Chapter 7

“Don’t you think our prince is breathtakingly handsome?” Vern whispered from beside him, his voice thick with unbidden admiration.

Isaac stared at Vern, silently questioning how anyone could speak so casually with such a grotesque spectacle unfolding before them. He eventually let out a weary sigh. “I suppose there’s no debating that.”

“How can someone who looks like that be so, well, awe-inspiring?”

Isaac watched Vern in sheer astonishment. The man had somehow managed to describe a terrifyingly cold-blooded monster as if he were a mere superior. Isaac shrugged, his gaze shifting away. “Who knows. People don’t live by their faces alone. No matter how highborn, nobody spends their entire life strolling through a flower garden.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. There’s the night of the new moon, after all… Ugh. Damn that witch’s curse, to hell with it.”

Isaac said nothing back.

He looked up at the moon, which hung round and brilliant in the sky.

Tonight, while it still held the force of fullness, the prince and the rest of the royals were in excellent condition. All others would be asleep by now, but this prince remained active. The latter was the direct opposite of Isaac.

The same rule applied during the new moon.

In that dark phase, when the power of witches was said to strengthen, the royals would complain of debilitating sluggishness and heavy headaches. On the night of the new moon itself, they had to endure the entire night writhing in exquisite, visceral pain. While other royals, who had contracted with powerful magicians, could suppress that agony and sleep through the ordeal, this prince could not. The man faced that horrific torment in full, once every month.

Perhaps being molded by a lifetime of such agony is exactly what twisted him into this monstrosity, Isaac muttered to himself, his voice barely a breath.

Vern tilted his head, letting out a skeptical hum. “We will never truly understand that until the curse is finally severed. The legends claim the hex will shatter once every witch in this realm is extinguished, but who can say if that day will ever dawn?”

“I wonder if there are any left at all,” Isaac replied softly.

The kingdom hunted them with relentless fervor. In recent years, news of a captured witch came rarely, perhaps once or twice every few years. Yet, the fact that the curse persisted meant that some witches must remain hidden in the shadows of this land.

Then what, exactly, am I?

Isaac was staring blankly at the moon, lost in that heavy thought, when he heard the wet sound of something collapsing. He turned his head and saw the young man who had been braced beneath the prince crumple to the ground, his body limp and unconscious. The prince looked down at him and offered only one cold command: “Drench him.”

Gods, what a stunning display of humanity, Isaac scoffed internally.

Whether Isaac was horrified or not, the attendants remained perfectly calm. They drew water from the lake and splashed it over the young man to rouse him, their expressions indicating that this chore hardly counted as work. Then again, this was a man who tore entrails from living beasts with his bare hands.

No sooner had the young man gasped back to life than he was dragged back under the prince and pierced again.

“Please, just a moment,” the youth sobbed, his voice shattering in the night air. “Please, have mercy.”

His broken pleas leaked out between frantic gasps, but they yielded no relief. Sadly for him, the prince’s condition was probably at its peak tonight, given how close it was to the full moon.

By day, that young man strutted through the palace with an arrogant sneer, looking down on the attendants and preening at every turn. Now, Isaac pitied him deeply and quietly observed a moment of silence. There was nothing anyone could do. One could only mourn the misfortune of a youth pretty enough to catch the prince’s eye. In truth, it might not even be misfortune; the young man had apparently flitted back and forth in front of the prince for weeks, intentionally catching Kaiyan’s eye to secure the position of bedwarmer.

The prince’s preferences were clear. He favored neat, pretty men as his playthings. It was not that he had originally slept only with men. At first, he had taken women, but every one of them had been ruined and cast aside within days. He had switched to men, who could endure the abuse longer. The current state of affairs had grown from there.

Man or woman, it hardly mattered to him. The prince was perfectly indifferent to everyone around him.

In the end, the bedwarmer fainted again. He had been used so thoroughly that his lower half lay exposed, smeared with cloudy fluid and red blood, and he remained unresponsive even when doused with cold water. The prince discarded him and rose, looking as though he remained unsatisfied. He slowly surveyed those around him, still naked, still erect, and radiating heat.

The prince’s intent was so clear that every person present froze.

After scanning the attendants one by one, the prince’s eyes locked onto Isaac. Standing rigid with tension, Isaac felt his heart turn to ice. Those eyes were cold and emotionless, like a predator deciding which creature to bite into.

A chill slid down his spine.

The gaze lingered on Isaac for a heartbeat, then moved on. Until the prince had finished his survey, Isaac’s frozen heart refused to thaw.

