Rex wondered, not for the first time, if he had just made the most reckless decision since waking in this world.
The moment he rose from the throne, leaving behind the wide-eyed nobles and their frantic whispers, the sputtering priest whose protests cracked against the marble pillars, and the knights who wavered, unsure whether duty compelled them to intervene or stand aside, he had already surrendered himself to their mercy.
To willingly step away from the safety of guards and the eyes of the court, only to place himself inside a room surrounded by Aurex's so-called faction, which apparently means people who had walked through the fire of succession trials at the king's side, who had bled and endured for Aurex, was madness.
He should have known better.
He caught their eyes as he passed them, and every glance carried its own sharpness.
Inis, the other copper haired woman, her posture rigid and her grey eyes cold, bore a resemblance to the one who had given her life for Aurex, her presence still clung to the air, an echo, a shadow.
The grief radiating from her was a storm, raw and barely contained, and Rex felt the edges of it gnaw at him as if he had stolen something irreplaceable.
Then there was Shin Lan. The tall man, silver hair glinting faintly beneath the dim torchlight, looked at him with an expression Rex couldn't name, confusion, yes, but also fury barely bridled by grief.
The weight of his gaze was heavier than his spear. Sadness sharpened into anger, and in his silence Rex could hear the echo of all the accusations he had not spoken.
Even Cross, the elf boy in white, had lowered his head, golden eyes swimming with tears. His lips pressed together, trembling with all the things he wanted to cry out but could not, his small frame shaking as though the very air here was too heavy to breathe.
Yet what unsettled Rex the most was Mira Lilith. She stood apart from the others, her dark hair falling in lazy waves, her violet aura still clinging faintly from the chains she had brought out of nowhere earlier.
Her expression was sweet, soft even, the kind one might wear when admiring a roses through a garden full of thorns. But Rex was no fool. He knew hunger when he saw it.
That smile carried something sharp beneath it, a delight not in beauty but in ruin, a fascination with the unraveling of those around her. She looked at him not as a man, not even as a king, but as prey that had just stepped into the hunter's den.
Rex exhaled slowly, his jaw tightening.
Yes, he should have known.
The moment the doors closed behind him, leaving only the five of them in a room, his fate was already sealed. He barely had time to draw a breath before it came, black hair glinting as the woman moved with unnerving calm, and then the chains were there.
They snapped around him like serpents, sudden and merciless, biting into his arms, his chest, his legs until he could scarcely move. The sound was faint, just the rattling scrape of links pulled taut, but the weight was absolute. He was caught.
Not metaphorically, not in the same way he mess up and got put behind bars right after, but literally, body bound, pinned where he stood.
The sensation hit him with a strange familiarity. It wasn't just the ache of restraint or the breathless pressure against his ribs, it was the cold.
The chains carried it, a sharp and unnatural chill, one that seeped through his skin and crawled into his bones. It reminded him of bare stone floors in the heart of winter, the kind where frost crept between the cracks, and where even a single step barefoot left the soul longing to flee.
That same merciless cold pressed against him now, urging him to recoil, to run, yet he could not.
There was nowhere to run to.
His body strained against the bindings instinctively, but the effort only made the chains tighten, biting deeper. The air left his lungs in ragged bursts, and the weight of their eyes on him, the copper haired woman's grieving fury, the man's steady suspicion, the elf's wounded gaze, only sharpened the sensation of being trapped.
And at the center of it all, the black-haired woman, serene as a shadow, as though she had known all along he would walk willingly into her snare.
"So, who exactly are you?" Mira Lilith's voice was a purr against his ear, smooth and deliberate, carrying the sort of silkiness that was meant to both soothe and suffocate.
Her breath brushed against his skin as she leaned close, violet eyes gleaming with an indulgent delight. "My majesty would never allow one of his precious subordinates to die without crying his little heart out…"
Rex didn't flinch. He only thought, oh, what a whimp.
The chain's bite was still around him, holding him taut on the thick carpet that covered the floor of what had once been some grand receiving room. The servants had ushered them here with stiff faces, as though eager to rid the hallways of their presence. Now it was only him and Aurex's so-called subordinates, the air heavy with unspoken accusations.
They push Rex until he sat on a grand stool, and let the silence drag on.
He'd been in tighter spots before. Interrogations had been a constant in his life, good cop, bad cop, and the rare but far nastier ones who didn't bother with the labels. They all wanted the same thing... information.
And he'd learned early that silence was often the best weapon.
But here? Silence would get him nowhere.
These people weren't cops. They weren't playing at procedure or feigning restraint.
He had seen it already, in the throne room, in those eyes, people here aren't the same, in the way they'd celebrated blood spurting out as though it were a feast.
Men and women had died before them and not one of them had so much as gasped in horror. No, they had looked disgusted only when the blood spattered their boots, not when it spilled from a throat.
This wasn't a world that lived by moral codes. Not like the one he'd left behind.
Here, death was theater. A spectacle to be watched, judged, and stepped over. And if he sat there and said nothing, Mira Lilith would simply make his silence her entertainment.
He lifted his head, eyes narrowing as he looked at her, her chains still coiled around him. Her smile was beautiful in that terrifying way, the kind that promised she already knew the answer but would make him bleed just to hear it said aloud.
"…if I tell you I'm not Aurex, would you believe me?"
He did said silence won't be acceptable,but would an answer be?