"......"
Barbatos slowly opened her eyes. Their gazes met naturally.
Barbatos half-closed her eyes, looking slightly drowsy. Sleeping while hanging from the ceiling didn't really relieve fatigue. She must have been tired and exhausted in more ways than one. Barbatos's voice was somewhat hazy.
"I had a nostalgic dream."
"A dream, huh?"
"Yeah. That's right. It was around the time Zepar started growing his beard... He's always been a fool who takes everything too seriously."
Barbatos giggled at something amusing. I just puffed away at my pipe. I wasn't sure how much difference there was between her laughter and my smoke.
The cell was sealed off in ash-grey on all sides. Cool and gloomy like a damp nook perpetually soaked by rain. I never imagined a day would come when the two of us would have a conversation in a place like this. Barbatos probably harbored the same sentiment. She playfully rattled the chains on her wrists.
"Ah, ah—. So I got dumped after all. This is why you shouldn't fall for men. I'm such a fool. I had at least three layers of blinders on."
For a Demon Lord whose horns had been severed and limbs bound, she was remarkably composed. But that was Barbatos. A lioness who carried pride in her heart.
"Do you regret loving me?"
"I do regret it. Immensely. You see, I like being the one to dump a lover, but I absolutely hate being dumped myself. If I could go back in time, I'd smash your bastard's balls first thing."
I laughed.
I gazed at Barbatos in silence for a moment. Time stretched only around my heart, like music suddenly stopping. That silence lengthened until finally, like a bowstring snapping, it went— *twitch*.
"I killed Paimon. Barbatos."
"Huh? I know."
"No."
I shook my head.
"With these hands. I drove a blade directly into Paimon's body."
"......"
"I caught every drop of blood that spilled from Paimon. Once in the nape of the neck. Once in the back. Once at the base of the skull. Three times total—I thrust a sharpened dagger in each time."
I demonstrated by lightly tapping my own neck and back with my bare fist. A smile still lingered at the corners of my mouth.
"Each time I stabbed, she twitched. Twitched, her whole body trembling. She tried to hold on until the end, but when she couldn't anymore, she leaned her weight against me. I targeted only vital points, so she didn't take long to die."
Barbatos stared at me with a blank expression. Barbatos had believed the Grand Dukes killed Paimon. That I had personally murdered her was something she'd never heard before. I felt somewhat, if not greatly, pleased. The truth was, whenever Barbatos wore that dazed expression, I always felt good.
"Here's the important part. I deliberately stabbed the throat only twice. Making sure blood flowed back into her windpipe so she couldn't speak properly—that was the most important thing."
"Huh...?"
"Last words. When you're about to die, you're going to want to leave some last words, aren't you, Barbatos?"
I smiled sweetly.
"Before I killed Paimon, I gave her a wedding ring. Because happiness means letting your guard down. The moment Paimon was happiest—that was the moment she let her guard down the most. So after giving her the wedding ring..."
I pulled a ring from my pocket. The very same ring I had once slipped onto Paimon's ring finger myself. I held the ring up with my index finger and spoke playfully.
"I stabbed her. Without a shred of hesitation. How's that? A bit excessively cruel, isn't it? I think so too."
"......"
"Paimon must have thought so too. That it was too cruel. So, if Paimon were to leave last words, she would undoubtedly unleash every curse imaginable about me. A last words so dark, so deep, so terrifying that I couldn't even imagine what curse it might be..."
I didn't have the nerve to listen to that in silence.
The curse Paimon left behind would be lodged firmly in my brain, never to be erased for eternity. Paimon's curse would persist as hallucinations and voices, endlessly blaming me.
I didn't have excessive confidence in my own mental fortitude. My condition was already quite precarious. I might have managed to push through auditory hallucinations, but visual hallucinations were serious. If Paimon's curse were added on top of that, my mind might truly collapse.
Quickly.
Before she could leave any last words.
That was why I had to kill her that way.
"But even after losing all her mana, a Demon Lord is still a Demon Lord. Just one word. She had enough left for one final word, at the very end. Of course, she couldn't talk at any length. She couldn't use complex vocabulary either. Blood kept flowing back up from her mouth, so she had to keep it short and simple..."
One word was far too short to sum up a life. But that was the only absurd reprieve left to Paimon.
There wasn't even time to think. The man holding her in his arms right before her eyes—her fiancé and her killer, both at once. She had to hurriedly leave her last words. Paimon gathered her final strength and opened her mouth.
"She said 'I love you.'"
"......"
"That woman. She pressed her palm against my cheek and said it. She said she loved me one last time, and then she died. Do you understand what that means, Barbatos? It wasn't a simple confession. Of course it wasn't."
I removed the pipe from my mouth and grinned.
"That woman—Paimon—even in a situation where she could stop breathing at any moment... thought of the most effective, the most cruel curse disguised as a single phrase. Perfectly brilliant, wasn't it?"
