The admission hit the group like a physical blow.

"No way..." Fara whispered. "You’re pulling our legs, Nyx."

"You have to be exaggerating." Another stammered. "There isn’t a force in this world that could actually upset you."

Ivy shook her head violently. "I call absolute bullshit. Nice try."

Even Alia, who prided herself on being the anchor of logic within their friend group, found the claim impossible to swallow.

They all knew exactly how desensitized Nyx was.

When she had executed that human weeks prior, detonating his physical form into a grotesque spray of crimson rain and flying viscera, she hadn’t flinched.

She had stood in the center of the carnage, drenched in blood, laughing with pure, euphoric excitement.

For a woman like that to claim a scene was too intense for her to witness defied all rational belief.

"I am entirely serious." Nyx stated, her voice deadpan and devoid of humor.

"The techniques the Hero employed on that man...it is something I never could have conceived in my wildest nightmares."

Selma swallowed hard, her bravado rapidly leaking away.

"Is it...is it really that brutal? That bloody?"

Nyx stared past them, her lips tightening into a thin line as if a foul taste had suddenly flooded her mouth.

"Brutal? Yes, obviously. But the gore isn’t what shatters your composure."

"It’s the method the Hero is using...it’s something I have...personal experience with. Trauma from my past. So, seeing it done to someone else..."

She trailed off, shaking her head.

"I was also with Luca when he...worked on Julius. I thought I could handle it. I’ve seen horrible things. Done horrible things. But this..."

She met their eyes. "By the end, I was physically ill. I had to leave. And afterward...I couldn’t eat for two days. Every time I tried, I vomited."

The confession, delivered in Nyx’s usually unflappable voice, had its intended effect.

The bravado drained from the group. Their curiosity curdled into something closer to dread.

Nyx’s features suddenly shifted back into her familiar, mischievous grin.

"So, my lovely ladies...do you still wish to step inside?"

The response was an instantaneous, chaotic chorus of panic.

"We’re leaving! We’re going back right now!"

"Forget it! If even Nyx can’t handle it, we’d literally die!"

"I value my sanity, thank you very much! I want to actually sleep tonight!"

Ivy looked at Selma. "Selma? You’re not still thinking..."

Selma hesitated. Every instinct told her to run.

But another part of her—the adventurous, stubborn part that had gotten her into trouble since she was a child refused to back down.

Not when she was this close.

"We’ll go." She said finally, though the words tasted like ash in her mouth. "We’ll go check out the moonflower garden."

Nyx studied her for a moment longer, then nodded.

"Good choice."

She watched as they turned and hurried back the way they’d come, their steps quick with relief.

Only when they were out of sight did she let her shoulders relax.

’Oh, to be young...’ She thought affectionately.

She remembered being that age—her and Leona, sneaking out to the boundary lines, daring each other to go further, to see more.

Their mother had scolded them endlessly.

The memory brought a pang of bittersweet warmth.

Shaking off the nostalgia, she turned and walked away.

She had her own duties today. Luca was bringing the last of the male elves from the island today.

Today would be their last day alive.

And Nyx had a special role to play in what came next.

And just like that, the clearing fell into an absolute, pristine silence.

But the peace was short-lived.

A few minutes later, the quiet crackle of snapping twigs broke the stillness.

From the edge of the brush, a figure came sprinting back into the clearing at a frantic, breathless pace.

It was Selma!

Her friends thought she’d gone with them, but she’d slipped away at the first opportunity, telling them she needed to check on something in her treehouse.

They’d been too relieved to question her.

Now she stood alone before the burrow, the cloth sheet swaying gently in the breeze.

The forest around her was silent—unnaturally so.

No birds sang here. No insects buzzed. Even the wind seemed to avoid this place.

’This is a mistake.’ A voice in her head whispered. ’Nyx was serious. Whatever’s in there...’

But she’d come this far. She had to know.

Taking a deep breath that did nothing to calm her racing heart, she reached forward and pushed the sheet aside.

"Argh!"

The first thing that hit her was the smell.

It wasn’t the smell she’d expected—not blood, not decay, not filth.

It was sweetness. An overwhelming, cloying, suffocating sweetness that filled her nostrils and coated the back of her throat.

It was like walking into a room where someone had spilled gallons of honey and then let it ferment.

