The torches hissed and crackled above us, their flames twisting in the stale, suffocating air. Each flicker painted the dungeon walls in jagged strokes of red and black, the light catching on the metal hooks embedded in the stone and the instruments lined neatly on the table—silent witnesses to cruelty.
My pulse pounded in my ears. Every breath scraped down my throat like gravel.
Victor Grayan stood between us and the chasm of terror, and though he looked composed, I could feel the suppressed storm vibrating through him.
"You probably thought I'd be the exception," he said, voice low enough to feel rather than hear.
His words cut through the tension like a blade. Frederick—the scarred man—froze for a heartbeat before his mouth twisted into something that was half laughter, half snarl.
"Exception?" Frederick repeated, leaning back with the lazy arrogance of someone who believed he could never be challenged. His scar, an angry slash across his cheek, pulled tight as he sneered. "HA! Are you acting like an unruly street ruffian because I brought you here from the streets?"
He tapped the arm of his chair, the metal rings on his fingers making dull, rhythmic taps that echoed like muffled countdowns.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A threat disguised as impatience.
He surveyed Victor's uniform with deliberate insolence, his lip curling.
"Do you fancy yourself a real member of the Royal Defense Corps after parading around in that uniform for a few days?" Frederick spat.
The words were meant to belittle him—to drag him back to the gutters of Buiterberg, to remind him of debts and chains he was supposed to carry.
Not defiance.
But Victor stood motionless, a statue carved from resolve.
His golden eyes lifted, meeting Frederick's roiling expression without flinching.
"Since when have you been so well-versed in our Kingdom's laws, Frederick?" Victor asked calmly, each syllable sharpened with quiet contempt. "Know your place and quietly do as I say."
Frederick's scoff was immediate and feral.
"It's common sense, isn't it?" Victor continued. "Regardless of where I come from."
For a moment, the room froze. The fire snapped. Dust drifted in the torchlight.
Then—
"HA!" Frederick exploded, launching from his seat. His chair scraped back with a violent metallic shriek.
"WHAT did you just say? COMMON SENSE?"
His voice ricocheted off the walls, vibrating through my bones.
He jabbed a finger toward Victor, trembling with fury.
"You're nothing but a REFUGEE from Buiterberg! How dare you defy me!"
The insult hung in the air, rancid and heavy.
Frederick was unraveling, his composure shredding with every breath he took. In his eyes burned a hatred that was personal—deep, festering, and bruised by Victor's refusal to bow.
That bastard.
His eyes—those unreadable eyes—have vexed me from the start.
I could almost hear Frederick thinking it, choking on his own indignation at being crossed by someone he believed beneath him.
And then there was Victor.
He was a pillar in the inferno, unmoving. Only the faint twitch in his jaw betrayed the tension roiling beneath his skin.
He was choosing every word like a soldier laying down one final desperate strategy.
My own thoughts were a frantic whirl.
He's challenging an order tied to the Prime Minister himself.
This is suicide.
Unless—
Unless he was doing it for a reason.
If I push that point…
If he pushes that point…
We might be able to buy time.
My breath hitched as Victor's gaze flickered to the officer beside him—his subordinate, the only one in the room who might listen.
A brief glance.
A silent pact.
A message carried on the thinnest thread of hope.
"And I'll help you take Serena out of the torture room," Victor said quietly. "However little."
The words fell into the charged air like a stone into deep water—rippling, sinking, reshaping everything.
The pause that followed was suffocating, unbearable, endless.
Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.
"However little."
Even the smallest opening—one breath, one second, one shift in their attention—meant everything.
Because right now, even that was the difference between survival and oblivion.
---
I looked past Victor—past his rigid frame and controlled breathing—and my eyes traveled to the chains suspended from the ceiling. They swayed faintly in the stale air, cold metal catching the firelight like fragments of frozen lightning. The brazier's flame spat and hissed, throwing jagged shadows that crawled across the dungeon walls like living things.
The truth of my situation hung as heavy as those chains.
I was bound.
Unarmed.
Alone.
Or so I had believed—until Victor Grayan refused a direct, illegal order and split the script in half.
Frederick shot to his feet, the torchlight slashing across that infamous scar on his cheek. Fury warped his features; his shadow fractured violently behind him.
That bastard.
That inscrutable look in his eye has vexed me from the start.
He wasn't just angry—he was cornered. His mind was unraveling with vicious speed. I could see it in the tremor of his jaw, the twitch of his fingers on the hilt of his dagger, the frantic flare in his eyes.
There's no going back from this…
…so I might as well get rid of that insufferable bastard quickly.
And get her to sign this thing no matter what.
He lashed out verbally, his voice sharp and venomous.
"If you don't do it, someone else will. I'll get another member of the Corps to begin torturing her at once. Or…"
He leaned forward, smile cruel and thin.
