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Darkness stagnates.
It is not merely the absence of light. More than a physical dimness that steals sight, it is something more fundamental, a sticky fissure running through the world itself.
The darkness is heavy and damp, like the bottom of a swamp where rotten water pools, or the air of an underground ossuary sealed for centuries, eating away at the lungs of those within from the inside.
With every breath, she falls into the illusion that a blasphemous air, mixed with iron rust and decay, is scorching her airways.
Boundaries are vague.
Reality and dreams. Self and others.
The thin membrane that separates them is melting under the encroachment of that viscous darkness, turning into chaotic sludge that tries to entangle consciousness itself.
In a room of the servants’ quarters to the northwest of the Aster ducal estate, Feri jolted upright as if struck.
Her lungs spasmed, and a dry, rasping sound escaped her throat.
Her underclothes, soaked with sweat, clung to her chilled skin. That unpleasant sensation acted like a catalyst, calling back memories of the mud and filth that had once covered her body.
She had seen it again, that dream.
The loathsome memories of a time when the being called Feri had been a dignity-less thing, replayed night after night without mercy.
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The world within the dream was always unsteady.
The rattling sound of wheels biting into ruts echoed endlessly. She was inside a narrow cage surrounded by iron bars, within a box untouched by light.
Feri had no name.
Delphen. That rare race that lived in darkness was the only label that defined her. Dark skin, pointed ears, eerily gleaming eyes. None of these were her individuality. They were nothing more than specifications written on a price tag.
Her beauty, however, was nothing but a curse to her. The more beautifully her body matured, the more the swarming flies of desire grew bloated, seeking to consume her.
The buyers were fat merchants, debauched sons of sadistic nobles, or coarse mercenaries.
But no matter how the location changed, the ritual performed was always the same.
There was no room for Feri’s will to intervene. She was merely a vessel.
A vessel to receive discharged desire. Men’s grotesque emotions were pressed upon her one-sidedly. There was pain. Tearing pain, burning pain. Yet even that wore down with repetition. The heart, that fragile organ, shattered quickly, and all that remained was a lump of flesh that reacted only to external stimuli.
──Cry out with a pretty voice.
──I will use you until you break.
Insults and mockery. The sound of flesh being struck.
Even so, Feri did not fawn. No matter how much her body was defiled, she could never extinguish the cold light dwelling deep within her eyes. Eyes that stared into nothingness. Or perhaps eyes that seemed to curse the world itself. That was what irritated her owner.
「I do not like it」
The man said.
「Those eyes. Those hands. Those legs. For a mere tool, any part that suggests will is unnecessary」
The sensation of a cold blade. A dull sound as bone was severed.
Her right arm fell.
Looking at her own arm rolling across the floor, Feri thought with an oddly calm detachment, ah, there is trash on the ground. It was no longer part of her. It was merely a detached object.
Next came her left arm. Then her legs, taken one after another.
The man went further and stole even Feri’s words.
To prevent her from spewing curses or calling for help, he cut out her tongue from the root.
Her mouth filled with the taste of iron.
Thus, Feri quite literally became a silent toy.
Unable to resist. Unable to flee. She was nothing more than an organic sack that accepted pain and humiliation as they were given, leaking them out in return.
Eventually, having lost even her value as merchandise, Feri was thrown into the corner of a dim underground cell and left to await decay. As vermin gnawed at her wounds, she wished for her own end from the depths of her fading consciousness.
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Feri covered her face with trembling hands.
They are there. Fingers exist. They move.
Arms exist. Legs exist. Inside her mouth, her tongue exists.
The Aster ducal estate. In the room given to her, Feri reaffirmed her own existence. There was no stench of rot, nor any sign of violence.
She let out a deep breath. It was relief, and at the same time, a sigh tinged with disappointment.
She did not hate this nightmare. She did not resent it. Because it was precisely because this hell had existed that she was able to meet Hein.
If Feri had remained whole, living out her life as a trivial pet slave. Or if she had met her death at an earlier stage. She would never have caught Hein’s eye.
That day, at the bottom of the underground cell reeking of decay. Hein found her as she lay there, a lump of flesh stripped of her limbs. There was no sympathy in his eyes. No pity. Not even disgust. What was there was only an innocent, and therefore cruel, curiosity, like that of a child who had found a broken clock.
『Oh. This is interesting』
Hein said that, and bought Feri with the casual motion of picking up trash.
Then he treated her as experimental material. He did not save her as a human being. He was merely interested in her structure as an object, and attempted to repair it.
Yet for Feri, that itself was salvation.
Human kindness was powerless before the depths of her despair. Words like how pitiful merely stroked the wound and were nothing more than deception. Hein was different. Hein treated Feri thoroughly as an object, and reconstructed her through the logic of magic.