She coughed, covering her nose with her hand, her eyes watering.

The sweetness was so thick she could almost taste it—a sickly, overwhelming flavor that made her stomach turn.

’What is that?’ She thought, gagging. ’What could possibly smell like that?’

Steeling herself, she stepped fully inside.

The burrow wasn’t just an opening in the roots; it was a tunnel that sloped gently downward, leading deeper into the earth.

At the far end, she could see a soft, golden light.

The sweetness grew stronger as she descended.

By the time she reached the end of the tunnel, she had to pull her handkerchief from her pocket and press it to her face.

Even through the cloth, the smell was overwhelming.

She did hesitate, knowing that she was a step away from the truth.

But after gathering all the courage she had left, she pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the light.

Whoosh!

She couldn’t see anything at first with how bright it was inside.

But the instant her eyes registered the reality of the space, her pupils shrank to violent, trembling pinpricks.

Her heart ceased its rhythm, freezing solid in her chest.

Then her body reacted before her mind could.

Her stomach convulsed and everything she’d eaten that morning—the berries, the bread, the sweet tea came rushing up her throat.

"BLERGH! BLEEERGH! BLEEEEERGH!"

She had braced herself for a brutal display, but the sheer, calculated depravity of Luca’s design was something her mind couldn’t instantly categorize.

Even as she vomited, even as tears streamed down her face, her eyes remained fixed on the scene before her.

She couldn’t look away.

The room was large, circular, lit by hanging lanterns that cast a warm, golden glow.

Along the walls were shelves filled with bottles and jars, tools hanging neatly, tables arranged with surgical precision.

It looked like an alchemist’s laboratory or a healer’s workshop.

Except for what hung in the center of the room.

Julius.

The high elf wasn’t bound to a chair, nor was he kneeling or chained flat to a surgical table.

To Selma’s profound horror, he was actively hung from the ceiling.

But he wasn’t suspended by his wrists or ankles with standard hemp ropes.

He was suspended from the ceiling by hooks through his back!

Two large hooks dug into the flesh of his upper back, two more into his lower back, holding him upright in a grotesque parody of display.

He hung like a side of meat in a butcher’s shop, like a specimen in a museum of horrors!

But that was just the start.

Not only was he hanging there like some weird museum exhibit, but shockingly, all four of his arms and legs had been completely chopped off!

They were totally gone. His body was just a limbless torso—just a chest, stomach, and head.

The stumps where his arms and legs used to be were wrapped tightly in thick, bloody bandages to keep him from bleeding to death.

His missing arms and legs hadn’t been thrown away, though.

They were neatly lined up on a rack on the side wall, hanging from individual meat hooks like legs of lamb in a butcher shop.

Looking closely at the severed limbs, Selma realized with a sick feeling that they hadn’t been cut off cleanly with a saw.

The flesh was totally mangled and torn apart.

It looked like whoever did it had grabbed his arms and legs and twisted them around and around like wet towels until the joints shattered, and then yanked them hard until the flesh tore and the bones popped out.

He was just a human block of meat dangling in the air.

And it didn’t stop there.

The long, beautiful golden hair the elven lord loved so much had been violently ripped from his head.

His raw scalp was a horrific mess of dried blood, showing exactly where the skin had been torn away in chunks.

Below that, his classic long elf ears had been completely remodeled.

They weren’t cut off; instead, the long pointed tips had been carefully sliced away to make them round, leaving him with raw, human-shaped ears.

But still, that wasn’t the most horrifying thing of this all.

Selma, despite her fears, knew she had to take a closer look.

Maybe she had imagined it for a moment.

So she slowly stepped forward, closer and closer, almost as if she was too scared that Julius was going to jump up and do something to her.

But eventually, she made her way until she was close enough to see his back clearly.

The moment she did, she saw exactly what she saw when she entered...and was horrified!

The upper back of his body that was left had actually been cut open!

Exactly the place where his ribcage were—it seemed as if someone had torn off his skin and taken out the bones underneath in a beautiful, precise manner like a surgeon.

And right there in front of Selma’s eyes, she could see Julius’s lungs right in front of her!

She was wondering just a moment ago if Julius was really alive after all of this.

But his lungs, despite how weak they were, were moving up and down. Despite the state he was in right now, he was shockingly still alive!

But this...

This was a state that was even worse than death.