Valessia’s bedroom was warm and dim with candles burning low on the dresser and curtains drawn shut against the night and she was just sitting there on the edge of her massive canopy bed in her silk nightgown staring at the floor.
Her brain kept dragging her back to the hall.
"You have two days to prove your innocence."
Corvus had basically short-circuited on the spot. "What?!"
While the head servants behind him erupted into frantic whispering like the world was caving in.
"My Lady you cannot do this! Haven’t I always warned you? Your soft heart is a blade the enemy will use to slit our throats one day!"
Valessia stood up from her chair and didn’t raise her voice and didn’t need to.
"My decision is final, Corvus. Do not presume to tell me how to manage my estate."
Corvus’s jaw went so tight it was a miracle his teeth survived it but he bowed, deep and stiff and furious.
"As you wish, My Lady."
"Remove his chains." She’d already turned her back. "The rest of you are dismissed."
**
She exhaled and it came out shakier than she wanted.
Her eyes drifted to the nightstand on their own.
She reached over and picked up the heavy gold frame the same way she always did with her fingers tracing the glass without her really deciding to.
Her mother and father. Both smiling like life was a perfectly reasonable thing.
Looking at them pulled up the memory the way it always did.
She was twelve, sitting alone in the east garden because outside felt less lonely than inside.
Her father had come around the corner with this scrawny little ten-year-old trailing behind him, drowning in a butler’s uniform two sizes too big with sleeves hanging over his hands and wide curious eyes scanning everything in the estate like he was trying to memorize it all at once.
Her father put his hand on her head easy and warm like he always did.
"Meet him, my cute little Valessia. He is our newest butler, but more importantly I brought him here so you would finally have a friend to play with — so you never have to feel lonely again."
She had smiled so wide her cheeks hurt.
"Thank you, Papa~!"
"Haha. That’s my sweet girl."
Her fingers tightened around the frame until her knuckles went white.
"Did you make a mistake, Papa?" Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to.
"Someone inside our home is betraying the Astria name right now and even if it really is Sylus..." She stopped and pressed her lips together. "I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t just send him to the block."
A short dry laugh scraped out of her.
"My stupid weak heart."
She stared up at the ceiling and the words just came out because there was nobody here to hold them back for anyway.
"I can’t be strong like you and Mama at all. Academy started and I still can’t talk to the people around me properly, can’t build the connections with other noble houses the way you taught me and I come back every night to an empty house with a desk buried in paperwork I don’t have answers for. Revenue is falling and I don’t know how to stop it without making life harder for the people on our lands and I just..."
Her breath caught and snapped.
A tear dropped onto the glass before she even felt it coming and then another and she stopped fighting it because what was the point.
"I miss you so much," she sobbed quietly, pulling the frame to her chest and curling up around it. "I can’t do this alone. I don’t know how. Please just come back and tell me what to do."
The candles flickered.
The house stayed empty.
"The estate is falling apart, Papa." Barely a whisper. "Please come back to me."
__________________
One floor below Sylus was walking through the servant wing with glowing blue panels floating right in front of his face.
[Detecting Host...]
[Host Detected!]
________________
Host Status
Name: Sylus | Age: 20 | Race: Human
Title: Butler of Astria | Class: Swordsman
Rank: Veteran
Strength / Constitution: 12
Agility / Speed: 9
Stamina / Endurance: 7
Flexibility: 9
Weapon Mastery: Intermediate (Sword)
Mana Affinity: Fire (F) / Thunder (D)
Skills: None | Special Skill: Bonding
_________________
He looked at it for a second then waved his hand and dismissed the whole thing.
’Hard pass.
I’ve read enough webnovels to know exactly how this plays out. System appears, protagonist spends three hundred Chapters in dungeons grinding forever, breaking through cultivation realms gets a tournament arc saves the entire world harem ending credits roll. Seen it a thousand times and every time it puts me to sleep.
I did not die on a staircase to become someone’s grinding montage.’
He was already walking when his eyes snagged on the last line and stopped cold.
’...Special Skill Bonding?’
A new panel popped open the second he thought it like it had been sitting there with its hand raised the whole time just waiting to be noticed.
[Special Skill: Bonding
Tracks the intimate connection and affection level between the Host and target key female characters. Unlocks exclusive rewards, attributes and traits as intimacy increases.]
Sylus stared at it.
A grin crawled across his face so slow and shameless it took its time getting all the way there.
’Okay I take everything back. The system is a genius and I respect it deeply and we’re going to get along just fine.’
He was still grinning at the floating text like a man who’d just won something when he turned the corner into the servant wing.
BAM.
He walked straight into a tower of freshly folded linen blankets moving at speed from the other direction and both of them went down immediately with zero chance to stop it, blankets flying everywhere in every direction.
"Ahh!"
Sylus hit the floor and kept going, landing right on top of whoever had been carrying the pile, the impact knocking the air out of both of them completely.
"I’m sorry are you ok—"
He looked down and his brain just stopped mid-sentence and forgot what it was doing.
The woman under him had fiery rose hair spread across the stone, a gorgeous face that had real life behind it and sharp green eyes already locked onto him like a loaded weapon ready to go.
Clearly older than him and carrying herself like someone used to being in charge of things and right now looking up at him like she’d already decided exactly where to bury him.
But then Sylus went to push himself up and his eyes dipped on the way and completely forgot to keep moving.
Her uniform had pulled tight in the fall and pressed against the floor her breasts had pushed together, heavy and smooth and insanely full, spilling forward over her neckline in a deep valley of cleavage right there at point-blank range making zero apologies about any of it.
’Holy Moly! Those are massive.’
He stared. Openly. With the full committed dedication of a man who had completely abandoned self-preservation and made peace with whatever came next.
"Argh — can’t you watch where you’re walking?!"
She stopped mid-sentence and her green eyes dropped to his face then tracked slowly to exactly where his gaze had gone and sat there for one full second.
Her expression went from furious to genuinely volcanic in about half a heartbeat.
"It’s YOU!" She pointed directly at his face. "You traitor! And now you’re a PERVERT on top of everything?!"
SLAP.
The sound cracked through the hallway like a thunderclap and her palm hit his cheek with the full dedicated force.
Sylus went skidding across the stone floor like a coin someone had flicked across a table, coming to a full stop a solid metre away with his entire face on fire.
"Hmph! What a shameless perv." She was already on her feet scooping her blankets off the floor and tucking them under one arm and marching off down the corridor without a single glance back, hips swaying furiously with every step until her footsteps faded around the corner and the hallway went quiet.
Sylus sat on the floor in the ringing silence with one hand pressed against his burning cheek staring at the empty corridor.
"...Ow," he said to nobody. "That genuinely really hurt."
He sat there another second anyway.
Then a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth despite everything.
’Wait.’ He stared down at where she’d disappeared. ’Has there always been a maid like that in this estate? Chest that broke every known law of physics?’
Thirty-seven episodes. Faithful devoted viewer since episode one. That woman never appeared on screen a single time.
He had been robbed. Personally and deliberately and without any warning whatsoever.
He sighed and got off the floor and brushed the dust off his trousers.
’Should’ve gotten her name at least. Though after she launched me across the hallway first impressions are probably a lost cause.’
He shook his head and started walking.
"Whatever. Back to business."
End of the servant wing. Heavy oak door at the corner of the hallway. No sound coming through it.
Sylus stopped in front of it and the easy smirk was completely gone now, his eyes going sharp and focused.
’This is it.’
He stood in front of Corvus’ room.