The eyelids fluttered open slowly, feeling heavy as if sealed by the frozen remnants of magic. When Lucien finally opened his eyes, the first thing he sensed was no longer the damp stench of the basement or the lung-choking smell of dust. Instead, his senses were greeted by the sweet, faint aroma of roses—an alien scent of luxury.
He froze. The ceiling above was no longer cracked brick, but intricate oak carvings with edges lined in gold. Lucien rose slowly, feeling the surface of a mattress so soft beneath his small fingertips. Silk. This was incredibly expensive silk.
His memory spun back to a few hours ago. He remembered his hysterical laughter, the sensation of tearing flesh in his grip, and the terrified stares of the kneeling soldiers before everything went dark. After that confrontation, his memory was severed.
"Where is this?" he murmured softly.
Lucien scanned the room. It was vast, many times larger than the "hole" he had lived in until now. The walls were dominated by an elegant deep purple, accented by pink velvet curtains that draped heavily. There was a crystal vanity, a large wardrobe of expensive wood, and various furnishings that could only be owned by those who held high power in this mansion. This was clearly not a room for a small child, let alone an outcast like himself.
Creeeeak...
The sound of large doors opening made Lucien turn. At the threshold stood a woman, her body trembling. She was no longer wearing the extravagant white gown she had previously used to pretend to be nobility. Now, she wore a clean black-and-white maid's uniform, yet her face was as pale as parchment.
"Ah... Y-you are a-awake... Young Master..." The woman bowed so low it seemed as if her head might fall right off her neck if she didn't.
Lucien stared at her with his cold red eyes, giving the impression of a predator observing terrified prey. "What is wrong with you? Did you eat something bad? Suddenly acting strange... and where is that fancy white gown of yours?" Lucien asked snidely, his small voice ringing sharply in the silent room.
The woman swallowed hard, her voice catching in her throat. "Y-Young Master, perhaps you do-do-do not know because you fainted. While you were u-u-unconscious... a Butler from the Main Estate arrived."
Lucien's brows furrowed. "A Butler from the center?"
"Yes... he immediately calmed the situation. A-a-afterward, he brought you to Julia's chamber and ordered me to serve you well. As best as possible... without flaw," the woman explained, her voice fading to a whisper by the end of the sentence.
Lucien looked around the room again with a cynical gaze. "Julia's room, I see..." He let out a small snort. So this was the bed of the woman who had always looked down on him from behind her pointed nose.
"So, where is she?" Lucien asked quietly, yet his tone carried a cruel curiosity.
"T-t-t-t-the Butler went somewhere, he said... he was only g-g-g-going for a moment, but after five hours he hasn't returned here," the woman answered, thinking Lucien was asking about the Butler.
"Not him," Lucien interrupted with a thin smile that didn't reach his eyes. The smile looked horrifying on the face of a five-year-old boy. "I mean... Ju-li-a."
The maid fell silent. Her shoulders slumped, and the look in her eyes revealed deep-seated trauma. "Ah... Julia..." she whispered faintly. "Everyone is dead..."
"What? Dead?!" Lucien tilted his head, as if hearing slightly surprising but unimportant weather news.
"Y-yes... In this mansion now, there are only the two of us, Y-y-y-young Master..." The maid replied as she began to sob quietly.
Eva Planu, the woman's name, felt as though her world had collapsed. The fact that she had to serve this little monster alone inside a mansion that was now a mass grave was an unbearable mental torture. To her, every second spent with Lucien felt like walking on a thread over the abyss of hell. One wrong word, and she was certain her end would come.
"I see..." Lucien showed not a shred of sympathy. He climbed out of bed, his small feet touching the cold marble floor. His eyes caught something outside the open door—streaks of dragged red, though some had already dried.
"How should I call you?" Lucien asked without looking back.
The woman immediately dropped to her knees, bowing her head level with her waist in a display of total submission. "M-m-m-m-my name is E-e-eva Planu. Call me as you wish! I am yours, Young Master!"
"Fine, Eva. For now, I want to check outside. Did that Butler forbid me from leaving this place?"
