Leon’s mind was in a complete haze.

Neither Seraphina nor her explosive actions made sense.

Her words made even less sense.

He could not bring himself to move, and more than that, he did not dare to forcibly pull away from the tight embrace.

It felt as though time itself had come to a standstill within the office while she cried against his shoulder.

‘What in the…’

…world was happening?

‘Why is she…’

Before he could fully process the bizarre development, Seraphina’s weight suddenly shifted, and her trembling body slumped forward heavily against his chest.

Leon adjusted his posture out of pure reflex, but instead of correcting her balance, her entire frame went completely limp, falling helplessly into his arms.

“This…”

His eyes widened.

She was fast asleep.

From this position, she looked less like a world-ending threat and more like a child who had cried herself into a state of pure exhaustion.

Her expression was soft and defenseless, in a way that did not match anything he knew.

The monstrous woman who would one day reduce this world to ash in a matter of seconds… was peacefully resting in his arms, her cheeks still stained with fresh tears, not as a woman, but as a juvenile girl.

It was… a very strange view to hold.

Just then—

Click. Clatter.

The heavy office doors burst open as a group of maids rushed into the room. A tall woman with sharp, snake-like eyes led the pack. Judging by the silver brooch pinned to her chest, Leon could tell she was the Head Maid.

The servants stopped dead in their tracks, their breaths catching at the shocking sight of a limp and unconscious Seraphina resting in the arms of a handsome young stranger.

The Head Maid’s gaze shifted rapidly from Seraphina’s tear-stained face, up to Leon's expressionless eyes, and then right back down to her young mistress.

In an instant, the veins along her neck and forehead almost exploded as she spoke, her professional veneer slipping away.

“This pathetic vixen…!”

Leon’s eyes narrowed at her sharp tone.

‘Vixen?’

He looked down at the girl in his arms.

There was no doubt that the insult was directed at Seraphina.

Still, the sheer audacity of the statement was jarring.

A mere servant speaking with such blatant disrespect about a noble daughter would have been executed on the spot in any typical aristocratic estate.

And yet—

Tap. Tap.

The sharp sound of fingers knocking against the desk drew Leon’s attention back across the room.

Duke Zorack clicked his tongue in irritation, his green eyes locked onto the Head Maid.

“What exactly have you been doing, Veri?”

His voice carried a lethal baritone that sent a visible chill down the woman's spine.

“Can you not see that your incompetence has made our guest uncomfortable?”

“M-My Grace…!”

Veri stumbled over her words, her arrogant composure breaking instantly.

“She… she broke out of her quarters while we were attempting to feed her, and…!”

She shot the sleeping Seraphina with a look of clear displeasure and disgust.

“What a thoroughly unpleasant sight…!”

“Haa…”

The Duke exhaled tiredly, waving his hand dismissively.

“See to it that she is properly fed.”

“Y-Yes, my Grace!”

Without wasting another second to anger her master, Veri gestured for the subordinate maids to follow her.

She cast one last curious glance at Leon before lifting Seraphina's frail body with the help of the others, hurriedly carrying her away into the corridor.

Leon slowly stood up from the floor, brushing the dust off his fine shirt.

“Harold, ensure that our young guest is properly attended to,” Zorack instructed with a small gesture toward the door.

“Yes, my Lord.” Harold bowed.

Turning around, he offered a formal nod.

“Please follow me, Young Master Leon.”

As Leon turned his back to leave the office, the Duke’s voice echoed one last time.

“We will speak again very soon, Leon.”

Leon glanced over his shoulder, giving a silent nod before stepping out into the hallway.

Feeling unsettled, he followed the butler as the doors clicked shut behind them.

◈—◈—◈—◈—◈

The rest of the day passed quickly.

After exiting the Duke’s office, Harold escorted Leon back to the guest suite, informing him that the Duke would send word soon before taking his leave.

Not long after, Veri arrived at his door, her professional mask fully restored as she inquired about his food preferences and other necessities, which she would arrange.

Leon dismissed her quickly with a few polite and hollow words.

Evening bled into night, and before long, midnight settled over the estate.

Leon lay back on the soft bed.

It should have made him sleepy, but his mind refused to rest.

It would have been far stranger if he could sleep given the circumstances.

The events of the day had left his thoughts in disarray.

The intense morning negotiation, Seraphina’s arrival, and the strange dynamics of this household all lingered in his mind like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

Everything felt off.

