The grand doors creaked open slowly, the moan of rusted hinges echoing down the marble corridor as Laito stepped in first, his gloved hand tangled loosely around your wrist. Your heels scraped against the polished stone, but he didn’t stop. Reiji followed just behind, his expression unreadable, his pace stiff with restraint. The throne room swallowed you in its emptiness—towering ceilings, stained glass darkened by the night beyond, and a cold draft that made your newly sensitive skin tremble.

At the top of the blackened steps, Karlheinz sat motionless on his silver throne. Still. Regal. Eternal.

Laito gave a spin and yanked you forward, laughing as he flung you to your knees before the dais. The world blurred for a second. The room tilted. Everything in you screamed wrong.

“I declare this one as my wife,” Laito purred, a grin curling the corner of his lips, though his voice held the eerie finality of a vow already sealed.

Reiji stepped forward, sighing softly as he adjusted his glasses. “She was a human… but without my knowledge, in the human realm, Laito turned her.”