As Olivia was busy preparing to meet a visitor from the Noruden nation,

The outskirts of the capital bathed in the reddening twilight was quiet except for the smoke of evening fires.

Normally, the streets would have been bustling with the voices of parents calling for their lateplaying children and the conversations of those heading home.

But as the string of disappearances and unreturned individuals grew, people began to hold back, restricting their outside movements.

Of course, they still had to make a living, so they went to work during the day, but as night fell and the sun set, they all hurried home, looking around.

And the perpetrator who drove them into fear was receiving a calm evening, wearing the face of a very familiar, ordinary neighbor.

No, it seemed exceedingly peaceful on the surface, but……

Clank, thump, grating.

A man, his eyes halfrolled back, was opening and closing the box where he stored the possessions of those who had become sacrifices to the ancient god, dragging the box back and forth.

“Taren, Taren, Taren, Taren, Taren, Taren!”

Thud!

The man, whose eyes were darting around, looked towards the store as he slammed the box down.

Licking his dry lips, he grinned to the point of tearing his mouth open.

“I finally found it.”

The prey that would be the final sacrifice needed to summon his god.

Ambre Taren.

Initially, he only planned to swindle money…

The man licked his upper lip as he clutched the purse that Ambre had handed over today.

Soft pink hair, a perfectly clear smile, an expression and voice filled with nothing but kindness.

And those light blue eyes.

Indeed, weren’t those eyes as clear as a child’s?

“You will make a good sacrifice to end it all.”

He had always dreamed of the end, but he had never thought about specifically pointing someone out to be the sacrifice.

They said she was the lady of the Taren family.

Probably, kidnapping her would be as difficult as picking stars from the sky.

“The harder the sacrifice is to obtain, the more worthwhile it will be.”

And tonight, the eve of the final act begins.

Squeak.

The door of the box creaked open, revealing two empty spaces.

“One, and then another.”

The places for the sacrifices to be offered to the ancient god today.

The moment the man brushed his fingers over the empty space.

Knock knock.

“Brother. Mom said to give this to you.”

The child who opened the door and handed the basket to the man was the very same child whose mother had been struggling a lot around the man not long ago.

“Why give me something like this.”

In the basket the child handed over were two dried, shrunken pieces of bread and sprouted potatoes.

Knowing that this was almost the last food the mother and child had, the man tapped the child’s head lightly.

Upon that, the child pulled down her eyebrows and licked her lips.

Kneeling down to match the eye level of the speechless child, the man stroked her forehead.

“Don’t worry, there will be no worries after tonight.”

The child tilted her head as she rubbed the forehead he had stroked.

It seemed like she was trying to understand something. And then…

“Tonight?”

Looking down at the blinking child, the man opened his mouth.

“Just wait here for a while.”

Leaving the child nodding obediently, the man went inside the house and brought out soft white bread and a thin soup that wouldn’t cause stomach ache.

He put the food, which a grumbling neighbor had spared, into the child’s arms.

“Take this and eat. You’ll need to move a bit.”

Although she couldn’t understand what he meant, the child’s attention was only captured by the food in front of her.

The man, who wiped away the drool that had pooled at the corner of the child’s mouth, smiled as kindly as possible.

“Eat well and come back here before dawn. Don’t separate from your mother.”

The man handed a small note to the child.

The note didn’t have words, but a picture that anyone could understand.

Not the already torn apart open space, but to a much smaller, but much more secret place…

The child who received the note grinned with a dry face that showed utter delight.

“Yeah! Brother, thank you so much! I’m glad I talked to you. My mom will cry less now.”

The child left the man with a smile.

And unfortunately for the child and her mother, but fortunately for the man, no one saw the child’s visit.

The man who checked around nodded his head.

The fact that people don’t look out the window, let alone walk around outside when it gets dark, has ironically become a blessing in disguise.

The man stood outside until the top of the departing child’s head was out of sight, then went back inside and stood in front of the box again.

Stroking the empty part of the box, he whispered.

“Thank you. I will purify you and your mother.”

The eyes of the laughing man were swirling with madness.

And a few hours later, a small empty lot described in the man’s note.

Thud.

“Brother? Why, why are you…”