"A good alternative would be to torture you instead."
Victor didn't even blink.
"I'd prefer that."
His calm was horrifying.
And breathtaking.
A cold shock ripped through me. He wasn't just refusing the order—he was placing himself between me and Frederick's sadism. Deliberately. Publicly. Strategically.
Only then did everything click into place.
Frederick's obsession with getting my signature on whatever coerced agreement he'd prepared had pushed him past legality. Past protocol.
Past sanity.
It's true.
The Prime Minister did not give permission to bring Serena to the torture room…
Torturing me—a Serenity—was a violation so blatant it bordered on treason.
Victor must have known the moment Frederick dragged me through that door.
If the Prime Minister finds out…
A shudder passed through me.
Victor's defiance wasn't merely moral.
It was tactical.
He had forced Frederick into a legal death trap.
If Frederick tortured me, he risked the Prime Minister's wrath.
If he tortured Victor without an official order, it was still a violation.
If he did nothing, his entire scheme fell apart.
It was checkmate.
Frederick tried to reassert control, but his voice shook.
"My plan to threaten Serena isn't really working out…"
A thought flickered in his eyes—dark, spiraling.
"But in any case…
I'll torture Frederick like I planned."
I felt my blood run cold.
Victor Grayan intended to torture Frederick—his own superior—instead of me.
This man…
This impossible, infuriating, stunning man had flipped the entire dungeon dynamic upside down.
Frederick's face warped into an expression of pure, murderous hatred.
I will personally tear that bastard to shreds.
He had failed.
Failed to scare me.
Failed to force the signature.
Failed to control Victor.
And now he faced a choice that could end his career—or his life.
Victor's voice sliced through the tension like a sword.
"FREDERICK!"
The sound reverberated through the stone chamber.
A trap sprung with one word.
Frederick straightened, masking his terror with a grotesque smirk.
"Ah. You're really willing to be tortured in her stead?" He tilted his head mockingly. "Well, him being so willing just makes things easier."
He turned his attention to Victor, relishing every syllable.
"I don't know how good you are at taking a beating, but our boys here are very skilled. They've killed several people with whipping alone. Well?"
His lip curled.
"Still feeling confident about this?"
His monologue was supposed to intimidate Victor.
Instead, it ignited me.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!" I screamed, yanking against my restraints. The metal bit into my wrists. "STOP IT! WHAT'S FREDERICK GOT TO DO WITH ANY OF THIS?!"
My throat burned; my voice felt razor-edged.
"IF YOU WANT TO TORTURE SOMEONE, TORTURE ME INSTEAD!"
My words ricocheted around us, slicing through Frederick's performance—but he only grinned wider.
He fed on fear like a vulture.
"Or," he purred, stepping closer to Victor, "perhaps I'll make you burn your own eyes out… and rip out your fingernails, one by one."
The horror in the room tightened its grip—
Until a frantic, sharp knocking broke through the suffocating tension.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock—!
From beyond the wooden door came a muffled voice:
"SIR VICTOR!"
Frederick froze.
Victor did not.
His gaze flicked toward the door, then back to Frederick—this time with a flicker of satisfaction, a shadow of victory.
"OPEN," he commanded a guard.
A guard moved immediately.
Frederick's mask shattered. Panic surged in his eyes. He lunged toward one of his men, whispering fiercely, urgently. His face contorted into a grotesque mixture of fear and calculation.
He straightened just in time to bark toward the doorway:
"The detention room? BY WHOSE AUTHORITY?!"
But his voice cracked—just barely.
He pivoted back to Victor, attempting a desperate, last-second escape route.
"Just to be safe, I believe you should first return her to where she originally was before you discuss the matter again."
He knew.
He knew the moment someone addressed Victor by title that the Royal Defense Corps had arrived.
Witnesses.
Higher authority.
Law.
Victor had cornered him perfectly.
Frederick's jaw clenched so tightly I thought I heard teeth grind.
"DRAT…" he hissed under his breath.
His entire scheme—every illegal threat, every reckless decision—was collapsing.
Crushed under the weight of Victor Grayan's calculated defiance.
The air shifted.
The brazier hissed.
The guards stiffened.
The situation is changing rapidly as someone has arrived.
The creak of the heavy wooden door splitting open was like a rope thrown to a drowning soul. The sound cut cleanly through the suffocating hush of the torture chamber, and for a moment—just one suspended, disbelieving moment—I forgot to breathe.
Frederick reacted first.
He shot upright, the chair skidding back with a scraping shriek that echoed like the cry of a cornered animal. Panic flashed across his scarred face before he smothered it beneath the usual mask of cruelty. But the fear was there—raw, jagged, impossible to hide. Whoever had arrived was not part of his plan.
