Why? Why won’t you just die?

Unlike the forks and knives caught midair by blood threads, never destined to reach Adelaide, the woman’s scream cut clean to her ears.

Hysteria crashed over her, yet Adelaide didn’t anger. Puzzlement first, like a curious sparrow tilting its head. She touched a finger to her cheek.

“Nothing’s left? Mom, what are you talking about, Dad?”

The duke dropped decorum. Panic before speech; cold sweat slicked his brow. He clamped his wife’s mouth and stammered, “She… she’s raving. Your mother’s not well—she’s off. Don’t mind her!”

“Oh? Is that so? Funny, Mom doesn’t sound like she’s lying.”

Adelaide set the back of her hand under her chin. Her head stayed tilted, but the curl at her lips drained the color from the duke’s face.

“Let me guess, Dad… While I was gone, the Douglas Family hasn’t been doing well, right?”

“Uh…!”

“You’d already offended the Crimson Orchid Society and the Tribunal because of me. Then, after I vanished, that old hound Rockridge decided you’d lost value and dropped you. In a storm like this, no patron means you’re out.”

“Just as you told me, the Douglas Family lost its cabinet seat. Long-term partners cut ties.”

“You couldn’t even keep the manor in Balad. Your debts piled like dunes. So you fled the capital and hid here.”

She sighed like winter wind and shook her head. Her gaze slid to Aunt Emily; her tongue clicked, teasing and light.

“My, my. This place was built by the Douglas Family as a cemetery for the useless. Now it’s your only roof. If you’d known, why start all this?”

“You…!”

The duke gaped, no rebuttal rising. His shoulders trembled. He squeezed out one line.

“We had no choice! Rockridge forced us. We could only—”

“Only what? Only hand me to him, Dad?”

Silence strangled him again. Adelaide shook her head, pity pale as moonlight, and sighed.

“Really, Dad. You’ve lived decades more than me. How do you miss something so simple? I’m not a disposable smoke bomb you toss when convenient.”

“Quite the opposite. I’m a talisman. A talisman only works if you keep it on you.”

“What talisman…” His eye twitched. Disgust for his own daughter surfaced, raw as a bruise. Adelaide kept speaking, soft as a blade.

“Think it through. As the dark horse for crown princess when I was little, and later when my Sacrifice Domain and over-spec Blood Magic drew Rockridge’s eye—I’ve always been your finest chip.”

“The royals and Rockridge—different motives, same desire. They wanted me, in person.”

“As my parents, if you kept me in your palm, no one would dare touch anything under the Douglas name.”

“But you handed that leverage away. Why? Did you really think those short-sighted eyes and that sleek, empty brain deserve the status the Douglas Family earned in the empire?”

“Sadly, that’s impossible~” Adelaide answered herself, mockery unveiled. Her gaze slid to the mother the duke barely restrained.

That single mocking glance snapped the woman’s control.

“You goat that cursed this house! I bore you! You’re my property! Even if we sell you, even if you die for the family, it’s right! You don’t get to question—you don’t!!!”

She tore free and snatched a table knife. Madness burned in her eyes. If not for the duke hauling her back, she’d have vaulted the table at Adelaide.

Adelaide met the ugliness and played along. She shrank back, a startled fawn, and pressed herself to Aunt Emily’s side.

“Ooh~ Auntie~ Tell me, aren’t Dad and Mom too much? Treating their own daughter like that…” She dabbed the corner of her eye.

Maybe her plea rang too true. Maybe her earlier warmth stirred duty in the elder. Lost and shaking, Aunt Emily gathered courage. Fear still clung to her gaze toward the duke and his wife, but she stammered aloud.

“Y-yes! Too much…! A-Atai… is right! Kami and Hel… don’t understand!”

“You think I’m right too?” Adelaide clasped her hands, delight popping like cherry petals. “I knew you’d stand with me, Aunt Emily~! Dad and Mom could use a lesson!”

Then—she flipped the tone in a heartbeat. She looked back to the pair, chin propped like a troubled scholar.

“Though grown-ups say foolish things, Mom had one point. I am still your daughter. Rank-wise, I don’t get to teach you…”

Her perfect show of hesitation lit a small hope on their faces. They mistook it for filial mercy—until she suddenly smiled and merrily looped her arm through her aunt’s wrist.

“So! The lesson will be decided by your peer—Aunt Emily!”

“Eh, eh…?”

Not only the duke and his wife froze. Emily herself dropped her jaw. Adelaide held steady, voice the sweetest honey.

“Aunt Emily, how should I punish these thoughtless parents?”

“Pun… punish…?”

“Yes. Punishment~! They treated you poorly after coming here, didn’t they? Now’s your chance to settle the score!”

“B-but…”

Emily’s eyes went wide. Drool slid from her parted lips. The idea was a flood her mind couldn’t hold. Even without grasping it all, instinct cried this wasn’t… right.

So she shook her head hard, desperate to refuse.

Too bad Adelaide wasn’t asking for consent.

“Hey, Aunt Emily, look at me…”

White silk gloves brushed Emily’s cheek. Adelaide cupped her face and held her eyes. Same bloodline, yet Adelaide’s pupils burned redder—like a whole sea of blood churned in her gaze.

“Tell me… anything is fine…”

Auntie, how do you want me to punish these…

“bad people?”

“Uh… ahh…”

The Dreamfeast Spider’s core at Adelaide’s hip glowed powder-white. The highlights in Emily’s eyes faded, replaced by chaotic fervor.

Driven by that frenzy, she finally crossed the line.

“They… they al-always… yelled at me!”

“Ah, that is excessive!”

“I… don’t like… their tongues!”

“I see! I understand~”

“Adelaide, you—” The duke finally reacted. He tried to speak, but his voice cut off on her name.

