The faint sound of manic laughter—like a man drowning in his own insanity—snapped Azriel’s attention outward. He looked around carefully, but there was no one there.
"Wake up..."
Rubbing his temples, Azriel let out a tired sigh, half-afraid his face would wrinkle from how often he had been doing it.
"A scenario designed to break ... I know Pollux wanted to break , but everyone?"
Then he heard the laughter again.
Azriel’s head turned sharply as he searched the colosseum once more. A sickening sensation spread through his gut. He tightened his jaw and clenched his teeth.
And then his eyes fixed on sothing in the distance.
At the very center of the abandoned colosseum stood a long table.
And at the end of that table sat a person.
Azriel was already moving toward him before the thought had fully settled. Narrowing his eyes, he studied the figure as he approached.
It was a man.
Both elbows rested on the table, his chin supported by interlocked fingers. He looked back at Azriel with a calm smile. As Azriel drew closer, he made out the young man’s features more clearly. He was handso in a gentle sort of way, with soft brown curls and bright blue eyes.
When Azriel reached the other end of the table, he noticed the white cloth draped over it and the abundance of luxurious food spread across its surface.
"Please, sit."
The young man gestured toward the seat beside Azriel.
Not thinking much of it, Azriel sat down, facing him directly across the table.
"You really are ineffable," the young man said. "The records say no one has managed to open that gate in the past thousand years."
Crossing one leg over the other, Azriel leaned back and rested his arms on the chair’s armrests. He glanced at the lavish al in front of him before lifting his gaze back to the young man.
"Do you know who I am?" the man asked gently, wearing a smile as warm as sunlight.
Azriel smiled back.
It was a smile, but only barely. There was sothing faintly uncanny about it.
"A dead hamster."
"..."
"..."
"Excuse ...?"
The man’s smile vanished completely, replaced by sheer confusion. His expression was so thoroughly bewildered that Azriel almost repeated himself just to make sure he had heard correctly.
"Your na reminds of a hamster I once knew."
"A hamster...?" the man asked skeptically.
Azriel nodded.
"Yes. My little sister once had a hamster. His na was Dorian. He died after a month by drowning himself in his own food."
Then Azriel heard that laugh again.
This ti, it ca from behind him.
So it wasn’t the prince.
Still seated, Azriel turned to look over his shoulder, scanning behind him and then around the colosseum. He saw no one.
"So you do know who I am..." the prince of House Aureliath said, his voice still respectful as he watched Azriel look around.
"Are you... searching for sothing?"
"Huh?"
Azriel looked back at him, still wearing that distant, slightly dazed expression.
At the sa ti, a quiet murmur drifted past his ears—sothing that might have been whispers, or perhaps only the wind. He could not tell.
"Your joke was amusing, though. Worry not," the prince said with a small, restrained smile.
"Soone dear to once nad a pet turtle after as well. I suppose I have one of those nas that people easily give to animals."
A fake laugh slipped past the prince’s lips.
Azriel noticed it imdiately.
His eyes narrowed.
’Is he... scared?’
The prince seed strangely eager to please him.
"I must also apologize," he continued. "Da Selene must have been quite a nuisance, but I have reprimanded her for her mistakes. Please forgive her."
As he spoke, he gestured toward the chair at his right.
Only that chair was empty.
For so reason, the sight of it stunned Azriel.
That strange dazed feeling still had not left him. Neither had the odd heaviness spreading through his chest.
The prince, growing visibly nervous, pressed his lips together a few tis before speaking again.
"There is much for us to discuss... I apologize once more, but you were... difficult to contact. So I took the opportunity I had."
The mont Azriel heard those words, the laughter rang out again from sowhere far behind him.
But Azriel kept his eyes on the prince, forcing himself to ignore that insane, distant laughter—the kind that felt so deeply wrong it made his very intestines twist with fear.
’...I need to get Jasmine and Celestina, and then kill him...’
"There are also... so precious people of mine," the prince said carefully, choosing each word as though afraid of saying the wrong thing, "whom you have chosen not to return."
Azriel simply stared at him.
His face was utterly unreadable.
"Lia is your sister," Azriel said suddenly.
The prince’s eyes widened.
He pressed his lips together.
"I understand it now," Azriel continued.
"Leonardo. A thief of extraordinary skill. Skilled enough to steal one of the Thirteen Teeth from the king himself, inside his own palace... and in the end, he died inside this colosseum."