His whispered command to his subordinate—sharp, frantic, meant to erase a witness or cover up the illegal detainment—fell uselessly into the air. The man he whispered to hesitated, eyes flicking between Frederick and Victor, clearly unsure whom to obey.
And Victor Grayan left no room for uncertainty.
"I'LL BE BACK SOON. SO TAKE HER BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND PRISON."
His tone was calm, flat, almost cold—yet it carved through the tension like steel. He did not raise his voice; he didn't need to. Authority radiated from him in quiet, razor-sharp lines.
Frederick's fury blazed hotter than the brazier. But now, in the presence of other staff and whoever stood in the corridor beyond that door, his hands were tied. Public disobedience would expose everything—his scheme, his illegal actions, his desperation.
So he clung to the tattered shreds of control with both hands.
"Just to be safe," he spat, each word squeezed through clenched teeth, "I believe you should first return her to where she originally was before you discuss the matter again."
His jaw worked, grinding out a final, bitter growl.
"DRAT…"
He was seething, crushed beneath the weight of his own blunder. The more he tried to act authoritative, the more obvious his unraveling became.
The guard approached me, and I felt my body sag with the weight of exhaustion. Victor turned to leave, but before passing the threshold, he glanced back at me—just a flicker of his golden eyes, but enough to anchor me against the storm.
Then the door slammed shut behind him with a decisive, reverberating SLAM.
His footsteps echoed down the corridor, firm, measured. When he stopped just outside, his voice carried back through the crack under the door—clear, strict, deliberate:
"I REPEAT… NOT THE DETENTION ROOM, BUT THE UNDERGROUND PRISON."
A warning.
A shield.
A legally binding command that left Frederick powerless.
That specificity was everything.
The "underground prison" was documented. Regulated. Monitored.
The torture room… was an unrecorded abyss.
By directing the guard away from the detention room and toward the official facility, Victor was protecting himself from accusations—and protecting me from further harm.
He was sealing Frederick's fate by following the law to the letter.
Behind me, Frederick simmered like a boiling cauldron left uncovered. I didn't need to see him to feel the rage radiating off him—acidic, corrosive, desperate.
What is that useless Prime Minister doing? He's being a nuisance again.
I could almost hear Frederick's internal rant unraveling.
In my mind, I saw the Prime Minister—well-dressed, indifferent—pacing in an office filled with polished wood and maps of territories he cared nothing for beyond their usefulness.
Why won't any of these bastards just do what I tell them to?
That was Frederick's downfall: believing fear was loyalty. Believing threats were law. Believing he could control Victor Grayan.
The guard finished removing my restraints, and the sudden absence of pressure made my arms drop uselessly to my sides. My knees gave out, and I slumped against the wooden post, the world spinning in bleary circles. My lungs trembled as I drew a jagged breath, tasting dust, rusted iron, and the fading tang of terror.
The guard steadied me and pulled me upright.
I was being led out—my feet stumbling over the uneven stones, breath hitching with exhaustion—but my heart was steady. Alive. Unbroken.
I wasn't free.
Not yet.
But I was no longer trapped in the shadows of a torture chamber.
I was going back to a prison, not a dungeon.
And I had survived—not because of mercy, nor pity, but because Victor Grayan chose the law over corruption. Chose order over cruelty. Chose even the smallest chance of protecting me over obeying an illegal command.
As I was guided through the doorway, I turned just enough to cast one last look back into the chamber.
Not at Frederick.
At Victor's lingering shadow, etched in the firelit dust—a silent testament to the man who had defied the Prime Minister's shadow with nothing but moral steel.
Now that I have been led away, the immediate threat is over.
I lay on the rough, threadbare mattress of the underground prison, my body still trembling from the hours of fear and forced vigilance. I was no longer bound, yet the sense of captivity clung to me like a second skin. The air here was damp, cold, and unwelcoming—nothing like the stifling heat and suffocating, metallic stench of the torture room. Yet the chill that penetrated me now was not from the environment. It was the icy realization of the deception that had surrounded me from the beginning.
I pressed my face into the coarse bedding, inhaling deeply to steady the frantic hammering of my chest. My mind churned, unrelenting. I need to help her. It's my fault things turned out this way…
The events replayed like a relentless, looping theatre.
The day I met Frederick.
The moment I had trusted Victor.
The anxiety, the fear, the desperate urge to satisfy the Prime Minister—all of it had clouded my judgment. I had failed to see the subtleties, the careful manipulations, the hidden lines being drawn around me.
Victor Grayan's words echoed, sharp and precise: "I cannot follow any personal orders that are not official instructions from higher-ups."
I remembered the way he had stood, unflinching, challenging Frederick with nothing but law, reason, and sheer, controlled presence. He had orchestrated every step, using knowledge I hadn't even suspected existed.
