A mother bird that protects a snake’s egg, thinking it is her own, is eventually devoured by the hatchling snake.

 

“The black-haired guest spent the whole night with her companion…”

 

Her coldly turned back moved further away. 

 

The curiosity that had tormented him for days had been resolved, yet he felt no relief at all. 

 

Instead, a bitter sense of defeat churned through his mind like a storm. 

 

A feeling of loss washed over him as if he had been defeated without even competing.

 

Unlike his usual self, Thekion could not easily control his emotions. He roughly swept a hand down his face. Then he paused. He pulled his hand away. 

 

A strange scent lingered on it, a sweet yet bitter aroma, like that of dried herbs. 

 

It was the scent of the woman who had coldly shaken off his hand.

 

Not the old woman’s scent. The woman’s scent.

 

‘No… the scent of that foolish witch.’

 

Thekion lowered his hand and clenched his fist tightly.

 

He regretted going to the well for no reason.

 

He must have been bewitched by the moonlight.

 

🫧

 

Langsion, who had just returned from meeting Apollo, witnessed the scene. 

 

Thekion turned away with his fist still tightly clenched. He took a step, then unconsciously turned his head to watch Scylla’s retreating figure.

 

He was the second person, aside from Langsion himself, to learn her secret. 

 

Of course, Scylla’s curse was not the kind that absolutely had to be hidden from others, but Langsion felt uneasy about letting the matter pass lightly.

 

Of all people.

 

Of all possible people.

 

Those words were truly frightening. They seemed like a coincidence, but were in fact inevitable.

 

He thought of the blind goddess. 

 

It felt as if the Moirae, who saw the threads of fate with their white eyes, were smiling. 

 

Although he could not perceive the fates or connections between humans, for some reason, it looked as if an invisible thread of fate now connected the two people walking away from each other.

 

If he had never met Scylla, would she have lived out her life in that old woman’s form?

 

Would she have come down to Thebes?

 

Would she have encountered Thekion like this today?

 

Freed from half of her curse, Scylla was beautiful. Skin as white as sand on a beach, eyes that seemed forged from sunlight squeezed from the sun itself, and elegant, cat-like features. 

 

What human could resist being captivated by her?

 

But the reason she had been able to lift even half of her curse was because of Langsion’s presence.

 

Was it because he had broken her curse that their fates had become intertwined?

 

Even if he had not broken her curse, would Scylla and Thekion still have been fated to meet?

 

It was obvious that the first key to breaking Scylla’s curse was sexual intercourse.

 

If escaping the curse was part of her fate, then even without Langsion, Scylla would have eventually shared her body with someone. 

 

And that someone could have been Thekion.

 

Langsion’s languid face gradually grew fierce, like waves turning rough.

 

The Moirae did not offer only one path. 

 

Fate was more like the branches extending from a single large tree trunk. Human destiny was uncertain which branch it would follow depended on variables. 

 

Yet one major flow remained unchanged. There were things that no variable could alter.

 

Just like the meeting between Scylla and Thekion.

 

Even though Langsion could not see the threads of fate, he sensed that this was one point of destiny coming for them.

 

And he wanted to shatter it. 

 

The fate that sought her out, as if bypassing his own existence, felt as irritating as stones jutting out at every corner of the road.

 

“Our existence violates the law of causality.”

 

A god’s intervention in the mortal world was the only factor capable of completely twisting human fate, the fate that should grow freely, like a tree following its natural course.

 

By doing so, it changed even the fate of the world itself. 

 

That was what it meant for gods to violate causality. But unfortunately for Apollo and Hermes, their warning did not instill much fear in Langsion.

 

Tartarus was the underworld, the origin of the gods. 

 

Hades’s realm of the dead was a place so cold and lonely that even the warmth of the afterlife seemed inviting an extreme solitude where even divinity could scatter and dissolve. 

 

It was the only place that even Zeus, the first lord of Olympus, feared. 

 

If the already unstable Langsion, afflicted by madness, were to fall there, he might not even be able to maintain his divinity.

 

However, unlike Zeus, Langsion was accustomed to solitude. He was familiar with loneliness. 

 

From the very beginning, nothing had ever been given to him. 

 

Falling into Tartarus now would simply be a return to that original state. 

