Zephyra thought about Sylvia... She thought about the arrogant, blonde swordsman who had broken Klaus’s heart and abandoned their party just to return to her "prestigious" noble clan in the Capital...

’What a crazy woman.’

Sylvia had chosen politics... Sylvia had chosen a comfortable, pre-arranged life over the man who liked her...

’So what if she left?’ Zephyra thought with a vicious triumphant smirk curling her lips. ’Fuck Sylvia. If that bitch wants to play clan politics, let her.’

Zephyra wasn’t interested in playing petty clan politics.

She was thinking on a much grander scale.

Zephyra was going to light up his days by turning him into a candidate for a King... She was going to build a flawless, unassailable throne for him to sit on the exact second she got home...

She looked at the shocked faces of the most powerful people in the world, completely secure in the knowledge that her curse would force them to accept her absolute decree.

’Don’t worry, Hubby,’ Zephyra thought with a fond intensely loving smile as her heart swelling with anticipation.’ I’ll soon be back to get you. And when I do, the entire world will bow at your feet.’

...

The return to waking consciousness for a second time was not a sudden jolt... It was a slow agonizing crawl out of an impossibly freezing abyss...

Klaus didn’t just feel tired.

Every single breath he drew felt like dragging crushed glass through his withered windpipe.

His lungs, once capable of sustaining hours of high-speed combat in the freezing altitudes of the Winterlands, now felt like brittle, dried paper that threatened to tear with every expansion.

A dull agonizing throb pulsed from his left wrist... the wrist Mirela had accidentally snapped just hours earlier.

He could feel the rigid soothing brace of Anya’s purple spatial magic wrapped around the fractured bone, keeping it perfectly suspended, but the ache was a constant reminder of his terrifying fragility.

He lay perfectly still with his eyes closed, listening to the ambient sounds of the ground floor.

He heard the soft, comforting crackle of a small fire.

He smelled the distinct scent of burning ironwood, likely salvaged from the shattered remains of the Snow Caravan’s hull and he heard the gentle sound of water splashing softly against the side of a metal basin.

’...Huh?’

A warm, damp cloth gently pressed against his right shoulder.

Klaus slowly peeled his heavy eyelids open. His vision was blurry at first, swimming in dark disorienting circles before finally locking onto the dim, towering obsidian ceiling of the Endless Tower.

He shifted his head slightly, the brittle vertebrae in his neck popping audibly.

Mirela was sitting on the edge of the place beside him.

She had taken off her heavy winter coat and rolled up the sleeves of her maid uniform.

A large, dented metal basin filled with steaming hot water rested on the floor near her boots.

She was holding a soft wet cloth, carefully wringing out the excess water.

Klaus realized, with a sudden sinking wave of vulnerability... that he was entirely naked beneath the thin, woolen blanket draped over his waist.

He looked down at his own body.

The sight made his breath hitch. The dense corded muscle mass that had defined his physique was completely gone.

His chest was sunken, his collarbones jutting out sharply against his pale, paper-thin skin.

The flesh on his arms and stomach sagged, lacking any of the elasticity of youth.

He looked like a shriveled dying husk of a man.

His physical body had been forcefully dragged into the twilight of its natural lifespan by the parasitic person residing at the top of the tower.

Klaus didn’t even have the physical strength to reach down and pull the woolen blanket higher to cover his withered chest...

The overwhelming embarrassment of his condition flared in his mind, but his body simply refused to obey his commands.

Mirela didn’t look at him with pity. She didn’t look at him with disgust.

She leaned forward as she gently pressed the warm damp cloth against his sunken chest, slowly tracing the cloth over his collarbones and down his arms, washing away the cold sweat and the grime of the dungeon.

The heat of the water soaking into his freezing brittle skin felt like pure heaven. It chased away the bone-deep chill that had settled into his marrow but the act of being bathed, of being completely, utterly helpless, shattered whatever remaining pride Klaus had left.

"Why...?" Klaus rasped.

His voice was a gravelly wheeze that barely carried over the crackle of the fire.

It didn’t sound like him at all... It sounded like a dying stranger...

