Inside Gilded Haven, panic spreads like spilled oil.
Voices overlap. Shoes scrape against marble. Someone retches near the curtains.
Tsia doesn't understand any of it.
She is still inside the cage, still holding her sister so tightly her arms ache. Her ears ring. Her heart pounds so hard she thinks it might tear free of her chest.
The viscount is on the floor.
He isn't moving.
Blood, so much blood, reflects the warm glow of the mana lamps.
"I… I didn't—" Tsia whispers, but the words die in her throat.
Her little sister peeks out despite Tsia's grip, sees the body, and lets out a small, broken sound.
"Sis… why there's dead people on the floor…?"
Tsia squeezes her eyes shut.
"Don't look," she says again, more desperately than before. "Please. Don't look."
She doesn't know what happened.
One moment, the men are reaching for them.
The next, everything is screaming.
The shop owner finds his voice at last.
