The air in the Crimson Castle wasn't cold. That was the first thing Elara noticed, and it was wrong. Every other level of this nightmare game had been freezing, damp, or burning. This place, the final chamber, was merely… still. The silence was so thick it pressed against her eardrums. She stood just inside the towering double doors, which had slammed shut behind her with a finality that echoed in her bones.
She forced herself to breathe, to look.
The hall was vast, a cathedral of black stone and blood-red velvet. Candles in iron chandeliers floated high above, their light not flickering, as if the very air was afraid to move. At the far end, on a dais, stood a throne carved from what looked like a single, massive piece of obsidian. And on it, he sat.
Duke Valerius.
He was exactly as the rumors described, and yet the descriptions failed. He wasn't just handsome; he was a study in perfected stillness. Hair the color of old snow fell to his shoulders, a stark contrast against the deep burgundy of his jacket. His features were sharp, elegant, devoid of any human flaw or warmth. He held a crystal goblet, swirling a dark liquid slowly. He hadn't looked at her yet.
Elara's mind, her greatest weapon, raced. She catalogued exits: none. Threats: the entity on the throne, the suffocating silence, the statues. Ah, the statues. Dozens of them, lining the walls. Not marble. They were people, or had been. Contestants frozen in silver, their faces captured in expressions of hope, longing, terror. Some reached out, some knelt, some seemed to be mid-curtsey. All were failures.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the quiet. *Strategy. Focus.* The objective was simple and insane: make the Duke fall in love. The only way out. She'd seen the other approaches fail. The coquette from Level Three, the intellectual from Level Seven, the defiant warrior from Level Nine… all here, frozen in their final, futile poses.
Valerius finally lifted his gaze. His eyes were the pale, unsettling grey of a winter dawn. They swept over her, from her practical, mud-stained boots to her tangled brown hair. There was no interest in that look. Only a profound, weary boredom.
"Another one," he said. His voice was smooth, low, perfectly modulated. It filled the hall without effort. "Seeking to win my heart? How predictably tedious."
Elara straightened her shoulders. Fear was a luxury. She'd traded in it for calculation the moment she'd been pulled into this game. She took a step forward, her boot heel clicking on the polished stone. The sound was obscenely loud.
"I'm not here for your heart, Your Grace," she said. Her own voice sounded rough, human, compared to his.
One pale eyebrow lifted, a minute show of surprise. "No? Then you have taken a terribly wrong turn. The exit, as you may have noticed, is sealed."
"I'm here to survive," Elara stated, taking another step. She kept her eyes locked on his, refusing to be cowed. "Your heart is just the key. I need it to open the door."
A slow, utterly humorless smile touched his lips. He took a sip from his goblet. "Direct. A minor novelty. It will not save you. They all had their opening lines. The poetry, the tears, the bold declarations. They all thought they were different." He gestured languidly with his free hand toward the gallery of statues. "They are not. They are all… souvenirs."
Elara reached the center of the hall. She could see him more clearly now. He looked young, perhaps in his late twenties, but his eyes held centuries of nothing. "I don't care about being different," she said. "I care about being effective. They failed because they played the game you expected. I'm not playing that game."
"And what game do you propose?" He leaned back in his throne, resting his chin on his hand. The picture of indolent curiosity.
"The game of observation." She stopped walking, about twenty feet from the dais. A respectful, but not submissive, distance. "You are bored. Profoundly, terminally bored. These contestants,"—she jerked her head toward the statues—"are amateurs performing a tired play. You know every line. You know every possible move a human makes when they desire something. So you freeze them and add them to your collection, waiting for one who might, for a single second, surprise you."
The silence that followed was deeper than before. The floating candles seemed to dim. Valerius's expression didn't change, but the air around him grew heavier, colder. The temperature in the hall finally dropped.
"You presume to know my mind?" he asked, the smoothness gone from his voice, replaced by a dangerous edge.
"I presume to state the obvious," Elara countered, her own fear fueling a strange courage. "If you weren't bored, you'd have left this castle. If you weren't waiting, you'd have destroyed the game system that sends us here. You haven't. So here you sit, drinking your wine, collecting statues, hoping the next one will be less disappointing."