"N-no! He only told me to serve you, not to forbid you from leaving the room! B-b-besides, I wouldn't dare..." Eva replied, her breath hitching in panic.
Lucien did not respond. He walked past Eva, stepping toward the threshold. However, he stopped. There, right on the marble floor of the corridor, a gruesome sight greeted him.
Julia's head was embedded into the marble floor, which was spider-webbed with a thousand cracks. It wasn't merely lying there; it was truly driven into the floor as if the marble were soft earth forced to accept an impossible weight. Surrounding the head, thick crimson fluid pooled like a small, rotting pond.
"What is that?" Lucien asked flatly, pointing toward the heap of flesh and blonde hair that was no longer shaped like a human.
"That is Julia, Master," Eva replied shortly, her voice trembling.
"You know I wasn't asking for her name, don't you?" Lucien turned, pinning Eva with a gaze that made the woman feel as if her soul were being stripped bare.
Eva flinched, her entire body tensing up. "Ju-Julia was caught red-handed by that Butler... Then her head was slammed into the floor repeatedly with his bare hands... until it ended up like this." Eva stood beside Julia's body, her hand pointing hesitantly at the mangled corpse.
"Is she... dead?" Lucien asked again.
"Yes, confirmed dead, Master. It seems Count Avaru's family—Julia's family of origin—will file charges against the Grand Duke through the King because of this incident. She was a distant relative sent here," Eva said softly, trying to provide what political information she knew.
"I see." Lucien looked away. Titles, politics, and the Count's family name meant nothing to him. To him, Julia was merely a nuisance who had been removed by another, larger nuisance named the Butler.
Lucien then looked toward the grand staircase leading to the ground floor. "Accompany me downstairs."
He gave a calculated, awkward smile—the smile of a child trying to be polite, yet it looked utterly bizarre amidst the pools of blood. Lucien began to descend the stairs, while Eva followed behind him like a terrified shadow.
Once they reached the ground floor, the sight that greeted them was far worse than upstairs. The main hall was now nothing short of a human slaughterhouse. So much blood had dried in various places, leaving a pungent, black crust that smelled of iron. The heaps of corpses—the women who had previously laughed in mockery—now lay piled atop one another, their gowns ruined and stained.
On the right side of the hall, the arm of the maid in the blue dress that Lucien had forcibly wrenched away still lay there, turning blue and beginning to rot, swarmed by buzzing flies. Lucien stopped for a moment, staring at the shattered marble floor where he had slammed the head of the maid in the red dress. Fragments of skull and dried brain were still visible within the cracks of the marble.
Then, near the entrance, the armored soldiers lay in strange positions. There were no significant external wounds, yet their faces were blue, their eyes bulging with burst blood vessels. They had died from sheer mental shock—a terror so intense their hearts had stopped when facing the aura of Lucien's gate.
The first floor had become a sea of corpses. The silence in this place was heavy, broken only by the sound of Eva's ragged breathing as she fought back nausea.
"Oh, by the way, why are you still alive?" Lucien asked suddenly, his voice piercing the oppressive silence. He asked without turning, his eyes still fixed on the pile of corpses before him.
Eva jolted, her heart nearly stopping. The question sounded like a delayed death sentence.
"I-I-I-I d-d-don't know, Master.... You were the one who d-didn't kill me... I did n-n-not beg for my life. At that time... I had already given up..." Eva bowed her head, her body going limp as if her bones had turned to water.
Lucien nodded slightly in a mechanical fashion. He tried to remember. True, when that madness consumed him, there was something about Eva that kept her untouched. Not because Eva was good, but because this woman was too afraid to truly be evil to him. Eva was the type of person who simply followed the current; she oppressed because others oppressed, but she never had the courage to be the first to hurt him.
The opposite of Julia, who was full of wicked initiative, Eva was merely a coward who survived. And to Lucien, a coward like this was far more useful as a tool than as a corpse.
"I see... How lucky," Lucien muttered softly, then stepped back into the sea of blood with his bare feet, leaving small red footprints across the filthy floor.