The palace was hushed, its opulence swallowed by a creeping, bone-deep dread. Shadows clung to the marble like cobwebs, while chandeliers above flickered weakly, as if afraid to fully illuminate what lay beneath. Servants glided across the black-and-gold tiles with trembling fingers and darting eyes, bowing so low their foreheads nearly kissed the floor—as if the darkness might notice them less if they made themselves smaller.

They didn't speak. They didn't dare.

At the end of the long corridor, a pair of towering golden doors loomed like a mausoleum gate, encrusted with rubies that glimmered like watchful eyes. Two palace guards stood there, armor dulled by fatigue, swords leaning against their shoulders. Their eyes drooped—one teetered on the edge of sleep, the other already gone, head bobbing like a broken puppet.

Neither noticed the thin, dark trail snaking from the slight crack beneath the doors.

Blood.

Thick and slow, it crept toward their boots, pooling like ink on the polished floor. The scent was coppery and wrong, like iron and rot waltzing together in the stagnant air.

Above the door, the engraved nameplate screamed its owner in ornate lettering carved deep and cruel:

"Crown Prince Azrael."

From within, a sound echoed—steady, rhythmic, grotesque.

THWACK.

Wood groaned under each slam, like it wanted to cry out but had long forgotten how.

THWACK.

A butcher knife danced with brutal precision, slicing the silence open with every stroke. The room beyond was pitch black, as if night itself had taken root there. No torches burned. No candles wept wax. Just darkness—and movement.

A single hand, muscular and slick with blood, gripped the handle of the cleaver. Again, it came down.

THWACK.

Into meat. Into wood. Into something once human, now ruined beyond recognition.

From inside, a voice began to rise. Not a scream—not at first. A gurgle. A moan. Then finally, the scream burst out—a raw, jagged sound that clawed at the palace walls like fingernails on stone.

"Clean up the mess."

Azrael's voice cut through the screaming like a blade through silk. The guards jolted awake, their eyes wide with terror as they looked down at the blood pooling around their boots. Without a word, they grabbed what remained of the headless body, dragging it by the legs toward the garbage outside Vaelmont Palace.

The body hit the refuse with a wet, plastic sound as they dumped it among the other remnants of Azrael's rage. The heavy lid of the filthy garbage container slammed shut with finality.

Inside the palace, Azrael sat in his armchair, bloodied hands still trembling with the aftermath of violence. The sound of delicate anklets grew closer and closer, their musical chiming a stark contrast to the carnage that had just unfolded.

"You shouldn't be doing this, Azrael." Elizabeth's voice carried a sharp edge as she entered the room, her eyes narrowing as she looked at her mad son. "All the gardener son did was give your spouse a cheap trinket."

She might be his mother, but perhaps she was the reason why Azrael had become this monster. She shouldn't have left him alone with Charlotte all those years ago.