Time of the Blind Beast - Chapter 14

The reason was simple.

It was the fear of Ezekiel’s anger and revenge.

“I start thinking that I want to kill you. I imagine a hundred different ways to kill you in my head.”

The way he wanted revenge was very clear—immediate execution. Had she been of noble status or from a prestigious family, maybe there would have been room for negotiation. But as a commoner who had harmed a man from an aristocratic family, there was no way her actions could be justified, no matter what threats or coercion she faced.

If Ezekiel had lost an arm or a leg instead of his eyes, and thus had the ability to execute her right away with a rifle, would she have come to this mansion, offering her help?

The answer was obvious.

She wouldn’t have. It would have been a path straight to her death.

The courage she had mustered to come to this mansion was born from an unconscious assumption: that a blind man wouldn’t be able to recognize her face.

It was an ugly truth she didn’t want to admit. Truly despicable. Disgustingly despicable.

A hypocrite.

A coward.

She despised herself more than anything.

Rose bit the inside of her lip. It wasn’t something to be thankful for—that the tea had grown cold. If only it had been boiling hot, she might have felt like she was getting the punishment she deserved.

When Rose returned to the drawing room after stepping out for a brief moment, Ezekiel had already returned to his bedroom and was drinking wine mixed with opium.

Though he often drank, he usually stopped once he felt the effects. But this time was different. One glass, two, three. He poured it down so quickly that the bottle was empty in no time.

They said nothing numbed pain like laudanum. The repeated examinations by doctors had clearly taken a toll on him. After all, the heart could feel pain, too.

Rose couldn’t bring herself to approach him. She stood by the doorway, silently watching him.

As the opium took effect, the pained expression on his face gradually relaxed. He leaned back in his chair, his head resting against the back. His body looked noticeably more at ease. For a moment, he even seemed to be asleep.

For this man, this moment was both his rest and his treatment.

She felt like she shouldn’t disturb him. Rose quietly stepped backward, gently closing the door behind her as she left.

***

It was after two or three more doctors had visited the mansion that Rose began to notice something strange about Ezekiel.

“Major, it’s Rose.”

Though he had an uncanny ability to recognize her footsteps, Rose knocked twice before entering, just in case. It was a habit she had developed while attending to him.

“I’ve brought up the pillows and blankets from the laundry room. I’ll go ahead and change them now.”

It was a trivial matter, one he didn’t need to know about, but Rose spoke deliberately, not wanting her quiet movements to irritate him.

She quickly tidied up the bed, replacing the old pillows and blankets with the freshly laundered ones that carried his scent. On the bedside table lay several empty bottles, discarded haphazardly after he had guzzled their contents following his examination.

She decided to clear them all at once.

Setting her things down for a moment, she gathered the bottles quietly, casting a glance at him to ensure she wasn’t disturbing him. Though Madam Serva had told her to focus solely on tending to Ezekiel, this mansion was always short of hands, and the line between one’s duties and another’s often blurred. Rose often helped with cleaning the room as well. Besides, small tasks like these gave her an excuse to keep her headscarf on, which concealed her hair from prying eyes—something she welcomed.

One, two, three. Rose counted the empty bottles and looked back at Ezekiel. He had drained every last drop. At this point, she could believe that what ran through his veins was not blood, but alcohol and opium.

She glanced at him again, noticing his half-lidded, drowsy eyes.

Wait… What was that?

She had seen him intoxicated many times. Though he had a strong constitution and could consume large amounts of alcohol and drugs without becoming incapacitated, there was still no comparison to how he had been at his peak. As time passed, he spent more and more hours unfocused, his gaze wandering aimlessly.

Rose had seen every sign of his intoxication, being with him for most of the day. Yet, this strange sense of unease bothered her.

There was something eerie about it, something different.

Rose rose from her spot and cautiously approached him. His eyes, more unfocused than usual, wandered blankly across the room. They appeared both to see something and not see anything at all, as if he were looking through some invisible veil.

“Cease the advance, cease.”

Rose jumped at his sudden, nonsensical words.

“The bushes are waist-high. It’s the perfect place for the enemy to ambush us.”

His words, slurred from the alcohol and drugs, were incoherent, and the content itself was completely out of context. Conversations usually followed a logical flow. But now, listening to him was like hearing a foreign language.

“Major?”

“Yes, over there.”

He suddenly turned to stare at a corner of the room. Rose instinctively followed his gaze.

But there was nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

“…Major, what’s going on?”

Rose struggled to stay calm, though her voice came out more stiff than she had intended.

“The ground is soaked from the rain, so every step we take will make a noise. The sticky ground won’t allow us to move quickly, and the squelching mud and wet leaves will alert the enemy to our position.”

His response made no sense.

No, it wasn’t a response at all.

He wasn’t talking to Rose—he was speaking to someone else. A man who couldn’t see the visible was now seeing the invisible. A man whose hearing had become keen in the absence of sight couldn’t even hear her voice from right next to him.

“We’ll turn their plan against them. We’ll pretend to fall into their trap, then ambush them from behind.”

His words were nonsensical.

Was he dreaming? Possessed? Losing his mind?

Fear gripped her. Rose stood frozen, watching Ezekiel.

No, he wasn’t dreaming—his eyes were slightly open. And he wasn’t possessed—he was simply sitting there, gazing into the empty space and talking nonsense. His condition resembled a delusion more than anything else. But the clarity and vividness with which he described his fantasy made her shiver.

Was he having a mental breakdown?

She thought of the asylums where lunatics were sent. Those who weren’t cared for by their families were taken to asylums and left there, abandoned. Though Ezekiel was unlikely to be sent to such a place, as his noble status protected him, who knew what might happen if Akenaus found out? Everything Ezekiel did could be used against him.

Rose checked to make sure the door to the bedroom was securely closed. She didn’t want any of the other servants to witness this strange behavior. While she was tending to the door, Ezekiel was busy commanding his spectral soldiers in an imagined battle, his sharp, tactical mind fully engaged in leading his ghostly troops.

He was completely lost in his delusion, calculating with precision how to outmaneuver the enemy, where to strike if his army got stuck in the mud, and how to ambush the opposing forces—all while sitting in the empty bedroom with nothing but a few pieces of furniture and shadows.

“Prepare to fire. Fire.”

Even though it wasn’t real, Rose felt as if she were catching a glimpse of the officer Ezekiel had once been. In the heat of battle, he must have been a commanding leader, sharp and decisive. Bold, fierce, and intelligent.

He was a man whose body had once been trapped on the battlefield, and now it was his mind that was still there. His soul was ensnared in the war, unable to escape.

Rose hesitated to wake him, her hand hovering in midair.

It was because of the expression on his face.

He looked like a confident officer, completely sure of himself.

It was a face she had never seen in the reality where he was blind. Instead, it was in this state, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, lost in his false hallucination, that he seemed more free, more at peace. Perhaps this was his true self.

She didn’t have the heart to bring him back to harsh reality. She knew too well how broken he had become.

In the end, Rose withdrew her hand.

Ezekiel, still trapped in his intoxicated state, never recognized her until he eventually drifted off to sleep.