In a crimson castle lived a crimson man, like a heart housed in stone.

The floor was stitched from human hide, and the clock beat on hearts like war drums.

He wore a blood-red jacket and sat on a blood-red throne, toying with a living eyeball like a blinking pearl.

“Takuri, Takuri, will today be fun and delightful?” His voice slid like silk over knives.

The pupil tightened, fear and pain shrinking like frost under dawn.

“I think so, because we have a tiny visitor.” His smile opened like a wound.

He watched the blood-red gate inch apart, his jaw yawning wide, his grin twisting like a broken mask.

“Welcome to my castle.” His words floated like perfume over rot.

Behind the doors stood a girl of eight, filthy as a dust storm, her skin a map of mud.

Her clothes were scraps layered like dead leaves, barely wrapping her stick-thin frame.

She had no shoes; her limbs shook in the chill like willow branches in wind.

Furniture made of organs froze her, and she lurched back like a spooked fawn, then halted mid-step.

She breathed deep, counted courage like coins, clenched tiny fists, and crossed the threshold on trembling legs.

He admired her, his hand stilling over the eye like a paused pendulum.

“Little one, what’s your name?” His tone was honey laced with steel.

Her mouth fluttered open then shut, fear knotting her voice like tangled thread.

He waited, patient as a viper under moss, and on the umpteenth try she forced sound.

“…Anta.”

“Anta, Anta… In the Sali tongue it means both violet and vengeance,” he said, eyeing her purple hair like a bruise of dusk.

“So, little Anta, why did you come here alone?” His question hung like a hook in air.

Her lips parted, will gathering like storm-light, but he pressed a finger to them with a hush.

“Hold on. Don’t tell me. Let me guess.” He shut his eyes, tapping his skull like a drum.

He brooded, then cried out, frustrated as a hunter with no tracks. “No use. I can’t guess.”

“Why would a darling girl walk into my castle?” His stare glinted like glass.

He looked at the eyeball cradled in his palm like a trembling bird.

“Forgive me. I’ll trouble you, Takuri.” His tone soothed like a lullaby over a gallows.

The pupil shrank in terror, but red light bloomed in his hand like a thorned flower.

The eyeball fell to ash; a naked soul bolted for Anta, flitting like a moth begging the flame.

Anta slumped, stunned as a deer in torchlight, unable to move.

The soul didn’t reach her; a force hauled it back like a tide dragging a swimmer.

The pull came from a crystal sphere by the man, clear as ice on a lake.

Dark-red tendrils rose like roots from the sphere, bound the soul, and reeled it in to be devoured.

The wail faded, replaced by a humming resonance like bees trapped in glass.

Blurry sigils surfaced on the sphere, and his fingertip brushed them like a whisper over water.

His crimson pupils rolled back; only bloodshot whites remained, veins pulsing like river reeds to the same beat.

“Mira… Adelaide… they’ve crossed the Sarman Empire’s border,” he intoned, flat as an obituary read from stone.

“They want my help to seize them both.” His voice wore another soul like a mask for a count of breaths.

He finished the facts as if reading a paper, then his eyes slid back, and joy warmed his tone like wine.

He gazed at the white-haired girl in the sphere, and his mouth split like a seam torn wide.

“At last, you’ve come… I’ve waited so long, my bride.” His words fell like rose petals over blades.

He stroked the sphere’s skin as if it were her cheek, tears of rapture welling like spring water.

The image cut off, dissolving like morning fog under the sun.

His face smoothed back to its first shape, calm as frost on iron.

“Good. The first riddle’s solved. I know the message Rockridge sent you to bear.”

He turned to Anta, still sprawled like driftwood. “But there’s a small problem.”

He stepped toward her, red eyes locking on her like twin coals.

“Why did you choose to come here?” The question landed like a stone in a still pond.

At his words, the skin-floor wriggled like worms and forced her to stand upright.

“If you took a courier’s task, you know no one leaves this flesh-built castle alive.”

Anta’s chest trembled, breath crushed like a bird in a fist, yet the floor pinned her head to face him.

“Those who came knowing they wouldn’t live were desperadoes, eyes dry as dust.”

“I asked why they didn’t fear. Some had nothing; others were born bold.”

“But I know this: people only fear death when they truly picture dying, like seeing their name on a headstone.”

He spoke and stroked a tea table made from liver and gut, a macabre weave like ropes on a gallows.

“When I peel their skin and make them watch each organ lifted, every one sobs for mercy and fights like netted fish.”

He stopped in front of Anta and tilted her chin with a finger light as a hook.

Up close, beneath caked dirt, her brow showed its true line like bone under frost.

Her cheekbones and neat nose promised a beauty talked about for miles, like a star over fields.

Poverty had pinched that promise thin, and split, dry violet hair veiled it like dead reeds.

“Such a pity,” he clicked his tongue, then caught a rank scent like a barn in rain.

He glanced down. Her ragged pants darkened, and pale yellow ran down thin legs like thawing ice.

He laughed, a bell with a crack, delighted by the stain like a flag of fear.

“Yes, you’re special. Unlike the others, fear had bitten you before you stepped inside.”

“Yet you chose to face me. Why?” His curiosity prowled like a cat.

Anta sobbed, prying her cramped jaw open like a rusted hinge.

“He… he promised… food for the village… and medicine.” Her words crawled like wounded ants.

His laughter stopped; thought settled on him like evening.

Silence held for a breath, then he offered his blood-red gloved hand like a crimson branch.

Anta shut her eyes, helpless as a candle in wind, bracing for pain.

But he only patted her head, gentle as rain on ash.

“Go, brave little one. You’re free.” His mercy fell like a coin into a well.

Anta froze, mind blank as snow. The gripping skin slackened, and the gate groaned open behind her.

Meaning sank in slow as ink in water, and disbelief bit like frost.

She stepped back, then back again, each footfall a heartbeat afraid of a knife.

She expected him to kill her with the last step, like a Blood Mage who gifts hope then cuts it.

But he stood still, smiling like a lantern, and waved goodbye like a breeze.

Her heel struck the threshold; she spun and ran, stumbling from the castle built of meat like a foal from a pen.

She had guessed wrong; he didn’t strike her like thunder.

Yet she hadn’t guessed fully wrong—the truth sat split, a coin showing only half its face.

He settled on his blood-red throne again and eyed the crystal sphere with interest, like a scholar over a specimen.

It showed a little village, a hell no less than this castle, a winter without harvest.

Houses sagged like rotten teeth, and simple graves buzzed with flies like black snow.

If not for smoke from half-collapsed chimneys, it would look like a charnel field, a forest of nameless stones.

Poor little one. She doesn’t know the plague gnawing her home sprang from the crimson man like mold from damp.

He tapped the sphere, and a mound cracked like parched earth, a half-rotten corpse pushing up through dirt.

The plague-dead clawed from graves and lunged at the barely living like wolves in a famine.

Among their prey were Anta’s bedridden grandparents, two lanterns flickering in her long night.

He knew those elders were her last family and her reason like a compass pointing home.

That’s why he let her go back, like releasing a moth to a waiting flame.

He is a true Blood Mage, demon blood rooted in marrow like iron thorns.

For those unafraid of death, he makes them drink its terror like bitter tea.

For those afraid of death, he savors despair beyond death like a feast with no end.

He has no creed; only the maxim of delight, pleasure swollen like a red moon.

“As I thought, today is fun and delightful.” His verdict fell like ash.

The crimson man watched elders’ arteries bitten open on the image, a river turned to red threads.

His mouth curled in sick joy like a mask of porcelain, and he finished his day.