A blood-red candle flared to life, its bleeding light washing a room carved from the same scarlet.

On the crimson carpet, delicate patterns bloomed like frost; on crimson walls, murals mounted on membranous tissue dazzled like forbidden stained glass; crimson gears meshed into a grand, refined machine, and the shriveled blood vessels embedded in every metal plate lay parched, waiting new blood to irrigate them—waiting to unveil a miracle beyond imperial science.

In this chamber where elegance twined with eeriness, a broken woman knelt, her body lacquered in clotted blood.

Her head and her left abdomen were almost gone; the surviving curves still held a wicked allure, an awful beauty; even the finest mortician would only smooth her flat, throw a white cloth over her, and spare the family’s eyes.

She received no such mercy. Chains fed through steel rings bit into her wrists, hoisting her arms; her knees pressed the floor, her posture both pained and provocative, her bare chest offered up like a sacrificial moon.

The candle drifted down before her face. The visitor bent close, and stroked the ragged line of her remaining jaw.

“What an eyesore.”

His voice carried a playful warmth, almost a festival glow, as he studied the wet architecture inside her wounds; her ruined head tilted under his touch, and tar-dark, black-red syrup poured from the skull and slicked his knuckles.

“So, why did you disobey me and sneak into that village to ambush my fiancée, Firefly?”

He set the candle aside. Metal kissed metal with a cold clack. He paused in thought, then chose a slim scalpel from a silver tray, and stepped into her shadow.

Firefly trembled; her exposed trachea rasped, coughing blood like a rusted flute.

“She must never… never get near… Master…!”

Hatred burned in her voice, but beneath that flame lay a trembling root—

—fear.

“Otherwise, Master, you’ll… you’ll—ah—aaah!”

Her plea broke into a shriek. The scalpel had slid into her chest, then drew down slow, and her fine skin parted; pale-yellow fat peeled back, and the lung broken into chunks gaped like a torn flower.

“Your screams are lovely as ever, Firefly.”

“Kh—ugh—oh!”

Blood jetted up her trachea. Drowned by her own crimson, she coughed and keened, an animal sound rising helpless from her throat; his hand slipped into the opened cage of her chest, searching with unhurried patience, and when he squeezed lung and windpipe, a sticky gurgle crawled over the scalp like cold ants.

Firefly’s limbs thrashed harder, and his smile widened like a knife-line.

“Ungh—!”

Crack. His grin peaked as the clear snap rang out. Her cry died mid-breath; the spasming limbs locked stiff as iron bars.

He wrenched back. A spine, studded with scraps of flesh, tore free through her chest; her neck went slack, and her head drooped, puppet strings cut.

The broken body had spent its last breath.

He weighed the spine in his hand, rose, and strolled to the machine.

Snap.

He flicked his fingers. A red light winked in the air, and Firefly’s body melted, slumping into a pool of blood at his feet like thawed wax.

“Don’t hurry. Just a moment more.”

No one remained to answer him; he spoke to the spine, cradled like a dark flute.

As if obeying his words, the corpse-water streamed toward the machine. The metal drank; the buried vessels swelled and grew plump, like vines after rain.

A heartlike pumping thudded to life. Gears began to turn again, and viscous liquid murmured from the ceiling.

Meanwhile, he plucked up a syringe from the silver tray and slid the needle into the spine.

When the thick point pierced joint cartilage, the spine squirmed like a caterpillar, writhing in rage; but as he pulled back on the plunger, scarlet sludge filled the barrel, and the spine fell still, tamed.

If Adelaide stood here, she’d know that sludge at a glance.

Blood-Plasma Slime—a legendary monster born in corpse-heaps and blood-rivers, a creature that survives by devouring flesh.

Unlike most monsters, it wields Blood Magic like a person. It has no core—feed it enough flesh, and it can reconstruct itself and expand without limit; in a way, it’s a Blood Mage among beasts.

For balance’s sake, such a destructive, invasive thing lives only briefly on the battlefield; once cut off from corpses, it withers. Firefly was no exception.

But for the man, this need was trivial.

He set the Blood-Plasma Slime gently into a “bathtub,” then pulled a lever at his side. Through a pipe came a storm of fragments—bone, muscle, all manner of organs—carried by blood; in seconds the pool brimmed, burying Firefly’s core beneath a red tide.

The next instant, the plasma boiled. Body scraps tumbled in a violent churn, then the slime’s adhesive stitched them together, and a rough human shape rose like an idol from silt.

At first, he watched with bright curiosity; soon, boredom dulled his gaze—this spectacle offered nothing new.

“Why won’t you trust me, Firefly? How many times have I said it—prophecy can’t be overturned.”

He twirled the scalpel, lazy as a cat playing with string, then went on.

“You ran off on your own, ruined a fresh embryo, and still failed to kill them. Worse, you let them meet the beastfolk ‘Hero,’ and handed them a path into the Elven Realm.”

At that, a woman’s wrist broke the surface of the blood, viscous red sliding down a delicate ridge, revealing the pale softness beneath, smooth as fresh snow.

He caught her hand and drew her up, lifting the newly reassembled woman from the pool.

In his arms lay an exquisite nude. Though her face now wore another woman’s features, the expression was still Firefly’s—ridged with guilt and awash in regret.

“Master, this concubine…” Her new golden eyes brimmed with tide-swept tears. “…I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize. Your devotion moves me.”

He gazed at his “beloved,” then—

pinched her cheek.

“Eh…?”

Confusion dawned in Firefly’s eyes. He laughed, his joy tinged with a bright, forward-looking gleam.

“Prophecy’s future can’t be resisted. But, Firefly, you should be happy.”

He laid his hand on her chest and drew it slowly downward, a warm trail across cold silk.

“Don’t you remember? On the day I marry her, you’ll truly merge with me… Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

Firefly felt his fingers sketch her skin; a low moan rippled out, and blush rose like dawn across her face.

“Y-yes, Master…”

As his hand reached her lower belly, her breathing quickened, shallow and hot.

“I know. You can’t wait for that day. But before the end arrives…”

He bent gently and left a faint kiss on her crimson lips.

“Let’s enjoy ourselves in other ways first, Firefly.”