So hungry... so hungry...

Allen desperately craved food.

With one hundred gold coins, Allen had eaten only ten meals. Those ten meals stretched over nearly a month of travel—a painfully slow countdown. Even a fortune of millions would dwindle under the slavers’ exploitation, let alone a mere hundred gold coins. Surviving this long felt like a miracle. Allen knew her frail frame couldn’t withstand even a single day of true hunger. Years of malnutrition had left her skin-and-bones thin. When pushed to the brink, she’d reluctantly hand over ten silver coins to gorge herself on black bread and plain water. Yet even that meager meal sparked a flicker of happiness in Allen. At least she was still alive.

"It’s gone... all gone," Allen thought fearfully. Each time this crossed her mind, she’d touch the coins hidden in her felt pouch—warmed by her body heat. It offered fleeting reassurance. But the coins kept vanishing. Until one day... the unthinkable happened. They hadn’t reached their destination, but her money had run out.

Since the gold vanished, Allen hadn’t eaten. Three days without food—her longest stretch yet. The caravan leader seemed to have forgotten her entirely, never once asking if she lived or died. Finally, as dizziness threatened to swallow her whole, Allen rasped toward the man at the front:

"I’m... hungry..."

Her whisper, thin as a mosquito’s buzz, went unheard.

Allen hadn’t spoken in days. The sound that escaped her throat startled her—a dry, grating rasp like dead wood scraping stone. Not her voice. The whimper of someone already half-dead.

Tears wouldn’t come. She’d cried them all out long ago.

"Food!" she croaked, then dissolved into coughing.

The leader finally turned. He hadn’t ignored her—he simply hadn’t recognized that broken sound as human. He’d mistaken it for a snapping twig.

"Where’s your money?" he demanded, climbing onto the cage-cart. The stench of unwashed bodies hit him as he loomed over Allen.

"Gone... all gone. Not a single coin left..." Her voice scraped out like brittle twigs snapping. So it *had* been her shouting.

"Tsk." He clicked his tongue, feigning thought. The cruel plan he’d nursed for weeks resurfaced—perfect timing.

"This costs money, you know."

"I’m starving..."

"I’m a merchant," he said flatly. "I don’t trade without profit."

"I have nothing left! Just... water. Please."

Allen lay wilted in the cage like a dried-up sponge, her body pressed against the floorboards. The cage sat inside a covered wagon. She still wanted to live.

The leader had guessed right. Allen showed no signs of rebellion or despair—just quiet endurance. That meant she clung to something.

Like the name she whispered in her sleep: *Lilith*.

"Tsk. You really won’t listen." He paused, then grinned wickedly. "How about a trade? Your pocket watch for three meals. It’s worth plenty."

He’d known all along. The face on that printed scroll inside the watch? Lilith.

"No!" The shout tore from Allen’s throat—a strength no starving girl should possess. She glared at him. That watch held the only photograph she owned, her lighthouse in the dark. Taking it would kill her.

"Tsk..."

Allen rarely moved. She slept, or stared at the pocket watch—not to check time (it hadn’t been wound in weeks), but at the image beneath its glass lid. The leader wanted that photo destroyed. To erase her last hope. To crush any thought of escape. His calculations had been flawless: no chance to flee along the route. He’d expected resistance, but not this fury. Not from a girl barely clinging to life.

He knew her weakness.

Allen was days from death. She might simply stop breathing in her sleep tonight. He’d engineered this. A trap she’d walked into step by step.

Her ribs jutted like fish bones beneath parchment skin. She knew her own decay. So did he.

Chained inside the wagon’s cramped cage, she barely crawled to relieve herself. Conserving energy was survival. She spoke only to beg for food, water, or the latrine—her voice a mosquito-whisper only audible up close. This shout was her first.

"I’ll give you leftovers after this," he coaxed. "Just hand over the watch."

"No!"

"Please! Take everything else—I’ll give you *anything*! But not that! Have mercy!" Allen pleaded.

"Tsk. Is *that* how you ask?" he countered.

Silence. Allen clutched the watch tighter, sensing the threat in the air.

"You know I could just take it."

"Then *take it*!"

"I’m doing you a kindness..." He paused. "Don’t you see what you’ve become?"

Hardness failing, he shifted tactics.

A month without washing. Allen’s silver hair hung in greasy, matted clumps. Black bread and starvation had leached the life from her skin, leaving it waxy and yellow. The girl who once walked the halls of Demon Castle was gone.

Allen froze. She knew her body was fading. Knew her coins could never buy her survival to the journey’s end. This was his trap—and she had no choice but to step into it.

The leader struck fast. While Allen hesitated, his hand darted like an arrow, snatching the watch.

By the time she reacted, it was in his grip.

He flipped it open, prying at the crystal frame holding the photo with his dagger.

"No!!"

He ignored her, scraping the blade against the glass. Each scrape felt like a stab to Allen’s heart. Her sobs and pounding on the iron bars meant nothing.

*Crack.*

The frame came loose. The scroll slipped out.

Then—*rip, rip, rip*—it shredded into confetti.

Everything was gone.

A suffocating pressure crushed Allen’s chest. Darkness swallowed her.