Iris’s words were like poison-tipped icicles, driving into Furenna’s eardrums.
Each word was clear, slow, and carried the indisputable weight of a final sentence.
“Listen well, Furenna.”
“From now on, my joy shall be your delight.”
“You are to feel the same happiness for it, and you must draw near willingly to accept my touch and my favor.”
Her crimson eyes narrowed slightly, as if savoring her prey’s final struggles.
“My sorrow shall be your torment.”
“You are to feel the same grief for it, and you must find ways to flatter me, to please me, to dispel my gloom.”
She paused, taking half a step forward.
Her shadow fell over the kneeling Furenna. Her voice dropped lower, turning even colder.
“And my anger—”
She bit down on these two words with extra force.
“—shall be your gravest sin.”
“No matter why this anger stirs, or who brings it forth.”
“The moment I show displeasure, you must immediately recognize your own failure of purpose, and then—”
“You must actively request punishment.”
“You will use your suffering and your obedience to quell my wrath. Do you understand?”
This was not a request.
It was a redefinition of her every future expression, every heartbeat, every flicker of feeling.
Furenna would become an extension of the Demon King’s moods, a living doll with no emotions of its own, existing only to reflect and serve her master’s heart.
And when the Demon King, with a slight smile, held up the dark silver collar engraved with sinister patterns in her upturned palm, this “definition” gained its most direct instrument of enforcement.
The collar hovered slightly in her hand.
The patterns on its surface flowed with a breath-like rhythm of light and dark, emanating a powerful magical resonance.
“Wear it,”
Iris’s voice held a trace of strange gentleness, colder than the deepest winter wind,
“and we can truly become connected. Share the same feelings.”
“Your tremors, your heartbeat, the most subtle ripples in the depths of your soul… all will be shared with me.”
“This will help us… ‘deepen our understanding.'”
“Deepen understanding?”
Furenna’s heart felt gripped by an icy hand. This collar would likely grant control over her emotional shifts and physical state.
It meant she would have no inner corner left to hide.
All her fragile, pained, unwilling struggles would become a spectacle for the Demon King to observe and toy with.
Her last shred of private space would be utterly stripped away by this cold metal.
The young Heroine’s gaze was locked on the collar as if she could see her own soul being imprisoned within it.
Xiao Ling hung behind the barrier—
Suspended by cold chains, her small body still trembling faintly from the earlier torment.
Her eyes, always full of timidity, were now staring unblinkingly at the object in the Demon King’s hand, her face filled with pure, unadulterated terror.
Xiao Ling’s face slowly overlapped with Timo’s in Furenna’s mind.
This is for her.
That thought was like a red-hot brand, searing through all of Furenna’s pretenses and the last shred of dignity she had preserved for herself.
Her own humiliation, in the face of this child’s very real fear and pain,
seemed measurable, exchangeable. Just like with Timo.
Slowly, with immense heaviness, she lowered her head.
Her silver hair cascaded down, covering her cheeks which had instantly turned deathly pale,
and concealing the rapidly extinguishing light in her eyes.
Her throat felt clogged with grit. Even swallowing brought a taste of blood.
She used nearly all her remaining will to force a hoarse, ragged whisper from between her teeth:
“I… will wear it.”
The voice was shattered beyond recognition.
A pause.
An even heavier sense of suffocation pressed down on her, forcing out the second half, that final straw she was trying to clutch:
“But… you must guarantee it with the contract!”
“Swear that from now on, you will never touch Xiao Ling again!”
“Your demon clan cannot harm her… for any reason!”
This was the only amulet the Heroine Furenna could think of, as she fell into a deeper abyss,
that might perhaps be exchanged for this innocent child’s safety.
To trade her own complete, naked transparency for a child’s security.
However, the response to her plea was the unchanged curve of a smile on Iris’s lips,
and a flash of cold light deep in her crimson eyes.
The Demon King did not answer.
No affirmation, no denial. She did not even let her gaze linger on Furenna’s face for a second longer.
Only the fingers that had been resting lightly on Furenna’s shoulder pressed down—very slightly, very elegantly.
“Ghk—!”
Behind the barrier, Xiao Ling’s body jerked into a sudden, violent arch, like a bow drawn to its absolute limit!
Her face contorted in agony, her mouth open wide, yet not a single sound escaped,
only a fresh burst of tears and a sudden sheen of cold sweat proving the torment of the invisible force exploding inside her.
The energy chains let out a piercing shriek, their glow intensifying, swallowing and then revealing Xiao Ling’s slender form again.
“No! Stop! I’ll wear it! I’ll wear it right now!”
Furenna’s reason shattered completely before that sight. She screamed.
Every condition, every bottom line, was ground to dust.
She lunged forward like one possessed, her hands grabbing for the floating collar,
wanting only to have it placed around her neck immediately, right now, to end that child’s suffering.
Thump.
A soft sound.
Her fingertips, inches from the collar, met an invisible, utterly impassable wall.
The collar remained motionless, hovering above Iris’s palm.
Staggering, Furenna looked up and met the Demon King’s gaze.
Those crimson eyes had now shed all false amusement, holding only pure, frigid cold.
“I do not enjoy,”
Iris’s voice was as calm as if discussing the weather, yet each word fell on Furenna like an ice shard,
“repeating the same lesson.”
Furenna stood as if struck by lightning, her outstretched hand frozen in mid-air, fingertips icy.
The same lesson…
The Demon King’s first lesson: no bargaining, no wishful thinking, only absolute obedience…
She understood.
It wasn’t that Xiao Ling’s suffering was insufficient. It was because she had attempted an “exchange.”
