In just a few moments, all four of them were now in nothing but their underwear.

Axel gulped hard, unable to peel his eyes off of the three’s bodies. He could feel the strange air around him thickening, but he trusted that they wouldn’t do anything beyond checking his soul space... He prayed, at least.

"Fufu...~!"

Queen Wisteria chuckled as she jumped onto the bed, wrapping her arms around Axel’s neck and pressing her soft body against his arm. They both fell back against the sheets, lying down with eyes meeting each other’s.

She was soft, warm, and had a firm, perfect shape that made it genuinely hard to believe she was a mother of several children. If he didn’t know better, he’d have mistaken her for Ria’s sister rather than their mother.

"Shall we start?" She whispered teasingly straight into his ear.

Ria and Nina followed her lead, moving to Axel’s other side. Ria was a little more aggressive about it, copying her mother exactly—wrapping her small body around his arm.

The sensation on his left wasn’t losing out to the right in any way. ’As expected of mother and daughter...’

Nina felt some reservation watching two voluptuous girls coil around Axel like that. Albeit reluctant, she couldn’t really compare to them in terms of figure. But she didn’t want to lose out either.

Slowly, she crawled up and hugged his waist.

"...!"

Her position ended up being the most aggressive of the three. Axel faltered for a moment before willing himself to relax—trying to keep his mind from drifting into pink territory.

It was a tall order with three half-naked beauties draped all over him.

"Then, I’ll begin."

He was genuinely thankful that Queen Wisteria didn’t delay any further.

She shifted—still hugging his arm—and laid half her weight across his chest. Their skin pressed together, hot and faintly sticky. A bewitching perfume drifted up from her body.

"Ehehe~!"

Ria, as always, copied her mother.

She rested her chest atop his, stomach pressed to his side, her legs worming their way under his thigh. It was ticklish, but Axel kept a straight face, eyes shut, doing his best impression of someone "relaxed."

Though not really.

Nina felt something move near her stomach.

Given their respective positions, it wasn’t hard to guess what it was. Her face flushed, and her arms tightened around his waist—but she didn’t say a word. Not a single syllable to tip off the other two.

’I shall protect Sir Axel’s honor...!’

Though there wasn’t much time to dwell on it.

"Kurisu Mani Raegha Tala. Luvi Khan Terra Phoene...!"

Queen Wisteria’s chant filled the room, her voice layering over itself, overlapping—as if she weren’t speaking alone but with a chorus of dozens. A red mist began seeping from her body, curling slowly around Axel like something alive.

"Don’t resist," Nina murmured. "Breathe it in and let your consciousness go. It’s a necessary step."

Axel didn’t nod, but he followed the instruction.

With the Queen’s chant looping endlessly in the background, he drew in a breath of the red mist—it smelled like roses in a field, warm and full—and let his eyes close.

Nina and Ria did the same, each inhaling a portion of the mist before their eyes shut.

A few moments passed.

Their consciousness faded.

...

"...This place is...?"

When Axel came to, he was somewhere unfamiliar.

It wasn’t the Queen’s room, nor his room in the castle. And yet it felt deeply, unsettlingly familiar—like a place he’d spent most of his life in. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"This is..." He gasped as the interior registered.

A dark room, lit by nothing but the blue tint of moonlight through the window. A small desktop computer in the corner, beeping quietly, a few dots of light blinking in uneven intervals. A single bed barely wide enough to fit him without bending his knees. A dresser with barely ten pairs of clothes—casual and for going-out, nothing more.

"My... home?"

Right.

He’d woken up in his own home. Back on Earth.

The place he should’ve lost, after his wife deceived him—pinned all her wrongdoing onto him—and had every asset he owned confiscated and frozen.

Axel sat up and looked at what he was wearing.

A simple pajama, purplish-white, printed with a childish pattern of trains and buses. Something his wife had chosen for him, a long time ago.

An item. A memory. One that made his heart beat with a quiet, unbearable ache.

"Wait!"

He snapped to attention, looking around the room.

"Queen Mother! Teruria! Ethernina!"

His voice rang out into the empty dark. Nothing came back. No reply, no echo that carried an answer.

"Is this the Soul Dive...?" He muttered, brows knitting together. "I don’t get it. Am I reliving a past memory? Is this my soul space?"

He wasn’t sure, and there was no one to ask.

Deciding it was better to move than to sit still, he went to the wardrobe and changed into a suit he knew well. But just as he finished—

Ting!

A chime sounded, and the computer screen flickered to life.

Axel glanced at it. A notification—a new email. Curious, he sat down before the PC, moved the mouse, and clicked.

"What the fuck is this?"

The contents were garbled.

At first he thought it was encrypted, or written in some kind of cipher. But the random strings of characters had no logical pattern, no consistent length, nothing that could be parsed as actual language.

It wasn’t a code—it was as if someone had simply mashed the keyboard without aim.

The only thing not garbled was the date.

March 19, 2038, 05:03 AM.

"...So it’s this day."

Axel sighed—the kind of sigh that carried the weight of something he’d never fully put down.

There was no forgetting this date.

It was his last day on Earth. The day his wife walked out and left her sins sitting on his shoulders. The day he lost everything... And the day he died trying to save a gold-eyed boy.

Knock. Knock.

"...!"

Just as he was beginning to get a grip on the situation, something strange happened.

Someone knocked on the door.