the intimate trap.
The maid grinned, waiting for Nea to burst into tears, break down, or flee in betrayal.
Nea did none of those things. She stood her ground in the doorway, her pink hair framing a face turned to pure, unyielding stone, refusing to grant the maid her cruel victory.
"You arrogant little parasites!" the maid hissed, her voice dropping into a guttural, inhuman roar.
Then, an explosive, unstoppable laughter burst from her lips, echoing off the stone walls in wild, mocking waves. She slowly pushed herself up off my chest, her dark eyes flashing past Nea toward Valen standing in the corridor behind her.
"Well, Lord Valen," she cackled, her voice grating like grinding stone, "it looks like our little scheme didn't work. But a promise is a promise... I will remove Amaduce from your way!"
Realizing her psychological game had failed and her cover was blown, her bronze skin split into jagged, obsidian scales. Her hands deformed into wicked talons, crushing my wrists as she turned her full, murderous rage on me. With a ferocious grunt, she yanked my body from the mattress and hurled me straight through the leaded glass window.
The world turned into a rush of wind and shattering crystal before I slammed brutally onto the hard courtyard cobblestones.
Agony exploded through my spine, threatening to undo a month of healing, but the surge of raw adrenaline forced my eyes open. Above me, the maid leaped from the first-floor ledge, her human frame contorting into a towering, twisted beast of Chaos as she plummeted toward me.
Steel sang across the yard as Imperial Knights rushed forward, but the beast was a whirlwind of slaughter. Tail spikes sheared through plate armor, and dark claws tore through the vanguard, leaving a dozen knights broken and lifeless on the cobblestones. Blood painted the stone floor as the beast spat a bitter, monstrous laugh across the corpses.
"Valen promised me your head!" the beast shrieked, her twisted voice echoing off the stone walls. "He gave me full reign to gut you so his house could rise!"
Lying flat on my back amid the dying knights, unable to stand, I knew normal steel couldn't finish this. I tapped deep into the dormant, volatile energy surging in my veins—the strange power locked within my chest. Black and silver veins burned hot beneath my skin as I focused my raw aura, locking onto the beast's dead angle as she lunged down to crush my skull.
Using the leverage technique I had memorized from the beast man, I hooked my heel behind her stride and unleashed a blinding pulse of raw, kinetic force straight into her center mass. The blast shattered her obsidian scales, pinning her monstrous form to the stone floor.
"Now! Strike!" I roared, my voice raw with blood.
The surviving knights drove their broadswords straight through her exposed core, and with a final, agonizing shriek, the beast collapsed into a silent heap of ash.
Darkness claimed me, and when I opened my eyes again, I was back in a dim chamber, fighting for every shallow breath. The castle healers stood near the door, shaking their heads in grim resignation; my shattered body had completely given out from the fall and the strain of my power, leaving me on the brink of death.
The heavy latch clicked, and Valen stepped into the room alone, his face an unreadable mask.
He walked slowly to the side of my bed, looking down at my fading frame. "I suppose full honesty is owed to a dying hero," he said quietly. "I made a deal with that Chaos creature. House Valor was to receive aid in casting off the Holy Land's grip, and in exchange, she promised to eliminate you. I needed you gone, Amaduce. I needed Nea to choose one of my elite knights as her champion."
Valen let out a low, bitter sigh. "But the Divine Lady is maddeningly obstinate. She refuses to grant her blessing to any man alive except you. She would let the realm burn before choosing another. So... I have no choice."
He reached into his silk tunic and pulled out a small, ornate vial crafted from blackened brass.
"This has been preserved in House Valor since the end of the Age of Gods," Valen whispered, resting the cold metal against my trembling palm. "It is a lethal, primordial draft a force that grants total authority over life and death."
I stared up at him, my breath rattling in my chest. "Why... waste something so priceless... on a slave like me?"
Valen offered a smooth, fluid tilt of his head, his dark eyes gleaming in the candlelight.
"Because, Lord Amaduce... we are entering the Age of Heroes. And whether I like it or not, you are our hero."
My fingers slowly curled around the cold brass vial. As Valen turned and walked out into the quiet hall, I held the weapon tight against my chest, my mind locking onto a single, burning promise. I would survive this agony, and I would use this terrifying power to make Jabari's dream come true.