Showing one’s back was ultimately exposing a weakness. And Seiyad couldn’t afford to be a weak Tither. The only reason his family’s name had managed to survive, if only barely, was because he was a Tither that Solias couldn’t do without. That’s why allowing anyone to underestimate his power—even a little—was something he could never permit, not even in death.
A flicker of unease stirred inside him. A compulsion gripped him—the conviction that he had to take responsibility for everything happening in the field. While he hesitated for a brief moment, unable to let his guard down, Stella called out to him from the front.
“Seiyad, I… I don’t know how to kill this thing…!”
Her desperate cry swept away all hesitation. Right. Right now, they needed Seiyad. This wasn’t like last winter, when they had faced a high-ranking Nir’a. Unlike the more seasoned Selfini Vetria or Duke Bridehit, the others had only encountered Nir’a for the first time last winter.
Stella may have been his age, twenty-five, but she still lacked the experience. On top of that, without a proper guide, she hadn’t had the freedom to use her powers as she pleased or to participate freely in hunts. So freezing up in a situation like this was perfectly understandable.
And even to Seiyad, this monster was unfamiliar. It was unsettling, but he had to leave this place to someone else and go deal with the creature.
“Make sure no one gets hurt.”
At his words, Vine and Rigda hesitated and turned to look at him. It seemed they couldn’t believe such words had come from Seiyad of all people. But he meant it. At least in this battlefield against the Nir’a, he could no longer bear to see anyone die.
With that, Seiyad quickly joined Zion and Stella. Just like earlier, Stella was summoning trees to form a barrier between them and the monster. As soon as Seiyad reached her side, she turned to him with a face that barely masked her fear.
“There are too many cores. Zion tried destroying them one by one with his power, but they won’t disappear, and I don’t think it’s even hurting the thing. How… how do we kill this monster?”
From beside her came Zion’s ragged breathing. Having overexerted himself from the start, his face had gone pale. The toll of using his power was likely tearing him apart from the inside, and enduring that alone had to be agony.
Fighting a Nir’a wasn’t just about facing the creature itself—the hardest part was enduring the cost of power. As a fellow Tither, Seiyad knew better than anyone what kind of pain Zion was going through right now.
He looked down at Zion, his gaze full of conflicting emotions. Zion, sensing the stare, clenched his jaw and shot Seiyad a glare.
“So you’ve got nothing either, huh? For all your damn posturing…”
He forced out the words, then straightened as the monster’s rampage grew fiercer. Staring ahead with a face white as paper, his eyes half-closed, a soft golden light seeped out from under his lashes. And then, as if lightning struck from the sky, a torrent of radiant energy crashed down.
The deafening roar as it pierced the creature’s torso echoed violently in their ears. But even after multiple strikes, the monster only screamed—it didn’t vanish.
Seiyad watched the spectacle, deep in thought. He had no clear strategy for a creature like this. As long as it could regenerate, it would keep reviving unless its core was destroyed. But with hundreds of cores to choose from, they needed to find the real one.
Then, an image flashed in his mind—the pitch-black maw of the monster. He remembered seeing a core deep inside its gaping jaws when it had nearly swallowed him.
Its thick, hardened outer shell existed to conceal what lay within.
With that realization, instinct told him the object lodged at the back of its throat had to be the weak point. And unlike the exterior, there seemed to be only one core inside. That was enough to convince him.
“I’ll lure it in.”
He made up his mind. Without hesitation, Seiyad told Stella and Zion his plan. Stella cautiously asked,
“And then?”
“All those exposed cores are decoys. It probably devoured other Nir’a and those are their cores. The real core is in its mouth.”
Zion narrowed his eyes and challenged him.
“And how exactly do you plan to destroy that? External attacks don’t work.”
“I’ll destroy it from the inside.”
Zion fell silent for a moment, the idea not sinking in right away. But when he finally grasped what Seiyad meant, his expression hardened.
“Duke, you’re still human—even as a Tither. If you get that close to a Nir’a, it could steal your soul. That’s suicide.”
His warning was valid—but also surprising.
“You care whether I die?”
Zion met his gaze, full of distrust, and swept a hand through his gold-brown hair with a dry laugh.
“Yeah. A Tither’s death would be my responsibility. I won’t tarnish Ressas’ name.”
At the mention of Ressas from Zion’s mouth, a strange disgust stirred in Seiyad. His expression chilled as he replied coldly.
“I don’t plan to die before watching Shildras fall. So save your excessive concern. If you’re not going to offer an alternative, I’ll take it you’re following my lead.”
“Seiyad, just this once, Zion’s right. Getting that close to a Nir’a is far too dangerous.”
“Our power is becoming increasingly unstable, but the Nir’a isn’t. That’s why, Stella—when I lure it, stop it from swallowing me. Bring Cecilia—it’ll be easier that way.”
“I…!”
Her turquoise eyes, so much like her mother’s, trembled. With no confidence on her face, Stella whispered,
“What if I mess up? What if I can’t do it?”
“Stella.”
Seiyad looked down at her and spoke calmly.
“You’ll never know until you try.”
There was no time left to hesitate. In the end, nothing was more certain than direct confrontation. With his decision made, Seiyad turned and began walking toward the monster. From behind, Zion called out to him.
“Come back alive, Duke!”
