Time of the Blind Beast - Chapter 22

Chapter 4: The Magic of Dawn

“Rose, I don’t know if you’re awake… I’ll leave the food in front of the door. Eat it later.”

Footsteps approached stealthily, followed by a brief pause, and then Anna’s voice. It was clear she had hesitated over whether to knock. Soon after, Anna left with only a fleeting trace of her presence.

Rose groggily opened her eyes, brushing back the hair that had fallen over her face, and listened toward the door. By now, the outside had fallen into a deathly quiet.

How many days had it been?

“Three days… maybe?”

It was hard to tell precisely since day and night blended together, but judging by the six or seven meals left outside the door, it had been about three days. Her mind felt hazy, as if she’d only briefly dozed off.

She thought it would be over in a single night.

She had assumed that surviving that one night would allow her to unlock the door and step outside. Such optimism was born of ignorance. By morning, his condition had not improved. What she had thought was a critical low body temperature turned out to be just the prelude to the myriad withdrawal symptoms that would ravage him.

While it might be possible to deceive Madam Serva for a night, doing so for several days was out of the question. By morning, Madam Serva returned, and through the door, Rose confessed the truth of what had transpired the previous night. She then volunteered to stay locked in the room with him until his condition showed signs of improvement. This was to minimize any external stimuli.

At Madam Serva’s instructions, the household staff brought water, towels, food, and external wound ointments to the door as Rose had requested. Rose cleaned Ezekiel’s body, applied medicine to his wounds, and tidied up the disheveled room whenever she found a spare moment.

She attempted to feed him, but every effort failed. His condition made eating impossible—the pain alternating between a maddening itch and violent convulsions left no room for sustenance. Yet Rose continued to accept the meals, hoping against hope. She herself was barely eating, as staying beside an ailing person sapped her own appetite.

He suffered withdrawal symptoms without respite. When a crushing pain coursed through his entire body, Rose dared not touch him. In those moments, Ezekiel was reduced to a creature ruled by pure instinct, devoid of reason. To Rose, it seemed as if his body was conjuring non-existent pain on its own.

To endure the agony, he would punch the floor or hurl himself against the walls. Rose scrambled after him with a blanket to cushion his blows or desperately clung to him to prevent him from causing further harm. If only she were as large and strong as him, she might have pinned him to the bed until the worst of it passed. But she wasn’t, and despite her caution, accidents inevitably occurred.

“Ugh…”

She had been slammed against the wall three times. No matter how hard she tried, there was no overcoming his strength. She even learned that extreme pain rendered her incapable of screaming.

“Move, Rose!”

Still, she refused to let go of him.

“Are you trying to get hurt too?”

Even as he yelled at her, she held her ground.

“…I’m in this with you, Major. If you keep hurting yourself, I’ll get hurt too. But if you endure, I’ll stay unharmed.”

She was entirely sincere. In some ways, she felt fortunate. Sharing even a fraction of his pain eased her heart, though it left her body exhausted.

What truly tormented her was the extreme mental anguish.

“He can’t sleep.”

When she first heard Dr. Brehman’s warning, she hadn’t understood its full meaning. This was not ordinary insomnia—not a restless tossing and turning in bed. His awakened consciousness, spurred on by pain, meant he was relentlessly tormented without reprieve. Despite being utterly spent, he had not slept for three full days and nights.

Rose, too, stayed awake on the first night. But after hitting her physical limits, she now found herself briefly dozing off whenever Ezekiel’s symptoms seemed to subside. Even so, these fleeting moments of rest lasted no more than twenty or thirty minutes at a time.

Her head felt heavy, and her eyelids were dry and sore. If she looked in the mirror, she would likely see bloodshot eyes rimmed with broken capillaries. Occasionally, her eyes stung so badly that tears fell involuntarily. The bruises from trying to restrain him also throbbed with pain. Yet ever since she had declared herself his equal, Ezekiel’s ferocity had slightly abated.

In truth, Rose hadn’t even checked to see what injuries she had sustained. She was too busy watching over him to spare any time for herself.

Instead, she whispered constantly, to him and to herself.

“It’s alright. Everything will truly be alright soon. All of this will become a distant memory someday.”

Like a chant, infused with hope.

This room was a new battlefield. Sleepless, hungry, with someone suffering unimaginable pain every moment—it was eerily reminiscent of war.

But no war lasts forever. No matter how grueling, an end inevitably comes.

Today, Rose steeled herself once more.

We will end this war and walk out of this room unscathed.

***

If asked whether the hallucinations induced by opium brought pleasant dreams, the answer was simple. They did not. By most standards, they were closer to nightmares.

And yet, if asked why someone would immerse themselves in opium-induced hallucinations, the answer was just as straightforward. Because what was a nightmare for others was not a nightmare for him.

Opium hallucinations are rooted in vivid experiences. For Ezekiel, his life could be distilled into two significant events: the war that shaped him from boy to man, and the assassination attempt orchestrated by his own blood brother through a mistress-cum-assassin.

Time within hallucinations flows unevenly. Unlike ordinary dreams, which often feel fleeting no matter how long one sleeps, the hallucinations induced by opium-laced wine stretched on interminably, as if they would never end. They were also vividly realistic.

Had it not been for the soldier’s instinct to adhere to discipline and habitually analyze his surroundings, Ezekiel’s days and nights might have long since blurred into chaos. Many opium addicts failed to distinguish between hallucinations and reality, squandering their lives in dissipation.

Yet even amidst endless battles within his hallucinations or the presence of the woman sent to kill him, Ezekiel was untroubled. For someone who had repeatedly stared death in the face and survived, the terror of a nightmare was laughable. Ezekiel roamed the war-torn hallucinations with unrestrained relish.

Moreover, unlike Akenaus, whose face was familiar and widely recognized, the anonymous woman—whose name and age remained unknown—was merely a fleeting presence glimpsed upon waking for a few seconds. In truth, he was almost grateful for the way opium etched her face into his mind, ensuring he would never forget the visage of someone he must one day settle the score with.

For him, the allure of the hallucinations lay less in their content and more in the stolen sense of vision they provided. Even if waking up left him more despairing, opium offered a paradoxical solace, like seawater that quenches thirst while intensifying it.

“Major, stop scratching. You’re bleeding again.”

It had started again. The imaginary insects crawled over his skin. Ezekiel clawed at his arms and legs, but his nails, now filed blunt by Rose, slid ineffectively.

Frustrated, he resorted to tearing at his flesh with sheer force. Immediately, Rose’s delicate hands wrapped around his rough ones.

“Look, there are bugs,” he said, shaking her off.

But Rose did not let go.

“It’s a delusion, Major.”

“There are bugs crawling on me, Rose!”

As always, their exchange escalated into a struggle. Rose consoled him.

“It’s pruritus. Your symptoms are just more severe than usual. Trust me. There can’t possibly be bugs on your body.”

“Why wouldn’t there be bugs on a body? Enter any infirmary with wounded soldiers, and you’ll see maggots swarming every wound,” Ezekiel countered.

The memory of maggots writhing in the wounds of still-breathing soldiers lingered vividly, a repulsive image even for someone who prided himself on enduring the horrors of life and death. The insects feasted on flesh and blood, tunneling deeper as sustenance. In the scorching summer heat, the stench became so unbearable that even military doctors hesitated to enter the tents.

Imagining maggots crawling on his own body made his skin crawl unbearably.