Sathya summoned her light magic to illuminate the area, finally revealing the young girl's appearance to everyone.
Her tattered dress had long been stained with blood and mud, making her look like a roadside beggar. Her short hair, which should have been neatly combed, was now so disheveled that it covered half her head. Her pale skin had lost all color, and the blood-streaked wounds all over her body bore silent witness to the abuse she had suffered in recent days. Her eyes were wrapped in a blood-soaked white cloth, as if she had long been stripped of her right to see.
She looked like a living corpse.
Velrose's body trembled visibly.
Sathya looked at the nearby guards and asked, “What did you do to her?”
The guards, controlled by the power of the Deceptive Magical Beast, naturally did not refuse to answer the magical beasts' questions.
“Lord Wade ordered us to persuade her, but she refused. So we had no choice but to gouge out her eyes, puncture her eardrums, and damage her brain...”
“Enough.”
A look of clear displeasure appeared on Sathya's face. With a wave of her hand, tentacles crushed the knights, who were then swallowed by the miasma and turned into energy spheres.
Velrose burned through the iron bars, stepped into the cell, and tightly hugged Krulu.
“...Cough, cough...”
Only then did Krulu show a slight reaction. Her first instinct was to resist, but she suddenly felt that the embrace seemed to come from a girl who cared deeply for her. It was incredibly warm, yet she had no idea who it was.
The scent... it smelled so familiar...
But she couldn't remember.
Velrose gently touched her back, but she did not want to hurt Krulu due to her own nature as a magical beast. She had no choice but to pull away and let Sathya heal the dying apprentice Saintess.
At that moment, Krulu burst into tears.
Her tears seeped through the white gauze. At this point, she didn't care who the other person was anymore.
“Is... Is that you, Velrose?”
“It's me. I'm here.”
Velrose clutched her chest, but she knew that the current Krulu couldn't hear her voice at all.
Krulu had lost both her hearing and sight, all because she refused to compromise with the Church.
Having endured the most brutal torture, she had only a single conviction left.
She firmly believed that Velrose had come to save her.
Yet, she couldn't confirm it...
Not even by scent, nor by an embrace—she had never experienced either from her before.
She liked Velrose, but she had never shown it. She had wanted to connect with her emotionally like normal girls, slowly growing closer and gradually falling in love. But all of that had vanished like a bubble.
Now, she was even stripped of her right to look at Velrose.
“I... I held on... I didn't give in... I have no regrets. I love you...”
“I want to see what you look like so much, Velrose...”
“Your voice...”
“...It's my fault... I... shouldn't have...”
Her voice trembled as she spoke, her tears flowing even faster.
Watching from the side, Tina suddenly felt a sharp headache.
Looking at Krulu, she felt a strange sense of familiarity.
She seemed to see a girl who controlled ice, walking toward death alongside an orange-haired girl.
Krulu prayed to meet the one she loved most. Her longing had turned into resentment, and finally into an obsession.
Every day, she longed to meet her beloved, even if it was just to catch a glimpse from afar.
But fate never gave her that chance.
Her dreams stopped along with her heartbeat, leaving behind only silent weeping.
It was so painful, as if she could feel and empathize with every bit of the other girl's suffering.
What on earth did she do wrong?
【You did nothing wrong.】
Unconsciously, that blurry voice rang in her ears once more.
Listening closely, it didn't seem to consist of words, but was rather another form of information, entirely incomprehensible through language.
【You are not wrong, poor Krulu, my companion.】
At that moment, Velrose and Sathya gasped in shock. Just like Tina, they heard the voice that seemed to come from the abyss, though it wasn't a spoken language.
Yet, strangely enough, they could all understand it.
It was a complex, blended sound, as if it weren't something a living creature could produce at all—or perhaps it was a more dangerous, terrifying transmission of information, and sound was merely one of its facets.
What shocked them even more was that this voice came from Tina.
It was Tina who had spoken these “words” and made these “sounds.” At some point, she had already walked up to Krulu and reached out her hand.
She made more obscure, incomprehensible sounds, engaging in a highly complex exchange with Krulu.
Then, a strange mutation occurred throughout the entire prison.
Densely packed cracks appeared on the sturdy walls, filled with intensely burning, lava-like blue-green flames. The bodies of the controlled humans began to burn, and strangely, they didn't even let out a scream before they were reduced to dry bones.
The sky was filled with miasma, and the once-clear sky turned into endless darkness. In this night of Eternal Day, a bizarre, eye-like blue-green sun rose above the horizon.
Her cloak could no longer conceal the girl's appearance. On her delicate and exquisite features, her blank, ignorant eyes became sinister and cold. A magnificent black dress appeared on her out of thin air, tracing the charming curves of her waist. Dragon-scaled thigh-high stockings adorned her slender legs, and on her pale back, a pair of dragon wings that could blot out the sun actually appeared.
The aura she radiated unintentionally caused the entire prison to collapse. The miserable prisoners could only flee in panic through the hellish scene, their survival left to fate.
However, Krulu remained extremely calm. She lifted her head, as if she could see Tina.
“...I understand, Demon King, Lady Tina.”
Tina merely nodded, and a stream of black energy flowed down her arm, entering Krulu's delicate body.
Krulu clutched her head in pain and struggled briefly, then sat on her knees just as before, looking as if she had truly died.
Like a storm finally subsiding, Tina's body stopped emitting any more pressure. The miasma began to dissipate, and the cracks on the walls vanished as if they had never existed. In their place came a winter-like cold.
The dying Krulu now seemed to come alive, as if possessed by some power. Shimmering crystals appeared beneath her feet.
They were strangely shaped snowflakes, as finely crafted as works of art.
More and more snowflakes gathered, and after a few seconds, they actually formed an icy lotus that covered Krulu's pale shins and climbed up to her knees.
Then, the ice lotus grew larger and larger, its petals slowly closing to wrap Krulu completely inside, forming a bud like a cocoon.
The girl hugged her legs, curling up inside the “ice cocoon.”
In just a brief instant, a frigid aura erupted from the ice cocoon, freezing the entire cell. Then, the ice grew even more rampant, spreading to the entire prison and continuing to expand...
Rate on N.U.