His mouth gaped. His tongue jerked out as if yanked by invisible fingers. His body shook. Cold sweat dripped from his nose onto his tongue. Terror flooded his face. His wife mirrored him—frozen in a grotesque pose.

“Shh… Auntie said she doesn’t want to hear you.”

Adelaide lifted a finger to her lips. Hair-fine red threads shimmered silver under candlelight.

Only now did they realize that from the start they’d lost control of their bodies.

They were like that house cat hacked into segments—no wings left to flee.

“Ah… Adai…”

Their last dignity crumbled. Panic seized them. They tried to call their daughter’s name, beg for mercy. The threads coiled around their tongue-roots tightened, burrowing into flesh.

They couldn’t speak. Blood barbs on the threads drove into their tongues, ripping nerves along the papillae. Their cries came out mangled and soundless with pain.

The woman—slow but kind—saw their misery and didn’t stop. Childlike delight lit her face. She waved her arms like she’d found a new toy.

“They… they also… hit me! Hit my… face!”

“Hmm? My parents did domestic violence? Horrible. Which hand did they use?”

“Left…? Right…” Aunt Emily scratched her head. She struggled. After a moment, she drooped. “I forgot…”

Adelaide patted her head in comfort and giggled. “No problem. Then let’s do both~”

“Uh—?!”

Fresh agony wracked the couple. They toppled from their chairs. Blood sprayed from their mouths.

This time, threads wrapped each fingertip. Like a sculptor’s chisels, they carved away the skin from the pads, layer by layer. Each cut was slow and precise, like being struck by a heated blunt hammer—yet longer. Unlike normal burns, Adelaide preserved their nerves on purpose. Pain wouldn’t dull. It bloomed at full strength, every second.

“Mm—uhh—ooooo——————”

“Look, Auntie. From now on they won’t dare use those hands to hit your face~”

“H-hooray!”

On one side, two people screamed, whites of their eyes rolling as ten fingers fed them pain from the heart. On the other, a child’s pure cheers.

The duke and his wife had become Adelaide’s toys. As all children do with toys, Emily didn’t stop at a tap. She listed their “good deeds,” and Adelaide honored each one.

She said Hel once kicked her with high heels. Adelaide twisted, and their feet came off at the ankle.

She said Kami mocked that she couldn’t dress and that her belly held only filth. Adelaide snapped her fingers. Threads sliced their tops open—along with flesh. Their belly skin popped and fluttered. Like hogs in a slaughterhouse, the flaps swung wide. Dark-red muscle and dirty yellow fat met the air. Inside, bowels wrapped in greasy film gleamed. Blood needles poked them from afar for sport.

Stench of viscera. Splashing gore. A human shape taken apart. The opulent sanatorium dining hall turned into a hellscape—made worse because the two carved targets still howled.

Yes, Adelaide hadn’t killed them. She spent her precious blood as a holder of the Sacrifice Domain… well, precious no longer. The Sacred Heart filled her arteries anew with each pulse.

Even so, the blood’s power hadn’t thinned. It easily kept this mortal couple alive. Despite flaying and severing, their bodies still functioned in theory. Especially the nerves—robust, healthy, firing bioelectricity at two hundred percent.

Adelaide didn’t want them fainting. That would be mercy. End it quick? What a joke. She hadn’t played nearly enough. At minimum, she’d test every punishment she hadn’t tried, all on these two traitors.

Hurt, but don’t sever. Limbs hanging by threads, lotus roots not fully cut, keeping pain at the edge where consciousness refuses to flee. She performed precise, brutal surgery. Her smile grew brighter. The scene spiraled further. Screams and cheers braided into a carnival. Every snap of her fingers, every tightening thread, blurred the line between steaks on the table and two bodies bleeding in the air.

It was a carnival that outlived the night.

So long Emily dozed, woke, and dozed again.

So long the duke and duchess rasped like torn bellows.

So long it felt like hell had settled, pain without end, ash falling in the soul.

At last, a period fell, like chalk at dusk.

Not because Adelaide finally had her fill.

She still had countless tricks she wanted to try.

What ended it was the dining hall doors shoving wide again.

Wind shouldered in.

Adelaide had blood threads slipping beneath two human stakes’ eye sockets.

She was about to stir their slick brain matter like porridge.

Then she saw the blonde silhouette in the doorway and her blade of intent stopped.

She flashed a radiant smile.

"Mira? You’re back? Did everything go smoothly?"

She waved, cheerful, like it was a family dinner, and made small talk.

The Douglas couple, their sheen long stripped, saw Mira and a candle of hope fluttered back.

"Help… help…"

They croaked, their voices like cracked baskets, words leaking through the weave.

They prayed she would remember old shelter, do something, even if she no longer bore the Douglas name.

Beg on their behalf, or try to take them away—anything to get them away from their own flesh-and-blood, their mad daughter.

Mira looked on, silent, the quiet a cold tide.

A bad premonition crept up; before they could name it, it arrived.

Mira vanished.

Not just her—Adelaide vanished too.

They were gone only for a heartbeat.

A metallic symphony tolled like a bell at their ears.

The next instant, they saw two blades—one red, one silver—kiss their throats.

Their eyes bulged like frogs under frost; terror broke their bladder.

But despair came from the blades’ positions, not the brush with decapitation.

The silver blade was the one slashing for their necks.

The blood-red sword was the one guarding them, catching Mira’s cut.

"What’s wrong, my dear sister? Why so hasty?"

"I haven’t played enough yet…"

Adelaide’s voice stayed sweet, but her smile faded.

Her eyes narrowed, doubt gleaming like a thin knife.

"Mira, you’re not trying to let them off easy, are you?"