Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

What she got instead was the taste of stale library dust, cold ozone, and the distinct, incredibly jarring sensation of biting into a pressurized balloon filled with dusty air.

And then, the eclair screamed.

It did not squeak or giggle. The strawberry pastry let out a booming, masculine shriek of pants-wetting terror.

”AAAAAAAGGGGHHH! GREAT HEAVENS! MY ECTOPLASM! SHE IS CONSUMING MY ECTOPLASM!”

WHOOSH.

The sugary, graham-cracker dreamscape collapsed. The molten chocolate river vanished. The fairy-winged cookies popped like soap bubbles.

Seraphina was violently jolted back into reality.

Her dark eyes snapped open.

She was not in a magical dessert wasteland. She was in the massive, plush, four-poster bed in the guest suite of the Obsidian Gate.

The room was dark, illuminated only by the dying, red embers in the volcanic hearth. The heavy, silk duvet Kaelus had so meticulously tucked around her was kicked off to the side.

And she was currently clinging to a grown man.

Seraphina froze.

Her arms were wrapped tightly around a tall, incredibly immaculate, translucent figure. Her face was buried directly into the center of his chest.

More specifically, her teeth were clamped down, hard, onto his collarbone.

”Please! I beg of you, little Sovereign! Have mercy on an old servant’s soul! I am entirely lacking in nutritional value! I am composed of regrets and spectral residue! Unhand me! Don’t bite me! I don’t taste good!”

The voice was frantic, athletic, and vibrating with genuine, existential panic.

Seraphina slowly opened her jaw, releasing her grip. She scrambled backward on the mattress, her heart pounding, completely disoriented.

She stared at the entity she had just attempted to eat.

It was a ghost.

But it was not one of the handsome, monocle-wearing, aristocratic ancestor grandpas who had juggled fire for her earlier that afternoon.

This was an entirely new spirit.

He appeared as a tall, remarkably fit, impeccably dressed older gentleman. He wore the strict, formal, tailored tailcoat of a high-ranking head butler, complete with a crisp cravat, white gloves, and a pocket watch chain that dangled uselessly from his translucent vest.

He possessed a sharp, disciplined face, and hair that was slicked back with absolute precision.

Right now, however, that disciplined face was twisted into a mask of pure horror.

The ghost butler was hovering three feet above the floor at the edge of her bed, clutching his own chest, hyperventilating as much as a creature without lungs possibly could.

He was shimmering with a faint, pale blue light. But what was most horrifying, and most incredibly, second-hand-embarrassing, was the distinct, undeniable visual evidence of the assault.

Because Seraphina possessed a Supreme Dark Core, her physical body was uniquely attuned to the spiritual plane. Her dark mana interacted with ethereal bodies as if they were solid matter.

Which meant that right on the ghost butler’s pristine, translucent white cravat and collarbone, there was a perfectly shaped, glowing purple bite mark.

It looked like someone had taken a neon highlighter and stamped a set of six-year-old teeth directly onto his soul. There was even a matching, smaller bite mark on his cheek where she had apparently missed her first chomp in her sleep.

”By the Light,” the ghost butler wept, frantically rubbing his cheek, staring at her as if she were a literal demon crawled out of the Abyss. ”The legends were true. The Northern bloodline is indeed feral. You literally tried to devour me! I was simply trying to politely awaken you, and you launched yourself like a rabid dire-wolf!”

Seraphina sat perfectly still in the center of the massive bed, wearing her pale blue, cloud-patterned nightgown.

Her childish mind, rapidly catching up to the physical reality of the situation, experienced a complete system failure of pure mortification.

’I bit a ghost,’ her internal monologue shrieked, her face instantly flushing a violent, brilliant shade of scarlet. ’I dreamed about a strawberry eclair, and I woke up chewing on a deceased senior citizen. There are literal, glowing bite marks on his ectoplasm. I cannot survive this. I must immediately pack my bags, walk into the nearest volcano, and perish out of sheer embarrassment!’

But Seraphina was the Sovereign of the North.

She had a reputation to uphold!

She could not, under any circumstances, admit to accidentally snacking on the staff!

She had to pivot and deploy the most powerful, and infuriating psychological weapon known to humanity as...

Gaslighting!

Seraphina straightened her posture.

She quickly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, ensuring there was no residual on her lips, and crossed her small arms over her chest. She leveled a fierce, incredibly judgmental glare at the weeping butler.

”I did not bite you,” Seraphina announced, her voice ringing with absolute, unshakeable, flat-out denial.

The ghost butler stopped rubbing his cheek. His translucent jaw dropped open as he stared at her, utterly flabbergasted.

”You... you most certainly did!” the butler protested, pointing a trembling, white-gloved finger at his own chest. ”There are indentations! My spiritual matrix has been structurally compromised! I can feel the draft!”

”No,” Seraphina countered smoothly, tilting her nose into the air. ”You came pre-bitten.”

”Pre-bitten?!” the butler shrieked, his athletic, energetic demeanor flaring up as he began to perform rapid, stress-induced spectral pacing back and forth across the bedroom floor. ”What kind of preposterous, illogical defense is that?! I am Bartholomew! Former Head Butler of the Obsidian Gate! I have served the House of Valen for seventy years in life, and forty years in death! I assure you, my uniform was absolutely immaculate until you decided to use me as a midnight snack!”

”It’s probably just some acne,” Seraphina insisted, completely refusing to yield. ”Or maybe you fell on a very sharp, tooth-shaped rock. It is incredibly rude to wake a sleeping Sovereign and accuse her of cannibalism, you know? Papa Duke would be very disappointed in your manners, Butler Butt-tolomew!”

The audacity of the tiny child completely derailed Bartholomew’s argument.

The ghost butler stopped pacing, his hands pulling at his own hair.