The Yandere Demon Lords & Me-Chapter 26: The World is Watching - 2

The village didn't smell like death.

It smelled like death's clothes.

Wet straw, copper, bile, mold.

The stench was layered, like the sickness itself had nested in the soil and learned to breathe.

Rein stopped at the edge of the first collapsed hut, scarf pulled over his nose, Zeraka a few steps behind him sniffing the air with a sharp scowl.

"This place is rotting," she growled. "You can smell it through the rain."

"I know," Rein said. "Which is why we're not staying long."

Zeraka crouched and dipped her fingers into a crack in the mud. When she brought them up, they dripped black.

"Blood and plague," she muttered. "Mixed."

Rein stepped carefully down the narrow lane between broken fences and crumbling walls. It wasn't just that people had died here. It was that no one had bothered to clean it up.

A forgotten place.

But not entirely empty.

A faint sound drifted from one of the intact homes.

A cough.

High-pitched.

A child.

Rein was through the door before Zeraka could stop him.

Inside, the light was dim, filtered through torn cloth nailed over the windows. Three bodies lay in the far corner—silent. Still.

Their skin had gone waxy-gray.

But one tiny figure stirred beside them. A child, no older than seven, curled up beneath a blanket, lips cracked, eyes fever-glazed.

Rein didn't hesitate.

He knelt, pulled out the herbs he'd taken from Asmodra's satchel days ago, crushed them fast between his palms.

Boiled water wasn't an option.

So he leaned down, gently pressing the bitter paste to the boy's tongue, whispering between clenched teeth, "Swallow, damn it. Come on."

The child flinched. Swallowed.

Rein wiped sweat from the boy's forehead with a sleeve and muttered, "You better live. If you die after I taste plague root on my fingers, I'll—"

"—marry you."

???

The voice came from the dark.

Soft. Velvet-wrapped.

Wrong.

Zeraka growled instantly, moving in beside him.

From the far side of the room, just behind a splintered beam, something stood up.

A woman.

Tall. Pale.

Dressed in a tattered silk gown stained with ink, wine, and old blood.

Her skin was cracked in places—like porcelain left too long in the rain.

Her right arm was wrapped in gauze, her left bare and marked with faint green veins that pulsed faintly beneath the surface.

Her hair was black and long, braided with feathers, beads, and what looked like bones.

But her eyes—

Her eyes were soft.

Too soft.

"You gave him life," she said, stepping forward. "With hands. Not light. Not fire. Just touch."

Rein stood, blocking the boy with his body.

Zeraka flared her claws. "Back up, corpse doll."

The woman's smile didn't fade.

"He touched death... and turned away. I saw it."

She looked at Rein now, with something between reverence and hunger.

"You're the kind one."

"The quiet one."

"The keeper."

Rein blinked. "What?"

"Healers never mean to become kings," she said. "That's why they're worshiped the longest."

Zeraka stepped between them. "Say your name, rot queen, or I take your tongue and use it as a scarf."

The woman smiled gently.

Then bowed, deep and elegant.

"Valaithe. Plague Empress of the Ninth Spoil. Warden of Decay. Beloved of the Endless Sleep."

She rose.

And her eyes didn't leave Rein's.

"And I have found my consort."