CONTENT WARNING:
The following chapter includes depictions of rape, blood, and violence. These themes may be deeply unsettling for readers who have personal experiences with such trauma.
Please prioritize your emotional well-being. If you feel uncomfortable with such topics, I encourage you to skip this chapter. Your safety and peace of mind matter far more than keeping up with every detail of the story.
The content within is purely fictional and created for storytelling purposes. It does not, in any way, represent the author’s personal beliefs, values, or real-life perspectives.
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Mythril Cave | Dusk | Fridocea's Forest
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Freya didn’t remember how she started running, all she knew was that her heart had turned into a drum and her legs were barely keeping up with it.
Tree branches whipped against her arms as she sprinted, and her breath cracked with every panicked gasp.
“Please, please let them be alive. Please…”
The desperate words tumbled out of her.
The closer she got to the mythril cave, the thicker the air felt.
It's just like something terrible was waiting for her inside, and she was right.
The moment she stepped into the cave’s mouth, her entire body froze.
The ground was painted in green.
Slick and shiny goblin blood was smeared across stones like someone had dragged bodies across them. Severed arms hung from jagged rocks, fingers curled like they’d died clawing for help. An actual goblin spine was snapped in half near her foot.
Freya gagged.
She stumbled backward, her one hand was over her mouth as a sob ripped out of her throat.
“W-what h-happened here?”
She stepped too close to something mushy and looked down.
A goblin head.
Eyes wide open.
Mouth frozen mid-scream.
“WHAT THE HELL?!” Freya screamed back.
Then a low and bored exhaled voice echoed inside the cavern.
She snapped around fast. Her knife was already shaking in her hand.
She saw a man leaning against a mythril boulder, drenched in goblin blood. His hair was streaked green. His clothes clung wetly to him. Even his eyelashes glistened with gore.
He slowly lifted his head and stared.
“S-STAY BACK! W-WHO ARE YOU?!” Freya shrieked again.
But before the man could even answer, “OH FOR FU—OF COURSE!” a familiar voice groaned.
Horace jogged in, and stopped dead when he saw the carnage, then wrinkled his entire face like he smelled five-day-old rotting meat.
“Krai, why? ” he started.
“Why do you have to turn every battlefield into a butcher shop? IT'S DISGUSTING! I.HATE.IT!”
The blood-soaked man, Krai, tilted his head lazily. “Psh.”
Horace flailed. “That’s not an answer you freaking assassin!”
Freya, who is still pointing her trembling knife, blinked rapidly. “Y-you two know each other?!”
Horace threw an arm over her shoulder like they were old friends. “Relax, little faye. He’s not an enemy.”
Then he leaned closer and his voice dropped to a playful, chilling whisper.
“He’s just a psychotic assassin.”
Freya froze. “WHAT?”
Horace burst out laughing. “Your face! Damn, you look like you saw a ghost.”
Krai pushed off the boulder. The blood drips as he walked toward them with the calmness of someone strolling through a garden.
Freya shook harder. “D-don’t come closer!”
Krai stopped and stared at her knife, then at Horace. “You’re letting her point that at me?”
Horace shrugged.
“Fair point. She’s scared but a mere poisoned knife won't kill you.”
“I AM NOT SCARED!” Freya hissed.
She was absolutely terrified.
Krai’s lips twitched. “Sure.”
Before Freya could argue, the cave trembled with footsteps, hurried voices, and the clatter of armor.
“Rescue’s here.” Horace spoke.
Moments later, Evita entered with knights trailing behind her, carrying medical crates, stretchers, lanterns
Her soft voice filled the cave with calm authority.
“Everyone, spread out. Check the bodies, no, not the goblins, the victims. Prioritize heavy bleeding. Don’t slip, there’s...” She glanced down at the puddle of gore, “…a lot on the floor.”
Then she looked up and froze at the sight of Krai.
“Krai,” Her expression tightened into something between disgust and resignation. “You look disgusting.”
She thrust clean clothes at him. “Change. Go away from all of us.”
Krai took the clothes with a grunt. “Psh.”
Horace grinned wide. “Aww, Commander Evita, that’s not how you talk to your fiancé.”
Evita shot him the deadliest soft-eyed glare imaginable but Horace just snorted.
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Mythril Cave | Inner Chamber| Early Evening | Fridocea's Forest
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They walked deeper until the darkness bloomed into light.
They reached the inner chamber, where the walls were lined with glowing mythril. It was almost beautiful and magical.
Except for the limp nymph bodies scattered like fallen petals.
Freya stopped breathing.
Her knees buckled. “No, no, no.”
Horace caught her immediately, “Hey, I got you.”
She clung to him, trembling.
Evita glanced back and spoke kindly,
“Stay with her. We’ll take care of the wounded.”
Horace nodded and guided Freya to the side, keeping an arm firmly around her so she wouldn’t collapse again.
Freya’s eyes darted desperately from one nymph to another, searching with growing panic.
“W-where is she?” Freya whispered.
Horace looked down. “Who?”
“Rheya,” Freya said with a cracking voice, “My half sister.”
Horace blinked. “What does she look like?”
Freya wiped her tears with trembling fingers.
“She has g-golden wings and golden hair.”
Horace stared at her. “Golden?”
Freya sniffed. “She’s the nymph princess.”
Horace choked on his own saliva.
“She WHAT?! Then, then you?!”
“No!” Freya shook her head so hard, “I’m not a princess. I’m not anything.”
Her voice was soft yet broken, but she forced herself to continue.
