Immortality. For ages beyond count, countless souls have chased this dream.

Fear of the unknown end makes it the sweetest temptation.

To grasp this ideal, humanity paid sorrowful prices beyond measure—

only to find emptiness waiting at the journey’s end.

But is immortality truly bliss?

The answer may well be no.

Eternal life. All things perish, yet I remain. After witnessing too much, only endless solitude lingers.

Forsaken by time. Isolated by the world. Forever unable to belong.

Immortality is a shackle.

An unbreakable chain coiled tight around every inch of your being, granting no release.

"Lord Akat, what troubles you?"

Maria entered just as the girl by the window turned her gaze beyond the vines, lost in thought.

Yuri’s crimson eyes flickered faintly. "Maria," she murmured, "how long have we known each other?"

Maria hesitated, puzzled by the question. After a pause, she answered truthfully:

"Sixty-two years, Lord Akat."

"Sixty years..." Yuri’s lashes lowered as a weary sigh escaped her. "How time flies."

Sixty years—a human lifetime, spent and gone.

Her pale fingers lifted toward the windowsill—then froze.

Not from reluctance. Translucent chains slithered across her skin, halting her movement.

Silence stretched. Yuri withdrew her hand.

The moment she ceased struggling, the chains vanished like mist.

A seal. Sixty years of bondage.

Since Maria woke her in this ancient castle, this near-unbreakable seal had bound her—

crippling her steps, smothering her power.

Leaving only undying blood, an ageless body, and soul-deep loneliness.

"What does the world truly look like now?"

"Lord Akat..." Maria’s expression tightened, sensing Yuri’s turmoil.

She’d searched relentlessly for a way to break the seal since awakening her mistress.

But it was forged by a being of unimaginable power. Shattering it wouldn’t be simple.

Sixty years meant little to creatures like them. If not sixty, then six hundred. Time held no meaning. The seal *would* fall.

Yet Yuri wasn’t Maria. Her patience had long since frayed.

Her soul and mind had been claimed at awakening by an otherworldly presence.

Time and lingering traces had shaped her outward form—but her memories, her will, remained unbroken.

Having tasted freedom once, she loathed this cage all the more.

She accepted becoming inhuman. She accepted the shift from man to woman.

But she could *never* accept eternal imprisonment.

No growth. No death. Eternal existence—trapped forever within these walls.

This was the cruelest punishment from the one who sealed her.

Yuri had cursed that being countless times. Uselessly.

Invisible chains locked this realm. The power buried deep in her soul couldn’t shatter them.

Beyond the castle, a colossal barrier repelled all living things.

Why Maria moved freely here, even she didn’t know.

She’d stumbled into this place by accident. Woken Yuri by chance.

Bound by strange circumstances, she became the girl’s servant—and remained so.

"Leave me, Maria. I’m tired." Yuri rubbed her temples.

Maria opened her mouth, then closed it. "Rest well. I must visit the human world later. I’ll return late."

"Hmm."

Maria bowed slightly, turned, and closed the door with a soft click.

Alone again, Yuri’s crimson eyes snapped into reptilian slits—

cold, inhuman, dragon-like.

*Riiip!*

Twin obsidian wings tore through her clothes, unfurling into the air.

Instantly, the vanished chains reappeared, coiling tighter.

"*Ugh...*"

Agony flashed across her face. Her demonic eyes and wings dissolved like smoke.

"*Damn it.*"

She gritted her teeth, sharp claws digging deep into her palms.

Crimson-gold blood welled, staining her skin—but not a drop fell.

Outside the door, Maria’s breath hitched.

That fleeting aura—instinctive dread of a lesser creature before its apex predator.

Even sealed, even appearing a delicate loli, Yuri’s mere presence demanded submission.

Like a tiger trembling before a dragon’s shadow. No action needed. The pressure alone could crush bones.

Maria’s face flickered with complex emotions, then smoothed into calm.

She knew exactly what Yuri was. No one understood better the monster she’d awakened.

A vampire?

Perhaps. But not merely that.

A vampire who made true monsters tremble.

Even that godlike being chose only to seal her—not erase her.

*That* was why Maria served. *That* was why she sought the seal’s destruction.

Demons should wear their true faces. Not rot forever in this tiny prison, denied even death’s release.

She longed for the day the demon would bare her fangs to the world again.

"*Then... it will surely—*"