For the past few days, Rita had been having the same nightmare.
In that dream, she sat in the passenger seat of a transport vehicle, taking a short rest. Beside her was a Valkyrie colleague she knew well, hands steady on the wheel.
It was night.
The road was quiet. The mission itself was not difficult. There should not have been any enemies nearby.
She had only wanted to close her eyes for a moment.
But just as she began to drift—
"Let… me…"
"Let me go…"
"I don't… want…"
"Ri… please… help…"
"Save…"
"Don't…"
"Uu… uu…"
"Ah… ah…"
The voice came from the rear compartment.
Hoarse. Broken. Mixed with crying.
It sounded like a child whose mind had already been worn half to pieces, using the ugliest, most primitive way possible to spill out fear and pain.
That kind of sound only came from someone who had already been driven into despair, then suddenly thought they saw hope, only for the mind they had been forcing to hold together to start collapsing the instant it loosened.
It was naked weakness.
A plea born from helplessness.
Rita turned around.
Through the wire partition, she saw the young man lying in the back of the transport.
All his hair had already fallen out.
His lips were split in several places, but there was no blood flowing from them.
The skin exposed to the air had taken on a dead, sickly white.
Purple veins crawled up his neck.
But what shocked Rita the most were his hands.
All ten fingernails were gone.
What remained was wet, ruined flesh.
And more horrifying still, the flesh at the tips of his fingers seemed to have been pierced through.
Tiny holes.
One after another.
Small as pinpricks.
Not just one.
Not just the fingers, either.
His toes looked the same.
Even now, Rita found it hard to imagine. If wounds like that had been on her own body, then what kind of horror had he gone through to end up like this?
For the rest of the drive, she kept hearing him mutter.
It was as if that muttering was the last straw still left in his heart.
That straw had many names.
Maybe it was hope.
Maybe it was something beautiful.
Or maybe it was kindness. Conscience. Humanity.
But Rita had forced herself to ignore all of it.
To be honest, on a personal level, she had wanted to grant that man's wish.
Let him go.
But the condition he was showing—
Honkai sickness.
He had to be isolated.
Otherwise, more people would be hurt.
And on top of that, there was his identity.
He was suspected of being an Anti-Entropy test subject.
"Bring him back."
"I want to see what those Anti-Entropy people were trying to do."
That had been the Bishop's direct order.
So Rita, leading the post-disaster investigation team in Nagazora, took the "test subject" they had found in Anti-Entropy's abandoned underground base and sent him to the West Asia Branch.
Strictly speaking, the closest destination should have been the Far East Branch.
But that place was under Lady Theresa's control.
Clearly, the Bishop did not want his precious granddaughter touching too much darkness again.
And besides that—
the Far East Branch within Shenzhou was not suitable either.
Because for certain historical reasons, that country's hatred toward forced high-risk human experimentation had sunk into the bone.
As for the West Asia Branch…
Many of its upper ranks came from the Country of Jacob.
Its reputation, and the things it had done over the past century, were notorious enough that even Rita, who came from Britain, knew them well.
So in the end, under the Bishop's arrangements, the West Asia Branch became the best place to receive that test subject and squeeze every last drop of personal value out of him.
At the time, Rita forced herself not to think too much about it.
Later, they sealed his mouth as well.
The other members of the team did not seem to have nerves as strong as Rita's. They had long since stopped being able to endure those scalp-crawling sounds.
But when the convoy entered the West Asia Branch facility, and the handover was completed—
"!"
She saw the stretcher pass by.
She saw that man—who was no longer struggling like he had during the trip, no longer trying to rip himself free of the restraints—suddenly force his head to one side and look at her from the corner of his eye.
His eyes were bloodshot.
His pupils trembled without stopping.
A tear slowly slid down from the corner of his eye.
But that trail of tears—
was a strange, bloody red.
It was as if he wanted to carve everything he saw into himself.
And in that silent stare, he seemed to be saying—
I will never forget.
All of you.
Every last one of you.
If I ever get the chance, I will—
"!"
At Schicksal Headquarters, Rita jolted awake in her personal quarters.
Only then did she realize her thin nightclothes had already been soaked through with sweat.
At some point, even her breathing had turned rough.
It took her a good while to calm down.
Fortunately, there was no one else here.
No one had seen that brief moment of disgrace.
"Haa…"
After several deep breaths, Rita finally let out a long sigh and forced her mood back under control.
Sitting up in bed, she pressed a hand to her forehead.
Cold.
Even now, she still could not forget that look.
Even after making a name for herself on the world assassin rankings, even after becoming the Bishop's blade and using the name Umbral Rose to deal with more filth than most people could imagine—
only that moment had ever truly frightened her.
