Only hours ago, Serene had been nothing more than a cold, mummified corpse, a silent relic of the grave. Now, she stood there in vibrant flesh and pulsing blood, her arms wrapped around the very monster who had dismantled her life.
"How?" Mathias rasped, the word escaping his lips like a broken rattle. "How is this possible?"
A sudden tremor racked his fra as a lightning bolt of realization struck. He fixed Serene with a sharp, incredulous stare, struggling to gather the shattered pieces of his composure. "Regardless... Lady Serene, you cannot leave. This place is not—"
"You!" Roland roared. He spun toward Mathias with the feral savagery of a cornered beast, the veins in his neck bulging with a terrifying cocktail of obsession and rage. He lunged forward, intent on tearing the man’s throat out, but Serene moved with a fluidity that defied the laws of the living. She swept into his path, interposing her fragile form as an unbreakable shield between the killer and his prey.
"Roland, be still," she murmured. Her voice was an eerie velvet, possessed of a serenity so profound it seed to freeze the very air in the room. "I will return with you, of course. There is no need for such fury, my dear."
Roland froze, his body vibrating with suppressed violence, as if her words were the only chains capable of shackling his madness. Slowly, Serene turned her gaze back to Mathias. Her features were terrifyingly placid, and her eyes held a cryptic shimr—a light he had never seen before, and one he did not yet understand.
"My son-in-law," she began, her voice draped in an icy, aristocratic poise, "I am departing of my own volition. There is no need for your concern." She paused, her gaze narrowing as she leaned in, driving a dagger of cryptic truth into his soul. "Perhaps it would be best if you went to see your wife. Now."
The words fell upon Mathias like a death sentence. The blood froze in his veins, a sudden, sweeping chill numbing his extremities. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a stark, undeniable warning.
He watched them recede into the distance. Roland gripped Serene’s wrist with a manic intensity, his knuckles white, as if her delicate bones might shatter under the sheer weight of his obsession. Serene did not look back, yet her shadow seed to linger, haunting the very walls of the room.
The mont they vanished into the gloom of the corridors, Mathias erupted into frantic motion. He no longer cared for Roland, for politics, or for his own dignity. He ran—a desperate, lung-bursting sprint—his heavy footfalls shattering the palace silence as he tore toward Olivia.
He threw the massive double doors open with a violent crash, gasping for breath as if his lungs had devoured every ounce of air in the estate. His eyes locked onto Isabella, who stood as motionless as a marble statue beside the family physician. Below them lay Olivia, unnervingly still.
He threw a searing look at Isabella, a silent, desperate plea for an explanation, but she remained hollow, offering him nothing but a void of silence.
"Doctor..." Mathias choked out, his voice strangled by a rising tide of dread. "Is she... will she be alright?"
The physician bowed with a heavy, formal reverence, beads of sweat glistening on his brow under the weight of Mathias’s piercing gaze. "Your Grase . Do not despair; she is stable. She has lost a staggering amount of blood for reasons that elude my understanding, but her vitals have begun to steady. It is a state of profound exhaustion, nothing more."
Mathias did not stay to hear the rest. He lunged toward the bed, his steps uneven and frantic. Ignoring the physician’s presence and the sharp, calculating eyes of Isabella—who tracked his every move like a hawk—he sank onto the edge of the mattress. He reached out with a trembling hand, touching Olivia’s wounded skin with a tenderness so fragile it was as if she were a relic of ancient glass, ready to shatter at a breath.
Her skin was cold—a preternatural, bone-deep chill that made his heart stutter.
"Olivia..." he whispered, his eyes searching her porcelain features for any sign of life. A jagged pang of guilt pierced his chest as he took in the white linen bandages binding her wrist, already blood with the crimson stains of her own lifeblood.
A thousand questions sward his mind like a fever. How had Serene awakened? What dark price had Olivia paid? But above all, a gnawing remorse began to devour his soul. Was this the "gift" he had intended for her? Had he restored her mother only to lose the woman standing right before him?
Moving with a slow, deliberate ache, he gathered her into his arms. "I am taking her to her chambers now," he commanded, his voice tight. "Isabella, we shall discuss this once you have escorted the doctor out. Agreed?"
Isabella offered a silent, graceful bow of assent.
The candles had burned halfway down to their sockets by the ti her eyelids finally fluttered. For six agonizing hours, Mathias had sat in the suffocating silence of her chambers, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, his fury curdling into sothing far darker as the moon climbed higher.
When Olivia finally drifted back to consciousness, the familiar carvings of her bedroom ceiling t her gaze. She turned her head languidly, only to find Mathias sitting by her bedside. He wasn’t wearing the mask of the worried husband she expected; instead, he was vibrating with a cold, absolute fury.
"What?" she muttered, her voice thin. "Why are you staring at like that?"
He crossed his arms over his chest, his posture rigid. "Are you truly going to feign ignorance as to why?"
"Ah," she sighed, a ghost of a smirk playing on her pale lips. "Here cos the Great Moralist, ready to lecture once again. Leave be, Mathias."
"Yes, continue your damnable evasions, as usual," he snapped, his voice dropping to a dangerous hiss. "You are acting like a complete scoundrel."
