Chapter 33

The prince moved his arm with agonizing slowness. His deliberate gestures felt as though he were wading through hardening lead, a testament to the immense force pinning him down. As he maneuvered, the rhythmic, ominous cracking of his own frame continued unabated, a brittle symphony of impending collapse.

Then, with a sudden, fluid shift, the prince lunged.

His movement was undeniably labored, a mere shadow of the light-speed grace he had displayed moments prior. Yet, even encumbered, he remained lethal enough that only a master could hope to evade him. The magician barely flinched aside, and the prince’s blade descended, striking the invisible wall once more with a dull, ringing thud.

CRACK

The fissure in the magician’s ring widened, the metal groaning under the immense pressure. The magician’s face contorted into a hollow expression, his skin stretched taut over his protruding bones.

Gritting his teeth, the magician intensified his chanting, his voice rising into a manic, rough cadence. As his spell took shape, a cloud of pitch-black smoke erupted from his lips, solidifying instantly upon contact with the air. It slammed into the prince, transforming into a viscous, tar-like substance that enveloped his arms, anchoring them in place.

“How is that possible? You are now shackled! Astaroth’s smoke binds anything within this reality to its own stagnant space. You are trapped!” the magician stammered, his voice laced with a desperate, frantic triumph as he sacrificed his own remaining lifespan for survival.

Indeed, the prince remained motionless, his limbs locked in a suffocating embrace of shadow. He attempted to struggle against the hold, but his efforts were futile. The magician, now drenched in cold sweat, wore a jagged, triumphant grin. He withdrew a dagger from his robes and raised it high.

“Die, you monster! You wretched creature wearing the skin of a man!”

The blade caught the light, emitting a brilliant, lethal flash. Isaac stiffened, his fists clenching until his knuckles burned white. The ceiling joists groaned, but the sound was abruptly stifled by a singular, sharp metallic CLANG.

With a casual flick of his toe, the prince sent a jagged shard of a broken blade skittering across the floor, then kicked it upward with surgical precision. The steel fragment tore through the air, piercing the magician’s Adam’s apple. The tip of the shard protruded, glistening, from the back of his neck.

“…”

The magician froze, his arm suspended in mid-strike, his dagger poised in the air.

CRACK.

The ring disintegrated, its fragments clattering uselessly to the floor.

A soundless, choked scream tore from the magician’s throat as the flames, the crushing gravity, and the suffocating smoke dissolved into thin air, leaving him hollow and broken.

“Can you not mend your own wounds?” the prince inquired, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. “Or does your magic necessitate an incantation even for that?”

The magician clutched the steel protruding from his throat, his mouth engaged in a futile, gargling struggle for air. He was already dead; he had simply not yet realized it.

“I suppose I must hope for better entertainment next time. Someone who at least knows of Roverni’s witch, or at the very least, someone who can provide a more extended spectacle.”

Without a hint of emotion, the prince’s blade descended. It severed the magician’s skull, splitting him from crown to gut in a single, brutal stroke. The man collapsed into a broken heap of flesh and sudden stillness.

Silence descended like a shroud. Amidst the cloying, metallic stench of fresh blood, only the prince moved, tilting his head with a rhythmic, bone-popping crack.

A bead of cold sweat rolled down Isaac’s neck, chilling him to the core.

In the suffocating stillness, Isaac felt he might stop his own heart if it meant dampening the frantic thudding against his ribs. The prince was hunting Roverni’s witch, and the ruthless efficiency of his assault on the faction left no doubt that his intent was anything but benevolent.

Isaac had stumbled upon a truth that should have remained buried.

The shadow that had been dismantling the Roverni faction was here, standing over a corpse. He was the same monster who had ended the grand duke’s son. Isaac realized that to this man, there was no distinction between a target and a bystander; he would carve through anyone with the same casual, lethal indifference.

He could not be found. If he were caught, it would be the end.

God, please let him leave, Isaac silently implored, his mind screaming for the man to vanish. His only sliver of salvation lay in the distant, growing clamor of approaching footsteps—the Roverni men, swarming like hounds. For once, the thought of those thugs surrounding him felt like a reprieve.

The prince would surely depart soon. Once he vanished, Isaac would slip away. Forget the faction, forget the prestige, forget the bounty; his life was worth far more than the gold buried in the vault. He would rather spend an eternity digging tunnels than face this monster again.

Go. Just leave.

Isaac was clinging to that desperate hope when, suddenly, a sharp premonition shivered through his spine. He reacted on pure instinct, throwing himself sideways just as the ceiling erupted.

A sword blade burst through the floorboards like a shark breaching water, slicing the air exactly where he had been crouching.

The wood splintered with a clean, violent SHHK.

“…”

It had been a matter of a hair’s breadth.

Had he been a second slower, his body would have been cleaved in two.

“Huh. So there was someone fairly useful left.”

The prince murmured the words, and the blade that had jutted through the ceiling slid back into the floorboards. Isaac’s entire body tightened, every nerve screaming in anticipation of where it might rise again. It would come from directly beneath him, wouldn’t it? When the command “Come down” reached his ears, he realized there could be no one else here to receive it.