Even now, after everything that had happened recently, even compared to the other Herrschers she had faced—
that memory still felt like a nightmare she could not shake off.
Maybe even back then, she had already known.
"If the hatred in his heart is ever released, it will be enough to destroy the whole world."
In the quiet room, Rita fell silent.
A long while passed before she finally let out another breath.
"…Sigh."
Thinking back over everything that had happened lately, she could only laugh bitterly to herself.
It had all come true.
That man really was trying to destroy the world now.
He killed without pity, more terrifying than any Herrscher she had ever known.
If, back then, she had disobeyed the Bishop and followed her own feelings and let him go…
Or if she had been just a little more clever and found some way to preserve him, hide him, send him somewhere uninhabited to live out the rest of his life…
Or even if, later, when she thought of him again and again, she had taken the time to visit the West Asia Branch and check what kind of situation he was in—
With her status, the first few had probably been impossible.
But the last one?
That would have been easy.
And yet, all the way until today—
"Pitying myself doesn't suit me."
Rita gave a self-mocking laugh. "No matter what I say now, it's too late."
She had never known him.
They had been strangers.
…Wait.
Strangers?
Years later, fresh out of that nightmare, Rita suddenly caught a detail.
Back then, during the transport—
had that man not…
had he not called her by name?
"Rita… please… help me…"
"Save me!!!"
Rita froze.
Why?
She was certain that before that day, she had never met him.
Then why had he treated her like his last hope?
Did he know her?
How?
"Mm…"
Rita rubbed the space between her brows.
Her thoughts were too tangled. In the end, she decided to get out of bed and take a cold shower.
As one of Schicksal's active S-rank Valkyries, Rita obviously did not live badly when she was not out on a mission.
That would have been impossible.
But even in surroundings like these, she almost never let her guard down.
That habit had long since sunk into her bones. Professional instinct, carved into her from the day she chose this road—from the day she admired someone in her youth enough to train herself into becoming a Valkyrie.
And then, suddenly—
"Bad dream?"
The voice that appeared in her room without warning made Rita snap into a combat stance instantly.
In one smooth motion, she drew the dagger hidden beneath her pillow, landed lightly on the floor, and lowered herself into a half-crouch.
Her legs were already bent, ready to spring or evade at any moment.
Her body stayed low, minimizing the area that could be struck.
That single response alone was enough to show exactly what kind of top-class killer she was.
But the moment she locked onto the source of that voice and saw the face of the uninvited guest—
"It's you!"
Rita felt both her breathing and heartbeat miss half a beat.
Ling Ke.
The Tenth Herrscher.
The Herrscher of Domination.
He had actually come here in person.
At least, from Rita's point of view, that was exactly what had happened.
A black-haired young man in formalwear was sitting on the sofa not far away inside her room.
There was a calm smile on his face.
But his eyes held no focus at all.
That violent mismatch between expression and gaze made the whole sight feel unbearably wrong, enough to make the skin crawl.
And in that atmosphere—
"So even you have nightmares."
Ling Ke spoke in an even tone, as if he were only commenting on some trivial little thing. "I thought you would stay hard-hearted forever. Calm. Cold. No… cold-blooded to the very end."
"Just like back then. True to your name—Umbral Rose."
"Beautiful and charming on the outside, but really… just a disguise to cover how dangerous you are."
If it had been anyone else, Rita probably would have answered with an elegant smile and a lightly mocking line.
Something like: barging into a lady's room is terribly rude.
But for some reason, in front of this man, she did not dare play that game.
"What are you here for?"
Rita's voice sank low. "Have you come to take revenge on me too?"
Clearly, she was not like Mei or Bronya.
She had long since passed the stage where she needed time to stumble her way toward clarity.
So even though, yes, she truly did feel guilt toward Ling Ke—
she also knew that he was humanity's enemy. A Herrscher who had to be eliminated.
Which was why, even while speaking, she was already making preparations in secret. Looking for a chance to transmit the live situation here so that others would know.
So that reinforcements could get here as fast as possible.
So that her side would not miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to capture Ling Ke's real body.
Unfortunately, Rita did not know one thing.
Ling Ke was not the kind of idiot villain who got carried away and threw his own life away out of arrogance.
So—
"Let's have some fun."
Back in the Theater of Domination, Ling Ke's true body still sat alone on that high-backed throne.
Like the director of a stage play, he watched everything from above.
Obviously, the one now sitting in Rita's room was only a Domination Puppet—one whose appearance had been adjusted a little using the authority of the Herrscher of Reason.
Just as he had said before—
until his real revenge plan was complete, he would never expose himself to danger.