Staring at the withered hand wreathed in unholy, crimson flames, the assassin’s expression remained eerily calm. She extended her own right hand—the one clutching the dagger—and offered it to the skeletal palm.

The withered hand’s fingers slowly curled, gripping her wrist.

Sssss…

The demonic flames leaped hungrily, and the sickening stench of burning flesh, acrid and foul, filled the room. The assassin’s face went deathly pale, cold sweat beading on her forehead as she endured some unimaginable agony. And yet, her eyes burned with a fanatical, ecstatic fervor, like a devout martyr witnessing the very descent of her god.

A moment later, the hand released its grip and retracted into the swirling black vortex, which then sealed itself shut as if it had never been. The terrifying aura vanished, but the unholy flames remained, now clinging to the assassin’s right hand and the dagger she held, burning with a malevolent, silent intensity.

“A Dark Priestess?” Celicia’s voice cut through the air, laced with a fury so profound it was almost a physical force. “You sewer rats… how dare you show your faces before me again?”

“Rats? To a high and mighty princess such as yourself, I suppose that is all we are.” The assassin looked up, her cold eyes reflecting the crimson flames and Celicia’s own pale, beautiful face. Her expression was a mask of pure mockery. “But alas, Your Highness. You are about to be exterminated by a lowly rat.”

She vanished again.

And reappeared directly in front of Celicia.

The flaming dagger, arcing through the air at a wicked, indefensible angle, stabbed mercilessly toward Celicia’s heart.

“Hmph. In your dreams!”

With a cold snort, a far more terrifying chill than before erupted from Celicia’s slender frame. The very air around her flash-froze, the ensuing storm of ice magic powerful enough to shred steel.

But it lasted for only an instant. A split second so brief that it couldn’t halt the assassin’s charge, only managing to nudge the dagger’s trajectory ever so slightly off course.

Because in the next moment, the arctic chill simply… vanished. Snuffed out. Utterly and completely gone.

Celicia froze, her mind reeling from the shock before her sharp intellect caught up. She stared at the crimson flames licking at the assassin’s hand. “As I thought. A power designed specifically to counter mine.”

Her ice was a divine blessing, the power of a fundamental law of the world. It was not mere magic; it was the rule of absolute zero. In theory, she could freeze fire itself. But that power was now useless, sealed away by an opposing, unholy law that burned on the assassin’s blade. She couldn’t even conjure her simple ice sword.

“But do you truly believe that is enough to kill me?”

Celicia’s composure returned in a flash. Her strength did not come solely from the grace of a goddess.

Before the assassin could launch a second strike, she surged forward. She did not retreat; she advanced. Her slender fingers came together into a rigid blade-hand, and a sharp, crackling battle aura flared to life around her palm as she struck, aiming for the assassin’s chest.

“I almost forgot. Your Highness’s martial prowess is not to be underestimated. A pity…”

The assassin did not dodge. Instead, she met Celicia’s strike with a palm of her own. Their battle auras clashed in a brutal, explosive stalemate. The resulting shockwave whipped the assassin’s neatly-trimmed hair back from her face. Her expression remained as cold as a tombstone.

“A pity that, due to your over-reliance on your ice sword, you, a master of swordplay, carry no mundane blade for defense. And in your supreme arrogance, you deign not to carry defensive magical artifacts.”

“!” Celicia’s expression remained a mask of ice, but deep in her eyes, a flicker of something—a fatal realization—flashed for an instant.

“And therefore—”

The battle aura on the assassin’s palm suddenly reversed, creating a powerful suction force that trapped Celicia’s hand. Taking Celicia’s blow head-on had clearly injured her, but it had served its purpose. The princess now had nowhere to run.

“Therefore, I believe I can still kill you.”

The assassin’s right hand was already raised high. She held the dagger in a reverse grip, aimed at a vital point, ensuring this next blow would be precise, powerful, and absolutely lethal.

Death, once again, raised its scythe.

This time, it was truly checkmate.

…

“Damn it, what in the ever-loving hell was I thinking?!”

Huddled in the corner, Ewan suddenly slapped himself hard across the face, the stinging pain a desperate attempt to snap himself out of the dark, seductive, and utterly unforgivable line of thought he’d been entertaining.

He couldn’t believe himself. He had actually, for one horrifying moment, wanted Celicia to die. For his own selfish survival, he had been rooting for the assassin.

“It’s true,” his treacherous mind whispered. “If Celicia dies, no one will ever know what I did. I’d get to live.”

“But… after what I did to her… to an innocent young woman… I was actually thinking of letting her be murdered, just to save my own skin?”

“What kind of ultimate, rock-bottom, shameless, irredeemable scumbag does that make me?! She’s the innocent one here! None of this was her fault!”

Ewan slammed his fist onto the floor, the sharp pain a welcome anchor in his sea of self-loathing. And with that clarity came a crushing, suffocating wave of guilt.

He was right. From start to finish, Celicia was blameless. She had been invited to this room because of his cowardice, drugged because of his villainy, and had her purity stolen because of his foolishness. And now, because of his one, single, idiotic oversight, she was about to lose her life.

This wasn’t her story. She was supposed to meet the love of her life, to have a happy, brilliant future. She was not supposed to die here, in this room, because of him!

“No. I can’t just stand by and watch this happen. I have to help her!”

Ewan clenched his fists, a sliver of desperate resolve burning in his eyes. But as he looked up at the life-and-death struggle unfolding before him, that resolve quickly guttered and died.

“How… how the hell am I supposed to help?”

He couldn’t even follow the assassin’s movements. He had no divine blessing. He recognized the assassin’s ritual as that of a Dark Priestess from the novel, a profane rite to borrow power from a dark god. That was a tier of power so far beyond him it was laughable.

He was a pampered duke’s son. A disposable blond villain whose only purpose was to be a stepping stone. He was a first-year slacker at a magic academy whose entire known repertoire of spells consisted of a single, useless “Light” cantrip.

He was completely and utterly useless.

“Maybe… the best way I can help… is by not getting in the way?”

He was like one of those well-meaning but incompetent characters in a bad drama who only makes things worse. Perhaps just staying put was the best, most heroic thing he could do.

“Celicia can win. She has to,” Ewan muttered, the words a desperate prayer to convince his own cowardly heart. “She’s so strong… she doesn’t need my help.”

…

Click.

A soft, crisp sound suddenly echoed from behind him. It was the distinct sound of a lock disengaging.

“It is almost over. You may leave now, Ewan Campbell.”

The same weak, disembodied voice from before whispered in his ear.