Morgana didn’t bother asking Guinevere why her heart had changed.

 

The lingering red tinge around her eyes spoke volumes about her emotions, even without words.

 

“Thank you, Nimue. Let’s go.”

 

With a light greeting, Morgana took Excalibur in hand and headed straight for the Prince’s Palace.

 

Nimue, for whom this was her first time inside the Britannian royal palace, glanced around the corridors leading to the Prince’s Palace with an awkward, almost shy curiosity.

 

Compared to the pure white, pristine temple, the Britannian palace was far more vibrant and colorful.

 

‘Nimue hasn’t left the temple since she separated from the sword, has she?’

 

Excalibur seized the moment and shouted energetically.

 

—Yes! Treat my body well, Master! One day it’ll be mine again!

 

Realizing that Merlin had bound him against his will, Morgana smiled as she looked at the sword while standing at the entrance to the Prince’s Palace.

 

“After this is over, would you like to take a look around Britannia? It might be a little overwhelming for you, Nimue—it’s quite free-spirited here.”

 

“No… it’s just… a little strange.”

 

“You’re probably just feeling out of place. I’ve only ever entered the Prince’s Palace once, just to see the paintings in the corridors.”

 

The moment Morgana stepped fully inside the Prince’s Palace—

 

An oddly chilling air brushed against her skin, carrying a strange sense of wrongness.

 

Even when Mordred was at the academy, the palace maids had always been bustling through the corridors.

 

Now that he had returned, the place should have been even busier.

 

Yet, for some reason, not a single soul was in sight.

 

Not even the basic sentries who were supposed to be stationed at the entrance.

 

“Nimue, did you see any guards? This is strange. Why is there no one…?”

 

As Morgana turned her head—Nimue, who had been right beside her just a moment ago, was gone.

 

It was as if she had never existed at all—vanished without a trace.

 

“Nimue?”

 

Morgana called out in confusion, but only her thin voice echoed through the empty corridor. She had felt this same sensation once before, in the temple.

 

Urgently, she called Excalibur.

 

“Excal! Excal! Are you still there?!”

 

—Why are you calling me so desperately? What’s wrong? …Huh? Where did my body go?!

 

“I was just about to ask the same thing.”

 

—Huh? Haa? What the hell?

 

Only Excalibur’s bewildered voice echoed inside Morgana’s mind.

 

Since the sword still sounded perfectly fine, it seemed—at least for now—that nothing fatal had happened to Nimue’s physical body.

 

“So that’s how it is. When the princess told me to go, there was a reason after all.”

 

Guinevere must have sensed something was wrong too.

 

Was she finally done pretending?

 

If she had simply kept up the innocent act like always, perhaps none of this would have happened.

 

Thinking back on Mordred—the way he had blinked those guileless eyes for so long—no one would have suspected him.

 

And yet the moment Morgana and Nimue stepped inside, he hadn’t even tried to hide it.

 

What was strange was that only Nimue had vanished.

 

“…What exactly is your goal here…?”

 

Even Merlin had only ever kept Nimue close. 

 

Because she knew the location of the Holy Grail. She had originally been under Merlin’s control, but she had only recently tasted freedom.

 

Locked away in the temple’s underground prison, she couldn’t possibly be behind something like this.

 

Morgana drew in a long, steadying breath.

 

“Excal. From this moment on, stay completely focused.”

 

—I’m always completely focused?

 

She gripped Excalibur so tightly her knuckles whitened, staring down the eerily silent corridor as she murmured, almost to herself,

 

“It seems His Highness Mordred needs the Holy Grail too.”

 

To learn the Grail’s location, Excalibur and Nimue had to become one again.

 

If Nimue was the body and Excalibur the soul… then when they reunited, wouldn’t the soul naturally return to inhabit the body?

 

He had been after Nimue from the very beginning.

 

✨

 

In a pitch-dark room, Nimue lay sprawled on the floor and let out a small, pained groan.

 

Her vision had blurred abruptly—then cleared—and when awareness returned, she found herself somewhere entirely unfamiliar.

 

She had no memory of being moved, no idea who or how.

 

The plush leather carpet beneath her palms felt luxurious, the kind reserved for high-ranking nobles or royalty.

 

Nimue clutched her spinning head and forced herself unsteadily to her feet.

 

“Lady Morgana… what in the world is happening…?”

 

When she lifted her gaze, her eyes—now adjusting to the gloom—began to make out shapes.

 

And then she realized there was a small figure standing directly in front of her.

 

“You’re…”

 

“Hah. Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”

 

A voice laced with irritation—and something dangerously pleased—slipped from the small silhouette.

 

✨

 

 

The air in the empty corridor seemed to thicken with unspoken dread and quiet fury. 

 

Morgana’s pulse thrummed against her grip on the sword, every heartbeat carrying the same unspoken question:

 

If he wanted her that badly… why take her now?

 

And somewhere in the darkness ahead, Nimue stood frozen, staring at the figure who had waited—who had planned—for this exact moment.

 

The child’s clear, high-pitched voice carried none of the innocence one might expect.

 

Instead, it rang with cold authority—commanding, almost violently coercive.

 

As though the speaker viewed Nimue as something small and utterly beneath notice.

 

“Who are you?”

 

At her question, the small silhouette took slow, deliberate steps forward—tock… tock…

 

Nimue tried to retreat, tried to summon any scrap of strength to flee this place, but her limbs felt chained by invisible iron. 

 

Each movement dragged like swimming through tar.

 

The figure drew nearer.

 

Closer.

 

And finally clear.

 

A small, exquisitely pretty child—almost doll-like.