There was sothing about Azriel’s calm that unsettled the prince. Azriel tapped his fingers lightly against the armrest, almost as though he were playing an instrunt.
Another laugh echoed from behind him.
The prince paled even further.
"What is far more believable," Azriel said, "is that you—the prince of this kingdom—are Leonardo."
He paused.
"And that all of it was an act."
His fingers continued their quiet tapping.
"To get close to the abandoned prince who was destined to die in this colosseum. To give him the Tooth. To fake your death as the great thief. And to let him escape... so that the current king would never suspect his own two sons colluding."
For a mont, Dorian said nothing.
Azriel said nothing in return, and the two of them simply looked at one another in silence.
Then, at last, Dorian gave a mournful smile.
"That’s right... Leonardo. That is the na my dead mother gave . And the puppet, Leonardo, was the identity I created with my [Unique Skill] so I could get close to my brother without arousing the king’s suspicion, even while he believed the Tooth had already been returned. It was also through that puppet that I was able to stay by my little sister’s side."
There was no surprise on Azriel’s face as Dorian continued.
"But now the ti has co. I need my brother by my side, and I need the Teeth. I also wish to be reunited with my little sister... as my true self this ti."
"You’re planning to kill your own king," Azriel said plainly.
At that, the prince of this kingdom lowered his head, both fists clenching tightly.
"That vile man... is not fit to be king. He killed my parents. He never even knew my little sister existed. He is consud by his own obsession—by love and hate alike."
Then Dorian looked at Azriel, took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and lowered his gaze in sha.
"I apologize for my outburst."
"For a prince, you apologize a lot to a terrorist," Azriel said calmly instead.
The prince looked at him and gave a knowing smile.
Then another laugh ca from sowhere behind them, and the smile vanished from Dorian’s face at once.
"I know," he said quietly. "I know you were the one inside the Forest of Eternity. I know about Mio... and I know about... about that wolf..."
If his goal had been to provoke a reaction from Azriel, he failed.
At least on the surface.
Azriel’s eyes remained fixed on the prince, but not for the reason Dorian thought. He was staring at him with a different kind of intensity altogether.
"I know you are not what others think you are," Dorian went on. "I-I know how powerful you truly are. And I am sorry. I really am."
Suddenly, the prince began breathing faster. He looked at Azriel in panic, as if terrified of sothing unseen. His face had gone bloodless, and even his eyes trembled.
"But I had no choice. I-I need your help. I know you killed Grandmaster Maxi, Lady Mio, and perhaps even got rid of that terrifying wolf... maybe even killed that thing as well. But I need to kill the king... and after that, I need to betray and kill the Supre Leader... and beco the new king."
He swallowed hard.
"A better king."
"..."
His whole body had started to shake now, as though he were being crushed by fear.
"I have twenty puppets, each as strong as a master. I have sixteen real masters beneath , not including myself. I have the entire revolutionary army. And beyond that, I have the Sun’s Shadows on my side—one of them being Duchess Selene, here under the na Da Selene. And even then, I know it won’t be enough..."
His voice faltered.
"Those two brothers are monsters. That’s why I need the help of the Inverse Creed, and more specifically... I need your he—"
"You are ."
Azriel cut him off.
At once, the laughter returned.
"Hahahaha—"
It rang out from sowhere behind them, then faded just as suddenly.
"...What?"
The prince looked as though he were about to be sick from the strain in his nerves.
Azriel, anwhile, was as calm as ice.
"You are ."
"What... what do you an by that...?"
"You are . Not similar to . Not soone like ." Azriel’s voice remained quiet, steady. "Just , from another world. In this world... I am you."
A look of pure fascination, mixed with dawning realization, appeared in Azriel’s eyes.
"How could this be...?"
"I... I don’t understand what you’re talking... about."
"I am you... and you are ..."
"..."
"You have my soul."
"...!"
Dorian shoved his chair back and stumbled to his feet, putting even more distance between them.
"We... share the sa soul...?" Azriel tilted his head, looking both confused and deeply unsettled.
The laughter returned, but this ti it did not fade.
It continued. It grew.
"Ugh..."
Azriel clutched his head with one hand as a maddening ringing flooded his ears, only to be swallowed by that lunatic laughter.
"Wake up..."
’Wake up?’
It felt like Azriel had heard those words not long ago.
Then, without warning, he felt the delicate weight of two slender hands settle upon his shoulders from behind.