"......"
"Paimon knew. That there was no need to unleash countless curses to destroy me. She was nothing if not a vicious woman from start to finish. Purely instinctive cunning."
Barbatos's expression twisted grotesquely. She wasn't grieving, and she wasn't worried. It was an indescribable mixture of emotions. The two of us stared at each other in silence for a long while.
"Dantalion. You... when did the hallucinations start?"
It was a sudden question.
I didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.
"Hallucinations? I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Stop playing dumb. I've seen thousands upon thousands of soldiers swallowed by war."
Barbatos's voice grew sharp.
"Killing someone quickly because you're afraid they'll leave last words—that's the textbook attitude of killers trapped in hallucinations. Don't even think about making excuses to me. There's no greater expert on war than me."
Barbatos stared directly into my pupils.
"At first it showed up as nightmares, right? Then auditory hallucinations. The final stage is visual hallucinations. Once symptoms deteriorate that far, there's no fixing it. When did it start? Answer me quickly."
I silently bore Barbatos's gaze. An impossibly heavy silence descended. Barbatos slowly parted her lips.
"That's impossible... no, you... how long have you been in that state..."
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm perfectly fine."
"So the drugs and the drinking were... wait, that started during the Crescent Alliance Army days... no, Dantalion. Look at me. Look into my eyes, you bastard!"
What on earth was Barbatos talking about?
Hadn't I been looking only at her this whole time?
"Ah...! Aaah!"
The maelstrom of emotions on Barbatos's face settled. Or perhaps it twisted even further—maybe that was more accurate. Barbatos stared at me with a face purely painted in shock.
"This... I failed to notice something so simple...!"
"If I'm not mistaken, there seems to be no conversation happening between the two of us. I have no idea what you're talking about, Barbatos."
"Dantalion, when you talk to someone, you look at their face and eyes!"
The conversation had reached a new level of absurdity.
I tilted my head.
"When having a conversation with someone, of course you should focus on that person. Isn't that just basic manners?"
"I should have realized sooner... why didn't I see it... You weren't looking at the other person. The only place your eyes happened to land was roughly the other person's face, and that..."
"The crazy one here isn't me, as far as I can tell."
I shrugged my shoulders.
Barbatos bit her lip.
"How many are there!? How many are in this room!?"
"I've been telling you—I don't understand what you're saying."
"How many faces of dead people in this room can you see!?"
I see.
In this room, there is no one besides Barbatos and me.
Why does Barbatos persist with such a strange claim?
"It's a judicial bargain. Zepar said he'd take the blame in your place. If you don't testify publicly that you alone planned Paimon's assassination, the entire Plains Faction will be executed."
"Look away!"
"You must care for your subordinates. If you don't want the Plains Faction to be annihilated like this, the prudent course is to confess your crimes willingly..."
"Look the other way! You son of a bitch! I said look somewhere else!"
Barbatos shouted. It seemed she wouldn't cooperate with the negotiations unless I met her demands. I sighed and turned my head the other way. It was a corner of the cell. There was nothing there.
"There. Happy now? I turned my head just as you wished. Now that your wish is fulfilled, perhaps we can have a slightly more constructive conversation..."
"What do you see over there?"
Barbatos pressed on persistently. She really was a woman more tenacious than a leech.
"Tell me what you see in that corner."
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Just a damp stone wall."
"......"
"Now then, let's not waste time on pointless delusions. Isn't there a more important matter for us to discuss?"
I held back a sigh and turned my gaze back to Barbatos.
And then I couldn't help but freeze. Barbatos's face was more wretchedly distorted than any expression I had ever witnessed. She was crying.
"Why... why didn't you say anything to me until it got to that point... I was always right beside you... if you had just said a word, if you had relied on me even a little, maybe things could have been different..."
"......"
"You fool, Dantalion... that corner is full of torture instruments..."
More tears. Still more tears streaked down her face.
"What on earth is 'blocking' your gaze...?"
There.
—Crouched in a huddle were corpses drenched in blood.
Dozens of them, in this very room, surrounded me and Barbatos. Corpses pierced by spears and hung up, corpses beheaded with only their heads remaining—their blood-soaked bodies encircled the two of us. Most of them were sitting or sprawled in disarray.
They shared one thing in common.
They were all staring fixedly at my face. Occasionally they whispered among themselves, but mostly in voices too small for me to make out. It was impossible for a severed head to hold a conversation. They were all nonexistent phantoms. Nothing but illusions.
"Paimon is there too."
Barbatos looked at me with tear-blurred eyes.
"You can see Paimon too, can't you, Dantalion? Answer me honestly... where is Paimon reflected in your eyes right now?"
I...
Smiled gently.
"Let me say it once more—there's no one here, Barbatos."