The old woman’s smile did not return after that.

Something uglier took its place.

At first, she tried to pretend she was still in control. She pulled the spike from Ludwig’s thigh with a wet sound, examined the blood on its tip, and gave him the sort of patient look an executioner might give a prisoner who had not yet understood the lesson. She changed tools slowly, almost ceremonially, as if the performance itself was meant to sharpen fear. A thin blade came first. Then a hook. Then the pliers he had already insulted. She moved around the chair with practiced care, cutting, pinching, twisting, and waiting for the human response that should have followed.

Ludwig gave her nothing.

Not courage.

Not defiance.

Nothing so satisfying.

He looked bored.

That was what ruined her most.

A scream could be broken. A curse could be punished. Tears could be tasted and dragged out until the victim became honest in all the ways pain forced people to be honest. But Ludwig only watched her with one raised brow, occasionally glancing at the tools as if he were judging craftsmanship rather than enduring them. She carved shallow lines into flesh. He blinked. She drove needles under nails. He looked at the ceiling. She snapped one finger, then another, and his only reaction was a small click of the tongue, as if disappointed by the angle.

"That one was sloppy," he said at some point. "A goblin with too little brain and too little patience would have done it better."

The old woman’s eye twitched.

She moved faster after that.

The gentle grandmother mask shattered completely. She went through her table of tools with a mounting desperation that would have been funny if it had not filled the chamber with so much blood. Hooks bit into skin. Nails were torn free. Fingers were bent and broken. Thin blades traced nerves that should have made any living man thrash against the chair until joints tore loose. The suppression cuffs remained locked around Ludwig’s wrists and ankles, their runes glowing faintly, but the truth was that they did not matter nearly as much as the torturer believed.

Ludwig could feel it.

That was the part she understood, and the part that made her madness grow. This was not immunity in the simple sense. His Living Vessel carried sensation. The body registered harm. The nerves spoke. Blood spilled, flesh tore, bones cracked. The woman knew that much. She had enough experience to know when a body was lying and when a body was truly untouched.

But Ludwig’s Living Vessel was not a normal human body.

Beneath it was undeath.

If he wanted, he could simply step back from the body. Not leave it, not abandon it entirely, but tune out of the sensation like a man refusing to listen to an annoying song. Pain became information. Damage became a report. Blood loss meant very little when the vessel did not rely on blood the way living flesh should. Shock could not simply seize him and drag him unconscious. The body needed will more than it needed comfort, and Ludwig had will in excess, much to the old woman’s growing misery.

By the second day, she had stopped asking questions.

By the third, she had nearly stopped forming coherent words.

"Why?" she screamed, voice cracked and hoarse, hands shaking around a narrow chisel. "Why don’t you scream?"

Ludwig looked at her from the chair, hair damp with sweat and blood, face pale from the damage done to the vessel rather than any true fear. "Because you’re not good at this."

Her mouth trembled.

"You think this is patience?" he continued, voice calm enough to make her worse. "You’re just angry with accessories."

She struck him across the face with the back of her hand, then grabbed another tool, then another, until even her own breath began to fail her. Sweat soaked into her collar. Her shoulders shook. Her hands cramped around handles slick from work. The old woman who had entered the chamber with a grandmother’s smile and a torturer’s pride was now bent over, gasping like she had been the one chained to the chair.

Ludwig looked at her with faint pity.

That, more than any insult, pushed her over the edge.

She snatched a narrow spike from the table and raised it toward his eye. For a moment, there was no craft left in her. No interrogation. No imperial duty. No desire for information. Only rage, naked and stupid, reaching for a place that would finally make him react.

The spike hovered inches from his face.

Ludwig did not blink.

The old woman froze.

Some last fragment of discipline dragged itself back into her skull. She knew, perhaps too late, that damaging him beyond the ordered limits would not go well for her. She had been sent to break a prisoner, not ruin an imperial asset before questioning. Her breath came in sharp, ugly pulls as she lowered the spike.

"I shall leave," she said, though the words shook.

"Take your time," Ludwig replied. "Maybe read a manual."

Her face twisted again, but she did not strike him. She threw the spike back onto the table with enough force to scatter several smaller tools, then turned and walked out of the chamber, slamming the heavy door behind her. The locks sealed. The warding lines along the wall brightened once, then settled.

Silence returned.

Ludwig sat alone in the chair, bleeding onto the old metal.

Then the air beside him folded.

A thin seam of darkness opened near his side, small and precise, and Kaiser stepped out of it as if emerging from a page nobody else could see. The boyish noble form looked completely out of place in the torture chamber, too clean, too composed, his expression sour as he took in the state of Ludwig’s body. Behind him, for the briefest instant, the faint outline of the Codex Necros vanished back into invisibility.

Kaiser’s eyes narrowed. "You allowed that woman to do this much damage to your body."

"Relax," Ludwig said. "This isn’t even a fraction of the injury Sloth caused when he struck my chest. Living Vessel doesn’t need blood to function, only will."

"That is not an argument. That is an admission of stupidity phrased confidently."

"Same thing, depending on the listener."

"You could have left at any time."

"Yeah," Ludwig said. "Would make it hard to face the Emperor if I’m a fugitive."

Kaiser stared at him. "You want to meet that psycho?"

"Not really. But I’m pretty sure we’ll be summoned again soon."

"Tsk."

"What?"