 

Wouldn’t it be better to have something short but entertaining rather than enduring a boring eternity without Scylla?

 

It would be better for Scylla as well.

 

In the human world, where trivial things like wealth, status, and power mattered so much, adapting would hardly bring her happiness.

 

Langsion was filled with arrogant confidence.

 

It was very similar to the arrogance that previous gods, who had made countless mistakes, had once possessed.

 

The delusion that everything would go according to his will.

 

The delusion that he could shape someone else’s happiness.

 

🫧

 

Thekion strode back to his room with long, wide steps. 

 

Although he had drunk wine, he appeared as composed as usual. He even dismissed the maid who had woken up and carefully closed the door behind him.

 

Immediately afterward, the atmosphere changed. 

 

Convinced that he was now completely alone, he relaxed and looked down at his empty hands. 

 

The wine cup he had been carrying during his night walk had disappeared somewhere. It must have fallen when he chased after the fleeing Scylla. 

 

By now, it was probably lying in the courtyard, spilling its fragrance. 

 

But none of that mattered. None of it was important.

 

Thekion swept a hand down his face. The bitter-sweet scent still had not faded; it faintly lingered at his fingertips. He covered his face with his hand and took a deep breath. 

 

Scylla felt much closer.

 

It was as if he had gotten drunk and stumbled into a strange place, only to crawl back out. Yet he hadn’t even been that intoxicated. 

 

No, it seemed he was now drunk on something else entirely.

 

The more he tried not to think about it, the more the image of her lush black hair swaying kept replaying in his mind. 

 

The way her eyes had widened when she sensed his presence, turned her face, and recognized him, that moment kept resurfacing endlessly. 

 

It felt as if it had been branded onto his soul.

 

That old woman was Scylla.

 

That eccentric witch was that beautiful woman. She was a sinner who had received divine punishment.

 

Even when he deliberately tried to recall only the “facts,” the moment he let his guard down even slightly, the image rose again. 

 

A slender, pale face, reflected in his mind like a mirror, gazed at him. His heart pounded wildly, thumping madly.

 

Thekion raised his head, covering his face with both hands. 

 

At that moment, moonlight passed through the window and dimly illuminated his room. Thekion stared blankly at the scene.

 

A long shadow stretched across the center of the moonlit room. 

 

A pitch-black snake had crawled onto the windowsill and coiled itself there. Its scales glittered as they caught the moonlight. 

 

The creature raised its triangular head and flicked its red, slender tongue.

 

A chill ran down his spine.

 

He could not move a muscle, helplessly pinned by the snake’s gaze. 

 

As if trapped in a prison made of stares, the snake seemed to grow tens of thousands of times larger as it looked at him. 

 

Sweat beaded on Thekion’s forehead. 

 

Unable to endure the gaze any longer, his trembling legs gave out. His knees slammed hard against the floor.

 

As if mocking him, the dark creature flicked its characteristically eerie tongue several times, then slithered its long body out of the window and vanished.

 

Even after the snake’s gaze disappeared, Thekion continued breathing heavily for a long time. 

 

Haah… haah… 

 

Only when his ragged breathing finally calmed did he fumble for a chair and sit down. His hands were shaking violently.

‘

What… was that just now?’

 

It had not been the gaze of an ordinary beast. Thekion immediately realized he had been warned. He had a good idea whose will it was. 

 

And he also understood why he had been warned.

 

Since when had it been watching? What had it seen?

 

Was Scylla not merely a simple toy to him?

 

Could it be that he truly favored her?

 

Thekion’s face twisted.

 

That was even worse than the fact that Scylla was a sinner.

 

It was no different from an unsuitable treasure destroying a single human being.

 

What human could possibly withstand the love of a being who was not human?

 

“Love from a god? I don’t want to become that, nor do I want to get close to one.”

 

The young voice of his late old teacher, the sage, echoed in his mind as he had once replied. He could immediately name several people from legends whose lives had been ruined by such things.

 

“They say the black-haired guest rolls around with her companion every night.”

 

Dionysus’s plaything was a beautiful woman cursed with a terrible affliction.

 

The woman was being toyed with like a doll in a cruel god’s game.

 

‘How pitiful.’

 

Forgetting the ominous shadow of the snake, a dangerous emotion began to sprout in Thekion’s heart.

 

How could he help her?