"It seems soone is feeling particularly sensitive today," she countered, her eyes flashing with a spark of her old fire. "What I do is no concern of yours. It is my body, and I shall do with it exactly as I please."
"Your body?" he echoed, his voice trembling with a volatile mix of derision and dread. "If it were rely your body, you wouldn’t be drowning yourself in hallucinogens. And now—this? I don’t even know why you’ve carved into your own flesh. Are you mad? Or are you enchanted? Only a fool does such a thing to themselves."
At his words, the fog in her mind shifted. The mory of her ritual clawed its way back to the surface. She looked down at her bandaged hand, her voice hesitant, fragile. "Serene... where is she? Did sothing happen? Did...?"
He leaned forward until his face was re inches from hers, his voice dropping to a terrifying, low vibration. "So, you’re involved. Serene has awakened, Olivia. The corpse that had been cold for days stood up, embraced Roland, and walked out with him as if nothing had ever happened. How did this cursed miracle occur at the exact mont you collapsed in a pool of your own blood?"
Olivia swallowed hard, the bitter, tallic tang of copper rising in her throat. "She left?" she whispered, a jagged streak of disappointnt cutting through her. "She went back to him, then..."
"She woke up?" she repeated, the words sounding as though they were tearing her throat. "Truly... she woke?"
She reached up with a trembling hand, burying her fingers deep into her silver hair as if to keep her skull from fracturing under the weight of the truth. Suddenly, the silence of the room was shattered by a scream—a raw, visceral howl of agony that seed to erupt from the very depths of her ravaged soul.
"Aaaah!"
Mathias recoiled in a panic he had never known, lunging toward her like a madman. He seized her shoulders, desperately brushing the hair away from her flushed, tear-streaked face. "Olivia! Olivia, look at ! Where does it hurt? Speak to !"
She turned her gaze to him, but her eyes were hollow, two glass spheres reflecting a soul that had already departed. "Alright? Am I alright, Mathias?" she asked with a terrifying, rhythmic calm. Then, her voice broke into a thousand jagged pieces. "She woke up with my blood... with the very drops of life that were stolen from ."
Then, without warning, she erupted into a fit of hysterical laughter. It was a wild, jagged sound—sharp enough to pierce the ears and cold enough to freeze the blood. Her entire fra shuddered with the force of her mirth, leaving Mathias to stare at her in a paralyzing blend of bewildernt and horror.
"Olivia! Stop this!" he commanded, gripping her shoulders and shaking her firmly, trying to tether her back to reality. But she had drifted far beyond his reach into a dark, chaotic sea of her own making.
"I am not even his daughter!" she shrieked through her dry, hollow peals of laughter. "I gave him my life... I gave him everything!"
Mathias shook her with renewed desperation, his patience fraying under the weight of her cryptic ravings. "Olivia, what is wrong with you? Calm yourself! Why are you laughing like this? Of whom are you speaking? What father? What life?"
But the laughter shattered as quickly as it had begun. In a heartbeat, it dissolved into bitter, chest-wracking sobs—the sound of a soul being torn asunder. Her strength failed her, and she collapsed against him, her fingers clawing desperately at his shirt as her tears soaked into the fabric.
"I gave him my years... my life..." she murmured between gasping breaths, her voice lting into pure agony. "I even... I sacrificed you, too."
Mathias went rigid. Those final words turned the very marrow of his bones to ice. "Sacrificed ?" he whispered, his arms tightening around her waist to keep her from slipping further into the abyss. "What do you an, Olivia?"
Olivia had surrendered herself entirely to the storm of her grief, her body trembling like a bird caught in a gale. Mathias stared out into the void of the room, his mind racing to decode the confession that had struck him like a thunderbolt.
He pulled her closer, shielding her from herself and the jagged truths that spilled like shrapnel from her lips. He felt her heart hamring against his ribs, as if her spirit were trying to claw its way out of her chest.
"Hush... be still, Olivia," he groaned, his voice thick with a sudden, aching fear. "I don’t understand a word you’re saying. You aren’t in your right mind!"
Suddenly, Olivia snapped her head back, her silver eyes shimring with a chaotic, tear-drenched brilliance. She fixed him with a gaze so piercing it shredded through his every defense, her voice dropping to a hoarse rasp that dripped with pure, unadulterated bitterness.
"I am not Roland’s daughter," she stated, the words cold and jagged. "I am the daughter of Lucius. Is that not a magnificent travesty?"
"What?"
The word dropped from Mathias’s lips like a stone. His entire body turned to granite, his breath hitching for a few seconds that stretched into an eternity. "Lucius? The Emperor...?"
Olivia gave him no quarter, no space to fathom the depth of her revelation. Her laughter flared up again, bleeding into her sobs in a harrowing, hysterical cacophony where the gasps of pain were indistinguishable from the cackles of madness. She began to strike his chest with her weak, bandaged fists, her voice rising to a frantic crescendo.
"I surrendered my years! I dismantled my soul and my health for a man who shares not a single drop of my blood! I shielded that wretch while I set my own spirit ablaze!"
Her weeping intensified as she lunged forward, seizing the collar of his shirt with a desperate, terrifying strength. Her voice trembled with a sincerity that chilled him to the core:
"I killed you, Mathias... It was I who dragged you to your grave with these very hands!"
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