If there existed a place forsaken by gods and men alike, it could only have been that temple — the one where Kasha first laid eyes on Leon.
She walked alone across the marble floor, its pale surface mottled with the dried stains of other people’s blood.
“…This place has been sealed off. Leave at once.”
The paladin who issued the warning was a wreck of a man.
His platinum hair had turned ash-grey beneath a coat of dust. His eyes had lost all their light. His helmet was missing its visor entirely; his pauldrons were rusted and caved in. And above all else — his right arm was gone, sheared off cleanly below the shoulder.
But the damage was not only to his body.
“Ugh — hk — hh—”
During the few days Kasha spent sheltering in the temple, he would erupt without warning — fever-bright eyes blazing as he screamed at her to leave.
“I told you… to go… ngh — aren’t you even afraid of me?”
Silence.
“Or perhaps you want a beast like me to tear into you, to soil you completely? Is that what you like? Kkhk… huk— kkhk—”
Even as his eyes burned with lust and saliva dripped from his lips, even as filth poured from his mouth — he never touched Kasha.
He crawled across the marble floor like an animal, spending himself beneath the sacred statues of the gods, screaming his resentment at the heavens — but he never laid a hand on her.
Kasha watched him from the shadows, her gaze unreadable. She waited, still and patient, until the fever broke.
He seemed to know. To know that she was watching him.
Displaying his ruined, fallen form before her eyes, he seemed at times to be suffering. At times, ashamed. And sometimes, when the lust seized full command of his mind, he seemed almost to relish her gaze.
On the night a full moon rose above the broken sanctuary, a fallen paladin and a crouching villainess watched each other through the long, dark hours.
The evening his fever finally broke, he built a small fire with a haggard, hollow face. Kasha hesitated, then crossed the distance between them and sat down beside him. Too exhausted to bother driving her away, he let her stay.
They sat together in silence, staring into the flames for a long while. It was Kasha who finally broke it.
“Um. I… I’m the villainess. Kasha.”
Even after hearing her confession, he said nothing. Those pale violet eyes — once called the jewels of the empire — held no life in them, only the flickering reflection of the fire.
“The one who… made you like this. It was… me.”
Her voice seemed to shrink into itself. Only then did he turn to look at her. Gaunt as he was, cheeks hollowed nearly to the bone, he was still beautiful.
“You — you’re the villainess Kasha?”
A nod.
He studied her for a long moment, turning the thought over in silence. Then a smile cracked across his lips — dry and brittle, like a dead leaf.
“Funny.”
And then, silence again.
…He doesn’t believe me.
Kasha understood. He couldn’t believe it. That a woman as inconsequential as this could be the villainess Kasha.
If he truly believed her, he would probably have drawn that rusted sword and run her through the throat already.
He didn’t recognize her.
Not just now — he hadn’t remembered their very first encounter either, years ago.
That was only natural. Their meeting then had lasted no more than a heartbeat, and her presence — then as now — was the kind that left no impression on anyone.
But she remembered everything. Every single moment, without exception.
That was why she couldn’t bring herself to leave this abandoned temple, or the man haunting it like a beast left to die.
For three days and three nights, she kept reaching out to him — stumbling over her words, but persisting. Searching for any way she might be able to help.
He had kept his lips pressed shut. Then, gradually, he offered a word or two. And then, at some point, everything poured out of him.
Why had he opened up?
It was a thought that only came to her afterward — but perhaps, even then, he had already begun preparing himself for death. The regret of a life about to flicker out must have loosened his tongue.
Or perhaps he had simply been bewildered by her — a woman who would look a cursed, fallen paladin in the eye and keep talking to him without a trace of fear, her gaze so achingly earnest.
The three days passed quickly. When at last Kasha had heard everything, she spoke.
“I’ll save you.”
He looked at her for a moment — surprised, perhaps, that she had completed a full sentence without stumbling.
“I mean it. I… I know a way. I might be able to break your curse. So just… a little longer—”
He cut her off, his expression unchanged.
“No one can save another person’s life.”
“…But—”
“So go. Save your own life first. Mine is already beyond saving.”
It was at precisely that moment that violent footsteps shattered the stillness of the temple.
“Villainess Katiana Rüschino — by order of His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince, you are hereby under arrest!”
Imperial soldiers flooded in through the entrance, and Kasha was captured without struggle — how terribly, uselessly easy it was.
“So this woman really is the villainess Kasha?”
Leon murmured it as though he still couldn’t believe it. But the eyes that fell on her were already losing their light again — as though even the fact that this unremarkable woman was his enemy no longer held any meaning for him.
Looking at him, she pleaded.
“I — I’ll find a way, somehow. I’ll think of something. So please — please, just survive. If you do, then—”
“Wait. I know that face. Isn’t that Leon Aranias? The fallen paladin wanted by the Holy Knights?”
One of the encircling imperial knights had recognized him. The moment the words were spoken, the knight commander’s face lit up.
