Chapter 136: Chapter 136: The way we live is the way we die.

Chapter 136 – The way we live is the way we die.

’Please, tell me it’s not what I think.’ Cassius whispered to himself, his eyes wide, looking at Esmeray standing nonchalantly beside a dead naked body.

Every hair on his back spiking, he turned his head toward Isolde standing to one side with a bewildered, dazed expression. Beside her was the Head Maid, Persephone, and the unconscious Anesthesia held in her arms.

It didn’t take long for him to confirm that what he had feared had indeed happened.

"What... what are you doing, Esmeray?" Raven asked, his face fallen yet filled with boiling anger, taking in his sister’s current state.

"What else?" Esmeray answered lazily, her eyes still dilating continuously. "I was just hungry and thirsty. So I came here."

"Half-naked?" Raven hissed, crossing toward the Princess with heavy, hurried steps. "You decided to leave your room in this state with a naked woman behind you? Am I hallucinating, Esmeray? Do you realise what you have done?"

"Ah, enough. Enough." She grumbled, waving her hand at him. "I know I was a bit reckless this time. But there is no need to be so sensitive. It’s over now. Our dear Head Maid is delightfully efficient and has already dealt with everyone who saw me." She let out a loud, unrestrained laugh. "I love her so much. Especially this new version of her. You should tell me your new name, you know? I no longer want to call you Catherina!"

Persephone shook her head immediately, her expression unchanged. "I refuse, Princess. My new name shall be spoken only by the Last Born."

"Huh?" Esmeray exclaimed, then snapped her head toward Cassius, who was standing perfectly still, still trying to process everything in front of him.

"Him, again?" She grated with undisguised dissatisfaction. "What is going on with everyone acting like a dog desperate for their master’s attention around him? After my bitch of a mother and my incompetent father...now you too, Head Maid?"

Her crimson eyes settled on Cassius and shifted into pure resentment.

He stayed silent, saying absolutely nothing. At that moment, any words from his mouth would only fuel Esmeray into a deeper frenzy.

The Princess, however, was not satisfied. She took one cold step toward Cassius, but Raven seized her right hand and pulled so hard her head snapped toward him.

"Look at me, Esmeray." He growled, his eyes glowing with a deathly light. "I don’t know what is going through your head for you to dare something this outrageous first thing in the morning, but you had better come back to yourself right now. Do you hear me? And where in Vorn’s name are your pills? Why aren’t you taking them?"

"You too?" Esmeray tilted her head in a cold, eerie manner, her hollow gaze meeting Raven’s deathly one. "Are you also going to make Cassius your master?"

"That is not what I am asking, Esmeray."

"And I don’t give a damn about what you are asking." She retorted sharply. "So you had better let go of my hand before I kill that bitch you are so obsessed with."

Without waiting, she yanked her hand away from Raven. It didn’t work. His grip was like the talon of an eagle on its prey — completely unyielding.

Esmeray began to dangerously lose patience. Her eyes grew emptier, looking less and less like the eyes of someone alive. A shimmering ethereal essence shrouded her body entirely.

"I will say it—!"

"You can neither frighten me nor threaten me." Raven cut in sharply. "So answer me, Esmeray, why aren’t you taking your pills? And don’t bring up Cassius, trying to use him to vent whatever is eating at you. Tell me."

Raven’s eyes were as unyielding as his grip. Esmeray knew this Raven. Right here, right now, it was no longer her brother speaking.

It was the Prince of Hood.

"I am tired." Esmeray said coldly. "Do you hear me, Raven? I am so tired of those pills. You have no idea how it feels to take them. It’s disgusting, and I never feel like myself when I do. Never. I always feel like an imposter living inside a body that isn’t mine. My limbs move but I don’t feel them. My heart beats loudly, but the sound is completely foreign to me. An imposter, brother."

She gritted her teeth so hard the sound of it echoed through the room.

