"One day, like any ordinary day, I noticed Yuuta’s eyes were darker than usual." Fiona’s voice had dropped to a near whisper, as if the memory itself demanded reverence.

"Not the glowing red that frightened the other children. Dark. Hollow. As if he had not slept in days." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Erza sat motionless, her violet eyes fixed on Fiona’s face, her hands still in her lap.

The evening light continued to fade around them, the shadows pooling at their feet like dark water, but she did not notice.

She was listening, truly listening, for the first time.

"The first day, I didn’t see anything unusual," Fiona continued. "People have bad nights. I assumed he had stayed up too late or had trouble falling asleep. But the darkness in his eyes did not fade. It grew worse. The second day, I saw him exhausted, slumped over his desk, his head barely lifted, his hands trembling when he tried to write. I almost asked him what was wrong. But I didn’t."

Her jaw tightened.

"The third day. The fourth. Every morning, I watched his eyes grow more sunken, more desperate. They were begging for sleep, not wanting it, but begging for it. And his arms..." She paused, her voice catching. "His arms were hurt. Bruised. Pinched raw. He was hurting himself to stay awake. Every night, he fought against unconsciousness like a drowning man fights against the sea."

Erza’s brow furrowed. Confusion flickered across her features. Why would anyone fear sleep? What waited for Yuuta in his dreams that was worse than the waking world he already endured?

"I was ten years old," Fiona said, as if reading her thoughts. "I had my own training sessions, my own struggles, my own life. So I ignored it. I told myself it was not my problem. And Yuuta’s silent suffering only got worse. I saw him in class, pinching his own arm so hard that his skin turned red, raw, bleeding, bruised. He pinched himself just to stay awake."

Erza opened her mouth to speak, to ask why, to demand answers.

But before she could, Fiona’s voice changed.

It became different. Heavier. As if she had been climbing a long staircase and had finally reached the final step, and what waited at the top was not a door but a wall, and beyond that wall was something terrible.

"And on the seventh day," Fiona said, "he finally fell asleep."

She paused, letting the words settle.

"The classroom was empty. It was the last period, and the other students had already gone home. The afternoon light slanted through the windows, casting long shadows across the desks. I was packing my bag, ready to leave, when I noticed him. His head was down. His eyes were closed. His breathing was slow and deep."

She swallowed.

"He was sleeping so deeply that I could not wake him. I shook his shoulder gently at first, then harder. He did not respond. For a moment, just a moment, I thought maybe he was dead. I thought maybe the exhaustion had finally stopped his heart."

Her hands trembled in her lap.

"And then his eyes shot open."

The words came out raw, torn from somewhere deep.

"His scream was not human." Fiona’s voice cracked. "It was the scream of a man who had seen something beyond terror, something that should not exist, something that had been hunting him in the dark for days. He screamed at the top of his lungs, and the sound filled the empty classroom, bounced off the walls, echoed in my ears for years afterward."

She trembled.

"I could not move. I could not speak. I could only stand there, frozen, watching him thrash against something I could not see. His eyes were glowing, not the faint flicker from the first day, but blazing, burning, like embers fanned into fire. He looked less like a child and more like a creature from a nightmare."

She looked at Erza.

"Then I saw it. His aura. It was corrupted. Twisted. Dark as spoiled milk, thick as smoke. It rose from his skin like steam from boiling water, and I could feel it pressing against me, making my skin crawl, making my stomach churn."

Erza’s eyes widened. Her composure, which had been absolute throughout Fiona’s story, cracked.

"When I finally snapped out of it, when I finally forced my legs to move, I ran to him. I grabbed his shoulders. I called his name. But he did not recognize me. He struggled against my grip, his eyes wild, his voice breaking."

Fiona’s voice dropped to a whisper.

"He said, ’Please leave me. Please leave me alone. I don’t want to eat the rotten meat anymore. Please.’"

The words hung in the air like a blade suspended by a thread.

Erza’s heart stopped.

Rotten meat.

She did not remember that memory. She had witnessed Yuuta’s past, the laboratory, the Death Well, the arena. She had seen his suffering, his pain, his endless endurance. But she had not seen this. She had not seen the child waking from nightmares, begging not to be fed rotten meat.

There were more memories. Darker memories. Ones that even the Goddess’s seal had not fully buried, because they were not tied to any single event but woven into the fabric of his daily existence, the quiet cruelties, the small horrors, the moments that did not make it into the grand tragedy of his life but still carved themselves into his soul.

Erza was frozen.

