Chapter 3

Black flames writhed along the tip of Draco's sword, like a venomous viper primed to strike and devour Lilia's fragile life at any second.

I lunged frantically at Draco, desperately trying to lock my arms around his sword-bearing wrist.

But I was dead. I was nothing but an incorporeal specter. My phantom hands phased harmlessly through his flesh again and again, unable to stir even the faintest breeze.

"Draco! Take it out on me! Kill me! Don't touch her!" I screamed myself hoarse, my soul violently flickering and warping from sheer, agonizing rage.

Yet he heard nothing. His dark-gold eyes were entirely consumed by cold, murderous intent.

"Ten." Draco began the countdown, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.

"Nine." The tip of the blade advanced an inch. The black fire began to singe the loose hairs clinging to Lilia's sweaty forehead.

A short distance away, Cecilia stood with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, feigning horror as though she couldn't bear to watch. But from my vantage point, I caught the unmistakable glint of sadistic thrill flashing in her eyes.

She practically hungered for Lilia's death. She wanted the entire Astral Elf clan wiped from existence so that no one would ever be left to unravel her web of lies.

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

A violent surge of disappointment and savagery flashed across Draco's features. "Eliana, you truly are a cold-blooded monster. If that's how it is, then you can crawl out here to collect her corpse!"

Driving a wave of annihilating black fire before it, the longsword plunged mercilessly toward Lilia's heart.

Lilia didn't even try to dodge. In that final, life-or-death split second, she summoned every last ounce of her failing strength and violently hurled the battered wooden box she had been fiercely guarding against her chest... straight at Draco.

The box shattered into splinters the instant it slammed into his heavy armor.

There were no hidden weapons. No lethal poisons. No devastating magical scrolls.

What tumbled out of the shattered wood was only a dull, heavily cracked gray crystal. Its surface was thickly crusted with dried, blackened blood, exuding a nauseating, chilling aura of absolute decay.

Draco halted the blade on sheer reflex, the roaring black flames stopping dead in their tracks a mere half-inch from Lilia's heart.

He furrowed his brow, staring down at the gray crystal lying by his boots. A flicker of genuine confusion crossed his eyes.

"What exactly is this? You thought producing a piece of trash would stall for time?" Draco let out a derisive scoff. He lifted his heavy, iron-shod boot, preparing to crush the crystal into dust.

Lilia threw herself over it like a feral, cornered beast protecting her dying young, completely shielding the crystal with her own body.

Her outstretched hands brushed against the residual black flames on Draco's sword, scorching the skin until the flesh was laid open and raw... but she acted as though her pain receptors had completely shut down.

She hauled her head up. On her grime- and blood-smeared face bloomed a smile so broken and ghastly it was far more agonizing than weeping. Her eyes, brimming with bone-deep despair and piercing mockery, locked dead onto Draco's face.

"Weren't you looking for my sister?" Lilia's voice grated like coarse sandpaper. Every single agonizing syllable dripped with blood and grief, echoing relentlessly through the dead silence of the Sanctuary.

"Didn't you demand her Starblood to save your precious darling?"

"Didn't you claim she was cowardly hiding inside, too afraid to face you?"

Draco's frown deepened into a severe scowl. A sudden, inexplicable surge of frantic dread and irritation twisted in his gut. He snapped fiercely, "Enough riddles! Where the hell is Eliana?!"

With violently trembling hands, Lilia hoisted the marred gray crystal securely into the air. Large drops of tears mixed with the blood from her face plummeted down, splattering against the dull stone.

Drawing from the very dregs of her life force, she screamed right into Draco's face—and to the hundreds of Black Dragon Knights watching on—shattering the lie that had festered for seven long years:

"She's right here! Draco, open your damn eyes and look at her! This desiccated husk, stripped of every last drop of magic—this is the Eliana you've been hunting for seven years!"

"My sister didn't run! Seven years ago, down in your Abyssal Dungeons, you personally drained her dry and let her bleed to death in excruciating agony!"

In that split second, the very air in the Sanctuary practically solidified.

Draco was frozen where he stood. The hand gripping the blackened sword gave an involuntary, violent shudder, and his dark-gold, slitted pupils constricted to pinpricks.

His gaze was locked dead onto the shattered crystal in Lilia's bloody palms, his breathing suddenly turning ragged and shallow.