Chapter 395: The Hand of Redemption

The laughter, the footsteps, the sounds of life—

All of them just outside the door, a single step away, yet as unreachable as the far side of the world.

The footsteps faded, carrying the laughter away with them.

No one stopped.

No one would notice a little kitchen maid, sneaking food in the dead of night, dying unnoticed from the toxic fumes of a coal fire.

She was alone—like a dying ember about to cool, watching helplessly as her life trickled away with every breath.

It was a despair more terrible than death itself.

………………

Pain.

Searing pain violently dragged Betty back to reality.

Pain, in that moment, seemed to be the only truth.

It mercilessly tore apart every tender or sorrowful illusion, stripping the world’s cruelty bare and naked before her.

Betty could even hear the sound of her own flesh being devoured by the ants.

It was no imagination—it was a real, solid sound.

Faint and dense... skss... skss...

Like countless miniature saws working at once, each one slicing through the muscle fibers at a different point on her body.

The silent trickle of blood seeping from ruptured vessels.

The final shriek of nerves at the edge of death.

Her skin was no longer intact. Raw crimson muscle tissue, slick with fresh blood, lay exposed to the air, trembling with every shallow breath.

In some places, the flesh had been chewed down to the deeper layers, where glimpses of pale, glistening fascia showed beneath.

She was like a doll violently torn apart and tossed carelessly among the ruins—even holding on to the shape of a person had become an unattainable luxury.

Deep within her consciousness, the montage of her life flashed frantically.

Those scenes of the past were like a mirror dashed to pieces—every shard reflecting her dying face, twisted and broken.

The kitchen of her childhood, the manor’s corridors, her mother’s whispers, the fairy-tale book with no ending—

All of it flashed before her at once, and all of it crumbled at once.

Two voices warred inside her skull, like a final battle between demon and angel.

“Give up, Betty.”

“You see—no one came in the story. No one came in your memories. And certainly no one will come now.”

“This is where you end.”

Yet her instincts fought back, faintly:

“No... I don’t want to die...”

That resistance was like the last flicker of a candle in the wind—so faint it could barely be measured.

“Look at yourself right now—lower than an insect.”

That voice went on, unhurried and calm, as if stating an irrefutable fact.

“End it. Once it’s over, there’ll be no more pain.”

“All it takes is a little courage. Even just closing your eyes.”

Closing her eyes.

Yes. All she had to do was close her eyes.

No more pain. Then everything would simply... end.

“But... I haven’t...”

Haven’t... haven’t what?

She didn’t know what she hadn’t done.

Haven’t lived enough? Haven’t finished the things she needed to do? Haven’t returned to the place she was meant to go back to?

She didn’t know.

All she knew was that something was still lodged in her throat—something she could neither speak nor swallow.

Betty’s gaze began to drift, her pupils dilating, reflecting the ceiling above, overgrown with black fur.

Those dark fibers swayed faintly in the gloom, as if quietly mourning her.

Despair, solid as black mud, surged in from every direction, poised to swallow the last of her trembling candlelight.

And then—

At that moment.

Through a crevice no light could pierce, inside this cage woven from fairy tales, memories, and cruelty—

A hand reached in.

This hand did not belong to the unfinished fairy tale.

The hero in that story had lost his way, never to appear again.

Nor did it belong to that cold winter night in her memories.

The people beyond that door had long since gone. The brother who should have saved her had never come.

This hand did not belong to the past, nor to any fragment of what once was.

But this hand carried real, living warmth.

She was pale, yet strong.

Her fingers were slender and long, her knuckles sharply defined, her movements precise and steady.

In this hellscape of mangled flesh and blood, she seemed utterly out of place—and yet... utterly sacred.

That hand swept aside the insects feeding so greedily upon her.

Where her fingertips passed, the Building-Borer Ants fell away in clusters, leaving a clean trail behind.

She ignored the revolting filth—the blood, the crushed insect carcasses, the ulcerated flesh—

And she clasped precisely onto Betty’s hand, which had been chewed down to little more than bone and sinew.

The touch was cold and slick—hardly like that of a living person.

The grip tightened.

“Betty...”

“It’s all right now. I’m here.”

At the intersection of the real and the imagined, a clear, ethereal voice rang out.

It drowned out everything else, becoming the sole truth of that moment.

Betty’s unfocused pupils suddenly contracted.

As if something within the dying ashes had stirred, rekindling a single spark.

Summoning the last shred of her strength, she struggled to look at the person before her.

Her gaze traveled through a blur of blood and tears, as if crossing long years of time.

Through the little girl forgotten inside a shut storybook.

Through the small kitchen maid trembling alone on the cold kitchen floor that winter night.

Through all the gnawing, the pain, and the despair.

And finally settled on the face before her—so impossibly close.

Pale skin. A delicate countenance. Indifferent eyes that were not cold.

It was Pandora Douglas.

“...Lady... Pandora...”

Betty’s cracked and torn lips trembled faintly. Almost no sound came out—only a whisper of air escaped her throat.

That breathy sound was as light as a sigh, yet it seemed to have cost her every last ounce of strength.

In that instant, bitterness, terror, agony—every emotion burst through its dam at once.

A single tear slid from eyes nearly hollowed out by the insects.

It carved its way down her blood-smeared cheek, leaving one clear, clean trail in its wake.

On that face chewed beyond all recognition, the tear track seemed the only thing left whole.

Pandora had come.

Even though she had once chosen to leave Lady Pandora’s side of her own accord. Even though she had made mistakes.

Even though she was nothing but an insignificant little soul—someone so small that even a storybook wouldn’t bother writing her an ending—

Her Lady had still come to her in this moment.

If the future ever offered her another chance to choose, she would surely...

Surely...

But before that thought could complete itself, her consciousness sank back into the darkness.

Only this time, the darkness was no longer cold.

Because there was a hand, holding hers all the while.

………………

Looking at the blood-soaked girl who had finally lost consciousness from the searing pain and emotional shock, Pandora let out a soft sigh.

The sigh was very light—so light the surrounding silence nearly swallowed it whole.

Betty really hadn’t done anything wrong.

She had simply made a choice that had, at the time, actually been quite reasonable for her.

It couldn’t even be called right or wrong.

Anyone in that situation might have made the same decision.