"Nothing." Kaiser looked around the chamber, at the tools, at the blood, at the imperial runes on the cuffs. His voice lowered, losing some of its dry sharpness. "This just doesn’t feel right. People would fight for an empire that imprisons and tortures its savior, then allows rot within itself to fester further."

"The Empire’s laws, Kaiser," Ludwig said. "We broke the taboo. But the Tower Masters are with us. They’ll solve..."

He did not finish.

The door exploded inward.

Kaiser vanished instantly, folding back into the Codex with the reflex of a creature that had survived too long to be caught by surprise. Splinters and twisted metal slammed across the chamber floor. Dust rolled through the doorway. The old woman stumbled in with a shriek, not by her own choice, but because someone had grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and thrown her forward hard enough that she nearly crashed into the tool table.

The person standing behind her had silver hair and red vampiric eyes.

Ludwig looked at her.

"Sup."

Celine’s eye twitched.

It was not a small twitch.

She looked at him, truly looked, and whatever fury had brought her there deepened into something far older. Her gaze moved over the torn flesh, broken fingers, missing nails, blood-slick chair, and restraints. She had spent centuries trapped in a forgotten pit with rods embedded in her body, her power drained from her endlessly, her existence reduced to suffering in darkness while the world above forgot her. If Ludwig had not searched, found, and retrieved her, she would still be there.

And now she found him like this.

"Don’t kill her," Ludwig said.

Celine’s grip tightened on the old woman’s collar.

"I won’t," she said, voice shaking with rage. "She deserves a fate far worse than death."

"You bitch!" the old woman screamed, trying to claw at Celine’s hand. "You’re going against imperial order!"

"The Empire can kiss my ass for all I care!"

If anyone with a delicate sense of treason had been present, they might have fainted.

Celine’s lips peeled back, revealing fangs. "I’m older than the empire you call home, bitch."

Then she tore the old woman’s arm from her shoulder.

The scream that followed finally gave the chamber the sound the torturer had been seeking for three days. Blood sprayed across the floor and cloth-covered table. Celine did not let the woman collapse. She seized one of the heated rods from the brazier with her free hand and pressed it against the wound with brutal efficiency, sealing the shoulder before blood loss could make death too easy.

The old woman screamed again, higher this time.

Celine dragged her toward the table. "I’ll need to try these tools on you now."

"Celine," Ludwig said calmly.

She did not look at him. Her whole body shook. "Do not ask me to pity her."

"I’m not."

"She did this to you."

"I know."

"She enjoyed it."

"I know."

Celine turned then, and the fury in her eyes cracked just enough to show the hurt beneath it.

Ludwig’s voice softened. "Calm down. I’m fine."

"BUT I AM NOT!"

The shout struck harder than any of the old woman’s tools had.

Ludwig sighed.

Then he stood.

The chains snapped.

The wrist guards broke apart as if made of brittle wood. The ankle cuffs tore loose. The steel chair shrieked beneath him, bolts ripping from the floor as he rose and dragged part of the frame with him. He grabbed one remaining restraint still locked around his forearm, twisted, and the engraved metal folded like paper before snapping free. Another chain across his waist broke under one pull. Suppression runes flared desperately, then died.

The old woman stared.

Horror replaced pain for one perfect moment.

He could have left.

That truth settled over her like judgment.

He could have stopped the torture at any point. He could have broken the chair, killed her, walked out, or made every imperial ward in the chamber look like a child’s drawing if the thought had crossed his mind. He had remained because he chose to remain. Her tools, her screaming, her pride, all of it had existed only because he permitted it.

Ludwig stretched one broken hand, grimaced slightly as the fingers reset wrong, and looked down at the old woman.

"See?" he said. "Amateurish."

Footsteps thundered from the corridor.

Several guards appeared beyond the broken doorway, weapons drawn and faces confused enough to suggest they had not been told the full contents of the room. Behind them came Tull, broad-shouldered and furious, and beside him Prince Alexander, whose expression looked like he had bitten into rotten meat and found imperial paperwork inside.

"Son of a bitch," Tull roared, taking in the chamber. "What the fuck happened here? Wasn’t he supposed to be here for questioning? Who the fuck sent this senile old witch here?"

Alex’s face had gone pale with rage.

Not fear.

Rage.

His eyes moved from Ludwig’s bloodied body to the torn restraints, then to the old woman on the floor with one arm missing, then to Celine standing over her like she was deciding whether to collect the other one.

"Ludwig," Alex said, voice tight. "What happened here?"

Ludwig looked down at himself.

Then at the blood.

Then at the destroyed chair.

"Nothing much," he said. "Just the usual. Tell me though, did your dad call for me?"

Alex closed his eyes for a moment. "Please refrain from calling the Emperor my dad."

"Am I wrong though?"

"Ludwig," Alex said through his teeth, "there is a time and place for things."

"Yeah. The time was three days of torture, and the place was here, so..." Ludwig tilted his head. "Did he call?"

Tull rubbed a hand down his face and looked like he wanted to punch several walls in a row. "Yes, you’re being summoned. But..."

Ludwig glanced at him. "You don’t like how I look?"

"No," Tull said, eyes hard as he looked at the wounds. "You’ll go as is to meet the Emperor."

Alex’s jaw tightened, but he did not contradict him.

Tull looked Ludwig over once more, then added, "Just hope you don’t bleed out."

Ludwig gave him a tired smile.

"Would be awkward if I did."