The smell of roses filled the Droselmire estate.
Their petals were perfect, their stems trimmed short and bound with gold thread. Every hall, every windowsill, and every vase in the mansion was lined with these beautiful roses as red as blood.
One might've mistaken these roses to be nothing more than Vorath's appreciation for beauty, or maybe even an interest in flowers.
But the truth is that the roses were nothing more than his twisted way of suppressing the stench of the basement.
He passed by all the roses as he made his way down the corridor. Behind him, a servant followed quietly with a silver tray; their back was hunched more than a normal person's as if he was afraid to even lift it and accidentally meet his master's eyes.
The clinking of glass vials was the only sound that dared accompany his steps.
The servant didn't dare to breathe a decibel louder. If he had the urge to sneeze, he had no choice but to suck it back in. If he wanted to cough, he'd swallow it.
"Tell me," Vorath said, his voice hoarse and cold, "how many of the livestock remain?"
"We're currently down to two hundred and sixty-seven, my lord," the servant answered.
Humming softly, Vorath was neither pleased nor displeased. More than seven hundred of his livestock had died in such a short amount of time, yet he didn't feel any guilt. The only negative feelings he had were worrying that there might not be enough people remaining for what he needed.
"We'll need more. If we can't take them from this city… then we'll take them elsewhere and just transport them here," Vorath smiled. "They're thinning faster than expected."
The servant didn't respond. His only task was to speak when spoken to.
Vorath began thinking about how much wheat he had bought recently.
He now had more wheat than he needed by more than twofold.
Bell was wrong about one thing in his theory.
The five hundred people's worth of wheat wasn't for five hundred mouths. It was for a thousand.
Stopping at a heavy oak door at the end of the hall, Vorath gestured for the servant to open it. The air there was cold. Moist. And beyond the door, there was a faint hum mixed with something that sounded like slow and wet breathing.
Creeeeak.
Once the door was open, Vorath stepped inside.
Over at a table, Dr. Debronx was sitting there hunched, the light from his lamp carving shadows across his face. His hands were trembling as he carefully adjusted a dial connected to one of the tubes.
Inside, the room was lightly dim, a drastic contrast from the brightly lit underground laboratory he once worked in.
Tubes ran along the floor, and the faint scent of iron and antiseptic was clashing against the perfume of the roses from the hallway.
In the center of the room, a glass tank stood tall.
A young girl, Judy, was floating inside it. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising and falling slowly — signs that she was still alive. Wires connected her body to the machines that hummed around her.
There were also many other tanks in the room that contained the bodies of other children.
Dr. Debronx was going through more spare parts than he usually did. Since his daughter had gone so long without treatment, her condition had worsened; thus, it took even more effort to keep her breathing.
But even then, no more than twenty children should've been affected by this point.
Yet over seven hundred people had died in such a short amount of time.
How?
There was no need to look any further than the man who had just entered the room.
Vorath Droselmire was to blame. His desire to become the perfect human, his youth restored — all of that meant that there was no room for any crack in the livestock that was going to be used.
Meaning that if any of them coughed or showed signs of being sick, he had them killed and tossed into the furnace.
Everything has to be perfect.
Debronx looked up and could see Vorath's reflection staring at him from the glass.
"How's your daughter?" Vorath asked, acting as if he was concerned.
"Stable now," Debrox muttered. His eyes were sunken, and he looked like he hadn't slept in days, which was indeed the truth. "But she'll need better repairs later. It's hard to do a thorough job with the limited equipment I have here. I'm also missing a lot of my research papers."
"But she's stable."
"Yeah."
"How long can she remain in the tank without needing any more surgeries or change of body parts?"
"...A week," Debronx answered. The actual answer was two weeks, but he didn't want to risk it. There was no such thing as being too safe when it came to his daughter.
"That means you have a week to begin working on your end of the deal," Vorath said; his tone was pleasant, but it carried the kind of softness that made men freeze. "You know our agreement. I help you keep your daughter alive, and in exchange…"
"I make you younger."
Debronx's hand clenched around the pen that was in his hand. His work has always been for the selfless act of keeping his daughter alive. He'd never used it for someone's selfish desires before, but there was always a first time for everything.
If it meant his daughter could live, he'd even sell his soul to the Devil. "I understand. Then we'll get started in an hour. Deliver me the bodies of everyone you want to take from. If you desire their limbs, their eyes, hair, face, kidney… whatever it may be, bring them to the room and put them into the empty tanks."
Vorath glanced at the servant behind him, who didn't even need to look up to know what was being communicated to him.
Understood, my lord," the servant bowed his hunched back even more.
The servant left the room to begin gathering the bodies.
Vorath had already chosen the people who had parts he desired, so the servant had no further need to inquire about who in the basement was meant to be brought to the tanks.
Vorath observed Judy for a little longer before turning to leave. But he stopped at the door and said, "You know what'll happen if you mess up, right?"
"...Yes."
"Good. I wouldn't want to see your daughter turning into a kebab."
Vorath left the room that had been turned into a makeshift lab, the door shutting behind him with a loud click.
