You Said You Wanted Us to Break Up - Chapter 105

A cold, snowy mountain where even one’s breath felt as if it might freeze.

Merwen walked silently across the snow-covered field. The snow, which had piled up in layers over countless years, was crushed beneath the woman’s small feet. These marks would be hidden within a few hours by the snow that would surely begin to fall again.

Though the mountain appeared to be nothing more than menacing evergreens and white snow, Merwen was familiar with its geography. This was a hunting ground at the edge of the Ethel fief, a place once used briefly by Lerox Raslet.

After walking for some time through the dense trees, a small wooden house came into view. It was a gamekeeper’s cabin, a home that had stood empty for over a decade. Approaching the cabin, Merwen carefully opened the door.

The cabin, abandoned for nearly ten years, smelled stale. It was a scent of moisture and mold—and a slight fishy odor that would likely remain until the very foundation of the house crumbled.

It was the scent of terror, still lingering in a corner of her memory.

Merwen approached the fireplace, which was covered in dust and moss. A small corner beside it caught her eye. It was a space perfectly sized for a child not yet ten years old to crouch within.

Staring down at that space, Merwen briefly recalled the time she had no choice but to hide her body inside it.

After killing Hesen and Lerissa and leaving indelible bloodstains on every wall of Castle Ethel, Lerox Raslet had kidnapped the daughter of the Count and Countess. However, a certain process was required to make the child, who had grown up as Wendy until then, live as Merwen Ethel.

Part of that process involved thoroughly breaking the child, who, since her parents’ deaths, would cry and struggle at the mere touch of a human hand.

Lerox Raslet chose the gamekeeper’s house to carry out what was necessary.

Dragged to a cold cabin in a remote area, Wendy instinctively sought a place to hide and curled her body tight. Lerox stood before the trembling child, who was clutching a reindeer doll stained with blood that would never wash away. He spoke as if to ensure she heard him.

“You act like a baby beast. How did I used to tame such things?”

“You locked them away until they broke.”

“That’s right, Lupid.”

The man leaned down and extended a black, leather-clad hand.

“If one born as a human acts like a baby beast, they must learn what discipline truly means.”

Merwen trembled as the memories of the immediate aftermath surged back. Her spine stiffened instinctively. It was the familiar sensation of terror. She clenched her teeth.

The men who once stood in this place were all dead. Merwen had either driven them into situations where death was inevitable or dealt with them personally. Lerox Raslet had been her very first victim.

Merwen took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The way to overcome fear is simple: recall the most miserable moment of the powerful figure who once reigned in tyranny.

Roughly four years ago, Merwen had the chance to witness Lerox’s misery.

At that time, Lerox Raslet was facing death.

Even for a monster whose blood seemed frozen solid, there comes a time when judgment falters—when one grows old and death draws near. At that moment, Lerox met both conditions.

The youthful days when he committed every atrocity without hesitation were gone. His skin was wrinkled, his joints protruded where the bone had settled, and his stature was shrinking as his muscles slowly wasted away.

The arrival of death, slow but certain, had been hastened by a poison for which there was no antidote.

Having been struck by the lethal poison, Lerox Raslet decided not to use the Glasyr. The tree, bought at the cost of the family head’s life, was intended for the “vassal’s daughter” he had brought into the castle over a decade ago.

When death was truly at his doorstep, Lerox called for the “vassal’s daughter.” He whispered to her:

“You are my daughter.”

At this declaration, which resurrected the distant past, Merwen smiled silently.

Unlike her, the man who had completely forgotten the past stared at that smile and hissed.

“So this is what it feels like to have a child.”

“……”

“I love you.”

It was the first time she had ever heard a confession so thin that half of it was lost to the sound of rasping air. The corners of Merwen’s mouth lifted into a deeper curve.

“Is that so?”

The man, more dead than alive, nodded slowly. His eyes trailed after Merwen. It was a gaze that expected a response, but Merwen did not tell such a man that she loved him back.

That day, she spoke only a single sentence with total sincerity.

“Thank you.”

Lerox’s words were wrong.

Lerox Raslet hadn’t discovered what it felt like to have a child; he had simply become fond of a pet he had carved to his own taste.

It was just like Evelyn Raslet—who hadn’t loved her own son in the slightest—falling for a child who perfectly mirrored her dreamed-of ideal, marveling at how “child-like” she was.

They were addicts. Addicted to the docility that catered to their whims and to the empathy that responded tenderly to their sorrows. They were addicted to a constant emotional service they never would have demanded had they truly viewed her as their child.

The proof lay in the man who was their actual “child,” who had reached adulthood without ever knowing a single shred of familial love.

The Raslet couple had never loved any child.