He set his goblet down on the arm of his throne with a sharp *click*. The sound was like a bone breaking. He stood up.
He was taller than she'd imagined. He moved with an unnatural, liquid grace, descending the dais steps without a sound. Elara's instincts screamed at her to run, to cower, to beg. She locked her knees and held her ground. This was the first test.
He stopped a few feet in front of her. She could smell him now—old books, frost, and something metallic, like cold iron. He looked down at her, his winter-dawn eyes searching her face.
"You are afraid," he stated.
"Yes," she admitted immediately.
"Yet you stand there."
"Running wouldn't help. Neither would flattery."
"What will help, in your expert opinion?" A trace of mockery was back in his tone.
"Honesty," she said. It was a gamble, but the only one she had. "I am afraid of you. I am afraid of dying here, of becoming a statue. I want to survive. To do that, I need you to feel something for me. That is my objective. It is not romantic. It is logistical."
A strange light flickered in his eyes. Not warmth. Not yet. But the boredom had shifted, just a fraction, into something else. Intrigue.
"Logistical," he repeated, the word tasting strange on his tongue. "You speak of the greatest force in any world—love, obsession, desire—as a logistical problem to be solved."
"In this world, in this castle, that's exactly what it is," Elara said. Her hands were trembling. She clenched them into fists at her sides, hoping he didn't notice. "It's the rule of the game. I am simply acknowledging the rulebook."
He stared at her for a long, long moment. Then, he turned and walked back toward his throne. He didn't sit. He picked up his goblet again. "Most of them," he said, his back to her, "spend their first hour trying to convince me they are not afraid. Or that their fear makes them worthy. You simply admit it. As a… logistical fact."
He glanced over his shoulder. "You may stay. For now. The west wing has rooms. Find one that doesn't displease you. Dinner is at moonrise. Do not be late."
It wasn't an invitation. It was an order. But it wasn't a death sentence, and it wasn't a statue.
Elara let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Her knees felt weak. "Thank you, Your Grace."
"Do not thank me," he said, settling back onto his throne. The mask of boredom was back, but it seemed less absolute now, a hairline crack showing through. "You have merely earned the chance to be slightly more interesting before you fail. The room at the end of the west corridor. The door with the silver handle. Go."
He dismissed her with a wave, lifting his goblet to his lips.
Elara turned and walked toward a narrow archway she assumed led to the west wing. Her back prickled with the sensation of his gaze on her. She didn't look back. Every step away from him felt like a minor victory. She had passed the first, impossible hurdle. She was alive. She had a room. She had time.
But as she pushed open the heavy door with the silver handle, the weight of her task settled on her fully. *Make him feel something.* She had reduced it to a problem, but now, in the quiet of the stone corridor, the human reality of it hit her. She had to connect with a creature who viewed eternity as a burden and people as potential art installations. She had to be honest in a game built on deception.
She entered the room. It was spacious, opulent, and cold. A large bed with dark curtains, a writing desk, and a fireplace with dead ashes. On the desk lay a single, fresh white rose.
She picked it up. A peace offering? A warning? A part of the game's décor?
She didn't know. She placed it back on the desk. Survival wasn't about guessing his every move. It was about controlling her own. She sat on the edge of the bed, the exhaustion of the previous levels crashing down. Moonrise. She had until then to rest, to think.
The game was on. Not the game of seduction the others had played, but her game. The game of one woman trying to solve the coldest heart in existence, using nothing but the truth as her tool. She lay back on the covers, staring at the canopy above. The first step was taken. Now, she had to figure out the second.
Outside the room, in the silent hall, Duke Valerius stared into his wine. The image of the woman with the defiant eyes and the trembling hands played in his mind. *Logistical*, she had said. No one had ever called the process of winning his love "logistical" before. It was insulting. It was… fresh.
A faint, almost forgotten sensation stirred in his chest. Not affection. Not desire. Curiosity.
He took a long drink. It would not last. It never did. But for the first time in decades, he found himself mildly anticipating moonrise.