Dr. Debronx released the pen that was in his hand, and it dropped on the table, bouncing slightly a few times before settling.
Grinding his teeth, he thought to himself, 'If it wasn't for those darn nosy bastards who discovered my lab, I would've never had to rely on someone else. You're lucky I need you for my daughter's sake… otherwise I would've ripped your mouth off your face for uttering such a threat about my daughter.'
Outside, Vorath was in a jolly mood and was about to head to his bedroom, where his wife was.
'I'll be able to get it up again once I have my new body,' he grinned.
There would no longer be a need for him to use only his fingers and toys.
He was heading to inform his wife to call for all of his concubines to return to the estate and wait for him in the bedroom. He planned on enjoying himself from the pleasure of life that his old age had robbed him of so many years ago.
But before he could reach the bedroom, one of his guards walked up to him and bowed.
"What is it?" he frowned.
The guard said carefully, "There's a woman asking questions in the northern district. She's been seen near the market, talking to suppliers. One of them happened to be our people."
"What was she asking?"
"She was just inquiring about which noble families in the north have the most bakers on their payrolls. And if there were nobles who had bakers who were working for them secretly, away from the eyes of the government."
The question seemed harmless, but it didn't take more than five seconds for Vorath to understand what the guard was trying to convey.
'Someone knows about our wheat purchases and is suspicious about it.'
He doubted that this person had anything to do with Dr. Debronx. The thought never even crossed his mind. After all, how could someone even make the connection between wheat and the city's most-wanted criminal at the moment? There was nothing in common between the two. If someone did make a connection, it would have to be the biggest stretch of all time.
It was most likely just a nosy woman trying to get dirt on a noble's secret in exchange for hush money.
"What does she look like?" he asked the guard.
"We don't know. She hides her face under a hood and keeps her head low. She moves quietly as well."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
"My lord?"
"Go handle it. Kill that nosy bitch and call it a day. Why is this even being brought to my attention? You fucking imbecile," he swore as he resumed his walk to his bedroom.
The guard bowed and answered, "At once, my lord."
* * *
Rain misted down over the city again.
It was indeed summertime, which frequently had rain, but even this was far more than normal. The past week had been the same story of rain coming in and out whenever it felt like it, as if they were a guest who didn't understand manners and possessed the keys to the home.
Maya crouched on a rooftop, watching the carriage below.
Her hood was drawn low, droplets rolled down her cloak and vanished before they touched the ground.
The men on the street below her were moving cautiously. Their boots splashed through puddles as they checked the alleys. Most were carrying crossbows and were dressed too finely to be simple mercenaries.
They were looking for her — she could tell.
Resting her chin on her hand, she had no worries about being caught. Her broken ability to be invisible made this feel like nothing more than a casual walk on the beach.
"First one to find her gets a gold coin," one of them told those around him.
"A gold coin?" she murmured under her breath. "Is that all you're offering? You're going to have to raise the reward for the amount of effort it's going to take to even catch a sniff of my boot."
The odds of finding her were lower than winning the jackpot ten times in a row. She was silence itself. No light bent around her. No shadows shifted. Her ability, granted to her by her god, made the world itself simply forget she was there. No one had ever seen through it.
Well — almost no one.
There was one exception.
Just one.
Him.
Bell Agnus.
The memory of Bell catching her watching him at the library still stung her pride. And she was hoping that someday, when she proved her worth and then some… Bell would reveal how he knew she was there.
But none of these people was Bell.
Tonight, she had full control of how the dance was going to go.
Following the hunters easily, she hopped from one rain-slick roof to another.
The hunters swept through the market, questioning shopkeepers, slipping coins into palms.
'I'm sorry, Bell. You probably expected me to just investigate the houses on your list one by one. Why waste all that time when I can just expose myself to the people we're searching for? Make them come to me. Then—'
All she had to do was follow them around.
The hunters, after hours of constant searching, even after the market closed for the night due to the rain and time, finally regrouped at a carriage that was plain without any crest to indicate who it belonged to.
Sitting on top of the carriage, Maya admired the view of the sky above that was starting to clear up as the rain had come to a stop, all while listening to the conversations occurring inside the carriage.
The hunters got out of the carriage in front of an inn. They ordered a single room, and once they were all in and the door was locked, they pushed the bed and opened the wooden hatch on the floor.
Jumping in one by one, they pulled the hatch shut from below.
The door would be unlocked and the bed would be moved back to its original place later by the owner of the inn.
Walking down a dark tunnel, they stopped at a room where multiple sets of clothes were. The hunters began undressing, and Maya, who had been following them the entire time, looked away in a hurry.
Once the hunters were out of their ominous black outfits, they were now dressed as regular civilians.
Continuing their walk down the tunnel, the hunters, now transformed into "civilians", reached the other end where a ladder was awaiting them. Climbing up the ladder, they were now in another building.
Exiting the building, they got into a different carriage than before. This time, the carriage had a crest that was burned into the wood.
'Droselmire?' Maya thought as she leaped up and landed on top of the second carriage of the day.