It was hot. Her eyes burned, and her mouth was parched dry.
Veronica thought in her feverish mind that she now understood how it felt to be burned alive. If this was the level of pain they’d gone through, then the heretics who had been burned at the stake in the Holy City had received a fitting punishment. Her throat seared painfully, and her heart blazed as if set on fire.
An unknown terror constricted her throat, as if she were trapped in sleep paralysis. Veronica kept trying to move her fingers and screamed in order to escape the darkness.
I’m going to die. Help me. Please. Someone, somehow…
“All right. I understand, so open your eyes.”
Her flailing limbs were suddenly pinned down, and a cold voice brushed past her ear. Someone was pressing down on her upper body, lowering their head close to hers. But who could it be? Everyone was dead—her father, the old lady next door, and even Benjamin.
Veronica opened her eyes slowly, wondering who was talking to her. Her vision blurred, then gradually cleared, until her focus caught the reddish-black gaze looking down at her from close proximity.
It was a man. Someone she’d never seen before. No, it was the man who had saved her.
Surprisingly, an intense desire for him surged through her all at once. She had never felt anything like this before. It was as if she had met a lost part of her soul. And also—
“…My throat. My throat is dry,” she croaked.
Her heart ached unbearably. Tears flowed from the corners of her narrowed eyes. Feeling flames burning through her veins, Veronica continued to beg.
“Please give me water. It feels like my throat is burning…”
Yet despite seeing Veronica breaking out in a cold sweat, the man remained expressionless. His cool gaze observed her like a hunter watching a dying animal.
“Water…”
“Water? Do you really want to drink water?” the man asked in a tone suggesting she should think carefully. So Veronica did.
Do I want to drink water? Yes. My mouth is parched, and my throat is burning. What else could this feeling be but thirst?
Just then, a blood-red afterimage flashed before her eyes. The dismembered corpses she had seen in the street before collapsing appeared in her mind like a flash of lightning and then vanished. She saw an arm stiffly extended toward the sky, and a hand pointing to the ground with delicate fingers. It should have been disgusting, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t repulsive at all. Rather…
“Do you want to eat them?”
“Yes… so let me go. Let me go. Please. I’m begging you.”
As Veronica continued to shake her head and struggle weakly, the man finally lifted himself off her and grabbed her chin instead. His grip was painful, but she didn’t care. She was just thirsty. Hungry, with the desire to feast upon human brain matter.
She tried her best to shake off the man, needing to quench her thirst immediately. It felt as though she were going insane—as if she would die if she didn’t consume blood right that very moment.
“Let go of me and leave me alone!” Veronica finally screamed. She had never known she could make such a loud sound. The scream that erupted from deep within her was sharp and intense.
Veronica glared at the man with tears streaming down her face. Since he didn’t avert his eyes—whose color was similar to hers—their gazes locked. Once again, her heart began to pound violently. Just like before, when she fainted, her pulse began to race. It felt like a massive earthquake, as if her heart might burst out whole with one wrong cough. She could vividly feel the frenzied flow of air against her clammy skin.
The man twisted his lips into a smile and murmured softly, “You’re something else. I never intended to go this far, but…”
He brushed back her trembling hair and lowered his head. His skin was cold when it grazed against hers.
“Please let me go,” she begged. “I won’t kill anyone. Just, I just need—”
Veronica’s incoherent sobbing stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened. The strength drained from her small hands, and her grip on his clothes slackened. All her senses focused on their overlapping lips. He twisted her mouth open and pushed his cool tongue inside, greedily swallowing her next words.
Even more surprising than the kiss was the strange sensation of her thirst being quenched. As time passed, her wide-open eyes gradually closed.
Her clouded emotions cleared, like she was dipping her feet in a cold stream on a hot summer day. She imagined leaves burning white, then subsiding into green lights in her mind’s eye.
Veronica immersed herself in the indescribably strange pleasure. She tried to extend her tongue to receive and drink the man’s saliva as if it were holy water. At her clumsy movement, the man briefly separated his lips and cursed.
“More, please give me more,” she begged with tears in the corners of her eyes.
The man stared down at her with a sunken gaze before abruptly asking, “How old are you?”
How old am I? Why would he suddenly ask that?
Born in winter, Veronica had come of age just yesterday. So now she was…
“Twenty.”
The man let out a quiet, hollow laugh. He seemed about to say something, but closed his mouth and tried to get up.
Don’t go. Let me feel that coolness again.
Growing desperate to indulge in that sweet sensation again, Veronica followed her instinct and wrapped her arms around him. Then, clumsily imitating the man, she pressed her lips against his. He grabbed her cheek as if to push her away, but when she pushed her tongue in, he let out a low moan and roughly sucked on it.
Although the whole world was dark with night, and she was in some unknown place, her body overflowed with the energy of a new life.
Bahamuts were cruel. They consumed humans and, in extremely rare cases, created corrupted beings. The Corrupted gained tremendous power, but their minds became contaminated, leading to death before long.
Veronica remained the only survivor because Leon Berg was a knight blessed by God. His breath and saliva, imbued with holy power, had become her god in place of the absent Divinity.