But before Zion could grab him, Seiyad melted into the lengthening shadows of the forest. His body sank briefly into darkness and surged forth again—only to emerge right in front of the beast. Its hulking body rolled through the trees, crushing them as it moved, radiating an intense fury.
The Nir’a quickly sensed Seiyad’s presence and whipped its head toward him. Dozens of red, eye-like orbs stared down from the grotesque face of a monstrous boar high above. From the massive Nir’a, Seiyad felt not only rage—but something else.
It was a kind of desire.
But it was so deep, so dark, that he couldn’t discern what it longed for. His stomach churned and nausea rose in his throat as some buried fear began to stir within him. To push it away, Seiyad tightened his grip on his sword.
Seeing Seiyad unmoving, the Nir’a drooled thick black saliva and opened its jaws wide. Its mouth gaped like a cave, ready to consume him in an abyss of darkness with no end. Deep inside that gaping maw, a faint red glow shimmered. That was it.
He had to let it swallow him almost completely.
Flexing his vein-lined hand, he began slowly backing away. The Nir’a followed with a low, growling breath, adjusting its pace to match his retreat. As Seiyad moved faster, the Nir’a initiated its hunt.
GUEEEK, GGGKK!
The screeching cry, like a pig being slaughtered, sent chills down his spine. Slipping along the shadows, Seiyad lured the creature just far enough for Stella to see him. A quick glance behind confirmed it—Stella stood pale-faced, watching him. Beside her stood Cecilia.
That settled it.
Seiyad stopped moving. As if it had been waiting for that moment, the monster lunged forward, its gaping maw engulfing him.
“No, Oppa—!”
Cecilia’s scream echoed—and then all sound vanished.
Seiyad was swallowed by the terrifying silence that surrounded him. Everything was pitch black. The same darkness he had seen the moment before death now consumed him.
A sudden chill overwhelmed him. His body froze as though turned to ice. And within that sensation, he saw it clearly—a brilliant red core. Thump. Thump. Thump. A sound like a heartbeat pulsed through his skull. He tried to move the hand gripping his sword, but his body no longer responded.
“This wretched demon needs to die—now!”
Somewhere, he heard Zion’s voice. Then, countless others followed.
“A monster like you can’t even be called human.”
“Give me back my family!”
The weight of his sins began to crush him. His dry throat quivered violently. And then, the voices of those who hated him transformed—into the voice of his mother.
“My child, kill them all….”
Her voice was infinitely tender and mournful. Like a lullaby, it whispered to him in tones full of aching familiarity.
“Kill them all—the ones who hated you, the ones who abandoned you. No one ever truly saw you. Even your sister turned her back on you.”
The gentle coaxing was identical to the voice he’d heard before he died. The whispered truth that everyone was his enemy shackled his limbs. The darkness wrapped around him with seductive peace. A serenity that made him long to fall asleep forever.
But then—a different voice intruded.
“Because I like you, Duke.”
A soft voice, like moonlight in the night sky, like a light that illuminated the world. A whisper that spoke words Seiyad had never heard in his life settled beside him.
Sweet lies delivered through pleading violet eyes began to echo. The voice that disrupted his peaceful surrender finally shifted into Ressas’s voice—and jolted him awake.
“Good night, my moon.”
The moment he thought of the stubborn young man who followed him everywhere, his fading consciousness snapped back into place. Gasping for breath, Seiyad moved his hand, drawing up the power buried within him in one explosive surge. He summoned pure darkness—a lightless void—to make it his own.
Darkness was the only authority granted to him.
‘With the power that created you, I will destroy you.’
Following his will, the darkness began to distort inside the Nir’a. Though he’d never attempted it before, he found it strangely easy to control the power. He tore at the pulsing shadows and aimed them toward the core deep within. Thorned spikes began to sprout—pop, pop—within the Nir’a.
Finally, they struck the core.
A shrieking scream, sharp enough to pierce eardrums, tore through the air. Light instantly dispelled the darkness, and vision returned in a flash. But the barrage of hallucinatory voices didn’t stop. The noise blaring through his mind threatened to shatter his skull. Seiyad’s eyes rolled back halfway as he collapsed.
The ceaseless whispers began to churn his mind into mush. A coldness that could freeze him to death settled into his bones, and a headache so fierce it made him want to gouge out his own eyes surged forward.
Driven by that urge, Seiyad groped upward, bringing a hand to his face. Pale, long fingers fumbled over his eyelids and pressed down hard. Just as he was about to give in to the impulse to crush them—
Someone grabbed his wrist.
“Eid. Don’t do that.”
To push the intruder away, Seiyad forced his eyes open. A warm body held his trembling, convulsing frame in a tight embrace. The grip was firm—unyielding, as if it would never let go. As he tried to writhe free, other voices surrounded him.
“Ressas, I told you it was dangerous! Why did you come in here?”
“Oppa, are you okay?!”
“The priority is to stabilize the situation—Your Highness, for now—”
The voices made the pain in his head spike even worse. Seiyad clenched his teeth to stifle a groan, and the arms holding him tightened.
Blinking through his hazy vision, he saw Ressas’s face. Or at least—it looked like him.
But that jaw, tense and frozen, seemed like someone else’s. The violet eyes gazing down at him from above held a light like the rising sun over a lake. A fiery blend of purple and crimson burned in those irises, and the sharp lines of his nose and lips were drawn tight.
Looking down at him with that face, Ressas finally spoke—with a voice Seiyad had never heard before.
“Everyone. Be silent.”