A memory unfolded like a shadow play in my mind—a conversation that must have taken place far from these dark corridors, perhaps in an elegant drawing room somewhere above ground.
"How did it go?"
A woman's voice, poised and calm, carried genuine concern. "Were you able to pass on the news to those three?"
"Yes, Lady Diah," replied a male voice I recognized as one of Victor's subordinates. "Given how highly secret Lady Serena's situation is, there wasn't anyone suitable I could pass this on to… But we kept an eye on those three. One of them happens to be the daughter of the Commander of Security, so we slipped the news to her family. And luckily, the three of them went to visit Lady Serena right away. I think it was the best we could've done."
It was a revelation.
Victor hadn't merely saved me by accident. He had engineered my rescue.
"Yes… the only people who know that they're pretending to have Serena confined in the detention room for nobles, while actually keeping her in the underground prison, are the Prime Minister's Royal Defense Corps, who would never let such information slip… So Eiser probably doesn't know yet. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been in there all this time."
Eiser. My chest tightened. My guilt spiked anew.
"I swear… no matter how much I resented that girl… I never wanted her to be in such danger." Eiser's quiet, despairing voice trembled in my mind. "I'm so scared something terrible might happen… And Eiser and Frederick too… I'm terrified because I feel so guilty towards them."
Tears threatened as I traced the unspoken remorse, a current of human frailty in the chaos around me.
The subordinate concluded his calculations. "Yes, since the girls left knowing Lady Serena is unjustly confined in the underground prison… the news should've reached the Serenity Manor by now."
Lady Diah's voice confirmed the final step, smooth and assured. "DON'T WORRY. AS SOON AS SIR EISER FINDS OUT, SHE'LL BE TRANSFERRED TO THE DETENTION ROOM FOR NOBLES. SIR VICTOR WILL BELIEVE THAT'S HOW THE INFORMATION WAS LEAKED AND WON'T SUSPECT YOU, LADY DIAH."
Everything fell into place.
Frederick's panic, Victor's calculated refusal, my removal from the torture room—all meticulously orchestrated. Victor had leveraged my friends, disguised his own interventions, and risked direct confrontation with Frederick, all to secure my safety. And perhaps, to use the illusion of my transfer as leverage to compel me toward the agreement later.
I was safe, yet still a pawn.
Victor Grayan—the man with the hypnotic, unreadable eyes—was the most dangerous player on the board.
The heavy door slammed behind me, reverberating like a gavel across the cell. I was back in a proper cell, yet the cold conspiracy weighed on me more than the damp air ever could. My hands were free at last, and I collapsed onto the mattress, shivering, the full scale of Victor's orchestration finally sinking in.
I had underestimated him. My anxiety over the Prime Minister and the coerced agreement had blinded me to his precise and ruthless maneuvering.
And then I heard the sound of footsteps—not Frederick's enraged, stomping strides, but a measured, controlled approach. I lifted my head to see Victor standing at the cell bars, his golden eyes fixed on me with that same inscrutable calm. No hint of the panic Frederick had displayed. No trace of hesitation.
"So, you figured it out, didn't you, Lady Serena?" His voice was low, even, slicing through the defenses I had clung to.
I whispered the names that confirmed the plot I had overheard: "The Commander of Security's daughter… Eiser…"
Victor gave a slight nod, acknowledgment of my deduction. "I knew you wouldn't sign that agreement under duress in front of me, but I also knew Frederick would violate the law. Torturing a noble like yourself without official authorization is a severe offense. Once he brought you to the torture room, he sealed his own fate, not yours."
I stared at him, the realization dawning fully. "You set him up," I breathed. "And you used Eiser to do it. You let her think she was helping me escape the 'detention room for nobles' when all she was really doing was alerting people to my real location in the underground prison."
"I did," Victor admitted, his voice steady, without remorse. "Her friend, the Commander's daughter, was the perfect conduit. I needed the news of your unjust confinement to reach your family and the right authorities quickly. Now, your family will exert the pressure needed to get you formally transferred to the detention room for nobles, where you can't be illegally harmed."
"And you get to look like the hero who defied orders to save me," I countered, gripping the cold iron bars. "You played everyone! Frederick, Eiser, even me!"
Victor's expression softened slightly, though the hard light of resolve remained in his eyes. "I did what was necessary, Lady Serena. Now, you are safe from torture, and Frederick is ruined. You are where you should be."
He paused, holding my gaze. "Now that you have seen what I am willing to risk for your… well-being… consider signing the agreement. The Prime Minister wants this deal done. I removed Frederick because he was an unpredictable variable. But I assure you, the pressure will not cease."
He was offering me a choice between two evils: the open villainy of the Prime Minister, or his calculated, controlling protection.
Victor has confessed to his manipulation.