There were more lakes than mountains in the vicinity of Heilen. If one included the ponds, or even wide puddles, the number was truly uncountable. A person born and raised in Heilen had once said there were far too many to mark every single one on a map. Naturally, a pond untouched by human footsteps would have no chance of being charted. Therefore, no matter how accurately they estimated the direction and distance, locating a pond with an unclear position would be no easy task.

Just a dozen steps away from where Isaac was currently lying, there was also a small pond. This, too, was a pond not marked on any map.

‘It won’t be easy to find the pond where Alikisa’s body is submerged either,’ Isaac thought as he gazed at the petite body of water.

The midnight pond was still and calmly settled. Whether fish were moving beneath, or bugs or small birds briefly landed and flew off, ripples occasionally spread across the surface. Whenever that happened, the full moon reflected on the water wavered and shattered before finding its round shape again.

It was a full moon night at the onset of early winter.

No matter how mild the area around Heilen was year-round, it was still technically early winter, and moreover, they were deep in the mountains. Lying naked in such a place, it was impossible not to feel the chill, yet Isaac was panting, exhaling hot breaths. It was because the prince covering his body was radiating a sweltering heat.

“…… Ugh,”

The moment the prince thrust up roughly after a long bout of pounding, Isaac let out a short moan, and simultaneously, scorching vital energy erupted inside his body. Unable to be contained inside, the liquid seeping out through the tightly joined, narrow gap between them was already soaking his groin. They had repeated the act an unknown number of times, so it was no wonder everything below his waist was utterly drenched.

“……, Can we, just take a break, for a moment.”

Isaac spoke haltingly between rough breaths, looking up at the full moon. “We could just stop here for today,” he added internally, but he knew by now that those words wouldn’t work at all.

The prince always poured ‘ample’ vital energy into Isaac. Claiming Isaac needed to be able to see the witch whenever necessary, the prince always poured vital energy into him until Isaac ate and ate and was completely exhausted and knocked out. Considering they didn’t even scry the witch that often, Isaac felt the vital energy was being wasted, but no matter how many times he carefully brought it up, the prince didn’t seem to listen.

“Better to overflow than to lack,” was his only response.

Furthermore, on full moons like this—the days when Isaac innately lost his strength and felt his body grow heavy and sluggish, but the prince, in terrifying contrast, overflowed with energy, would cling to him wildly all night long without letting go for even a single second.

Truth be told, Isaac was now not only accustomed to drinking vital energy, but he had grown so used to the physical act with this man that he genuinely felt pleasure. Moreover, aside from that cursed size, the prince was so exceptionally peerless in stamina, agility, and technique that Isaac would half-lose his mind and cry out throughout the act. Yet, even so, doing it over and over and over again inevitably left him mentally and physically drained and limp.

So nowadays, Isaac managed to look after his body by uttering “Let’s take a break” at appropriate intervals to barely scrape together a moment of rest.

The prince looked down at Isaac with slightly unsatisfied eyes but soon nodded, bit Isaac’s lip once, and pulled himself out of his body. The sensation of being pulled out little by little while tightly wedged inside, then suddenly slipping out, followed by the liquid that had filled him gushing out behind that sense of volume—no matter how many times it happened, he couldn’t get used to it. Isaac shuddered and hunched his shoulders.

Just then, from a distance, a loud *Pop!* echoed, and a red flare was seen shooting high into the night sky. Isaac, turning his head toward it, muttered, “There must have been a clustered village over there too.” And it seemed that village was currently safe.

Rihan, under the prince’s orders – along with his comrades Isaac hadn’t met yet – was reportedly distributing flares to every clustered village in the mountains. Since there were countless settlements and their locations weren’t all identified, many remained unvisited. However, in the places they did supply, they instructed the villagers to fire a flare at a regular time every day for the time being. At least so they could know if there were still people alive in those villages.

In the meantime, the witch seemed to be steadily devouring towns. There were quite a few instances where no one was left by the time they arrived to distribute the flares. Each time that happened, a red dot marking the witch’s path was added to the map.

“It would be nice if the full moon didn’t wane until we found Alikisa.”

Isaac murmured, looking up at the sky turning dark again as the flare faded. Earlier, after finishing their umpteenth round, he had briefly checked on the witch. Just as he guessed, since it was a full moon night when witches couldn’t use their power well, they were inside a room somewhere. Dressed only in a thin robe as if they didn’t plan to go out tonight, they were quietly curled up in a dark room with the curtains drawn.

