Beast of the Frozen Night

ed the cloth that was being dragged around and pressed it against her face, something heavy pressed against her chest.
As she tried to escape, this time a rocky stone suffocated her.

Anne opened her eyes at the vague feeling that it was hard to tell if it was a dream or reality, but her eyelids were heavy as if they were swollen.
She felt strange.
She seemed conscious but lost.
It was as if she had been drunk, and her mind was so clouded.

She drank a glass of wine at lunch, so maybe she is getting drunk now.
Or maybe it’s because of the tea that Marie brought to her, saying it’s good for sleep.
She didn’t think it would be as effective as most teas, so she guessed it wasn’t.

Her body did not listen, as if she had been sacrificed to an unknown.
She was unconsciously on the edge of somewhere, yet she still tried to keep her eyes open.
As a dark shadow fell over her thin eyelids, Anne slowly began to understand the situation.

‘Oh, it’s night.
The Grand Duke has come.’

So, even though she endured it, perhaps she fainted and passed out.
The chill, which seemed to flow from her breath, gradually disappeared, and a scorching heat circulated through her body.
Her whole body throbbed.
In particular, the tingling underneath, creating the illusion of tickling ants crawling over her bare feet.

In the meantime, a strange pleasure engulfed her, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe as if the fever was boiling in her.
She was hot and fervent, as if she had fallen into a scorching fire.
She could feel the tears flowing down her cheeks, but someone gently licked her eyes right away.

‘Mirabo… ?’

It was the name of the dog that was buried and forgotten beyond.
She remembered the childhood memories of Mirabo comforting her by licking her whenever she shed her tears.
But she couldn’t because Mirabo died because of her brother.

‘No, if it’s still a dream, wouldn’t it be possible?’

She ran at her brother who kicked Mirabo in the stomach, and was trampled on by his feet and died so horribly that Mirabo might have come to blame her even in her dreams.
The screams of death and the sound of bones breaking were still vividly in her mind.

‘Then this is a dream.’

The moment she acknowledged it softly, her body shook violently.
It’s like a strange sensation when she falls from a cliff she saw on my way to the north, and something grabs her body and lifts it up.

As the feeling of being pushed and dragged again like a mischievous prank was frantically repeated, her eyes flashed open.