“Bring us his head along with hers and His Highness will reward us handsomely. He’s dangerous, but if we rush him all at once, we have the advantage!”
“No—!”
Kasha went white. But Leon only stared blankly ahead.
“One squad escorts the villainess immediately. The rest of you — deal with Leon Aranias.”
As the soldiers dragged her away, Kasha watched Leon parry the knights’ swords with his single remaining arm — each blow deflected with the listless, mechanical motions of a man who had already decided to stop fighting.
She understood.
He was going to die here.
He had already made up his mind.
In that moment, a grief so violent it had no name tore itself loose from somewhere deep inside her.
“Don’t die — please don’t die, Leon—!”
Don’t disappear like that, so easily, so pointlessly. If you die like that — I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell myself I’m not the villainess they say I am.
I’ll become exactly the monster people say I am.
Clang. Clang. Clash.
At the end of the savage, hunt-like din of steel, the triumphant cries of the soldiers reached her ears like something heard from across a great distance.
They had succeeded in their hunt.
Kasha left Leon’s end behind her.
And was taken directly to Arkin’s first-class prison — a place reserved for the most violent and dangerous criminals in the capital.
⁂
Three months later.
It was Kasha’s twenty-first birthday.
Winter wind cut through the iron bars of her cell without mercy. And with it came voices, rising in a chorus outside.
“Execute the villainess Kasha!”
“Kasha Rüschino! Die! You miserable witch!”
“Give me back my child, you devil — you deserve to be torn apart!”
The curses people hurled at her had long since grown familiar. But the grief and agony woven through those voices — no matter how many times she heard them, they lodged in her chest like a knife driven slowly deeper.
Kasha pulled her knees to her chest and dropped her head, curling around the space where frostbitten toes had once been before falling off.
Winter in the prison was merciless. The dress she’d been wearing when they arrested her had long since rotted to rags, offering no barrier against the cold. Frostbite had eaten through her body in patches, flesh rotting away where skin had once been. Her eyesight, too, had broken down — she could barely see shapes anymore.
Cough. Cough.
She was still wracked by coughs violent enough to feel like cracking ribs when she heard footsteps.
Kasha’s body coiled tighter on instinct, drawing itself smaller. Her breathing quickened with a fear she couldn’t stop.
The sound of a guard’s footsteps alone was enough to make her teeth rattle.
Torture never grew familiar, no matter how many times it came. They demanded answers she was not capable of giving, and in response they invented new methods every single day.
Tell me, you wretched creature! What in the world was your purpose? Why did you do those terrible things?
Who were your accomplices?
You insufferable, miserable bitch!
Screech. Clang.
The iron cell door swung open. Someone stepped inside and, apparently finding her huddled and shaking in the corner, clicked their tongue.
“…Kasha. What a sight you are.”
A familiar voice. Her head snapped up — but with her eyes nearly gone, she could see nothing.
“S… Simon?”
The voice that crawled out of her ruined throat — shredded from the screaming she’d done under torture — sounded like an old woman’s, cracked and broken all the way through.
“That’s right. It’s me, Kasha. Ha — prisoner or not, this is…something else.”
He clicked his tongue again. Kasha dragged her frostbitten, sensation-less legs across the floor toward him. She resented his lateness — but the mere fact that there was now a chance of leaving this place made something like relief bloom in her chest.
“Simon. Has everything… come to light now?”
Silence.
“I… never said your name. Not once. No matter how much they tortured me… I never… breathed a word.”
“Good girl. Same as always.”
“So then…”
Take me out of here. Tell me that all the pain I’ve been carrying alone is finally, finally over.
“But even if you had said my name, Kasha — it wouldn’t have changed much.”
What?
What he said next, spoken in a voice edged with mockery, made no sense to her at all.
“Kasha. It really was all you who did it, wasn’t it? When it comes down to it. Whether I told you to or not — all that matters in the end is that your hands did it. You were the one who made those weapons. You were the one who broke the seals on the magestones.”
“N— no! I didn’t know! I didn’t know what those things would be used for — that they would be used to kill people — I genuinely didn’t know. If I had known, no matter how hard you pushed me, I would never — never — have made them.”
Simon let out a snicker.
“And that’s exactly how you ended up like this. You actually thought those weapons would be used for hunting animals.”
His mockery struck her like a blade. She pressed on, forcing the words out as though bleeding them.
“The magestones — breaking those seals — that wasn’t what I intended it for, either. You know that. So how could you take them from me like that and then use them for something so vile? How could you do that to innocent people — how—”
Kasha screamed.
The rage and despair that had been gnawing at her soul through every single day of her imprisonment finally tore free. It was a confession she hadn’t been able to make to anyone.
I really didn’t know. If she had known what her creations would become — what those magestones would be turned into — no threat in the world would have made her comply.
Every time the guards had pried her fingernails out one by one, snapped her joints, pressed white-hot iron tongs against her thighs — how desperately had she wanted to scream it all out. To tell them everything.
The only reason she hadn’t was—
“You… you’re my husband, Simon.”
