Chapter 6

Isaac lifted the oil lantern he had placed nearby, but the area beyond remained swallowed by the forest’s shadow. His challenge, however, received an immediate response.

“It’s me… Vern…”

“Vern? What happened to your voice?”

Isaac loosened his white-knuckled grip on his spear, his brow furrowed in confusion. The tear-choked voice was indeed Vern’s, but his breathing was erratic, bordering on hysterical. Isaac took a step forward, and Vern finally emerged from the treeline. In the dim light, his silhouette appeared grotesquely thick, as if he had gained excessive weight in a heartbeat. Then, the truth dawned—that was no human silhouette.

“V-Vern?!”

“Isaac… h-help me…”

Only as the shadow stumbled closer, sobbing, did Isaac see Vern clearly beneath the moonlight. The man looked ready to fracture under the weight of his own terror, and on his back, he dragged something massive. It took another second for the horror to settle in: the immense, trailing weight was the corpse of a beast as large as a grown man.

“Vern! What in God’s name happened?” Isaac rushed forward.

As he steadied the trembling guard, he caught sight of the beast’s condition—its belly had been split open in a jagged, long gash. Lost for words, he stared as the entrails, torn free as though ripped out by raw, bare hands, spilled out entirely, with clumps of viscera clinging to the blood-drenched pelt. Even Isaac, whose stomach was typically made of iron, nearly gagged.

“I was late… and I tried to cut through the forest… I ran into it on the path… He told me to bring it here…”

There was no need for Isaac to ask who “he” was.

At that exact moment, another figure stepped out from the forest shadows behind Vern.

The man revealed himself under the moonlight, his clothes and skin drenched in thick, black blood from head to toe. Only then did the heavy, cloying reek of carnage wash over them.

Perhaps because of the darkness, or perhaps due to the murderous, suffocating heat that radiated from his very presence, the tall man looked terrifyingly immense. He approached with slow, rhythmic steps.

Isaac stood frozen, paralyzed like an aspen leaf in the wind, staring at the man who did not even deign to glance at Vern, the slaughtered beast, or Isaac himself.

With eyes of icy, profound indifference, as if nothing at all stood in his path, the man moved past them.

The sensation was like a brush with death, a cold, sharp blade tracing the tip of Isaac’s nose. He remained rooted to the earth until the man had put significant distance between them. Only when the figure stopped at the water’s edge, stripped away his blood-soaked garments, and splashed into the lake did Isaac regain the ability to breathe.

Crimson blood bloomed in the water around the man, swirling before dissolving into the depths. He washed the gore from his skin, cutting through the water with slow, deliberate strokes.

And beneath him, the reflection of the moonlight shattered into a thousand trembling shards of silver.

As Isaac drew a sharp, steadying breath to calm his hammering heart, he finally took note of the several attendants trailing the man at a cautious distance.

“Prepare the towels. Quickly. Before Lord Kaiyan emerges.”

“We require fresh garments immediately.”

“The water supply is insufficient. Make haste to the palace and retrieve pitchers and ice. Lord Kaiyan intends to linger in the water for some time, so hurry.”

Amid the frantic activity of the staff scrambling to organize before the prince surfaced, the striking bodyguard Isaac had noted earlier stood in a stupor. He was a bodyguard in name only; in reality, he served as the prince’s bedwarmer.

The beautiful youth who, barring extraordinary circumstances, shadowed the prince incessantly had turned a sickly, jaundiced yellow after whatever horrors he had witnessed. His gaze drifted momentarily to the butchered beast corpse Vern carried, and he finally doubled over and retched.

“Ugh… I was barely keeping it down… I think I’m going to be sick, too,” Vern mumbled, clamping a hand over his mouth.

Isaac swiftly relieved him of the beast’s carcass, deposited it upon the grass, and crouched down to soothe the poor man’s back as he heaved.

Between shuddering, ragged gasps, Vern stammered out enough for Isaac to piece together the narrative. The wretched fool had been late for his shift change and dared to cut through the forest as a shortcut, only to collide directly with the prince mid-hunt. Worse, he had arrived at the precise moment the prince ended the creature’s life.

“Don’t ask… He split open its belly while it was still gasping and ripped out the entrails with his bare hands… I didn’t know if I was standing in hell or elsewhere…”

“You have endured quite an ordeal.”

“I am never, ever going to be late again if that is the price I must pay to avoid witnessing such a sight…”

The conclusion Vern reached through his tearful sniffling was perhaps eccentric, but it was a desirable outcome nonetheless. Isaac continued to pat his back, silently conceding the point.