Her mind raced, trying to find the memory, trying to place it, trying to understand. But there was nothing.

Only darkness.

Only the knowledge that she had not seen everything, that Yuuta’s past was deeper than she had imagined, that the sealed memories held more than she had ever known.

Fiona continued, her voice steadier now, though still heavy with grief.

"Finally, I held my Aether stone to his forehead. I did not know if it would work, I had never used it on another person before, only on myself. But I pressed it to his skin, and I watched the stone draw the corrupted aura from his body. The darkness lifted. His screaming stopped. His eyes closed."

She let out a slow breath.

"He fell asleep, truly asleep, peacefully asleep, for the first time in days."

Erza stared at her.

She knew the Aether stone. She had encountered it before, in the hands of enemies, in the hand of human heores. But she had never known it could be used like this. She had never known it could draw Darkness from a soul, could pull nightmares from a sleeping mind, could save a child from the terrors that lurked in his own skull.

"After that incident, I told my superiors at the Agency about what I had seen." Fiona’s voice was quiet now, almost hollow. "They analyzed the aura I had collected. They ran tests. They compared it against every known demonic signature in their databases."

She looked at Erza.

"They found nothing. They had never seen anything like it. They told me it was probably a one-time thing, a fluke, a child’s overactive imagination manifesting as a physical reaction."

Her voice hardened.

"I knew they were wrong." Fiona’s voice was steady now, hardened by years of carrying a truth no one else had been willing to see. "I knew what I had seen in Yuuta. So I started spending more time with him. I watched him. I learned his patterns. And I began to notice something strange, the nightmares followed a rhythm. Every few months, the darkness would return. The exhaustion would creep back into his eyes. The bruises would appear on his arms, fresh and raw, proof that he had been fighting himself in the dark."

She touched the stone at her neck, her fingers tracing its edges as if drawing strength from its presence.

"I used the Aether stone to pull the corruption from him. It worked every time. He would sleep better afterward, truly sleep, peacefully, the way a child is supposed to sleep. The nightmares would fade. He would start smiling again, laughing again, believing that maybe he could live a normal life after all." Her voice softened, almost breaking.

"But I also noticed something else. He was absorbing the aura from surrounding. Not just having it removed, but absorbing it. As if something inside him was hungry. As if something wanted to be released."

Erza’s eyes widened.

Her mouth tightened.

Fiona was making assumptions, wild assumptions, dangerous assumptions, but Erza did not dismiss them.

She could not.

Because deep in her chest, in the place where her instincts lived, she felt that Fiona was describing something real.

Something she had seen before.

The seal. The golden wheel buried in Yuuta’s mind, spinning slowly, holding back the flood of memories that would shatter him.

The seal that was not supposed to weaken, not supposed to leak, not supposed to need outside intervention.

Maybe the seal wants to released itself, Erza thought, and the idea was so terrifying that her blood ran cold.

Maybe something inside him is fighting to get out.

But What?.....

She shook her head, trying to clear the thought, but it clung to her like cobwebs.

If it was true, if the seal was trying to break free on its own, then her presence was accelerating the process.

Her aura, so much more powerful than the ambient mana or Aura of Earth, would tear through the golden wheel like a storm through paper. Everything Fiona had observed was a direct contradiction to what Erza had believed.

Or perhaps Fiona’s assumptions were wrong.

Perhaps Yuuta’s condition was something else entirely, a new branch of study, hidden inside his body, something even the Goddess had not fully understood, That’s the reason she missed this detail and Yuuta was still suffering.

Erza had seen it herself, back at the zoo, when Yuuta had absorbed mana, zani, and other particles as if they were nothing. As if his body was designed to consume power, not resist it. But Aura something Erza couldn’t understand.

She pushed the thought away.

Erza fell silent for a moment before slowly closing her eyes. Yuuta’s problem was not mana or particles but aura, which triggered nightmares.

This world was overflowing with corrupted demonic aura, and Yuuta absorbed it instinctively, like charcoal drawing in poison and filth from its surroundings. The more he remained exposed to it, the deeper the corruption within him would grow.

If she truly wished to free him from the curse and give him a normal life... then she had to make sure every trace of that aura was removed from him completely.

"How did you know about Yuuta’s aura in his apartment?" Erza asked, her voice genuinely confused. "It is not as if you were spying on us."

Fiona looked up at the apartment building. She raised her hand, pointing toward the small mailbox outside room 308. Wedged beneath it, no larger than a coin, its surface blending perfectly with the weathered metal, was a tiny device. Almost invisible. Almost forgettable.