“My mother, the Nymph Queen, was sexually assaulted by a goblin. I was the result.” She swallowed hard.
“The King h-hated me. He almost k-killed me the moment I was born. But my mother begged him to spare me, in exchange for stripping me of any claim to royalty.”
Horace froze.
For the first time, the teasing playboy had absolutely nothing witty to say.
He just stared at the small and trembling Freya. She trying so hard to appear strong.
“Freya,” he murmured softly, his voice is losing all flirt and joke.
He didn’t know what to say, but he tightened his grip on her shoulder. Just enough so she felt she wasn’t alone.
Horace was still half-lost in his thoughts when a panting knight sprinted toward Evita.
“Commander! Another wounded Nymph! F-far side of the cave! Near that weird-looking tree!”
Evita didn’t hesitate. “Move. Now.”
The air shifted with tension and urgency.
Freya didn’t even wait for permission. “R-Rheya, please, please…” her voice cracked as she chased after the knights.
Horace noticed how pale she’d gone and how her hands shook. He cursed quietly under his breath before following.
The deeper they went, the worse the cave became.
The air was thick, the ground was slick beneath their boots, damp with blood that had already begun to darken. Strange roots crawled along the walls like veins, pulsing faintly with corrupted magic.
Then they reached the tree.
It stood grotesquely tall in the center of the chamber, its bark was twisted and pallid, branches clawed upward.
And beneath it, a body lay crumpled at the roots.
Freya stopped breathing.
They didn’t recognize her at first.
She looked less like a nymph and more like something that had fallen from the sky and shattered on impact.
Rheya lay at the base of the tree, half-curled on her side. Her spine was twisted at an angle that made Freya’s stomach lurch.
Her skin had lost its light.
Nymphs were supposed to glow faintly, but Rheya’s glow was gone.
Her complexion was dull, waxy, drained of color, mottled with bruises in every shade of purples, sickly greens, angry reds layered over one another.
Her breathing was wrong.
Her clothes were torn beyond saving.
Fabric hung off her frame in ruined strips, ripped open down the front and sides as if hands, or claws, had pulled without care.
The bodice had been torn apart completely, leaving her bare breasts exposed to the cold cave air, and her skin was smeared with dirt and blood.
There was nothing delicate about how it looked, only wrongness. Only humiliation.
Freya noticed how Rheya’s legs were positioned, it was forced apart.
Her inner thighs were bruised deeply. The marks are dark and finger-shaped, and pressed in places no claw should have reached.
The skin there was scraped, as if she had tried to close herself. Tried to escape.
Blood stained her lower body in a way that made Freya’s vision swim. Not from a single wound, but from inside.
It had pooled and dried between her legs.
Whatever had been done to Rheya had not stopped when she fought.
It had not stopped when she bled.
Her abdomen was tense even in unconsciousness, muscles drawn tight as if her body still remembered pain it could not forget.
Freya felt sick.
Her hands were scraped, nails broken and bent backward, as if she had fought.
Freya nearly collapsed when she saw her face.
Rheya’s cheek was swollen, one eye bruised completely shut. The other was half-open, unfocused, the iris dulled like the light inside her had dimmed.
Dried blood streaked from her nose and mouth, crusted along her lips and chin. There were bruises along her jaw and throat that tells of hands gripping too hard.
Her hair was tangled and filthy, matted with blood and cave dust.
And then there were her wings.
Freya stopped breathing altogether.
They weren’t wings anymore.
One had been torn almost completely from her body, the joint shattered, bone exposed beneath shredded muscle.
What remained sagged uselessly against the stone.
The other was destroyed beyond recognition.
“WHY?! WHY?!” Freya made a sound that came from somewhere deep and broken inside her.
She dropped to her knees and gathered Rheya carefully, terrified of hurting her more.
Her hands shook as she tried to cradle her sister’s head, thumb brushing over cold skin.
“Rheya” Freya whispered, “What did they do to you?”
Rheya didn’t respond.
Her body was limp and unnaturally heavy as if she were already halfway gone.
Freya pressed her cheek to Rheya’s forehead and sobbed openly,“You tried to fly,” she whispered. “Didn’t you? You tried to get away.”
Horace stood frozen for half a second longer than he ever had in his life.
Then he moved.
He shrugged off his coat and covered Rheya’s upper body with deliberate care.
His hands was steady even as his jaw clenched so hard it trembled. He turned slightly, blocking the knights’ view, not out of modesty, but respect.
“No one looks,” he said sharply.
The knights looked away at once.
Freya was trembling now, trying to be strong, trying to be fierce, but her voice cracked anyway. “She’s not waking up. Horace, she’s not waking!”
He knelt beside them and took Rheya’s wrist, fingers steady as stone.
Freya’s chest tightened painfully. “Horace,” she whispered. “Please.”
Then, “She has a pulse,” he said.
Freya sucked in a sharp breath. “She does?”
“Yes,” he replied, calm and certain. “It’s weak. But it’s there.”
Relief crashed through her, “She’s alive,” she whispered, pressing her forehead to Rheya’s hair. “You hear that? You’re alive.”
Horace stood and turned to the knights, “Get a stretcher. Carefully. Do not touch the wings more than necessary.”
One knight nodded sharply. “Understood.”
As they lifted Rheya, Freya stayed close, one hand gripping the stretcher, the other brushing Rheya’s fingers.
“She’s cold,” she said urgently. “She’s really cold.”
Horace adjusted the coat, tucking it tighter. “Stay strong.”
“You’re doing exactly what she needs,” he continued. “Don't panic.”