The Night of the Monsters - Chapter 30

That was when it happened.

From within the ranks of the knights, a boy with jet-black hair came sprinting forward.

“Brothers!”

Dressed in fine garments, the boy ran straight to where Giselle knelt, his voice breaking with emotion.

Kneeling before the unrecognizably burned bodies, he shouted in anguish.

“What are you doing?! Move them, now!”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

“Ah—!”

No.

Giselle reached out instinctively, desperate to hold onto them. But pain shot through her hand as she was forcefully shoved away.

“Don’t touch them!”

That sharp voice—it was the same as the one she had used earlier, when she had rejected Ian. Tears welled in the boy’s large eyes, but the hatred in them was unmistakable.

His voice rang out, filled with fury.

“Witch! My brothers are dead because of you!”

“B-brothers?”

This time, she heard it clearly. Giselle’s lips moved soundlessly. She had never known they had a younger sibling. Hugo and Ian had never told her. Not once.

And as she stared at the boy’s grief-stricken, enraged face, it dawned on her—she had never asked. She had never once asked them why they had been abandoned. Never asked about their parents. Never asked what had happened at the castle.

Because… because if she had, and if she had realized they still longed for their old home, she would have done the only thing she thought was right—she would have tried to send them back.

And she had been terrified of that. Giselle shook her head violently. She had to save them.

She had to.

Maybe—maybe they were still alive.

“You killed them. They died because of you.”

Her last, fragile hope crumbled beneath the boy’s ice-cold words.

The spirits that had always lingered by her side shouted something, but she heard none of it.

Hugo and Ian were everything to her.

Her world.

Her joy.

Her happiness.

And if that world had collapsed, then she had no reason to live, either. Drowning in despair, she barely registered the next words.

“What did they say to you before they died?”

She lifted her head, her vacant eyes brimming with silent tears. They had told her that, in the end, she would love them. They had told her never to forget who had killed them.

Her cracked lips trembled as she forced out a hoarse whisper.

And the boy—his voice as cold as death itself—answered.

“Then you must love them forever.”

“……”

“You must never forget. Never forget who it was you killed with those hands.”

Creak. Creak.

The gears of fate began to turn. But they did not align properly. They had been forced forward too many times, their edges dulled and worn. Lost in sorrow, Giselle noticed nothing.

Not how the boy had immediately recognized the charred remains before him. Not how he had known, without hesitation, that they were Hugo and Ian. Not how the people around her had tried to help her. Not how an eerie silence had fallen over this unnatural scene.

She saw none of it.

And then, Leslie spoke.

“You must live your entire life in atonement.”

She had no choice. She would spend the rest of her life atoning.