They walked deeper into the forest, farther than Mandle had ever been taken before. The trees grew taller, older, their branches twisting together to block out the moonlight. The air grew colder. Still. Heavy.
Only the soft crackle of the torch in his father's hand broke the silence.
Mandle's legs trembled, but he forced himself forward. He had to see her. He had to know.
The wolf followed behind them, golden eyes glowing faintly in the dark.
They reached a place where the trees bent unnaturally, as if something powerful had once torn through them. A faint shimmer lingered in the air — the remnants of a magical boundary long destroyed.
His father stepped through it first.
Past the broken barrier.
Mandle followed.
The moment he crossed it, the air shifted — colder, heavier, filled with a strange stillness that made his skin prickle.
And then they reached the clearing.
A circle of ancient trees surrounded it, their roots curling like guardians around the earth. Moonlight broke through the canopy here, illuminating a bed of white blossoms.
And in the center of those flowers… lay her.
The clearing was filled with lilies, moonflowers, and pale petals that shimmered under the moonlight. And resting among them, as if she had fallen from the sky, lay the princess.
Her hair spilled across the flowers like dark silk. Her face was pale — almost glowing. Her lips were drained of color. Her body perfectly still.
But she wasn't preserved by her own magic.
She was preserved by his.
The power Mandle had taken from the priests — the power he had forced into her in a desperate attempt to save her — had frozen her in this state. Not alive. Not gone. Suspended.
Because even though the power he gave her wasn't enough to keep her alive, it was enough to keep her from dying… for a little while.
Long enough for her to breathe a few more breaths. Long enough for her to whisper her last words. Long enough for her to look at him one final time.
But not long enough to save her.
Her skin looked soft, but when the moonlight hit it, Mandle saw the truth:
Cold. Hard. Smooth like carved stone.
A statue made of the girl he tried to save.
Mandle's breath shattered.
His vision blurred.
His legs buckled beneath him.
He stumbled backward, losing his footing completely, crashing against a tree as a broken sound tore from his throat.
"No…" he whispered, voice trembling. "I gave her everything… and it still wasn't enough…"
Something inside Mandle shifted.
At first it was small — a tremor in his breath, a flicker in his eyes.
Then the forest reacted.
The wind, which had been still moments before, suddenly swept through the clearing in a violent rush, bending branches and scattering petals across the ground. The moonlight dimmed as clouds rolled in unnaturally fast, swallowing the sky.
The temperature dropped so sharply that Mandle's father's breath turned to mist.
The wolf's fur bristled.
The air thickened, humming with a low vibration that seemed to come from the earth itself.
It felt as if something ancient had awakened.
A pulse of dark power shot through the forest — a shockwave that rattled leaves, shook branches, and sent birds fleeing from distant trees.
Mandle's body jerked once.
Then his eyes darkened, swallowed by shadow.
The demon inside him had taken control.
The ground beneath him cracked slightly, as if unable to bear the pressure of the energy rising through him. The trees around the clearing leaned inward, creaking, as though drawn toward him or warning each other of what had returned.
The wolf growled, stepping back.
His father whispered, horrified, "No… not again…"
But it was too late.
The demon lifted Mandle's head slowly, unnaturally, as the wind spiraled around him in a tightening vortex. Leaves whipped through the air. The moonlight flickered. The forest held its breath.
And the demon smiled.
The wolf lunged forward, placing itself between Mandle and the girl, fur bristling, golden eyes blazing.
"Stay back," it snarled.
But the demon only tilted Mandle's head, amused.
Then—
With a flick of his hand, effortless and cold, the demon lifted the wolf off the ground.
No touch. No struggle. Just raw, invisible force.
The wolf's paws kicked at the air, its jaws forced open by an unseen pressure — not torn, not injured, but held wide in a way that made its eyes widen with shock.
The demon leaned in, voice low and chilling:
"I won't kill you… because you're not entirely useless."
The pressure tightened for a heartbeat—just enough to show he could do far worse.
Then the demon released him.
The wolf flew across the clearing, hitting the earth and skidding to a stop, breath knocked from its lungs.
The demon slowly turned Mandle's head toward his father.
And in that instant, different emotions flashed across his father's face — raw, unfiltered, impossible to hide:
Shock. Fear. Pain. Confusion. Helplessness. Desperation.
Each emotion flickered through him so quickly it was like watching a storm break across his features.
For a heartbeat, father and son stared at each other — but the eyes looking back were not Mandle's.
The demon studied him… tilted Mandle's head slightly… as if deciding whether the man was worth acknowledging at all.
Then, without a word, the demon turned Mandle's gaze back to the girl on the bed of flowers.
As if she was the only thing that mattered.
The demonic power inside Mandle surged upward, trying to strengthen itself, trying to take advantage of his unconscious state. It wanted to grow. It wanted to dominate. It wanted to smother the faint light buried deep inside him.
But the light pushed back — instinctively, violently.
Two forces clashed inside him, both weakened, both unstable, both too strong for a young body to contain.
The demon snarled inside him, furious.
It wanted to keep the power. It wanted to feed on it. It wanted to use it to take over completely.
But Mandle's body couldn't hold both energies at once. The collision of light and dark forced the demonic power outward.
The demon had no choice.
A dark, shimmering force gathered in his throat — not because he willed it, but because the unstable energies inside him expelled it.
He leaned over her.
And exhaled.
A stream of shadowy energy poured from his mouth into hers — cold, heavy, alive. The flowers trembled. The air pulsed. The clearing dimmed around them.
His father shouted his name. The wolf tried to rise again.
But the demon couldn't stop it.
The power was being ripped out of him — forced into her — because his body could not contain the collision of light and dark.
Only the stolen demonic energy left him — the corrupted power he had taken from others. The true demon inside Mandle remained, weakened but still bound to him. Nothing of the demon itself passed into her.
The last of the stolen energy burst out of him in a final surge — a dark, shimmering wave that fell across her like scattered embers, settling over her skin before sinking into her chest.
As that final thread of power left him, his strength vanished completely.
His knees buckled.
He swayed forward.
And with no awareness, no control, no resistance—
he collapsed onto her, his weight falling gently across her as if the energy had pulled him down with it.
The flowers beneath them rustled softly under the impact.
For a moment, everything was still.
Then—
Her chest rose.
Just once.
A faint, fragile breath.
And then—
A scream tore from her throat — sharp, sudden, and powerful — a sound that pierced through the night and sent every creature in the forest scattering into the darkness.
As the echo faded, her skin became surrounded by a swirling veil of demonic energy, flickering across her body like living shadows.