Chapter 9
401words
How could I possibly give up?
The will to survive is instinctive in all creatures. I was no exception.
But I never imagined that after Carlos returned, she would spin a different "truth" for him.
That night, just as Carlos returned from his flight, Lilith conveniently appeared at our home.
As I passed the study door, I overheard their conversation.
"Carlos, you're being deceived! She's playing you with this obedient act!" Lilith's voice trembled with perfectly calibrated concern.
"Those ancient texts she's been studying—they're not linguistics at all!"
"They're demon-destroying magic!"
The study fell silent.
I could imagine Carlos's expression turning to ice.
"She's researching how to reverse the Backlash Covenant!" Lilith's voice rose with calculated terror. "She plans to destroy you during the sacrifice, when your defenses are weakest!"
"Carlos, she doesn't love you—she's using you! She's been deceiving you from the start! She's going to betray you!"
*BANG!*
The study door flew open with explosive force.
Carlos burst in, hellish cold radiating from his body. I had no time to hide the research materials spread across my desk.
Those parchments with ancient sigils, those notes densely annotated in Sumerian—all damning evidence of my betrayal.
"Explain this!"
His voice was terrifyingly raw. Those crimson eyes held not coldness but fury and the agony of betrayal.
I'd never seen him lose control like this, his perfect facade completely shattered.
"Say something! Are you mute?" he growled like a cornered beast.
I opened my mouth but found my throat blocked, unable to form words.
How could I explain?
Tell him I wasn't researching how to destroy him, but simply how to survive?
In his eyes, a sacrifice wanting to survive was the ultimate betrayal.
My silence, to him, was damning confirmation.
"Very well."
He laughed—a sound filled with despair and madness.
With one violent gesture, an invisible force turned all my research materials—months of desperate work—to ash in an instant.
"Since you're so unwilling to be my sacrifice," he approached me slowly, the magical pressure from his body making it hard to breathe, "then you'll be my prisoner instead."
As he spoke, a crimson, semi-transparent barrier rose from the floor, enclosing me where I stood.
"From today until the sacrifice, you're not going anywhere."
The trust between us—even the false trust based on our contract—had completely collapsed.
Our relationship plummeted to absolute zero.
