로그인Her heart raced aloud. Only at this moment did she realized how the situation she faced was. The fact is, the butler had left her inside a room with a man, an adult man! The young master wasn't young as she had guessed, instead, he was a well matured, tall man with a frightening power on the grip that tightened around her wrist.
With such large hands, crushing her bone felt... like a cakewalk.
Oh no!
"I- I'm hired here as your servant!" She said, hoping this could somehow placate the man before her. She couldn't see but her other senses could feel that the figure standing before her was towering and enormous.
"I heard," he said languidly, the way he spoke she could imagine a face bared from a smile. Instead it would be a gaze that so sharp and burning with anger. "But who told you that you can simply enter my room as you please?"
Jane furrowed her brows as her wrists ache. The more he spoke, the tighter the grip around her bone became.
"B- But the butler..."
"The butler serves another person," he said with a faint scoff beneath his voice, as if he was mocking her choice of answer. "And coincidentally that person wants me dead. So do you know that coming inside my room in a moment when I'm asleep is the same as attempting to kill me?"
Attempting to... attempting to what? Kill?
"N- No!"
But before her words could finish she felt another hand moving from her shoulders and now stopping at her neck. She knew she didn't have a thick neck, but it wasn't small per say either. Somehow the man in front of her had covered her neck, circling his finger to the point that its fingertips could touch.
He was going to strangle her!
Tears welled on her eyes as fear caught her.
She didn't know why. She couldn't see the man's face, couldn't figure out his emotions based on it, but a keen instinct warned her, as if she knew that the man would kill her. The only reason he hadn't... was perhaps because he was trying to gouge more information from her or maybe even because it's quite amusing to him.
Amusing... her life was going to disappear because someone found it amusing.
"You know," then the man said, snapping her daze. She found herself lifting her face to look at the man despite the fact that she couldn't in this pitch black darkness. She was still staring up at his face, finding a grin she could imagine it would etch on his lips. "I hate silence."
Her brain rushed to work. Steam almost seeped from her ears with how hard she tried her best to think of an idea to survive the predicament.
"Y- Your eyes..." she mumbled.
The butler's words echoed in her ears.
<The young master can get violent if there's no entertainment>
"I will be your eyes..." she whispered, shutting her eyes as she felt her own lashes trembling faintly. "I will be your servant and... no one else's..."
"Eyes, ah," The man's strangling hand paused. "But wouldn't it be faster for me to gouge your eyes and replace mine?"
"Hic," a hiccup slipped from her mouth before she realized it. Crazy!
The man was quiet. His hands weren't moving anymore for a long painful silence. She knew her life was being weighed, whether it allowed to continue or not.
And at that moment she prayed her hardest to survive. She didn't want to die yet.. especially in such a dark place! She was scared... scared to the point of sobbing but a part of her figured he wouldn't be impressed if she sob her way out of this.
"Fine." suddenly the voice decided and his hands disappeared from her neck.
Fine?
She blinked and felt that his entire presence disappeared from her for a moment. She wondered if he could suddenly disappear because she could feel nothing at all.
"The candles are somewhere on your left. As for the matches it should be inside the cupboard. Who knows whether it still works or not, there hasn't been anyone who tried to light the candles here, after all."
H- Huh?
Jane blinked as the tears that earlier welled up in her eyes began to drip on her cheeks.
Was that it? Was he allowing her to live?
Earlier he felt so frisky, like someone who was ready to get violent. She doubted that he stopped because he was feeling merciful, or maybe that he felt guilty as she was a woman.
But he stepped back.
Quietly, Jane did what he said. It was important to know where she was instead of questioning. When she felt her way around the top of the cupboard, something sharp pricked her fingers, thankfully it didn't draw any blood. She made sure the smooth surface was a candle and then went to open the cupboard, still not paying attention of how quiet everything had became.
As she grew excited for finding a match, she readily flick one of the match to the side of the box, yellow friction sparked before a bright flame appeared and just then she was faced with a sudden appearance of a head looking back at her.
It wasn't a head of a person.
It was a head without a body.
The head was placed like an ornament on the wall before her, with dry blood all around its face. There was no way a head of a human could just be nailed to the wall but it did. Jane knew it was a human man's head. She didn't know who it belonged to, but the skin texture and the way the man's eyes stared at her, lifeless without a single light shining from its eyes tell her that the man was dead, perhaps before his head was even severed.
What was even more frightening was there was an arrow stuck to the man's forehead, which was what used to nail the head to the wall and there was a frightening expression on the man's face, as if... he had just seen Hell and was about to run away from it only to be caught.
Though faint, Jane could even see two dots beside its neck. Not a dot, but a deep wound as if it was made by fangs. The head then dangled, or perhaps not dangled, Jane wasn't sure because her eyes had turned dizzy and in that instant a pitch black darkness quickly consumed her.
By the time she realized what happened, her head had hit sharply against the wooden floor and her conscious was taken away from her body entirely.
She could hear the sound of a laughter coming from behind her and before the light from the match could disappear, she found a blue eyed angel looking down at her, smiling a smile that only a devil would have shown.
"You seem to be quite entertaining," whispered the man. "But how long do you think you will remain entertaining? If you aren't careful... you're going to be the next head hanging there."
The only thing Jane could see before as her viewpoint grew smaller was the lips that had languidly spoken. The smile on that man's lips tell her that what she was going to face from now on was Hell.
She had entered Hell.
