“If you like corpses, you might find my stepdaughter interesting.”
“Among us there are always people with… special tastes. Will the forest have something that pleases him?”
August 20—Cycle 7, the Endless Sea.
A blazing summer morning. Dense leaves outside the window filtered the hot wind, leaving the room cool and faintly green-scented.
In his room at Windrest Keep, Ethan Vale sat with Thea at the writing desk by the window. Two exquisite ribbons lay flat on the tabletop—both fished from props he’d obtained in the Sorrow Theater.
“Let’s start with a hypothesis,” Ethan said, taking out pen and paper. He wrote: “King” and “Queen.”
“Do you remember the song before the second-floor performance?” he asked.
Thea nodded. “Yeah. It said there was once a small country. The king died, and the queen took over as ruler.”
“Right.” Ethan crossed out “King.”
Thea’s golden eyes turned. “So you think the queen killed the king?”
“It’s possible,” Ethan said, “but it’s not the point.”
He picked up the first ribbon—pink, soft, and somehow too elegant for a place like the theater. The sentence stitched into it read:
“If you like corpses, you might find my stepdaughter interesting.”
“Assume these lines are from the queen’s perspective,” Ethan said. “Then we can infer a first queen existed before her—and left a daughter behind. That daughter is the stepdaughter.”
Thea leaned forward, following his logic. “And the stepdaughter isn’t… normal. She’s ‘like a corpse.’ The new queen hated her, so after the king died, she drove the stepdaughter into the forest.”
She grabbed the second ribbon—blue—and kept building the story, almost enjoying it:
“Then the neighboring prince arrives. The queen—now a ‘queen’—tries to secure an alliance and… you know. But the prince only likes corpses. The queen can’t fake it, so he gets mad and leaves, heading home through the border forest.”
Thea tapped the blue ribbon’s line:
“‘Will the forest have something that pleases him?’”
“So the forest does have someone who pleases him,” she concluded. “The stepdaughter. She teams up with the prince and his country, gets revenge on the stepmother, and takes back the throne. How’s that?”
Thea lifted her face, plainly waiting for praise.
Ethan paused, processing. Then he nodded. “It fits the known pieces.”
Thea beamed.
“But,” Ethan said, voice shifting, “if that’s true… what is the stepdaughter?”
He lifted the cinnabar cup from the theater. The print on it showed a mother giving birth—then dying, her abdomen torn open as if by a beast.
“Suppose the dead mother is the first queen,” Ethan said, “and the newborn is the stepdaughter—this ‘corpse-like’ child.”
Thea thought, then nodded.
Ethan continued, “How does a ‘corpse’ grow up? Does she develop like a normal human?”
“Hard to say,” Thea admitted. “She might only look like a corpse. Maybe she’s some cold-blooded creature. The Endless Sea—especially older eras—was full of strange things.”
“That’s fair.” Ethan’s gaze sharpened. “Then one last question.”
“If she’s alive and has sensation… then when the prince ‘enjoys himself’ with her in the forest—can she truly stay still, silent, unresponsive?”
In last night’s performance, when the queen tried to play dead but reacted, the prince lost interest immediately and stormed off.
“So if the prince truly obsessed over the stepdaughter,” Ethan said, “she’d have to be something that can’t move, can’t speak, can’t respond… like an actual corpse.”
Thea’s smile faded. She understood his implication.
Ethan set the cup down gently. “Which means the ‘stepdaughter’ might be an undead existence. Or something bound, controlled, or hollowed out.”
Thea’s tail flicked, uneasy. “So the theater’s story is pointing at a type of being.”
“And a taste,” Ethan said. “And whoever is writing the invitations knows exactly what kind of people they’re feeding.”
—
Later, in the underground Supernatural Materials Market, Qi Heng wandered through the cool corridors, still half-dazed from the Sorrow Theater and from the way his ‘mentor’ and the archmage treated the world like a chessboard.
He spotted a familiar figure in the crowd.
Rhine.
Ethan Vale—Player 0067.
Qi Heng started toward him, then noticed the young lady walking close at Rhine’s side, laughing with him like they’d known each other for ages.
Qi Heng’s brain helpfully supplied a dozen romantic subplots, then slapped itself. Get a grip.
He walked up anyway.
After greetings and introductions—Thea to Qi Heng, Qi Heng to Thea—Qi Heng explained he was here on an errand: he needed a gift for a business partner of the Violet Eye, specifically for the partner’s daughter.
“I have no idea what to buy,” Qi Heng admitted. “Any suggestions?”
Ethan considered, then led him to an herb stall and lifted a vivid red bud that looked like a tea rose.
“This,” Ethan said. “Dusk-Dawn Flower. It’s pretty, it smells like roses, and it’s practical.”
He explained the effect: in sunlight, the scent sharpened focus; at night, it calmed the mind and helped sleep. Unlike many supernatural herbs, it didn’t look or smell ‘weird,’ so a normal girl would actually accept it.
Qi Heng felt immediate relief. “That’s… perfect. How did I not think of that?”
He bought ten grams to make a sachet, thanked Ethan, and hurried off.
Thea waited until Qi Heng disappeared into the crowd, then lifted her chin. “You’re awfully good at this. Do you give girls gifts a lot?”
Ethan shot her a look. “Do I look like someone with money to burn?”
Thea smirked. “If the Violet Eye and that girl’s father are business allies… does that make us allies too?”
“No,” Ethan said, deadpan. “That makes us master and servant.”
Thea’s ears twitched. “Then pay me a wage.”
Ethan blinked. “What?”
Thea launched into a righteous lecture about contracts, factory owners, weekly wages, unions, and how ‘all employment relationships are improving’—and therefore he had no excuse.
Ethan stared, defeated by pure confidence. “Fine. What do you want?”
Thea immediately pointed at the herb stall. “Dusk-Dawn Flower.”
Ethan paused. “That’s it?”
He sighed and ordered ten grams.
“No,” Thea corrected sweetly, grabbing his sleeve. “Twenty.”
Ethan’s stare went blank. Then he nodded. “Twenty grams.”
—