Furenna’s hand, reaching for the collar, clenched into a fist so tight her nails dug into her palm.
‘My motive… in touching the collar, was still to secure Xiao Ling’s safety.’
‘In Iris’s view, this is still the cunning of an untamed beast seeking “equivalent value.”‘
‘What the Demon King wants is not a transaction. It is the complete crushing of the self. It is devotion without a single stray thought.’
‘Xiao Ling’s pain is the immediate punishment for her “impure motive.”‘
Realizing this, Furenna felt the blood in her veins turn to ice.
Every path was blocked. Even the path of “sacrifice” had to be walked in the most humble, most total manner, with every shred of ulterior motive discarded.
Behind the barrier, Xiao Ling’s convulsions seemed to have not yet ceased.
Her small head hung limply, only the occasional shudder of her shoulders proving she was still alive.
Furenna could even see the trickle of blood from her bitten lip.
There was no time! She could not make another mistake!
“I…”
“It was my fault! I was presumptuous! I did not know my place!”
“I beg Your Majesty’s forgiveness! I beg for punishment! Any punishment!”
“Please spare her! I beg you!”
She cried out the “rule” Iris had established—
When the Demon King is angry, it is your sin. You must plead guilty.
She mentioned the collar no more. She mentioned Xiao Ling no more.
She blamed everything on herself, using the most abject self-negation and pleas, trying to quench the Demon King’s wrath and buy the child a moment’s respite.
This was grinding her soul to dust. This was trampling her dignity into the mud.
But for the child silently enduring behind that barrier, Furenna was willing.
Iris watched quietly as she knelt in the most submissive posture, listening to the broken pleas.
After a moment, the cold curve of her lips finally lifted into a real smile, one tinged with cruel satisfaction.
“It should have been this way from the start.”
The Demon King said softly, as if praising a tool that had finally been set in its proper place.
“Knowing your station is the beginning of progress.”
She released her lightly upheld hand.
The dark silver collar drifted down, but did not fall to the floor.
It hovered at a height Furenna could easily reach, waiting quietly.
Furenna’s body trembled almost imperceptibly.
Maintaining her kneeling posture, she lifted a hand with excruciating slowness, reaching for the collar.
Her fingers paused in the air, trembling, as if reaching into the mouth of a bottomless abyss.
Finally, the cold metal settled into her sweat-dampened palm.
The engraved patterns immediately transmitted a faint pulse, echoing her own frantic heartbeat.
A subtle yet irresistible probing sensation tried to seep into her skin.
She clenched her jaw, forcing down the instinct to resist.
Furenna held the collar in both hands as if holding her own soul prepared for sacrifice.
She straightened slightly, though she remained on her knees.
Her empty gaze fixed on the exquisite instrument of torture in her hands.
Then, she lifted it towards her own neck, which was about to be locked.
The movement was slow, like that of a dying person.
The cold metal edge touched her skin. It was icy, sending a violent shiver through her.
Just as that cold circle was about to close,
to lock her into eternal surveillance forever,
in the final instant—
Perhaps it was a last spark of defiance.
Perhaps it was a surviving instinct—
Furenna’s head snapped up.
She looked towards the magical barrier.
She wanted to see that child one last time.
The child who suffered because of her, and who might find respite because of her complete surrender.
As if this desperate glance could make her remember the price of this downfall.
Xiao Ling seemed to be catching her breath after the torment had paused, her small face deathly pale, streaked with tears.
But when her gaze met Furenna’s own dead, hopeless stare across the distance—
Furenna saw,
in Xiao Ling’s eyes—those eyes usually damp with timidity—
behind the tears,
a tiny, weak, yet intensely bright flame had ignited.
Xiao Ling’s lips trembled slightly from pain and effort.
She looked at Furenna. She looked at the collar about to close.
With all the strength she had left,
slowly, but with perfect clarity,
she formed a few silent words with her mouth.
The barrier prevented any sound.
But Furenna saw them clearly. She understood them perfectly.
“Don’t… wear it?”
“Don’t… give in?”
Furenna’s movement froze completely.
The cold metal pressed against her skin, its chill penetrating to the bone.
But all her strength drained away in the instant she deciphered those silent words.
“Don’t… wear it?”
“Don’t… give in?”
This child, whom she had doubted, tested, even treated roughly.
This little maid, trembling in this demonic lair, living day to day.
This girl, while she herself was enduring inhuman pain, her life and death completely out of her own hands,
was using her eyes, her lips, to shout such a thing to her, this unworthy “Heroine”?
In an instant, many scenes flooded Furenna’s mind:
Xiao Ling’s slightly trembling hand as she offered medicine, her flushed yet stubborn face when sharing food, her clumsy gentleness when cleaning wounds, her frightened tears when being pinned down…
And now, that desperate yet stubborn insistence behind a veil of tears.
Xiao Ling understood.
She understood that this “sacrifice” meant a deeper abyss.
This frail child neither begged for rescue nor resented being caught up in it.
Instead, she was saying—
“Don’t abandon yourself for me.”
“Hmm?”
A clearly displeased hum came from Demon King Iris.
She had keenly noticed the tension in Furenna’s posture, the frozen movements, the suddenly constricted pupils, and the direction of her fixed gaze.
The Demon King followed Furenna’s frozen gaze toward Xiao Ling standing behind the barrier.
She too saw that little face, messy with tear tracks, pale with lingering pain.
But she saw more…
Those unusually clear, even scorching eyes behind the tears, and those slightly parted lips, as if conveying something.
Iris’s red eyes narrowed. A flash of cold scrutiny and dense displeasure passed within them.