Mira's hand stilled on his cock, still coated with his thick release. She turned sharply toward him, worry flooding her green eyes. "My lord?!"

Across from them, Elara had finally managed to untangle herself from Kaida's hit. She sat back, one hand rubbing her ribcage where Kaida's skull had jabbed her during the fall.

Each breath came shallow and sharp—one of her ribs felt bruised, maybe cracked. The pain pulsed with every inhale.

But as she lifted her gaze, her eyes caught something.

Viktor's hand.

His fingers.

They were glistening.

Wet.

Dripping.

A clear, viscous fluid coated his middle and index fingers, catching the dim light filtering through the carriage windows.

The liquid was translucent, slightly sticky-looking, clinging to his skin as his hand trembled from the pain in his head.

A thin strand of it stretched between his fingers as he flexed them unconsciously.

Elara's gaze dropped lower.

To Mira's hand, partially visible beneath the edge of the blanket covering their laps.

Her fingers were coated too—but with something different. Something white. Thick. Creamy. It clung to her palm and knuckles, glistening obscenely in the shadows. Some of it had begun to dry at the edges, forming translucent streaks across her skin.

And then Elara's eyes moved to Kaida.

Kaida sat with her legs pulled back as far as possible, rubbing furiously at her bare foot with a piece of cloth.

Her face was twisted in disgust, her jaw clenched so hard the tendons stood out in her neck. The muscles in her forearms flexed with each violent scrub.

And on her foot—smeared across her toes and the arch—was that same white substance.

The same liquid from Mira's hand.

Elara blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Her mind tried to process what she was seeing. The pieces were there, laid out before her like a puzzle she didn't want to solve.

'Where... where did that liquid come from?'

She looked at Viktor's fingers again. At the clear fluid dripping down to his knuckles.

At Mira's hand with its coating of white.

At Kaida's foot, still being scrubbed clean with increasing desperation.

'What is—'

Her thoughts stuttered to a halt.

A hot flush crept up her neck. Her stomach did something strange—half revulsion, half something she refused to name.

She didn't want to know.

She couldn't know.

Her brain refused to connect the dots, refused to acknowledge what her eyes were screaming at her. It was as if some protective barrier in her mind simply… shut down. Locked the door. Threw away the key.

So she just blinked again and looked away, fixing her gaze on the floor of the carriage. Her face heated despite herself. The air in the small space suddenly felt suffocating.

"Young Master, please!" Helena's voice pulled everyone's attention back to Viktor.

She had moved closer, her thick body pressing against his side as both hands gripped his arm with surprising strength.

Her brown eyes were wide with worry, maternal instinct overriding everything else—even the lingering embarrassment of having just orgasmed in a moving carriage, her thighs still sticky beneath her dress.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt? Is it your head?" Her questions tumbled out rapid-fire, her fingers already reaching up to check his forehead for fever. Her palm pressed against his skin, searching for signs of illness.

Mira leaned in from the other side, her hand—still sticky with his cum—abandoning his softening cock to cup his face. The cooling fluid smeared slightly against his cheek. "My lord, talk to us. What happened?"

"Mira... you just rubbed my cum—"

Viktor's jaw clenched, but he couldn't find the words to respond in front of everyone after Mira had just rubbed his seed on his face.

His eyes squeezed shut as another wave of pain rolled through his skull, sharp and piercing, like someone was driving nails through his temples. The throbbing intensified, making his vision swim even behind closed eyelids.

'Why does my head hurt—' Viktor did not understand why his head was hurting when he was trying to recall the contents of that ring.

The dirty black demon's horn, eyes of a slimy, disease-ridden shell.

Fragments of that dream surfaced through the pain. Dark images. A name.

He remembered now.

'Rian Millbrook!?'

The word echoed in his mind, carrying weight he couldn't quite grasp. Something important. Something crucial.

"Shit... don't tell me—"

He was not dense enough to ignore the fact that the territory he had been banished to had the same name as the demon from his dream.

Viktor's eyes snapped open. He lurched forward, shoving himself toward the carriage door while it moved slowly. His hand grabbed the frame for balance.

'!'

His gaze locked onto the village ahead.

And his blood ran cold.

The village wasn't just poor—it was dying from the inside out.

Broken houses lined the dirt path, their walls cracked like dried riverbeds under a merciless sun.

Roofs were patched with rotting straw and moldy planks that looked ready to collapse at the next strong wind.

Some structures had already partially caved in, their inhabitants apparently too weak or too defeated to repair them.

The so-called marketplace was a joke—a few stalls barely standing, most empty except for withered vegetables that looked more like mummified corpses than food, and bread spotted with mold that had turned fuzzy and green.

Between the houses, the earth was bare. Not the natural bare of well-trodden paths, but the sickly bare of poisoned soil.

Wild grass had been choked out by weeds and strange plants with purplish leaves and thorny stems that looked more poisonous than edible. Nothing healthy grew here.

Even the air seemed heavy, carrying a faint stench of rot and decay.

And the people...

Viktor's jaw clenched, muscles jumping beneath his skin.

Malnourished. Hollow-eyed. Walking skeletons wrapped in rags that might have once been clothing but now served as little more than ceremonial acknowledgment of modesty.

They moved through the streets like ghosts who'd forgotten they were dead, their steps slow and shuffling, their gazes empty of hope or even basic awareness.

Aldrin, who had already visited here once, leaned back in his driver's seat, wrinkling his nose in disgust. "What a waste of a stop. Not a soul here could afford a single copper, much less what I'm hauling."

Viktor's eyes snapped to him, cold enough to freeze blood mid-flow.

The merchant flinched, his body instinctively recoiling. "I—I just meant—"

"Stop the carriage."

The command was quiet but absolute.

Aldrin's hands jerked on the reins before he'd consciously decided to obey. The carriage rolled to a halt, wheels crunching on the dry, poisoned earth.

Viktor shoved the door open and stepped out, his boots hitting the dirt with a dull thud. Dust puffed up around his feet, carrying that same sickly-sweet smell of decay.

His gaze swept across the village, taking in every crack in every wall, every hollow face peering from darkened doorways, every patch of poisoned ground spreading like a disease through what should have been fertile farmland.

Helena and Mira climbed out behind him, their movements hesitant. Kaida and Elara followed, with Toby clinging to Kaida's hand, his small fingers wrapped tight around hers.

His eyes darted around nervously, taking in the strange, dying place with a child's unfiltered fear.

Aldrin, already terrified of pissing Viktor off more than he already had, stayed inside the carriage, peering out with barely concealed disgust twisting his features.

'Why did this baron bring me back to this shithole—!'

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