“These faces are pathetic,” the prince remarked, clicking his tongue in raw disdain.

He crooked a finger at the most passably pretty probationary attendant in the group, and the boy, pale as death, approached with faltering steps. Before long, screams like a pig being eaten alive rang out across the grounds, then dwindled into silence. Everyone there mourned the sacrifice and, at the same time, whispered silent thanks that their own faces were not particularly fine.

This is the first time a night watch has ever felt so eternal, Isaac thought, while watching the moon tilt over the lake.

The tavern hummed with the moderate, steady energy of a typical weekday.

On payday, the atmosphere thickened with royal guards blowing off steam, their ranks bolstered by the promise of cheap ale; Isaac was no exception. Even those with the thinnest purses found a way to justify three or four rounds when their wages were fresh in their pockets.

Isaac had rolled in with his unit, but the initial warmth of a glass or two quickly betrayed him. He slipped into a doze that felt like a momentary blink but must have stretched for an hour. When he finally forced his eyes open, his companions were well into their cups, and two or three familiar young women had woven themselves into the group, occupying the empty spots at the table.

“Oh, my. Look at you. You have been drifting off since you got here, but you finally look like you might rejoin the living. Did you stay up all night?” The young woman sitting across from him leaned in, her smile sharp and teasing.

Isaac blinked, struggling to focus. It took a long, disoriented moment for the fog to clear, but he eventually recognized her: the flower seller who habitually staked out the corner down the street.

“No,” he managed, shaking his head. “I slept. Or, at least, I tried to. I just haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

“Why? Is it too lonely in that bed of yours?” The question came from one of the women, who spent their days hawking bouquets and their nights selling affection. Their eyes shimmered with mirth.

“No, it’s not loneliness. The dreams are just… raw,” Isaac murmured. “Every night, it feels like something is whispering, rustling right against my ear. When I wake up, I feel more hollow than when I laid down. It has been happening for days.”

“My goodness, how strange,” she said, tilting her head. “Maybe you have a wandering spirit clinging to you.”

“This bastard lives on the old church grounds, you know?” a colleague interjected, his voice cutting through the banter. “That crumbling wreck on the hill behind Marnius Square. Though, come to think of it, the place is practically a tomb. I wouldn’t be shocked if a ghost or two crawled out of the floorboards.”

Isaac merely swiped at the man’s head, dampening the joke with a glass of water. Ghosts, spirits, demons—he honestly could not have cared less. He just wanted a full night of uninterrupted sleep.

Last night had been particularly grating.

His ears had been plagued by a persistent, chattering noise, preventing any descent into deep slumber. By all rights, the night should have been peaceful. The new moon was only a few days away, and he had returned home in high spirits, his evening patrol completed with a light step and a buoyant mood. He had been exhausted enough to think he might pass out the second his head hit the pillow, yet the night had refused to cooperate.

When he finally unlocked his door, he froze. A cat sat primly on his bed, watching him with unwavering intensity. He had not seen it for days; apparently, the big-eyed creature had returned.

“You… is your paw all right?” Isaac asked, his voice softening.

It was a thieving little beast, known for snatching food and vanishing, yet Isaac felt a genuine spike of warmth seeing it again. He stepped closer, expecting a retreat, but the cat only held its ground.

THUD

It dropped something from its mouth onto the mattress.

“Well, look at you. What is this? A gift? Finally decided to settle your debts for the scraps I’ve fed you?” Isaac teased.

The cat watched him with an expression of profound, arrogant pride, its whiskers twitching as if to say, Go on. Praise me. Worship me already. Isaac chuckled at the absurdity, reached out, and picked up the dark object.

It was a stone.

“…”

He checked it again. It remained a stone. Not a gemstone, not a rare mineral, but an utterly common piece of flint.

“What’s this?”

Why a stone? And what’s behind that haughty look?

The cat lifted its nose, exuding a sense of smug superiority as if he had bestowed a legendary artifact upon a peasant. It looked ready to scold Isaac for failing to drop to his knees in gratitude. Or perhaps it is just thinking: Serves you right, you idiot. What did you expect?

Isaac held the flint, staring at the cat. Just then, a second cat vaulted through the window. Its eyes were equally round, equally wide, and startlingly familiar. It paced toward him, locking eyes with Isaac, and dropped its own burden with a second

THUD

Isaac reached down to inspect the object. It was a jagged, badly rusted lump of iron.

“Steel?”