"Auntie Sophia... she's been quite devoted to you, hasn't she?" Victoria Nightshade changed the subject, her tone deliberate as she attempted to dispel some of the heavy atmosphere that had settled between them in the candlelit darkness.
"Dutiful," Elena Nightshade uttered the two words with crystalline coldness, devoid of any warmth or emotional coloring.
"Then... you don't trust her either?" Victoria pressed, her gaze searching her sister's face.
Elena's long eyelashes trembled ever so slightly, like butterfly wings caught by an unexpected breeze, before she finally exhaled a heavy sigh. When she spoke again, her voice had grown so soft it seemed to dissolve directly into the flickering candlelight itself:
"It's not that I don't trust her. It's... I'm unwilling to trust."
She feared the aftermath of placing her trust in someone, feared the inevitable betrayal that might follow. That was a price far too steep for her to bear—a debt she could never repay.
Victoria studied her sister in the dancing shadows, then released her own sigh, her tone saturated with something that bordered on pity:
"It's good that you maintain such vigilance, though. After all, I'm merely feigning madness, which means I can still observe from the shadows, still maintain my vantage point. But you... you're genuinely..."
Her gaze involuntarily drifted downward, settling on her sister's legs—thin, pale, draped in a blanket, hanging limply and useless. Something seemed to lodge in her throat; the words she wanted to speak became impossible to articulate. The candlelight flickered across her face, illuminating the raw emotion there before she could disguise it.
Elena, however, appeared entirely accustomed to these heavy stares, as though she had trained herself long ago to weather them. Her tone remained calm, almost unnaturally so, carrying an undercurrent of that peculiar rationality that bordered on cruelty:
"It doesn't matter. As long as Grandfather Jiang remains with us, they won't dare to act too rashly. They won't cross certain lines."
Grandfather Jiang—he was her sole protection now, her final and only shield against the world. Everything else was contingent upon his presence, his authority, his continued existence.
Meanwhile, in Marcus Chen's guest room across the residence.
Marcus had fallen into an extraordinarily deep sleep that night. Perhaps it was the accumulated tension of existing in this perilous world, where danger lurked behind every corner and every smile, that had left his mind perpetually wound tight as a violin string. When his exhausted body finally sank into such a genuinely soft and comfortable bed—the kind of luxury he hadn't experienced in longer than he could remember—his physical defenses seemed to crumble entirely in an instant.
He felt utterly boneless, completely drained of strength, like a sponge saturated to its absolute capacity with water. His consciousness descended steadily, deeply, into the sweet and impenetrable depths of sleep.
Creak. Creak. Creak.
Caught between dreams and waking, a regular, faint sound gradually penetrated his unconsciousness—the rhythmic rolling of wheelchair wheels, drawing closer from somewhere distant. The sound was like a persistent wedge being driven between the layers of his dreaming mind, attempting to pry him back toward awareness.
Marcus didn't sit up immediately. His consciousness remained trapped within the heavy mud of sleep, struggling feebly against the pull of wakefulness.
He forced his eyes open with considerable effort, his vision swimming as he blinked against the darkness. When his unfocused gaze turned toward the source of the sound, the world remained blurred, indistinct.
The door to his room was being pushed open—silently, carefully—just enough to allow passage. Cool moonlight spilled through the gap like water, painting the room in shades of silver and shadow, and within that illumination, a delicate silhouette gradually came into focus: a figure seated in a wheelchair, framed by the lunar glow.
The figure moved slowly, deliberately, in his direction. Backlit as she was by the hallway light, Marcus couldn't discern her expression, couldn't read her intentions. Yet he could sense something emanating from her—an aura so unprecedented, so utterly foreign to his understanding, that it took him several moments to identify it as gentleness.
"You're awake," she said softly.
That voice. It was unmistakably Elena Nightshade's. Yet it bore almost no resemblance to the Elena he knew—the one whose words typically fell like shards of ice, whose demeanor was consistently distant, deliberately remote. This voice carried something he had never heard before: warmth. A note of soft, genuine amusement seemed to shimmer beneath every syllable.
Marcus blinked repeatedly, as if he could somehow clear away the thick fog that seemed to coat his mind. But the fog persisted, stubborn and impenetrable.
Is this a dream? The thought crystallized in his half-conscious mind. It must be a dream. Because there's no other explanation. Elena Nightshade would never come to his room. She would never voluntarily seek his presence. And she certainly would never—could never—smile at him like that.
"Elena..." he mumbled her name, his speech slurred from sleep, and he began to struggle upward, pushing against the mattress.
But before he could complete the movement, a hand touched his cheek—cool to the touch, delicate as spun silk, with skin as fine and tender as the newest shoot of spring bamboo. The touch was gentle, almost reverential in its care.
The sensation jolted through him like electricity. That careful, almost apologetic contact carried with it an unfamiliar tenderness that froze him in place. His heart lurched, stumbled, then accelerated wildly, as if something had struck it—not violently, but with enough force to disrupt its rhythm completely.
What kind of dream is this? he wondered, his thoughts fragmenting. How could I possibly dream of Elena like this? How could she treat me this way, even in my subconscious fabrications?
Then—a moment of clarity cutting through the fog:
Positive Value!