"After I rose in rank at the Agency, I installed an aura detector near his door, Windows and post box," Fiona said. "It alerts me whenever the corruption spikes. Usually, I ask my aunt, Dr. Jenny, to treat him before it gets bad. She works at the school as a doctor and now sh etransfer inot our college. She uses the Aether stone to remove the aura before it can take hold." (Refr: Chapter 27)

She paused, her jaw tightening.

"But sometimes he falls into the nightmare before she can reach him. That is why I came myself. That is why I saw the detector reading while I was at the Agency, reporting to my superior. I left immediately. I did not wait for permission and I just ran here as soon as possible."

Erza stared at her.

The human woman who had seemed so insignificant, so weak, so pathetic, had been silently watching over Yuuta for years.

Building a network of protection around him.

Fighting demons during the day and watching over him during the night. Climbing ranks, earning power, all so she could be in a position to help him when he needed her.

While Erza had been frozen in her cold palace, unaware of his existence, Fiona had been there.

A strange feeling settled in Erza’s chest. Not jealousy, not the sharp, burning envy she had expected to feel. Something else. Relief. The quiet, unexpected relief of discovering that the person she was leaving Yuuta with was not a stranger, not an enemy, but someone who had already proven her devotion.

Someone who had already sacrificed for him. Someone who had already chosen him, again and again, without ever being asked.

My choice was not wrong, Erza thought. This woman is perfect for him.

She looked at Fiona with new eyes.

Not as a rival.

Not as an enemy.

As the woman who would take her place. The woman who would wake beside Yuuta every morning, who would cook with him, who would raise his children, who would grow old with him while Erza watched from a distance, a ghost in her own love story.

She turned her gaze toward the apartment window, toward the room where Yuuta slept, unaware of the decision being made on the bench below.

Wait for me, she thought, the words echoing through the hollow chambers of her heart. Just wait a little longer. I will give you a life you never dreamed of. I will give you everything. And then I will let you go.

Then she looked away. Her violet eyes shifted toward the horizon, toward the darkness gathering in the distance, toward the enemy she had decided to destroy. Her expression hardened. Her hands, which had been trembling, stilled.

"But first," she said, her voice cold again, absolute, the voice of a queen who had made up her mind and would not be swayed, "I must eradicate this pathetic demon. So that my mortal never falls into nightmare again. So that he never feels their aura. So that he can live his life in peace. Forever."

Her aura pulsed, not the crushing weight she used to intimidate, but something sharper. Something focused. A hunting signal, sent across the city, across the country, across the world. The air around her grew cold enough to frost the grass at her feet. The streetlights flickered. Somewhere in the distance, a dog began to howl.

Her hand tightened into a fist.

The Great Abyssal Demonic War had begun.

Somewhere far away, in a shadowed stronghold hidden from human eyes, deep beneath mountains that had never appeared on any map, Demon King Allen smiled.

The pulse had reached him.

He had felt it, cold and sharp and absolute, a declaration of war wrapped in silver light. The being who had frozen the port, who had slaughtered human and demon equally without blinking, who had made his demons tremble with fear, she was coming for him.

And he was ready.

His throne was carved from the bones of his enemies, polished until they gleamed like ivory. The walls of his chamber were lined with the skulls of demon hunters who had tried and failed to end his reign. Torches flickered in iron sconces, casting dancing shadows across his face, illuminating the sharp lines of his jaw and the cruel curve of his smile.

"Subharshi... Subharshi..." he whispered into the empty room, his voice echoing against the walls like the low purr of a lion circling wounded prey.

A slow smile formed across his face.

"So... it is finally going to happen," he murmured softly. "The end of my era."

His eyes glowed golden.

Wrong.

Twisted.

Hungry.

"I was Marked by her," he said, and his smile widened.

The torches flickered once, twice, and then went out.

The evening deepened.

The streetlights flickered. And on a weathered bench outside a small apartment, two women sat in silence, bound by love and duty and the terrible weight of choices neither of them wanted to make.

To be continued.

Dear Dragon Readers,

I want to sincerely inform you that websites like Cheread or any other unofficial platforms have no connection with me as the author. I am officially contracted with Webnovel, and all my Chapters are published there.

These unofficial sites are uploading my work without permission. While I normally wouldn’t interfere, I’ve noticed that many readers are paying on those platforms, Unlocking Chapters, believing they are supporting me as the author.

If you truly want to support my work and help me continue writing this story, please read and support it only on Webnovel.

Thank you so much for your understanding and support. It means a lot to me and to the future of this story.

— Author