‘If she was devouring people somewhere every time she went out, it would be better if it stayed a full moon night forever.’ Isaac thought as he looked at the bright moon pressing down on him.

Whenever his body was brimming with vital energy, he frequently checked on where the witch was and what she was doing, but since the day she was submerged in the pond, there hadn’t been anything particularly special. He hadn’t seen the pond again, nor had he encountered her eating people. Once, he saw her walking on a street on the outskirts of Kuslo and hurried over, but he was a step too late, and the witch was no longer there. He could only guess she was staying somewhere in this vicinity.

Now, a fortnight remained.

15 days later would be the new moon when the Grand Banquet of Witches was held. And the new moon after that was the Great New Moon that came only once every seven years.

“Can’t we just hang a full moon in the sky every night until the Grand Banquet…..?”

「Why are you doing this to us…?」

When Isaac murmured looking up at the full moon, dying voices drifted down from the tree above. Three shadowy lumps, perched on the branches like dangling fruit, were glaring down at him with bleak eyes. They looked so hollow and haggard that he almost reflexively said ‘Sorry’.

“They say witches have almost no power on the full moon. It seems those beasts, even wearing cat skins, are still witches after all.”

The prince, looking up at the branches, said indifferently. On any ordinary day, they would have jumped up with their fur bristling in protest, yapping about their noble and elegant pure-blooded lineage, but they must have been having a truly hard time; they merely let out painful groans without any real retort.

“Full moons are hard. Even as a half-blood, my body feels heavy and exhausted on full moons, as if crushed by something. Normal witches must have it worse. My mother used to lock the doors and lie sick in bed every full moon……”

Though it was a childhood memory, he still remembered it vividly. On full moon nights, Isaac’s house always locked the doors tight and didn’t go outside. Young Isaac would run a slight fever and lie sick in bed every full moon, and his mother wouldn’t rise from her spot all night either. And on such nights, Isaac was always afraid, waiting anxiously for the night to end quickly.

Because witches couldn’t use their power on full moon nights, humans usually targeted that day to hunt them, and therefore, witches living in the human world feared the full moon.

“Even neighbors who had been as close as family would change the moment they found out someone was a witch. They would frequently wait for the full moon night, grab pitchforks, and go to kill them. So the full moon was always a terrifying night.”

That was why, even now, the bright moon round as a tray always scared him. That pale white light, too.

The prince listened to Isaac’s words in silence. Looking at the prince’s face, who looked exceptionally cold perhaps due to the moonlight shining on him, Isaac suddenly smiled faintly.

“But right now, the full moon night isn’t so bad. Prince Kyan already knows I’m a half-witch, so you wouldn’t suddenly try to harm me just because it’s a full moon…… I’ve never spent a full moon night feeling so at ease while being with another person before.”

“The full moon isn’t bad either, the white, round moon is pretty,” Isaac muttered as if talking to himself, looking up at the moon. The moonlight he had always found fearful and anxiety-inducing was truly beautiful today. It was a bit sad that he was only realizing this now, and wondering when he might ever see the full moon with such peace of mind again.

Lost in the trance of gazing at the moon for a long while, Isaac didn’t realize the prince had been watching him the whole time. Only after a while did he drop his gaze and look at the prince.

“It must have been the opposite for you, Prince Kyan. You suffered on the new moon and had it easy on the full moon.”

Facing Isaac’s calm yet warm smile, the prince gazed at his lips for a moment, then nodded gently.

“While at the borderlands, the full moon was always the night we went out to kill magical beasts. On moonless nights, I didn’t move.”

Isaac remembered seeing him on the new moon night when he first used the tinderbox to cast a spell. He remembered. The sight of blood seeping out instead of sweat due to terrible agony. In that kind of pain, anyone would be unable to move.

‘It’s truly a relief that the pain of the new moon is over.’ Isaac sincerely thought it was a good thing he could offer his blood to him.

“From the soldiers’ perspective, the new moon must have been better. They wouldn’t have had to go out for night subjugations.”

To Isaac, who spoke lightly like a joke with a smile, the prince shook his head.

“No, the new moon was also when the most soldiers died.”

“Uh……, …… Why is that?”

