Vil was no fool. He noticed when you avoided his gaze, be it from guilt or the desire to keep something hidden within the depths of your eyes, he saw the jolt in your body when he called your name, quietly documented the way you'd fidget when he stared too intensely.

It was suspicious, but he wasn't nearly as good at sneaking around and finding out the impossible like Rook was. So he sent the man out with you as the target like a hunting dog. After a month Rook returned with an expression of hollow shock and quiet acceptance, his next words shattering the world around them.

At first it hurt because you'd never asked him for help, then the hurt faded to understanding quick. And that understanding hurt more than your decision. As capable as he believed himself to be, Vil Schoenheit had long ago accepted deep within that even he could never fully help you. It occurred to him in the sickening quiet of his room that he'd never asked about your home. Perhaps he'd inwardly hoped that by abstaining from his curiosity and not bringing it up, you’d inevitably forget about it. That perhaps you’d stay. He regrets it now. Blot eats you from the inside out, it carves you out, destroys you, eats you like rot.

It had been shocking—almost incomprehensible—to learn that someone like you, someone who shone so effortlessly, could have ever gone unnoticed. You lit up the environment around you in the smallest, most invisible ways: a faint warmth in a cold room, a softening of the air when you smiled, a kind of presence that smoothed the world around you without even trying.

And to learn that you'd turned to such a thing? Horrid. He slapped a hand over his mouth, the back of his throat tingling with the threat of puke.

Did it hurt? Did you cry? Did you reach out and wish someone had been there to hold you?

The thought of it stung more than Vil cared to admit. What had you been like before that? Back in your own world, before the weight of it all? Were you brighter then? Happier? Did you laugh more, shine more openly, without that delicate hesitation in your eyes?

He would never know. And maybe it didn’t matter anyway.

You were here now—lovely still, even though you were damaged. Beautiful not in spite of your hurt, but because of it. Because of yourself.

He wasn’t stupid or arrogant enough to deny that he had certainly once been a part of your pain, but truly he’d done his best to make it up for you; pre-made lunches suiting your tastes and being perfectly healthy and balanced, shopping trips where he bought designer and you gushed over the lower price of shampoo.

But now? Now every kindness he’d offered felt like too little, too late. You hadn’t needed clothes or curated meals—you had needed a lifeline. And you’d taken one, just not from him. From the worst thing possible.

Vil’s reflection stared back at him in the vanity mirror, perfect as ever, but there was a hollowness in his gaze that makeup could not cover. He pressed his palms against the surface, forehead touching cool glass.

“You fool,” he whispered, unsure if he meant you or himself.

Rook had said you were managing, for now. That the blot had not yet claimed you, but its stain clung like a shadow at the edge of your being. Vil couldn’t stop imagining it spreading, taking root deeper, corrupting. He pictured you smiling, unaware of how close the rot gnawed beneath your skin.

No—he couldn’t allow that.

If you thought blot was the only way to survive here, then he would have to prove otherwise. If you had sacrificed pieces of yourself to stay, then he would make you stay without needing it. Even if he had to burn himself hollow to do it.

Because beneath the perfect veneer of Vil Schoenheit, beneath the sharpness, the discipline, the beauty, was a desperate truth: he didn’t want to lose you. Not to blot. Not to despair. Not to anything.

And if that meant standing in its path himself, then so be it.