Their touch was impossibly soft, almost spectral, lingering for the briefest mont before gliding downward in a slow, unhurried caress along his arms. Every brush of her fingers seed to stir sothing restless beneath his skin. Then, with a tenderness that felt both dangerous and divine, those silken arms slipped around his chest and drew Azriel into an embrace so gentle it nearly undid him.
His eyes fluttered shut.
Warmth unfurled through him, rich and intoxicating, loosening every knot of tension in his body. It did not rely touch Azriel—it enveloped him, soothing, possessive, achingly intimate. And before Azriel could stop himself, he found his body leaning back into her hold, surrendering to the exquisite comfort of her touch.
Her.
Who was she?
What... was he doing?
The questions drifted through his mind like mist, distant and insubstantial, because in that mont she felt less like a person and more like a fevered apparition—sothing tender, sothing perilous, sothing... that should not exist.
Then he felt the faint, devastating graze of her lips against the rim of his right ear.
"Wake up..."
Like a spell cast over him, the maddening laughter fell away for a mont.
A tremor passed through Azriel.
His breath caught, then slipped free in a ragged hush, and his ear twitched at the delicate contact. His pulse quickened now for an entirely different reason than fear—sothing darker, softer, far more ruinous. Heat spread through him in quiet waves as her lips lingered there, brushing his skin with a maddening slowness that felt almost reverent.
When she finally spoke, her voice unfurled beside his ear in a low, velvet murmur—gentle, sensual, and unearthly in its beauty, like the whisper of a goddess in the dead of night.
"My king..." she breathed.
"Extra... wake up..."
"!!"
Azriel’s eyes flew open as wide as they could.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
The laughter ca back.
Azriel’s breathing turned ragged, too fast for him to control.
’What... just happened..?’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
’What just happened!?’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah—"
Feeling disconnected from everything, Azriel could only stare around him through the endless laughter.
And there was sothing else.
Sothing entirely new.
Sothing horrifying.
Azriel was sitting atop a throne of ice.
His feet rested on the back of a familiar white-armored knight.
Only now that armor was ruined—broken apart and drenched in blood—revealing the brown, blood-matted hair of Da Selene and the gash across her face as she lay there dead.
Azriel looked down at his own right hand.
In it, he was holding a liver, wet and slick in his palm.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
His gaze jerked around the colosseum.
Bodies.
Bodies everywhere.
Knights lay strewn across the abandoned arena, their limbs torn apart, their blood splashed across stone and pillars. So corpses had been flung so far it looked as though sothing inhuman had hurled them. So remains were stuck against the walls. Others were lodged high above, near the barely visible ceiling, while slow droplets of blood fell from the darkness overhead.
His mouth hung half open.
He felt sothing warm run down from his upper lip. Slowly, he raised his free hand and touched his face.
Blood.
Blood dripped from his hair.
From his face.
From his robes.
The liver slipped from his fingers and landed on Da Selene’s leg, where an eyeball already rested. The two struck together before the liver dropped to the ground with a sickening squelch, and the eyeball bounced once before rolling away.
’No... no... where... where is the table...? The food...?’
There was no table. No chairs.
Instead, standing before him were Prince Dorian and another white knight, both looking half-dead and drenched in blood.
The knight had lost an arm, the shoulder shredded into sothing grueso and barely recognizable, blood still pouring from the wound. Dorian had one hand pressed over his right eye, his face pale beneath the blood sared across it, terror written into every line of him.
At least they were alive.
But it did not look like rcy that had spared them.
They looked at Azriel with utter, devastating fear.
"M-monster..." the prince whispered in a cracked voice.
"Sir Évrard... w-we need to escape before this monster kills us..."
Azriel looked at them.
The mont he did, both of them froze, their bodies locking in place as horror overtook their faces.
’Why are you calling a monster..?’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
’What have I done..?’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
’Who did this..?’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
’I-I didn’t do this...’
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha—"
Why...
Why did Azriel feel such euphoria coursing through every vein in his body despite the carnage before him, despite the foul stench of blood and the sickening warmth of spilled entrails filling the colosseum?
’No... I... I killed them all..?’
He recognized that feeling.
That delirious, intoxicating, pleasurable euphoria.
It had been a long ti, but he knew it.
He knew it far too well.
Wanting to deny it with every part of himself, Azriel tried to speak, but that laughter kept cutting through everything.
He gritted his teeth.
The prince flinched.
And then Azriel flinched too.
He looked into those blue eyes and saw his own reflection.
"Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah—"
Then Azriel realized the source of that laughter.
...It was him.
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