 

“Prince Mordred… what are you doing? I came to Britannia as the representative of the Holy Nation.”

 

It was Mordred.

 

…Or was it?

 

Only now, standing face to face with him, did the strange dissonance Nimue had felt since first stepping onto Britannian soil snap into terrible focus.

 

She had known this resonance—had carried it in her bones her entire life.

 

“You’re a demon.”

 

“Sharp, aren’t you?” 

 

The red glow in his eyes flared like twin embers in the dark. 

 

“All those years glued to Merlin really sharpened your instincts, hm?”

 

Mordred stretched his lips into a wide, gleaming smile.

 

It should have been an ordinary, boyish grin.

 

Instead it crawled across her skin like something obscene, raising every fine hair on her body.

 

“Merlin was always so dreadfully cautious,” he murmured, almost fondly. 

 

“I kept telling him—over and over—‘Just let the girl merge with Excalibur already. Do it early. Do it soon.’ But nooo…”

 

He gave a soft, amused chuckle, then drew in a long, savoring breath and let it out again, shaking his head as though genuinely exasperated by an old friend’s foolishness.

 

He began to circle her—slow, leisurely footsteps echoing in the darkness.

 

“That’s the trouble with half-breeds,” he said, voice dropping to something velvet-soft and vicious. 

 

“Even demons know instinctively to bow before a higher one. But you… you never quite learned your place, did you?”

 

He bent at the waist until his face hovered mere inches from hers.

 

Nimue’s spine locked.

 

Every nerve screamed danger—primal, suffocating, intimate danger.

 

This was no mere comparison to Merlin.

 

This was something older, hungrier, infinitely more wrong.

 

She wanted to run.

 

She wanted to scream. Her body only trembled—helpless, traitorous shivers that made her feel even smaller beneath his gaze.

 

Mordred watched every quiver with bright, delighted eyes, the way a child might watch a frightened bird trapped inside a cage.

 

“Where is the Holy Grail?”

 

“I—I don’t know.”

 

“Where. Is. It.”

 

“I truly don’t know. I can’t—I can’t know.”

 

He clicked his tongue, sharp and displeased.

 

“Pity.”

 

His gaze raked slowly down her body—clinical, proprietary, almost tender in its cruelty.

 

“Guess we’ll have to do this the hard way, little saint.”

 

The smile returned—wider, sharper, infinitely more intimate.

 

And in the suffocating dark, Nimue understood with sickening clarity:

 

He wasn’t just here for the Grail.

 

He had always wanted her.

 

✨

 

The atmosphere coils tighter with every line—possessive menace masquerading as playful curiosity, the demon’s fascination with her half-breed nature bleeding into something dangerously close to desire.

 

“Coventina really is such a nuisance of a goddess,” 

 

Mordred murmured, voice dripping with lazy irritation. 

 

“Who could’ve guessed she’d splinter herself into such annoying little pieces just to make us hunt?”

 

Nimue knew that voice.

 

She had heard it—always the same low, commanding timbre—filtering through small black portals in the temple depths. 

 

The one who issued orders while Merlin bowed his head again and again, swallowing humiliation, swallowing rage.

 

No one could have imagined the speaker would turn out to be Britannia’s own prince.

 

Mordred didn’t seem interested in actual conversation. He giggled softly to himself, then began to hum a careless little tune under his breath, as though this were all delightful sport.

 

“Anyway… you’ll know soon enough.”

 

Nimue didn’t bother asking what he meant.

 

Morgana was somewhere in this very palace—with Excalibur. She would have noticed his absence instantly.

 

Nimue could only pray—fiercely, silently—that Morgana had already fled this place. That single desperate hope was the only weapon she had left.

 

Mordred clearly hadn’t expected an answer.

 

He swept one arm through the darkness in a theatrical arc, almost dancing to a rhythm only he could hear, and sang the words like poetry:

 

“This entire palace… is all for you.”

 

The way he limited it to just this palace told her something important.

 

He wasn’t some archdemon of overwhelming power.

 

A true great demon would have swallowed not merely the Prince’s Palace, but the entire royal citadel—perhaps all of Britannia itself—without hesitation.

 

A fleeting pulse of relief brushed through her.

 

And then it died.

 

Sssss—

 

Black smoke unfurled like living silk, coiling around her in slow, possessive spirals.

 

Only now did she see it: the vicious crimson-black magic circle etched into the floor beneath where she sat.

 

Its edges pulsed with dangerous, hungry light.

 

The circle tightened.

 

“—ngh…!”

 

Her breath caught hard in her throat, stolen.

 

The dark mist drifted upward, lazy and deliberate, drifting to hover around her face. It brushed her cheeks, her lips, her closed eyelids—caressing, almost tender, as though it had a mind and desires of its own.

 

A faint, sickeningly sweet scent curled into her lungs.

 

And in that instant, Nimue understood.

 

This was the fragrance Morgana had once asked her about—the scent that clung to demons.

 

The scent that now wrapped her like a lover’s embrace she could never escape.

 

Mordred watched every shallow, panicked breath she took.

 

His red eyes glittered with something far too intimate to be called mere amusement. He leaned closer—close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his small, deceptively fragile body.

 

“You smell it now, don’t you?” he whispered, voice soft and adoring and utterly wrong. 

 

“That’s me. All over you.”

 

The smoke tightened again, sliding along the curve of her throat like fingers.

 

Nimue’s body betrayed her with another helpless shiver—not entirely from fear.

 

And Mordred smiled.

 

Slow.

 

Ravenous.

 

Utterly enamored.