"And I had been taking those pills for consecutive days because of the Event. All because I didn’t want to ruin everything. All because I listened to your words and took them despite every single one of those side effects. Now the Event is over. And I will not allow anyone to stop me from being myself again."

"And you think this..." Raven’s voice was tight with quiet pain as he gestured at his sister’s current state, "...and this..."

He pointed to the dead naked woman on the floor.

"...you think this reflects who you are, sister?"

Esmeray bit her lip sharply at the word sister. It was so soft — yet so full of pain — that it felt like her heart was being shredded. She had never wanted to cause her brother any harm.

He was the only one in the entire family who cared about her. The only one who, despite hating how she lived, still tried to help her; still shielded her, every time she went to the brothels. His love for her transcended every disgusting aspect and flaw she carried.

And yet here she was, inflicting even more pain on someone who was already carrying too much.

"I... don’t know." She whispered, her breathing growing shallower and shallower. "I don’t know, brother. I don’t know. But this... this overwhelming lust consuming my mind and body and soul is the only thing that has been with me since the day I was born. So if you ask me whether this is who I am..."

She smiled. A broken smile.

"...then all I can tell you is yes. Because I know nothing but this side of myself."

Then, in a burst of fear and anguish, she reached out and threw her arms around Raven, tears streaming down her cheeks. "So don’t hate me, brother. Don’t hate me and don’t condemn me. I try. Every single day I try. I try to change. I try to stop. I try not to be the disgusting woman standing in front of you. But I can’t. I swear I can’t. I need this to feel better. If I try to keep everything locked inside me, brother, I feel like someone is strangling me from within. I feel like I am going to die!"

She cried harder and harder, clinging to her brother like a drowning person desperately holding the only broken raft keeping them above water.

Raven was unable to say anything.

He, more than anyone, understood how hard it was to fight obsession and craving.

He was the same. He was exactly the same with Anesthesia. And at that realisation, a quiet, broken question rose inside him, almost like a lament cast at the divine...

Were they cursed?

What had they done to be born so twisted, so broken in this specific way?

Why did they have to live this life — addicted, each to something different, when it was never their own choosing?

What sins, exactly, were they paying for?

Those questions were heard by no one but himself. But in the way he held his sister — tightly, warmly — Raven conveyed his love and his support without a single word.

And so she wailed.

Cassius watched the scene with his head bowed slightly, hiding his face from the others.

He couldn’t explain what had come over him. But witnessing, for the first time, the full weight of Esmeray’s curse on full display...he was rendered speechless.

He felt sadness. He felt pain. And he felt a thread of anger at whoever was responsible for a curse like this. So much so that, at some point he hadn’t noticed, his eyes had grown blurry.

He cursed quietly under his breath, subtly and rapidly burning away the tears threatening to fall, and raised his head.

His face was calmer now. But he could fool neither Persephone nor Isolde — both of them watching him with hearts nearly bursting at the sight of his pain for his family.

The Last Born said nothing. He walked toward Raven and Esmeray, still holding each other, trying to find comfort in one another.

He did not intrude on that scene.

Instead, he walked past them toward the dead woman on the floor a couple of paces away. He crouched down. He looked at her eyes: soulless yet locked in bliss, a faint smile resting on her cold, dead lips.

He sighed and pressed his palm to her cold forehead.

’You died with a smile, nameless woman.’ He thought, the memory of countless dead bodies from his time back on Earth — as the Boy of the Grave — rising in him. ’But this smile is nothing more than the smile of foolishness and heedlessness that only a lost, wretched soul wears at death’s door. And here you are, naked even in death. But it is what it is. The way we live is the way death finds us. So go, nameless woman. Pass through the Gate of Death naked, scarred and tarnished...’

Crimson fire ignited in his hand, then spread instantly across the entire body of the woman.

’...but go in peace. And let me put an end to your body’s lingering humiliation.’

In one breath, the nameless woman was nothing but ashes.

—End of Chapter 136—