The Heiress's Comeback-Chapter 413: [ Volume 1] Chaper 412- Old geezers

Esme charged forward, her dagger roaring to life in her hands. She was no fool; she knew better than to take them all on at once. Swiftly dodging a vicious strike, she focused on one opponent at a time. The moment an opening presented itself, she tackled one of them to the ground, and the fight truly began.

Half an hour later, the battlefield was drenched in blood.

Esme, barely standing, slumped against the wall, her breaths ragged. The bodies of six women lay before her, unmoving and bloodied. Her own condition was dire—crimson dripped from a gash on her forehead, and pain radiated from every inch of her battered body.

Beom had landed beside her, but something was wrong.

Her eyes—

They had not returned to normal.

Esme stared, struggling to grasp the unsettling sight before her. She didn’t know what to feel.

Her wrist was broken. Pain consumed her body, sharp and unrelenting, yet she could barely feel it anymore. The wounds—how many had she sustained? How many bones had she shattered? She didn’t know. None of it mattered.

Because the real terror wasn’t the pain.

It was in her head.

A voice—no, a presence—coiled within her mind, whispering, pressing, suffocating. It wasn’t just agony. It was something deeper, something worse. She could feel it. The weight of it. The finality. It was over.

Silence.

But that silence wasn’t peace. It was suppression. It was the slow, creeping realization that her body was no longer entirely her own. Her fingers trembled, unbidden. Her breath hitched. Her vision blurred.

Her eyes refused to return to normal.

She had overused herself. She had pushed too far. And now, her body—her very soul—was crumbling under the weight of power too vast to control. A fragment of her—30%, maybe more—had already been consumed, suppressed by the force clawing its way through her.

If this continued... she wouldn’t last six months.

Four, at best. Maybe less.

Or worse—she wouldn’t die at all.

She would lose herself. Turn into something unrecognizable. Something monstrous.

A madwoman.

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As much as Esme was in a hurry to bring down the organization, she knew it couldn’t be rushed blindly. The organization had to weaken first—to fracture from within. If it remained too strong, taking it down completely would be nearly impossible.

But the real problem wasn’t just Esme herself. It was the possibility of others like her emerging.

If Esme stayed longer, if she continued to push the limits of her power, then other suppressed outbreaks would begin to surface. More beast owners, long held in fear, would start to break free. And that was the organization’s greatest nightmare.

They could barely handle Esme alone. If more beast owners shattered their chains and let their power loose, the entire foundation of control would crumble.

They had already seen the signs—Ray Aron, Esme’s husband, was on the verge of breaking through his divine shackles. If they didn’t act now, they would lose the upper hand.

A major decision had to be made.

One of the four fundamental leaders of the organization—the highest authority figures, those with equal power to command—had finally made their move.

The Doc.

Normally, the Doc had a singular purpose—monitoring beast owners, studying their activities, and conducting research on new beasts. Their primary function was control. But there was another, darker responsibility tied to their role—destruction.

Yes, destruction.

The organization wasn’t just tasked with tracking and governing beast owners; it was also responsible for eliminating beasts that had spiraled beyond control. This usually happened when an entire bloodline of beast owners was wiped out—when there was no heir left to command or bind the beast. Without a master, a beast would lose all restraints, descending into pure chaos. At that point, the organization had only one course of action: complete eradication.

It was brutal. Because when a beast was destroyed, everything connected to it—its memories, its history, the very existence of its past owners—was erased as if they had never lived.

And the one overseeing this grim responsibility? The Doc.

Sitting in her dimly lit office, the Doc leaned back in her chair, her gaze fixed on a screen. A photograph of Esme filled the monitor—not an old image, not a file from the past. No, this was recent.

Esme stood bloodied in the frame, her golden eyes gleaming unnaturally in the suffocating darkness. The image had been captured just before the women she fought had died—taken secretly, unseen.

A slow, eerie smile curled on the Doc’s lips.

"What a beautiful creature," she murmured, her fingers tapping lightly on the desk. Then, with a dark chuckle, she whispered,

"I really want to dig those eyes out."

Her grin widened, sharp and unnatural, as the screen cast a cold glow over her face. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

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Next day

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Esme sat in the darkness, her body hunched inside a large cardboard box. To any passerby, it was just another piece of trash in the alley—discarded, forgotten. But inside, she was waiting.

The alley was deathly quiet, void of surveillance cameras or wandering eyes. Perfect.

She moved with practiced ease, her fingers finding the hidden seam in the box’s inner wall. With a quick flick of a small paper cutter, she sliced through it. There should have been a solid wall behind the box, just brick and mortar. Instead, a gaping hole revealed itself—like a passage waiting for her. Large enough to crawl through.

A smirk played on her bruised lips.

Her body still screamed in pain from the earlier fight. The wounds had stopped bleeding, but the damage was done. Each movement sent a fresh wave of ache through her limbs, yet she ignored it. She had changed into a black hoodie and dark pants, her hood pulled low over her face. In the pitch-black alley, she became nothing more than a living shadow.

Without hesitation, she slipped inside.

The moment her feet left the ground, the hole behind her sealed shut, as if it had never existed. A second later, the cardboard box outside burst into flames.