But Lerox would never know the truth. He had neither the time nor the sanity left to discern the authenticity of an emotion.

A few days later, Merwen visited the Duke’s bedroom once again.

Sitting by the bed, she pried open the mouth of the man who was barely clinging to life. The foul stench of a body turning into a corpse wafted out.

Her pale green eyes, inherited from her mother, swept over the darkened interior of his mouth. Inside that black pit, the tongue that had once commanded thousands lay like a piece of rotting meat.

Without so much as a flinch, Merwen thrust her hand inside. Her index finger, tipped with a rounded, pale pink nail, pressed hard against the man’s tongue. Lerox groaned in agony as she dug directly into the decaying flesh. Of course, it was a groan that no one else would hear.

Everyone guarding the bedroom had stepped away at her request, moved by her desire to share a final farewell before the Duke’s consciousness faded completely.

As she forcefully ground her finger into the man’s tongue, Merwen whispered.

“I am the one who poisoned you.”

During their frequent tea times, she had laced his cup with venom. Accustomed to the tea she poured, Lerox had drunk every drop without a shred of suspicion.

Thus, she was the one murdering the Master of the North; Capren Lowen was merely a tool used in her design.

His clouded blue eyes, rotting just like his tongue, slowly rolled toward her. His hazy pupils dilated in shock at the unbelievable revelation, a sight sweeter to her than any delicacy. That is the nature of anything branded with the word “first.”

Savoring the taste of her first murder, Merwen spoke softly.

“You aren’t protecting a family heirloom from falling into another’s hands, nor are you sacrificing yourself for a daughter you ‘love.’”

Therefore, the man’s death held not a single ounce of glory. He was not defending his house from an enemy; he was being slaughtered by the beast he had brought into his own castle and raised with his own hands.

Her fingers, white and soft as if to flaunt her youth, slowly pierced through the putrid flesh. The man exhaled weak, ragged gasps.

Merwen questioned the invalid, who was now tearing up from the unbearable pain.

“Do you remember the woman you crushed like an insect and the only man that woman ever loved?”

There was no answer. She had never expected one.

Just as Lerox had done to her recently, she made her declaration.

“I am not your daughter. I am the daughter of Hesen Ethel and Lerissa Ethel.”

“……”

“I will kill you, and then I will tear down the family you spent your entire life building. I will set fire to everything in the North so that not a single trace of your achievements remains to prove you ever existed.”

That task would be so very easy.

“Because you were the one who lit the first spark.”

Her pearl-like fingernail finally pierced through the sinful tongue and scraped the floor of his mouth. The longest, most agonizing gasp leaked from the stench-filled maw.

It was the most fragrant foulness in the world.

Feasting on that scent without restraint, the woman who had grown from an orphaned cub into a terrifying beast smiled radiantly.

That night, Lerox Raslet breathed his last. Since the tongue and throat of the man who had been poisoned for months were already mangled to begin with, no one took particular notice of the inside of his mouth.

The son who had hated Lerox boundlessly nevertheless conducted his father’s funeral with full honors.

That is what it means to inherit a man’s name: swallowing the pain of private hatred, even if it feels like your own intestines are tearing, and taking hold of the dead man’s achievements instead. As long as he lived, he would remain a trophy of his father’s legacy.

Therefore, Merwen added his name to the list of those who had to die. It was a list where she had already written her own name at the very bottom.

Now, that list was almost complete.

As she recalled that fact, her racing heart slowly settled. Taking a deep breath, Merwen opened the eyes she had kept closed. Her gaze fell upon a small doll lying abandoned in the corner.

With a sigh, Merwen picked up the small reindeer that had once been a brilliant white.

The moth-eaten fabric was so heavily stained that its original color was unrecognizable, yet the eyes looking down at it were filled with affection.

Gently stroking the head of the worn-out reindeer, its seams bursting with age, she murmured:

“I miss you.”

She wanted to see Hesen and Lerissa, if only just once. It was a wish she had never ceased to hold her entire life.

But she would not meet them, not even in death.

No—it was because she would die that she would never meet them.

Northern superstition claimed that even the dead possessed souls, but Merwen did not believe in an afterlife.

Life happens only once. As long as one is alive, anything can be achieved, but the dead can do nothing. The fact that the deceased are trampled upon while their living enemies are recorded in glory was proof enough of that.

Therefore, one had to keep moving forward without ever considering looking back.

She had to live so that even if an afterlife existed and she were to burn eternally in the fires of hell, she would have no regrets.

Having made her peace, Merwen placed the doll upon the mantel of the fireplace and pulled out the small notebook she had kept tucked away in her robes.

It was Lerissa’s diary, and she was finally ready to read it.