The air at the center of the circular hall was far heavier than it had been at the entrance, as though gravity itself doubled around the white marble bed. Every step Dex took toward the center of the faded crystal dome demanded immense mental and physical effort, not from physical obstruction but from the terrifying psychological weight of the scene.
Dex's body went completely rigid when he finally stopped at the edge of the bed and his eyes fell on his father at close range. The distance between them was no more than a few feet, yet to Dex it felt like a fathomless abyss, dark and bottomless, separating the pulsing world of the living from the cold world of the dead. In that moment, his memories as a young man from Earth who had read this story in a paper book intertwined with his current reality as a son standing before his dying father.
In the novel Dex had read in his previous life, the author had devoted entire chapters to describing the glory of Lord Marcus Williams. He was always described as the mountain that does not shake before storms, a man with shoulders as broad as a steel shield, built to carry the burdens of an entire western province. He had a voice as deep as thunder echoing through council halls, and an overwhelming, terrifying gravitas that made the most battle-hardened generals and warlords bow their heads in respect or fear the moment he entered a room. He was justifiably titled the Lion of the West, the man who had personally repelled barbarian invasions from beyond the mountains with a confident smile and a sword that knew no scabbard.
But the man Dex saw before him now, lying beneath silk covers that appeared as a heavy shroud, was nothing but a tragic ghost, a faded and broken echo of that legendary hero. His frame had contracted to a frightening, unnatural degree, as though his body had been desiccated from within. The powerful muscles that had once filled his military armor had melted away until the bones of his shoulders and ribcage protruded sharp and harsh beneath the thin silk sleeping gown, nearly tearing the fabric.
Lord Marcus's face was sunken, his skin pale to the point of deadly translucency, resembling old, fragile parchment abandoned in a derelict library to crumble with time. What made the scene more terrifying and more hideous was not merely the emaciation, but the veins. A complex, distended, diseased network of veins had risen beneath his thin skin, yet they were not the blue or green familiar to exhausted blood. They were the color of dark black ink, or the pitch tar of hell. Those black veins branched in a pulsing and horrifying pattern from the region of the heart, stretching like poisonous spider threads across his neck, creeping toward his jaw and the sharp bones of his prominent cheekbones, as though the roots of a demonic tree were burrowing beneath his flesh to strangle him slowly and drain whatever remained of his life's essence.
"My God..." Lumia gasped, placing her slender, luminous-skinned hand over her mouth.
Even she, the celestial being who observed the destruction of planets and the bending of galaxies with absolute composure, and who had moments ago manipulated the Shadow killers like wooden chess pieces, was visibly shaken. Her silver eyes widened as they fixed on the invisible aura radiating from Lord Marcus's body. She was sensing waves of corrupted energy flowing slowly.
"This is not merely a chemical poison, Dex," Lumia whispered, her voice trembling slightly, not from fear, but from revulsion at the sheer depravity of this magic. "This type of energy does not belong to Ekarthas natural world. This is spiritual decay. This is a living curse that feeds on the energy of life itself and replicates its agony."
Dex knelt slowly beside his father's bed, indifferent to the cold of the marble floor. He removed his black leather glove with a trembling hand, trembling not from fear, but from the weight of the moment. He placed his bare hand with extreme gentleness over his father's hand, which was cold and hard as stone.
These were the direct effects of Beelzebub's Tear, the legendary, forbidden poison he had read about in the novel. The author had given it a terrifying description, noting that it was not a poison extracted from any plant or serpent, the ancient legends said it had been crafted from the blood of a higher-level demon captured in eras long past, blended with the ash of tormented souls.
This cursed poison does not kill the body immediately, instant death would be considered mercy in the vocabulary of those who invented it. Instead, the poison penetrates the mana pathways and begins methodically dismantling the victim's mana core with excruciating slowness, converting the source of their power and their life into the source of their pain and torment. It makes the body corrode from the inside outward, burning organs without fire, while a malicious enchantment ensures the soul remains fully conscious and trapped within this clinically dead body. The victim feels every moment of pain, every drop of corrupted blood coursing through their veins, and every second of absolute helplessness.
"You are in agony, aren't you?" Dex whispered, his eyes glistening with tears of fury, helplessness, and a strange kind of compassion he had not expected to feel toward a fictional character. "You can hear me in this darkness, can't you? You feel everything, but you cannot respond. You cannot open your eyes."
Dex closed his eyes with force, attempting to block the physical vision in order to concentrate on energetic vision. He summoned the Solar Heart ability and allowed a very small, warm droplet of his phoenix mana to seep from the tips of his fingers into his father's cold body through the pores of the skin, to explore the internal state and the extent of the devastation wrought by the curse.
What he found inside was harrowing and tragic beyond what the exterior had conveyed. Lord Marcus's internal organs were nearly ceased, surrounded by a thick, sticky black layer resembling mud that pressed upon them and prevented them from performing their functions. The broad, luminous mana pathways that distinguished a warrior of the Duke's caliber were completely blocked and torn apart.
But amid all this ruin, he found something that sent a shiver of astonishment down his spine. The heart, surrounded by a golden mana core that was nearly extinguished, was fighting with ferocious desperation. Every beat required an effort equivalent to lifting a mountain, yet the heart was pumping blood slowly and stubbornly against the black mud. What had kept Lord Marcus alive until this moment was not the medical magic surrounding him, not the crystals losing their radiance day by day, it was his will. An innate, ironclad, unconquerable will. The will of the Lion of the West, who refused to surrender to an ignoble death in a dark bed, clinging to the last spark of his life as though he knew that someone would come to save him. Or to avenge him.