Chapter 05…
Tapping her fingertips lightly against the dressing table, Fiorentia continued her thoughts.
In the original story, Fiorentia was the only person in the mad House of Marcella who still had any humanity.
Oppressed and confined within the ducal household, she once went out for a walk at night and heard the sound of someone sobbing in pain.
So she walked toward a part of the estate she normally never even approached. There, she met Theodore for the first time—badly injured.
After that, Fiorentia secretly began tending to Theodore’s wounds, avoiding Desdemona’s eyes.
She hurt as if she herself had been injured.
Sometimes she pitied his situation so much that she even shed tears for him.
With such devoted care, how could any man’s heart not be moved?
The two slowly nurtured their feelings, and Theodore also struggled not to lose himself, for Fiorentia’s sake.
<I have a favor to ask. I want to see your face.>
<N-No. If my sister finds out… she’ll never forgive me.>
But their relationship was soon discovered by Desdemona.
In the end, Fiorentia chose to take Theodore’s punishment in his place to save him—and was killed by her half-sister.
Forced to watch his first love die before his eyes, Theodore later gritted his teeth and escaped from the House of Marcella.
He hunted down the traitor who had sold him out, took his revenge, built his strength, and eventually returned.
Of course, it was to avenge Fiorentia.
When she reached that point in her memories, a cold and fragile smile touched the edge of Fiorentia’s lips.
“So I’m destined to die soon. Is that it?”
She stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Brilliant platinum-blonde hair. Red eyes.
A sharp nose and full lips.
A glamorous, almost decadent beauty gazed back at her with an icy, expressionless face.
“It would be such a waste to die.”
Her murmured voice carried the tone of someone speaking about another person’s fate.
She slowly clenched her fist.
The bones stood out sharply, as if they might pierce through her thin skin.
‘As if I’d just quietly accept death.’
Now that she had taken over this body, she had no intention of following the original story—not even a little.
A calm, distant light returned to her eyes.
Thud.
A small vibration echoed from the next room.
“Looks like he’s arrived.”
Swallowing a sigh, Fiorentia reached out again.
She picked up a magnificent pure-white mask and fixed it over her face without hesitation.
An item she had to wear in order to move about this cursed mansion.
And in the end, the very thing that would grant her a new life.
She had decided to twist the original story slightly—but even this time, Theodore would not see her face.
She had no intention of showing it to him.
When she entered the next room, the guards were fastening the male lead’s chains to a hook in the floor.
“Good work. You may leave now.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Ah. Don’t go too far. Stand outside. Once the treatment is done, we’ll send him straight back to the underground prison.”
“Understood. Please call us when you’re finished.”
The two guards bowed to Fiorentia and quickly left the room.
She quietly looked down at the figure collapsed on the floor.
The man—Theodore Beringham—was still unconscious.
Treating his wounds was only an excuse. Fiorentia had another purpose.
‘I need to drive out the dragon’s poison.’
Today was his first time entering the breeding grounds. The poison likely had not yet reached the stage of destroying his soul.
That meant she had to act before it sank deeper.
“Alright. Shall we begin?”
Desdemona might change her mind and come here at any moment, so it was better to finish quickly.
As if she had no time for unnecessary sentiment, she stretched her arm toward Theodore.
Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, she heard a faint rustling sound.
Something pitch-black began sprouting rapidly around Theodore.
At a glance, it looked like tree branches charred by lightning.
No—more like…
‘Like the mummified monkey’s paw from that famous horror novel I read in my past life.’
What Fiorentia had summoned was a poisonous mushroom.
Because of its black, grotesque shape, no one would think it was a mushroom at all.
‘It’s become my tool now, but it still gives me chills every time I see it.’
She resisted the urge to turn her gaze away.
The poisonous mushrooms surrounding Theodore looked as if they might drag him into a deep abyss from which he could never return.
She steadied her breathing and moved her lips.
These mushrooms understood her words like trained animals. And they obeyed only her commands.
“They say poison can be cured with poison.”
Murmuring softly, Fiorentia clenched the hand she had extended into the air.
As if responding to her, the mushrooms moved all at once.
The horn-like protrusions—shaped like thin, withered fingers—made strange cracking sounds.
Snap. Crack. Snap. Snap.
They broke off their own segments and squeezed out juice.
Soon, a dark poisonous energy began to seep out as well.
From the floor, something like a cloud began to rise, quickly covering Theodore’s entire body like a thin film.
This poisonous mushroom was an ability she had acquired for today alone.
‘I really thought I was going to die.’
Fiorentia gave a bitter smile as she recalled what had happened recently.
Desdemona had well over a hundred cursed dolls. The breeding grounds were already overflowing with poison and madness, and even the surrounding plants had begun to mutate under the influence.
One of them was that poisonous mushroom.
In the original story, it had become one of the weapons that allowed Theodore to maintain his sanity despite Desdemona’s countless schemes.
He discovered it by chance and ate it, then suffered from a terrible fever caused by the poison.
After enduring it, he learned how to use the mushroom’s energy to keep his mind intact.
Fiorentia remembered that passage and decided she needed to obtain that method for herself.
After falling into this world, she realized Desdemona was just as insane as described in the novel. At this rate, Theodore’s imprisonment in the House of Marcella would happen soon.
—There’s no other choice. Nothing to lose. I have to try that method first.
So Fiorentia secretly went on a nighttime walk and searched the area around the breeding grounds thoroughly.
After a long search in the darkness, she found a mushroom that she believed Theodore had eaten in the original story.
[Overwhelmed by the poisonous energy, Theodore let out a strained breath.
‘Dying like this wouldn’t be so bad.’
As he gave a dry laugh, something appeared at the edge of his fading vision.
Something deeply ominous.
It looked like a severed wrist, blackened as if struck by lightning.
He felt as though he were being lured.
As if that cursed hand were beckoning him closer.
Come.
Come to me.
I will grant your wish and lead you into a peaceful death.
It felt as though a fairy of death were embracing him and whispering into his ear.]
‘It looks exactly like the original description.’
When she first read it, she thought it was just a hallucination caused by Theodore’s unstable mind.
But the mushroom she saw with her own eyes truly resembled a mummified human hand.
The sight of it was even more grotesque than she had expected, making nausea rise in her throat.
She hesitated—but that was not a reason to give up.
With reckless courage that bordered on foolishness, she squeezed her eyes shut and chewed the poisonous mushroom raw.
She worried about the aftereffects, but consciously ignored them. If Theodore had endured it in the novel, surely she could too.
But it seemed she had underestimated it.
※Notice※
This novel is fiction.
Poisonous mushrooms—and mushrooms in general—should never be eaten raw. Only edible mushrooms should be properly cooked and consumed.