Mirela paused, the warm cloth resting against his right bicep. She looked up, meeting his dull sunken dark eyes.

"Why what, Master?" Mirela asked softly.

"Why are you... doing this?" Klaus forced the words out with his throat burning with the effort.

He swallowed hard, trying to lubricate his vocal cords. "Look at me. I’m... I’m a dying old man. I’m a shriveled corpse. I can’t even... cover myself."

He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head away from her.

The shame was a bitter acidic taste in the back of his mouth... He had promised to protect her. He had slaughtered dozens of men to keep her safe and now, he was a bedridden invalid, completely dependent on her just to stay clean.

"You shouldn’t have to... take care of a corpse," Klaus whispered bitterly.

Mirela didn’t argue with him.

She didn’t offer empty, patronizing platitudes about how he still looked handsome or how he would recover... She knew exactly what the mirror showed...

She simply reached out, her soft, warm hand gently cupping his wrinkled, stubble-covered cheek.

She applied a firm pressure, forcing him to turn his head back and look at her.

Mirela dipped the cloth back into the steaming basin, wrung it out, and brought it back up to his chest then she poured a small trickle of warm water directly over his frail shoulders as the soothing heat radiated through his atrophied muscles.

"I am doing this," Mirela said. "because I love you."

Klaus stared at her.

"It doesn’t matter if you are young and strong, or old and frail," Mirela continued, her thumb gently brushing away a stray lock of stark white hair that had fallen across his forehead. "It doesn’t matter if you can fight monsters, or if you can’t even lift a blanket. I am yours, Master. In this life, and whatever comes after it."

The unshakeable certainty in her words hit him harder than any physical blow... It was a lifeline thrown into the darkest, most terrifying abyss of his mind...

Mirela shifted her weight, moving closer to his side. She gently rolled him slightly onto his right hip, being incredibly careful not to jostle his broken left wrist suspended in the purple magic. She began to wash his back with the warm cloth dragging smoothly in slow, rhythmic circles over his spine.

"Yesterday," Mirela began, her tone shifting slightly, taking on a more thoughtful weight. "Before you went back into that room... you told us about your regrets."

Klaus stiffened slightly beneath her touch.

"You said that you hate it when people leave," Mirela murmured, her hands continuing their gentle work. "You said you hate when people you care about leave you behind. You buried that pain so deep, just to survive."

She paused, letting the silence stretch for a moment as the fire crackled nearby.

"Master," Mirela asked softly. "Was that the same thing that happened with Taula?"

Klaus’s breath hitched.

"When she left," Mirela continued, tracing the warm cloth over his shoulder blades. "When she abandoned the party in the middle of the night without a word... did it trigger that trauma? Is that why you started acting like that? Why you started pretending that you didn’t care about anyone?"

Klaus closed his eyes. The exhaustion in his bones made lying completely impossible.

"Yes," Klaus whispered, the single word carrying the weight of a monumental confession.

He didn’t elaborate... He didn’t need to... The truth was out there, laid bare in the dim light of the tower...

He had built the psychopathic, unhinged "gamer" persona as a desperate, frantic shield.

If he treated the world like a video game, if he viewed Mirela, Zephyra, and Serra as disposable NPCs, then it wouldn’t destroy his soul when they inevitably died or abandoned him.

It was a coward’s defense, and it had nearly cost him his humanity.

Mirela smiled sadly as she scrubbed the last of the grime from his back.

She gently rolled him flat against the mattress again, pulling the warm damp cloth away.

Then, her expression completely changed.

The soft gentle demeanor of the demi-human maid vanished. Her striking blue eyes hardened, flashing with a fierce protective anger.

"Fuck Taula," Mirela stated bluntly.

Klaus’s white eyes snapped open.

They widened in slow, genuine shock.

He stared at the girl.

In all the months they had been together... through all the bloodshed... the dungeons... and the horrors of the Winterlands, he had never once heard Mirela curse.

She was always polite.

Mirela didn’t apologize for the profanity. She leaned forward, her face hovering just inches above his.