He had been found.

Isaac did not know when he had been discovered, but now that the reality was undeniable, there was no point in agonizing over it. It was far safer to descend than to remain perched above, waiting to be skewered by a blade that might strike at any second.

Isaac swallowed a groan, pried a loose wooden plank from the rafters, and scrambled down through the opening.

Even as Isaac landed in the center of the room, the prince displayed no surprise whatsoever. If anything, it was Isaac—who had only glimpsed the carnage through the gaps in the floor—whose expression soured as he finally took in the sea of corpses and gore that coated the room.

“You are… that royal guard,” the prince arched an eyebrow in mock surprise.

Isaac instinctively dropped to one knee, bowing his head. The sight triggered a chilling memory; the last time he had faced the prince in his capacity as a royal guard, the circumstances had been eerily identical. Only then, the scene had been littered with the butchered carcasses of magical beasts deep in the forest, rather than the fresh corpses of men on the top floor of a tavern. Why was it, he wondered, that their paths only ever intersected in places reeking of slaughter?

“What were you doing here?”

The prince stared down at him, his gaze heavy and cold. Isaac’s heart plummeted into his stomach. He knew the truth was irrelevant; whatever he said, his life was already hanging by a thread. He frantically searched for a viable excuse, but ultimately abandoned the effort. Flimsy lies would never deceive a man of such caliber.

“I was lying in ambush to identify the assailant who has been attacking Roverni’s faction.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to distinguish myself and secure a reward from His Majesty.”

The prince, who was slowly inspecting his blade with the detached focus of a deity of death examining its scythe, shifted his gaze toward Isaac. Even without a trace of emotion on his face, his look was faintly incredulous, as if he were asking: You really expect me to believe an answer that insultingly simple?

Isaac recognized it, too. He understood exactly how absurd and pathetic his explanation sounded. It would have been far more credible to admit he worked as a royal guard by day and a subordinate to Roverni by night—yet that, however dangerous, was the absolute truth. Feeling a sudden, sharp spark of indignation at that disbelieving stare, Isaac locked eyes with him. The prince’s blue eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

“…Merit. How unfortunate.”

He believed him. Isaac had no time to rejoice, however, as the implication hung in the air, heavy and lethal: the prince intended to finish him off. His heart sank, crashing further into despair.

“I have a terrible memory.”

Isaac spoke hurriedly, prompting the prince, who had been turning away, to arch an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

“The moment I step out of this tavern, I will forget everything I witnessed here. Hell, I have already forgotten it all. I cannot even recall what I had for dinner. And Roverni? I have no interest in him whatsoever, and I never will.”

I saw nothing. I saw nothing.

Isaac pleaded desperately. The prince offered no response, instead shaking the blood from his sword with a rhythmic, practiced motion. It was the same habit he maintained before dispatching a victim. The abyss seemed to be yawning directly in front of Isaac’s face.

“I…” Isaac pressed on, grabbing at any straw within reach, even as his thoughts began to fray. “I could be of service to Lord Kaiyan. If you are operating in the shadows to avoid prying eyes, you are bound to run into obstacles. I am often tasked with such work for the royal guard, and I am efficient at it. Let me handle those burdens for you. I might not look like much, but I am reliable. I can usually track down even the most discreet intelligence without breaking a sweat.”

“Yes. It seems so, considering you were hiding here.”

The prince spoke with chilling indifference, his lethal intent unchanged. With no regard for Isaac’s desperate sales pitch, the prince glanced toward the window, where the first gray light of dawn was beginning to bleed into the sky. His demeanor suggested he was already moving on to the next task.

“You have obviously handled things quite masterfully so far, but I thought it might be convenient to have an asset you can exploit within the royal palace…”

His mind was so tangled he barely knew what he was saying. Are you going to kill me? Do you not need your painkiller? He clung to just enough reason not to blurt that out—it might save his life, but it would surely sentence him to a lifetime of imprisonment. Listen, you may not know this, but if I die, it will be hard for you to find another witch.

“I also happen to know more about witches than most.”

He blurted it out in a panic, his tongue tripping over the frayed wires of his logic.

“I think I would make a decent errand-runner…”

As he added that, Isaac’s voice trailed off. He felt the crushing weight of the prince’s gaze.

“How much?”

“Pardon?”

“How much do you know?”

For the first time, the prince demanded a direct answer. The moment Isaac met those piercing blue eyes, he felt himself physically recoil.

Was this it? The one subject that had finally captured his interest?

“…When I was a boy, a witch lived nearby. I spent over a decade by her side, treating her like family, completely oblivious to her nature. Perhaps because of that, I can sniff them out better than most. I seem to possess a certain… instinct for it.”

It was not a certainty, but he offered it up, mumbling. Why did he feel as if he had grasped a straw, only to realize it was rotten?

The prince studied Isaac in silence. Then, suddenly, he slipped a hand into his coat, retrieved a heavy pouch, and tossed it onto the table. At the prince’s silent gesture, Isaac hesitantly untied the drawstring. The fabric gave way, and the contents spilled out.

They were small, dazzling gemstones.