Agony. After regenerative torment so intense it felt as though each individual cell were boiling and her soul were being burned away, she recovered what she had lost.
Her limbs. Her words. And the vessel called herself.
──Young master is a god.
That is what Feri thinks.
No, even the word god feels lukewarm. Then what is he? Even now, Feri continues to ponder that question.
She walked over to the window and gazed up at the night sky beyond the glass.
The recent scene resurfaced in her mind.
The great ice field of the northern land, the Kingdom of Norn. The grotesque existence they had faced there.
Feri’s keen senses had understood it instantly. That thing was a monster outside the laws of this world. A primordial terror, as if an evil god from another realm had manifested wearing the mask of a dragon.
──But Young master.
Astonishingly, Hein had declared that monster an inferior being.
And then came that light. A flash like divine punishment that could burn the world away.
The moment she saw that light, Feri became certain.
If that dragon was an outer god, then young master, who repelled it and even attempted to pursue it further, was something that surpassed even that.
If the nightmare-like past that led her to serve an existence far more exalted than any god was the price she paid, then could it not be called a blessing instead?
Feri’s body broke out in goosebumps.
Not fear. Ecstasy. Awe.
And then, dark and clinging, desire.
Feri stared at her own face reflected in the window glass.
Well-shaped features. Healthy, lustrous skin. Yet deep within those eyes flickered a dark flame that would never go out.
There was one darkness in her heart that she could not face directly.
It was a grotesque desire, adorned with the name of devotion.
──I want to offer everything to young master. My life, my soul, this regenerated body, everything without exception.
But the problem lay in how that offering should be made.
Feri did not want to be protected by Hein. She did not want to be loved. To put it plainly, she wanted to be broken.
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・
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Just like what those nameless men once did to her.
No, something even beyond that.
To be trampled, dismantled, and consumed without resistance.
She wants him to shatter the existence called herself with his own hands.
She wants him to look down on her as an object.
She wants him to strip away her human shell and reduce her to nothing but a lump of flesh.
She wants her words taken away. She wants her limbs taken away.
She wants to become a living doll, existing only for her young master.
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If Hein were to desire it, Feri would gladly sever her own limbs and bite off her tongue. Then, with a body stripped of freedom, she would crawl at Hein’s feet and feel supreme joy in pressing her forehead against the soles of his shoes.
──Ah, young master.
As if fever-struck, Feri reached out toward empty space.
In the moonlight, her fingertips trembled. A heavy, sweet ache ran through her lower abdomen.
It was a transgressive arousal.
──But young master is a noble soul.
Yes. Hein loves his mother, Helga, with single-minded devotion and directs no sexual interest toward anyone else. He sees Feri only as a capable tool. Precisely because of that, this desire of hers can never be fulfilled. It must not be fulfilled.
If Hein were to feel base desire for Feri, it would mean he had stepped down from the seat of being her god. Hein would be reduced to nothing more than a man. For Feri, that would be the collapse of faith itself.
That is why this feeling is a contradiction.
She wants Hein to remain a pure and immaculate god. Yet her body screams to be defiled by him. This tearing conflict was the very fuel that caused Feri’s twisted passions to burn ever hotter.
The rough impulses of a man that Hein would never direct at Helga. His sadistic urges. She wanted to receive all of them herself. That was what Feri longed for.
All that is beautiful belongs to Helga-sama.
All that is filthy should come to me.
Everything I am belongs to young master. My blood, my flesh, my bones.
Feri placed her hand on the hem of her nightgown.
Her heat-filled skin was exposed to the cold night air, and her fingers reached toward her most private place.
It burned with base heat.
──Please use me, young master.
──Please soil me, young master.
──Please break me, young master.
Feri closed her eyes.
Behind her eyelids rose the image of Hein’s cold, pitiless gaze.
Holding that illusion in her mind, she dug her nails into her own skin.
Once, twice, three times.
Tracing memories of being handled roughly in the past, she caressed herself with such force that it nearly became pain.
Pain became prayer.
Pleasure became an offering.
「……ah, u…… young, master……」
In a voice that barely formed sound, she called her master’s name.
At the moment of climax, Feri’s consciousness burst white, and the world inverted.
There was an ecstasy beyond words.
There was a certain premonition of a future where she would be used up as a tool and discarded like trash.
Feri released a ragged breath and sank into the sheets.
The moonlight remained cold as ever, quietly illuminating her secret.
Dreaming of the day when Hein might whimsically break her, Feri once more fell into shallow sleep. Her sleeping face was so peaceful that one would never guess she had just seen a nightmare, and it was pure, like that of a saint.
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