"So what if she left?" Mirela demanded, her voice rising in a passionate, fiercely loyal rant that echoed off the obsidian walls. "So what if she betrayed your trust? So what if she triggered your trauma? She was a coward who chose comfort over the man who liked her... She didn’t see your worth, Master!"

She grabbed the edges of the woolen blanket with her knuckles turning white.

"But I do!" Mirela declared, her voice trembling with intense emotion. "I am right here! I have been right here the entire time! And it isn’t just me! Serra is waiting for us! Zephyra is waiting for us! We would never, ever leave you! Especially not after you placed your trust in us!"

Klaus stared at her, completely overwhelmed by the ferocity of her devotion.

"You are not allowed to give up," Mirela whispered fiercely with tears springing to her eyes. "You are not allowed to die in this tower and leave us behind because one blonde girl broke your heart. Do you understand me?"

Before Klaus could even attempt to form a response through his shock, a tiny melodic voice chimed in from the shadows.

"Do not forget to include me."

Klaus weakly turned his head.

Sitting a dozen feet away, near the warmth of the salvaged campfire, was a large wooden barrel that had been cut in half to serve as a makeshift basin.

Inside the steaming water, entirely submerged up to her small collarbones, was Anya.

The six-year-old Shinigami had her silver hair pinned up clumsily behind her head.

Her striking purple eyes were locked directly onto Klaus, glowing faintly in the dim light.

"I was literally born a while ago, Father," Anya stated calmly, splashing a small handful of warm water over her pale shoulder. "It would be incredibly irresponsible of you to orphan me so quickly... You must promise not to leave us behind either..."

A weak rusty chuckle rumbled deep in Klaus’s chest.

The sound was scraping painfully against his withered throat, but it felt incredibly good.

The suffocating gloom that had settled over the camp was pierced by the fierce loyalty of his maid and the deadpan logic of his terrifying daughter.

"Are you feeling okay, Father?" Anya asked, resting her small chin on the wooden rim of the barrel. "What happened in the trial? Though I can surmise that you lost again...."

The levity vanished, replaced by the grim, terrifying reality of their situation.

Klaus let out a long sigh.

He stared up at the dark ceiling as the horrifying memories of the second loop flashed behind his eyes like a gruesome nightmare.

"The trial is a slaughterhouse," Klaus rasped. "The Second King isn’t playing fair. He isn’t just using the Regret avatar to tempt me... If the avatar refuses to surrender, or if he gets bored... he just executes him."

Mirela’s breath hitched. She stopped organizing the wet cloths with her hands hovering frozen in the air.

"He killed the other you?" Anya asked, her purple eyes narrowing sharply.

"He ripped his head off," Klaus confirmed with the memory causing a phantom ache to flare at the base of his own spine. "He tore his spinal column clean out of his back. The Regret version of me... he’s just a kid. He’s a seventeen-year-old boy who just got his dead parents back. He doesn’t have my stats... He doesn’t have Soul Mana... so he’s completely, hopelessly outmatched."

Klaus gritted his teeth with his jaw muscles clenching tightly.

"And because the Regret avatar is the active participant in the simulation," Klaus continued. "Like you’re aware, when he dies... the loop ends and I lose the lifeforce."

"Is there a chance that the Regret version of you will be able to hand over the body this third time?" Anya asked with her small face turning incredibly serious. "If the trial is disguised like that, it is fundamentally unfair... It is a rigged game... It’s more rigged than I thought."

"It’s worse than rigged," Klaus whispered, his white eyes staring blankly at the stone above him. "The Regret version of me hates me... He thinks I’m a jealous, depressed old man trying to ruin his second chance so he would rather die than give me control."

He slowly, agonizingly pushed himself up onto his right elbow. The effort was monumental.

His right arm shook violently under his own withered weight with the muscles screaming in protest.

"Master! What are you doing? Lie down!" Mirela panicked, reaching out to push him back against the mattress.

"No," Klaus grunted, fighting against her gentle hands. "I have to get up. I have to go back to the trial room."

"Are you insane?" Mirela cried out, her blue eyes wide with terror. "You just woke up! You lost another thirty years of your life! You can barely hold your own head up! If you go back in there and fail, you will die!"