In the morning, Jane went to eat alongside the other maids in the servant dining hall. Although she was eating there, it didn't mean that she was with the maids or that they had somehow come to accept her as one of them. Instead, it was quite the opposite.The maids, whether it was under Annie's orders or simply because they had all fallen under her influence, none of them wanted to come anywhere near Jane. The seats surrounding her remained noticeably empty despite the dining hall being crowded with servants. Conversations that had been lively only moments before would gradually quiet down whenever she walked past, and if by chance someone happened to sit close to her, they would eventually find an excuse to move somewhere else. Without throwing insults or exchanging harsh words, they had managed to isolate her from everyone else in the manor.At first, the treatment had bothered Jane. Every meal felt awkward, and every silent glance or deliberate avoidance reminded her that she did
Although she had let out quite a lot of grumbles throughout the day, if she were being truthful, what Victor had done for her was no different from teaching. It was something she had always longed for but had never possessed the privilege to receive. While other children learned from parents, tutors, or kind strangers willing to spare a little time, she had spent most of her life watching from the sidelines, convinced that education belonged only to people born into better circumstances than her.She couldn't tell whether Victor was helping her because there truly was a trace of goodwill hidden somewhere beneath his cold exterior, or because he was simply bored and found amusement in extending mercy whenever it suited him. Perhaps it was neither. Perhaps he merely found her useful enough to invest his time in. Whatever his reason was, she could not bring herself to reject it.Either way, Jane spent the entire day buried in the books Arnold had lent her regarding mental illnesses. She
“It doesn’t.. sound like a loving marriage.” Jane couldn’t help but say it aloud, unable to stop herself from voicing the thought. She wanted to see what Victor had to say, expecting perhaps a frown or a quiet denial, only to find him smiling instead. Not a wide smile, but one that looked oddly amused, as though he had been waiting for someone to reach that conclusion.“I did think they were in love,” Victor tapped his finger on the book and hummed thoughtfully before continuing, “the fact is, my father love to chase and my mother knew that better than anyone else. To keep him under her lash, what she had to do was to show she would never become his own.”Jane blinked slowly, trying to understand those words. It sounded contradictory, yet somehow it also made a strange kind of sense when she imagined the two people he was describing.“That means your mother had planned everything?” She asked carefully as she wondered if there is anyone in the world who would allow themselves to be loc
Although his words carried a faint bitterness, when Jane looked at his face, what she saw was not resentment but someone merely stating facts as they were. There was no grievance hidden beneath his expression, no trace of anger or lingering sorrow. He spoke with the calm indifference of someone recalling yesterday's weather rather than pieces of his own childhood. It was strangely unsettling. Victor genuinely seemed unable to find anything wrong with the life he had lived, almost as though he had long accepted every hardship as something entirely ordinary.That was what confused Jane the most.Victor was always someone who placed himself above everyone else. He was selfish, proud, and rarely willing to compromise whenever it came to his own interests. Yet strangely enough, when it came to the course of his own life, he seemed to have possessed almost no choices at all. Where he lived, whom he would marry, even how he spent his childhood... every decision had apparently been made by so
Something seemed to have snapped inside Morningstar. Despite always being a man who wore a smile regardless of danger or insult, this time he genuinely looked as though he had reached his limit. What his subordinate had said had gone too far. The man hadn't merely tried to force him into making a decision. He had questioned him, challenged him, and openly implied that he was weak. Evangeline couldn't tell which offense had angered Morningstar more, but whatever it was, it had clearly struck a nerve.For a brief moment, Morningstar simply stood there staring at the man on the ground. Then he slowly raised a hand toward him. Almost immediately, something akin to a sphere of black energy began gathering above his palm. Darkness swirled and compressed together, twisting into a mass so dense that even Evangeline could feel the pressure radiating from it. The atmosphere inside the cave became heavier. The shadows around them seemed darker. Morningstar was going to bring that same hand down
But seeing her suddenly fall silent and pretend she had nothing more to say, Victor looked distinctly displeased. One of his brows slowly rose while his face settled into an openly judgmental expression, as though he were the one most offended by her little act. His fingers began tapping lightly against the wooden table in a slow, rhythmic tick... tock... tick... tock..., each quiet tap making the growing silence inside the office feel increasingly uncomfortable."If you have nothing else to do," Victor finally said, "then leave."For a brief moment, the words visibly struck Vanessa. Jane caught the subtle flicker immediately. The confidence that had been sitting comfortably upon the woman's face faltered ever so slightly before she quietly composed herself again. She lowered her eyes toward the floor, took a small breath, then briefly glanced toward Jane before finally returning her attention to Victor."I wanted to," Vanessa replied evenly, "but... haven't you heard it from your fat
Jane rushed to the top of the staircase, her black loafers making a dull sound as she huffed, finally reaching the highest floor which took more time than she thought it would. A part of her even regretted looking too amazed at the mansion. What will that blind man do to her if she's late? Jane g
Day or night, Jane couldn't tell anymore. All she know was that she had been moved from one place to another. Sometimes alone in a carriage or with so many people in a room. For some reason, her eyes were kept tied with the cloth with no one ever letting her open her eyes at all. But for now, she s
"Once you're done over here, go do the rest of the laundry from the East Wing."The old bigger callously pushed the mono glass from his left eyes in place and stared at the paper board in front of him as he demanded his task towards Jane.Jane didn't feel small with the obvious condescending attitu
“Where are you?”The sound of thunder shook Jane’s trembling body even worse. She was already cold from the rain soaking through her clothes, dripping down her skin, and that gentle voice made it worse. Like a snake's, his voice slithered through the air, coaxing, as if he was simply trying to lure