For a split second, Isaac almost blurted out, ‘Because you killed them, Prince Kyan?’, but he barely swallowed the words back down his throat. It wouldn’t have been surprising at all if the prince, having lost his reason to pain, had slaughtered his subordinates indiscriminately. However,

“Because the magical beasts knew that was when I was most vulnerable, they poured on fierce attacks every new moon night. That’s why, every few months, bastards would pop up trying to just hand me over to the beasts.”

Watching the prince nonchalantly recount that horrifying story in an utterly calm tone, Isaac fell completely silent.

Something he saw once came to mind. 

A memory of Kyan’s he had seen once. Always alone amidst people’s attacks and fear. 

In that memory of having thoroughly endured everything completely alone, the scent of the border’s sand was mixed in. Amidst the dry stench of blood mixed with sand dust, he was always alone, betrayed even by those who should have been his allies. Even in the agony of the new moon that gnawed at his body and mind.

“——, It’s a miracle you survived.”

“Just because it’s painful doesn’t mean I can’t move.”

Hearing the prince’s indifferent words, Isaac could quickly guess. On the new moon nights, the prince’s reason almost vanished due to the pain, but he became an even more terrifying beast to that exact degree. If left untouched, he would pass the new moon with a single thread of reason, but the moment he was touched, he would tear everything apart with nothing but the wild ferocity of thrashing in agony.

Undoubtedly, on such new moon nights, the prince must have slaughtered the attacking magical beasts and the soldiers who tried to hand him over to them without leaving a single one alive, and in that gruesome spectacle, he would have become more and more alone.

As always.

Just as no one wanted to go near the prince on the new moon.

“……”

Isaac silently looked at the prince before dropping his head. The prince cast a glance at Isaac, who was quietly letting out a sigh. Receiving a gaze that seemed to ask: ‘What’s wrong?’, Isaac was silent for a moment before murmuring.

“It makes my heart ache a bit that you speak of it as if it’s no big deal.”

Those memories had now become things of the past, but even so, something remained like a residue. It wasn’t ‘as if’ it were no big deal; to him, it truly was no big deal. That was why Isaac felt down, but the prince, raising an eyebrow and staring at Isaac, probably didn’t know why Isaac had become gloomy.

Still, he liked those blue eyes looking at him so attentively. Suddenly feeling unbearably sorrowful and affectionate, Isaac quietly took his hand and kissed his fingertips. The prince merely watched Isaac do so as if finding it peculiar.

Just then, from very far away, the faint sound of a flare exploding drifted over. The sound breaking the darkness of the deep mountain was a welcome one. It meant there were people over there who had passed today peacefully as well.

“They must be having a hard time going around distributing flares.”

Isaac muttered, thinking of Rihan’s unseen comrades. The prince, looking briefly at the hand Isaac had just let go of, said, “Not particularly.” Indeed, those who spent their days in the dangerous, barren borderlands probably wouldn’t call roaming the mountains much of a hardship.

“I heard the border soldiers are all violent and fierce, making them quite a headache to manage.”

They were the kind of people who, even when high-ranking nobles were sent from the capital, would shoot an arrow into the horse’s hindquarters to make the rider fall off, then chase the nobles away while snickering. What on earth were the higher-ups thinking sending a young prince to a border crawling with such people? But they surely never imagined that the young prince would subdue those rough men in one fell swoop and place them firmly under his heel.

“They are useful. Because they submit to those stronger than themselves.”

“I see, submission…… Then I suppose they have a different concept of ‘comrades’.”

Even in the Royal Guard where Isaac had served, there was a strict hierarchy and absolute obedience was the baseline, but still, everyone existed within the framework of ‘comrades’. Whether captain or the lowest rank, there was a family-like bond. But perhaps the border where the prince was stationed was different. A world under a thoroughly divided hierarchy of dominance and submission. That was the world the prince had lived in, the world familiar to him.

‘I consider him both my superior and a person I am walking forward together with, but to him, I must just be a subordinate, a witch and nothing more……’ Having those thoughts, Isaac felt himself getting depressed again and shook his head. What does it matter? Anyway, wasn’t he a superior who generously let him eat as much vital energy as he wanted every day? It was just a bit excessive, that was the problem.

“Comrades. Can you trust and entrust everything to those comrades?”

The prince asked. Meeting the piercing gaze that seemed to look right into his thoughts, Isaac fell silent for a moment. Then he shook his head.

“No, I guess not. Because I couldn’t tell them I’m a half-witch.”

He knew that revealing it would isolate him from them. In that sense of alienation that only he felt while they remained unaware, Isaac was alone too. In the midst of them, he had lived filling moment to moment with loneliness.