‘Where do I even begin…’

His thoughts turned first to the alliance.

He had successfully secured a partnership with Armathorne, but it was incredibly fragile.

Zorack’s acceptance did not mean that he would leave matters as they were.

Leon’s knowledge of the demonic seed, despite lacking any divine abilities, suggested that an information leak existed somewhere.

But it did not.

It could have been in a later timeline, but Leon dismissed it.

At this point, House Armathorne had very few political enemies, and as the Empire’s so-called protectors, they held a nearly untouchable position.

Even during Leon’s dark years operating within the underworld, there had never been a trace of information regarding a noble heir carrying a demonic seed.

That meant the secret was being guarded flawlessly.

Or—

‘The Duke has either paid off or murdered every single soul who found out.’

That possibility could not be ignored.

Either way, Leon had given the Duke something to think about.

Since he knew the truth, it would only be a matter of time before Zorack tried to determine who could have leaked the information or how Leon had learned it.

The Duke was confident no one would ever uncover the truth as long as Seraphina successfully kept the seed suppressed, and he wasn't wrong.

She would not awaken until much later, near the time of the Great War.

That was only a fraction of the equation, though.

The second reason for his confidence lay within the geography of the Armathorne territory itself.

It hadn't taken Leon long to piece the layout together.

The teleportation portal had dropped him outside the primary territory, and the moment he had passed through the massive iron gates, he had noticed two things.

First, the entire estate was enclosed within a multi-layered barrier.

Second, the territory was surrounded by the vast expanse of the Great Narkon Forest.

The second point explained the first.

The Narkon Forest was a breeding ground for rare mythical beasts. It was an untamed wilderness under the empire’s military and guarded by Armathorne.

With the recent increase in the world’s Cracks, demons would inevitably spill into the forest, bleeding demonic energy into the environment.

Under normal conditions, that would be dangerous to anyone living nearby.

But having a barrier changed that.

Leon could tell.

Though Aura could not be directly used for sensing, which was a limitation of the class, decades of training compensated for that lack in other ways.

Aura Knights relied on sharpened physical perception, experience, and instinct.

Subtle details like shifts in air pressure, posture, movement, and timing all mattered.

The higher a knight's rank, the more refined those senses became.

As a High Knight, Leon’s instincts were particularly sharp.

At times, he could effortlessly perceive the underlying instincts of entities around him.

That awareness extended far beyond humans to wild beasts and demons alike.

Demonic instincts carried a vile and active intent, filled with bloodlust and the urge to devour.

Leon had sensed it lurking just outside the estate gates.

The Narkon Forest was crawling with such presences.

Yet, the moment he had stepped inside the barrier, the sensation had shifted.

His Aura resisted the barrier’s energy, and the oppressive demonic pressure had faded into nothingness.

That confirmed it.

The barrier prevented demons from entering the estate.

Combined with elite and heavily armed guards stationed at the gates, any immediate threat from the forest would be handled instantly.

But more importantly, the barrier served a secondary purpose.

Any accidental leakage of demonic energy from Seraphina's body would be masked.

Even if an imperial inquisitor or a holy sword detected a faint trace of such energy within the estate, it could easily be misattributed to a random demon attempting to breach the defenses.

There were many reasons for the Duke’s confidence.

Still, Leon could not be certain how many individuals within this estate actually knew the truth.

At first, he had safely assumed the secret was limited to the Duke and Seraphina.

But Harold’s awareness suggested otherwise.

It was highly possible there were others who knew of it as well.

If the Duke eventually concluded that no one outside had leaked the information, his paranoia would inevitably shift inward to his own people.

And if no one within the estate could be blamed, then Leon himself would become the obvious target.

“How?”

How could the second-born son of the distant House Serpentine know a secret that had never once been exposed to the light of day, something that even the highest sensors of the Divinity Temple would fail to detect?

Zorack would then launch an investigation into Leon’s background, but of course, he would find nothing.

Leon’s knowledge came from an entirely different timeline.

There was no way the Duke could reach that answer.

And when he fails to do so, he would turn his blade toward the one person without a clear source.

Soon enough—

‘He will decide to eliminate me.’

Leon exhaled slowly.

‘But not just yet…’

Even if the Duke reached that conclusion, he wouldn't act immediately.

Zorack Armathorne was a prideful man, but he was also practical.

He would use Leon as a meat shield for as long as he remained useful, especially with an alliance in place. He would likely wait until the conclusion of Seraphina’s academy years before arranging for it.