"If I stay down here and do nothing, I’m going to die anyway!" Klaus argued, his gravelly voice rising in a desperate, hoarse shout.

"My clock is ticking, Mirela! I don’t have time to rest! I don’t have time to heal! If I wait another day, my body might just give out from old age!"

He forced himself into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress with his bare feet touching the cold obsidian floor.

His legs were shaking so violently they looked like they might snap under the meager weight of his own frail torso.

"I have to go back up there..." Klaus stated, his breathing ragged and shallow. "I have to convince him. I have to break the delusion before the Second King executes him again. It’s the only way we get out of this tower alive."

Mirela stared at him with her heart breaking at the sight of his desperate determination.

She knew he was right... The purple spatial barrier outside the tower wasn’t going to lower itself... They were trapped in a cage with a ticking bomb, and Klaus was the only one who could defuse it.

"Fine," Mirela whispered, tears pricking her eyes once more. "But we are coming with you."

"No," Klaus commanded.

He looked directly at Mirela, and then shifted his gaze to Anya, who was climbing out of the wooden barrel and wrapping a large towel around her small frame. "You are to stay downstairs. No matter what happens. Do not come up to that landing."

"Father—" Anya started to protest.

"That is an order..." Klaus snapped.

He didn’t want them anywhere near the doors... He didn’t want them to feel the violent shockwave if he failed again... He didn’t want them to see him eject as a lifeless, decaying corpse.

Klaus looked at the two of them and his breathing slowed.

He reached his trembling right hand out as he didn’t have the strength to stand, so he gestured for them to come closer.

Mirela knelt in front of him. Anya walked over, clutching the towel, and stood beside the maid.

Klaus looked into Mirela’s tear-filled blue eyes, and then into Anya’s striking purple ones.

"I am going to try and convince him," Klaus said softly, his voice a raspy whisper. "But if I fail... if the doors go dark and I don’t come back down..."

He swallowed hard, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.

"I want you both to know that I love you," Klaus confessed, laying his soul completely bare. "I love all of you... You gave me a reason to keep fighting when I didn’t want to anymore... You saved me."

"Stop it!" Mirela sobbed, violently shaking her head.

She grabbed his right hand, pressing it against her cheek. "Stop talking like you are going to die! You promised!"

"I am merely stating the statistical probabilities, Father," Anya added with her lower lip trembling slightly, completely betraying her attempt at a facade. "Such morbid declarations are entirely unnecessary. You will simply win."

Klaus offered a weak, sad smile. He gently pulled his hand away from Mirela’s cheek.

"Help me get dressed," Klaus asked softly.

Mirela sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her wrist. She turned away, grabbing a fresh set of clothes they had salvaged from his spatial ring.

The dark combat trousers and the heavy, long-sleeved dark shirt were the exact same size they had always been, but as Mirela carefully helped him pull them onto his body, they hung loosely, dwarfing his withered shrunken frame.

She carefully guided his broken left wrist, still encased in the glowing purple spatial splint, through the sleeve of the shirt.

She buttoned the front, her fingers lingering gently against his chest.

When she was finished, Mirela didn’t step back.

She stayed kneeling directly between his knees.

She looked up at him, her striking blue eyes locking onto his dull aged white ones.

"Master," Mirela whispered.

Klaus looked down at her. "Yes?"

Mirela thinned her lips.

"If you come back from that room..." Mirela stated. "you need to make me a woman."

Klaus completely froze.

"I don’t care if you are old. I don’t care what you look like," Mirela continued fiercely, her hands gripping the fabric of his trousers over his thighs. "I have followed you through hell. I have given you my loyalty but I do not want to die in this frozen wasteland as a maid. I do not want to do it if it isn’t with you. Do you understand me, Master?"

Mirela didn’t know what to do... There was nothing she could so she was giving him a tangible reason to survive.

She was anchoring his soul to the waking world with the strongest tether a mortal possessed.

Klaus stared at her as a genuine chuckle bubbled up in his chest.

"Heh..."