The realization blazed through his drowsy mind like a sudden flame. Of course. That had to be it. He'd been diligently accumulating positive value, hadn't he? Wasn't the system constantly monitoring his actions, his choices, his interactions with Elena and Victoria? So naturally, his subconscious would construct this fantasy—a reward from the system itself, perhaps? A manifestation of his efforts taking tangible form?
Deep within his mind, a subtle sensation bloomed—the faintest ghost of a system notification, and alongside it, the sensation of his positive value meter incrementing slowly upward. Yes, yes, that made sense. Of course it made sense.
If this is a reward, then surely I should take maximum advantage of it.
With that rationalization complete, he abandoned any pretense of resistance. His body relaxed fully against the mattress, and he even tilted his cheek slightly into that cool palm, leaning into the contact with full cooperation, surrendering himself utterly to this beautiful dream. His voice emerged thick and slurred with sleep-induced abandon:
"Elena... keep touching me... it feels... so good..."
The woman in the wheelchair—Elena—paused. Her fingers stilled for a fraction of a second, barely perceptible. Deep within her eyes, something cold and dangerous flickered—a flash of fury, of ice, of something that could freeze oceans. But her face, her expression, remained meticulously composed. That smile she had so carefully constructed never wavered, never diminished by even a fraction.
She didn't withdraw her hand. Instead, she leaned in further, closing the distance between them.
" Marcus..." she whispered,
Her small face drew near to his in the pale moonlight, and the distinctive scent that clung to her—cold and aristocratic, like winter camellias blooming in frost—began to drift into his awareness in delicate waves.
Marcus's breath caught. His heart thundered harder. His eyelashes fluttered involuntarily, beating rapidly against his cheeks like a caged bird.
"Elena..." he breathed her name, and his arm rose of its own accord, his hand grasping the slender wrist that rested against his cheek.
Beneath his touch, her skin was smooth and cool, tender and impossibly fine—like the most exquisite mutton-fat jade, precious and perfect.
The curve of Elena's smile deepened, becoming something more complex, more dangerous—a smile that carried an almost hypnotic allure.
She leaned even nearer, until their faces were separated by mere inches, until he could see the intricate patterns of her irises in the darkness. Her large eyes—wide and gleaming—appeared almost childlike in their innocence, yet simultaneously possessed a magnetism that seemed capable of drawing the very soul from his body.
"You..." she began, her voice trembling with what sounded like nervousness, each word carefully modulated and perfectly pitched, "what are you going to do?"
Marcus felt the fingers on his cheek begin to move—a gentle, slow caress that traced the line of his jaw, sending waves of ticklish sensation cascading across his skin. His body was no longer his own to command; it responded to her touch with the mindless eagerness of a puppet.
Then her other hand rose, delicately brushing aside the slightly disheveled strands of dark hair that fell across his forehead. Her lips—thin and rosy, radiating warmth—drew close to his ear. When she spoke, her voice dropped to barely more than a whisper, each word like a soft breath:
"Marcus, did you... sleep well last night?"
And as she spoke, her fingertip drifted across his left earlobe with casual precision—a gesture that seemed playful, curious, accidental. But it was none of those things. She was checking, verifying, confirming something with the meticulous attention of a surgeon.
Elena's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and her gaze grew distant, calculating. The warm candlelight no longer reflected in her pupils; instead, it seemed to be swallowed by them, absorbed into something far colder—a frozen lake buried beneath winter ice.
Marcus, however, remained completely oblivious. He felt as though his ear was burning, as if it were being held over an open flame. Every nerve ending seemed to be converging on that single point of contact. His mind had become a wasteland, empty of all rational thought except for a single overwhelming certainty that roared through him like a storm:
Elena in this dream is extraordinary, absolutely intoxicating. This must be the system's ultimate reward, its finest offering, reserved for the most dedicated Host.
"I slept wonderfully," he murmured, his voice dreamy and foolish, and his arms tightened around her without conscious volition. He drew her closer, holding the softness and warmth against his chest, his tone taking on the particular sticky quality that only comes in dreams, when shame and inhibition have been entirely suspended:
"If you, Elena, could stay with me like this every night, if you'd let me hold you while we sleep... I'd sleep more soundly than ever before. Better than any medicine, better than any panacea..."
"Is that so?" Elena's response was measured, her eyes reflecting an inscrutable light in the dimness of early morning. As she answered with that soft, breathy voice, her hand—moving with practiced casualness—began to gently lift the thin down comforter that covered his body.
The cool air of the room rushed in. Marcus wore only light silk pajamas, yet he felt no cold, no instinct to pull the blanket back. All of his senses had contracted into a single point of focus: the delicious, burning weight of Elena's body as it settled more firmly against his chest.
She shifted her position with obvious intention, redistributing her weight so that more of her body pressed against his, so that her small face—delicate and refined—nestled into the hollow of his neck.
Marcus gasped sharply, his lungs suddenly starved for air. The scent of her—a complex mingling of the fragrance from her hair and her unique personal chemistry—invaded his senses with unmistakable force, threatening to overwhelm him entirely, threatening to make him lose consciousness from sheer sensation.
Elena remained draped across him, one small, cool hand still cradling his face with apparent tenderness, while the fingertips of her other hand began to move with deliberately casual grace. Like curious, mischievous butterflies, they began to trace patterns around his right earlobe, lingering, exploring, discovering—all while maintaining that facade of innocent, affectionate caress.