What the Duke didn't know, however, was that Leon intended to execute Seraphina long before graduation ever arrived.

What would come after that event, though…

Leon paused, his eyes narrowing in the dark.

‘Right… that's the real problem.’

His decision to form this alliance had been designed to protect House Serpentine from the apocalyptic Great War that would inevitably follow her death.

But that fragile alliance would collapse the moment he kills her.

At least, that had been his original assumption.

Until today.

After speaking with the Duke and witnessing the dynamics of the Armathorne household firsthand, Leon was no longer certain.

With no reliable information about Armathorne, Seraphina’s childhood, or her relationship with her family in the game’s lore, he could only rely on what he had seen.

And what he had seen was far from reassuring.

“A wench of a girl.”

“It seems the wench arrived on her own.”

The Duke’s cold words echoed clearly in his mind.

‘A wench…’

What kind of father spoke about his own blood like that?

Then there was—

“To think you are the same age as my daughter and yet…”

Leon could only assume the comparison was about capability, but even that felt off.

From what Leon remembered of the game, Seraphina had always been described as the untouchable, golden child of Armathorne. A prodigious heir feared and celebrated by her peers.

Nothing he had witnessed today matched that image.

Then there was the Head Maid’s outright hostility.

“This pathetic vixen…!”

“What a thoroughly unpleasant sight…!”

Her tone had been openly disrespectful, something that would never be tolerated in a noble house.

It would have gotten her head severed in the Serpentine household before she could even blink.

Yet, the Duke hadn't reacted to it.

Instead, he had been far more annoyed by the inconvenience of Seraphina’s presence in his office than the fact that a common servant was degrading her.

It wasn't difficult to read between the lines.

They were not treating her well.

‘Why…?’

If the Duke resented her because she carried a demonic seed, that would explain some of it.

But then why protect her?

In every single iteration Leon had experienced, the Duke had gone to extreme lengths to conceal her condition until the very end.

From a political standpoint, that made sense.

But if he truly despised her existence, he had far cleaner options available.

He could have executed her before she noticed and disposed of the problem.

Or, he could have personally marched her to the Imperial Capital, presenting her to the Emperor to elevate his own standing as a loyal paragon who put the empire above his own corrupted blood.

But he had done neither.

None of the math was adding up.

Leon did not possess enough information to draw a firm conclusion.

‘I need to observe closely.’

Even so, none of those mysteries were half as unsettling as what had actually transpired between him and Seraphina.

“Haa…”

He rested his arms behind his head, replaying the memory in the darkness of his room.

Her tears. The embrace. The word she had whispered directly against his ear.

“Mine.”

A chill ran down his spine.

This was not the Seraphina he knew.

In every past iteration, she had regarded his existence with nothing but ice-cold hostility whenever their paths crossed.

On the battlefield, their only true interactions had ended with his execution.

She had always been destruction given physical form.

Nothing less, nothing more.

Yet today, she seemed like an entirely different entity.

A disheveled girl whose guard had been completely lowered and her emotions entirely unrestrained.

There had been no trace of the figure he associated with war and ruin.

‘It makes no sense.’

He could not comprehend why she had clung to his clothes as if she had known him, nor could he decipher the underlying meaning behind her words.

She had muttered something about dreams and eyes, but without proper context, it only made Leon think she was quite crazy to begin with.

It was plausible, on a longer thought.

Then again, who ran into the arms of a complete stranger like that?

The lingering memory of her small hands grasping his face made his skin prickle with deep unease.

Leon could not discern whether this behavioral shift was the direct result of entering the Special Route or if she had always been this broken before the official story began.

Either way, it complicated things.

He stared up at the dark chandelier, unmoving. Outside his window, the night sky stretched out over the peninsula, filled with a cold blanket of stars.

It was calm, almost too calm.

“Mine.”

The word echoed again.

It was like a curse in the silence of his mind.

‘Whatever she meant by that…’

He tightly closed his eyes.

He hoped it was a passing delusion he had been unfortunate enough to get dragged into.

If that was the case, then this escort job was going to be far more troublesome than he had expected.

“Haa…”

He exhaled one final time into the empty room.

‘I will think of it tomorrow.’

It had been a long day.

Slowly, Leon let his consciousness drift.

As sleep finally claimed his mind, the last image burned into his thoughts was Seraphina, weeping into his shoulder.