In truth, loneliness is something fundamentally rooted within every human being, and all of us are simply living through the same empty days. Yet, every now and then, once every few years, or just a few times in a lifetime, there are still precious moments, like a treasure, that linger deep within one’s memory. Though called treasure, in reality they are exceedingly small and simple things. It might be the warm loaf of bread that an otherwise rude and gruff neighbor handed him during those days of hunger and hardship, or the short handwritten letter from a girl who secretly admired him, sent before her family moved away…… just small things like that.

Filling the heart one by one with such moments, he patched up his empty days. Waiting day by day to taste a time like that unexpected gift, never knowing when it will come again. Day after day.

The prince silently gazed at Isaac with an utterly expressionless face. Then he suddenly reached out. Grabbing the back of Isaac’s neck and pulling him in, he crashed their lips together. Along with the stinging sensation of biting lips and tongue, the taste of blood seeped out faintly. Kyan sucked Isaac’s tongue and slowly swallowed the seeping blood. His eyes were filled with an ardent craving, like a desert traveler dying of thirst who has found a glass of sweet water. He was greedy.

“When you eat a meal after starving,” the prince suddenly whispered against his lips. “When you learn something you didn’t know, you naturally grow greedier.”

“——.”

“Just waiting for something that might or might not come is not my way.”

The hand gripping Isaac’s neck tightened. The force sucking his tongue grew even stronger. Crushed beneath the greed that seemed fiercely intent on devouring him, Isaac quietly hugged the prince who lunged at him like a starving beast.

Somewhere in the distance, the sound of another flare exploding rang out. Surely, beyond the reach of their ears, countless streaks of light were being shot into the sky in other places as well. Immersed in that reassuring sound, Isaac willingly surrendered his body to the hands parting his legs again.

*Rustle,* the sound of a foot stepping on grass rang loud in the darkness.

Isaac flinched and whipped his head around to look. From deep within the darkness of the forest, Rihan was sauntering toward them. Witnessing the sight of them tangled together, he merely let out a short “Ah,” and muttered briefly before unconcernedly shifting his steps to sit on a rock behind them. His demeanor was utterly natural, as if he had seen this kind of sight countless times in the past.

Since Rihan was seated in a spot that afforded an extremely clear view of his exposed, sensitive lower half, Isaac was about to stealthily turn his face away; but the prince suddenly halted, shifting his cold, piercing gaze to fix it straight on Rihan.

“Don’t look!”

When those short words dropped, Rihan didn’t seem to understand what he had heard at first. Looking at the prince with a bewildered face, he soon looked at Isaac, then looked back at the prince, and highly startled, with a strange look, jumped up and went to sit behind a large rock.

Isaac accepted the prince leaning in again, and thought it was a relief they were out of sight, even though embarrassing sounds were obviously being heard over there. On the other hand, he wondered why the prince told that man not to look. For someone who didn’t care at all about others’ eyes, there was no reason to care now.

“——.”

But Isaac’s thoughts ended there.

Caring no further, the prince began thrusting into Isaac relentlessly, and Isaac had to endure for a long while, forcibly inhaling the vital energy he had already eaten to his fill as he clung to the prince.

‘If vital energy had been like food, I would have died from a burst stomach a long time ago……’ Isaac thought as he stared blankly up at the night sky that seemed to be stealthily brightening. ‘This is enough, this is enough,’ he had already thought countlessly, but the prince wouldn’t let him go. The vital energy was clearly pouring in to the point his stomach would burst, but he didn’t know why his mood felt so utterly exhausted.

「Our Manbang-ie is dying, dying.」 The sound of meowing in a dying voice from the tree seemed to be heard.

It was only around the time the full moon began to lose its light that the prince lifted his body from above Isaac. Fearing he might change his mind, Isaac nailed it in by greeting, “Thank you very much for today’s vital energy.” At that, Kyan, who seemed to be contemplating whether to do it a bit more, looked down at Isaac blankly and then let out a soft, indulgent chuckle, as if giving him a pass. Then he swiftly stood up and moved his body to the pond a few steps away and threw himself in. 

*Splash——* a sound that felt cold to hear in the early winter mountain, yet refreshing to ears where the heat had not yet faded.

‘I should wash too……’ but his groin was throbbing and numb so he couldn’t move; he would wash in just a bit. Isaac let out a languid sigh and slumped his body down.

Just then, he suddenly heard crunching footsteps.