Hunting deep in the forest under the cover of night was one of the prince’s occasional amusements. When the mood struck him, he would bolt into the darkness, and whenever that occurred, the attendants would throw the palace into an absolute uproar as they scrambled in his wake.

Evidently, tonight was one of those nights.

From the perimeter, Isaac watched the prince create quiet, rhythmic ripples across the lake as he propelled himself through the water. It had to be freezing, yet his strokes remained leisurely, lacking the slightest indication that he felt the cold. Isaac privately wondered whether the man lacked not only empathy but physical sensation altogether.

As Isaac observed, the attendants who had dashed to the palace returned with serving supplies, and Vern rejoined them after stashing the beast corpse. By then, Vern appeared composed, returning to his usual self, though he reeked faintly of spirits.

The staff had prepared dry linens, fresh clothes, beverages, and light fare by the time the prince finally emerged from the lake. As he stalked out through the reeds, the onlookers held their breath, tensed and expectant.

The prince swept back his damp hair and released a soft, steadying breath.

In the moonlight, his pale blond locks appeared silver, glistening like water-drenched jewels. Even the droplets falling from the ends seemed like beads adorning that flawlessly supple, imposing frame.

For one stunned moment, the attendants stared at the prince in open, breathless rapture. They snapped to their senses only when he wiped the water from his face with one hand, raised his gaze, and surveyed them with cold indifference. At last, they hurried toward him with towels and garments, but the prince waved them away as if such offerings were beneath his notice.

“Strip.”

The prince had seated himself in a chair prepared by the staff and was sipping ice water when he tossed out the indifferent command. It was directed at his bodyguard—the young man dressed in the hollow shell of that title. The youth flinched, then scrambled to the prince’s side.

Kneeling before the naked prince, the young man buried his face between the prince’s legs and began to service him with his mouth, all while frantically attempting to peel away his own garments. As if terrified of the consequences of even a moment’s delay, the bodyguard rushed to strip himself bare, while the prince propped his chin on one hand and peered down at him without a shred of expression, as though observing a tedious, inanimate object.

Before long, the prince seized the young man’s hair and began forcing him more aggressively against his groin. The young man, his throat being roughly violated, gagged and choked with animal-like sounds, tears springing to his eyes. Soon, the prince dragged him sharply against himself and froze. In the surrounding silence, the sound of the young man’s throat swallowing repeatedly rang obscenely loud.

“On your stomach.”

The prince shoved him away as he spoke.

The young man coughed as if he had choked, but he quickly flipped over and settled onto all fours. He lowered his head, arched his hips, and the prince gripped his waist. Without a single caress or any hint of foreplay, the prince thrust into him, and the violation commenced.

That was not intercourse; it was not lovemaking.

It was one-sided, brutal ravaging.

While attendants and guards stood by as if long since desensitized to such spectacles, the young man wept as his body was pierced, treated not with a shred of tenderness but like an object meant only to satisfy a fleeting desire. It was true that in exchange for this, the young man lived in luxury, enjoyed an abundant household, and walked with an arrogant air, but even so, this was…

Isaac quietly averted his eyes.

Perhaps both parties had entered this arrangement because their interests aligned, but that did not mean Isaac desired to watch another person’s intimate degradation laid bare in such visceral detail. He slid a few steps back and half-turned, pushing the scene out of his immediate line of sight.

Vern, who had been standing beside him with his mouth agape, noticed Isaac retreating and sidled after him. “What’s wrong? You’re not getting a good view from back here.”

“That’s precisely the point, Vern.”

“Why? I mean, sure, Lord Kaiyan does whatever he pleases—daylight, outdoors, right in front of everyone—but it’s not often that lowly guards like us get to see something this intimate! Holy shit, are you seeing this? Look at that. The rumors are actually true. That thing is the size of an arm—”

Isaac clamped a hand firmly over Vern’s mouth. Vern had whispered like the wind, ensuring no words carried to the others, yet one of the attendants still glanced over. Vern was not entirely without tact, so he quickly snapped his mouth shut with a brazen face, and Isaac stood at attention in a proper, disciplined royal-guard posture.

That movement forced the prince back into his frontal view, but Isaac lifted his gaze, striving to ignore the ominous scene below.

Since a man ought to live by looking at beautiful, lovely things whenever possible, Isaac reasoned, his eyes landed on the prince’s face.

It was a beautiful face.

Beautiful enough to steal his gaze despite his better judgment.

Yet that face also appeared terribly languid and bored, even in this very moment, in the throes of the act.

The prince was always like that.

Always as though existence itself were dull and tiresome.