To His Hell and Back

Chapter 533: It’s All Fragile-III

Where Morpheus went lay far beneath the castle.

Hidden under layers of stone and silence was a vast hollowed chamber, a space wide enough to perform rituals long forbidden, or rituals that demanded room not only for massive magic circles but for the forces they summoned.

The walls were etched with ancient writings, dulled with age yet still pulsing faintly with restrained power. This place had been shaped by Morpheus’s own hands after the curse had spread through the sorcerers, built in secrecy and sealed away from all eyes.

It had always been meant for this night.

From the very beginning, he had known that there would come a moment when patience would no longer serve him. He had told himself the chamber was merely a precaution, a contingency should matters spiral beyond control. Yet standing there now, surrounded by the quiet hum of dormant magic, he understood the lie he had fed himself.

All this time, he had waited.

He waited, endured, and restrained himself, convinced that patience was wisdom, that delay would somehow grant him a better outcome. But what had waiting brought him, truly? Only his loss and the mockery. His kindness and patient he thought was wise only cause for the one single thing he truly treasured to be destroyed and oh how he regretted for being so foolish.

It was all because he had hesitated.

Like a trained mutt, obedient and foolish, he had stayed his hand when he could have ended it all so easily. Arabella’s life could have been taken the moment she defied him. He should have allowed for her blood to be spilled and her life to be lost so quickly so the gate of Hell forced open without resistance.

But he didn’t and all was due to mercy.

Mercy.

Yes. That was the word.

It wasn’t merely foolishness that had made him delay this moment, it was mercy. A weakness he had mistaken for restraint. And mercy, he realized bitterly, had done him no good at all. Arabella had repaid it with malice, something he clearly hadn’t expected. A part of him had wanted that Arabella was obedient towards him and perhaps that’s because he once had two women before her who had also failed to submit towards him.

The first was someone he admired, someone he wished would have chosen him.

The second was a woman he thought would always be there for him as she pitied and understood him.

As she had loved him.

But of course, if those two women could have betrayed him, he should have known Arabella would do the same. But he was still insist on believing in them which was clearly a mistake. His mercy had been thrown into dirt. So it was only right that she suffer the consequence.

She should suffer a great consequence. So great as then it would only right that she learn what kindness had truly been offered to her, and how disastrously she had chosen the wrong person to provoke.

"What are you hesitating for?"

His voice cut sharply through the chamber.

Esme stood a few steps away, clutching a glass jar filled with darkened blood. It was Arabella’s blood, drawn from her body the night Morpheus had first taken her into the castle. At the time, he had claimed it was merely a safeguard, a precaution in case control slipped from his grasp.

Now, he was grateful for his own foresight.

The blood would serve as an anchor, binding Arabella’s soul firmly into the magic circle once the ritual began. This would be the final action he took. Arabella wouldn’t survive it but does he truly care? At this point he doesn’t. He was only set to show her punishment, to make her understand what a big mistake she had caused.

Esme said nothing.

Her fingers tightened around the jar as the weight of it sank into her palms. She had never pitied Arabella. Never. If anything, she had despised her from the moment she realized how differently Morpheus treated her.

How could she not?

Morpheus liked Arabella, at least to what she sees, he did liked her. He softened around her, grew complacent, indulgent in ways Esme had never been allowed to witness for herself. The sight of it had burned into her chest, a slow, aching fire she could neither smother nor extinguish.

Arabella had everything Esme had been denied.

A face that invited kindness instead of revulsion. A presence that drew attention rather than avoidance. Esme had spent a lifetime being shunned, whispered about and overlooked, until Morpheus had remade her. Only after he had given her a new face did the world finally look at her with respect and obedience.

Arabella could never understand that kind of loneliness.

She had it all.

She had it all—

And yet the truth, sharp and unwelcome, lodged itself deep within Esme’s heart.

No matter how much she despised Arabella, she knew it wasn’t entirely fair. Beneath everything, Arabella was not as privileged as Esme wanted to believe. They were similar in ways that made Esme uncomfortable, both isolated, both shaped by forces beyond their choosing, yet different enough that comparison felt like an insult.

Esme hated her for that contradiction.

Hated her even more because Arabella knew what was right, and chose to stand by it.

And Esme... even now, despite having convinced herself she would do anything for Morpheus, found her resolve faltering. Her loyalty wavered as she stood there, blood in her hands, realizing that obedience no longer felt as simple as it once had.

Her hesitation betrayed her.

And Morpheus noticed.

"If death greets you first, would you crumble, Esme?"

The question was spoken calmly, almost idly, yet it struck her with a force that made her heart jolt violently against her ribs. It wasn’t a threat, at least not to Esme. It felt more like an evaluation, like a cold test, as though he were weighing her worth on a scale only he could see.

Esme stared at him.

There was only one answer he wants to hear and one answer she could only give him.

For a moment, her lips parted without sound, breath catching in her throat as every answer she could have given tangled uselessly inside her chest. Fear rose first like an instinct, but it did not last. When she finally closed her eyes, her shoulders straightened, and when her voice reached him it trembling.

"Of course," she said quietly, "I would not."

Arabella.

The name surfaced again in her head. Perhaps unlike Arabella, Esme would always have to live as someone she was not, wearing a face gifted to her, where devotion mistaken for love, while loyalty mistaken for choice.

She would never truly be loved by the man who stood before her, not as herself, not in the way she had once dreamed.

But this was the life she had chosen.

A repayment.

When others had recoiled in horror at her face, when whispers had followed her steps and eyes had slid away in disgust, Morpheus had looked at her without revulsion. He had given her purpose, power, and a place at his side when no one else would. That kindness, twisted or not, had been real to her.

She could betray anyone else.

But she could never betray him.

It was easier to betray her own heart than to see him hurt by her betrayal. She couldn’t do that to him, not him.

Without another word, Esme stepped forward and placed the jar of blood into Morpheus’s waiting hand. Only then did she notice the ring still resting on her finger, its weight suddenly unbearable. Her gaze lingered on it for a brief second before she carefully slid it free.

She placed the ring into Morpheus’s palm.

He looked at her then, eyes narrowed with suspicion but only then for the first time that night she smiled, not bitterly, not with longing, but with something resolved and final.

"I wish for you to hold it," she said softly. "Wear it instead of me. It should be with you, the object you treasure most should be in your hands. That’s only the right way for it."

Morpheus studied her expression closely, searching for jealousy, resentment, or some hidden fracture in her loyalty. But he found none. Whatever this gesture was, it was not born of spite.

At last, he nodded.

The ring was slipped onto his little finger, the only one it would fit.

He turned away from her then, attention shifting fully to the ritual. Kneeling, Morpheus began to let the blood spill from the jar. He traced ancient symbols onto the stone floor with the blood, the scent of iron thickened the air as the magic circle slowly took shape, glowing faintly beneath the spreading crimson.

Esme took her place at the outer edge, the final point needed to complete the spell.

When Morpheus gave the signal, she lifted the jar high and overturned it without hesitation. Blood poured freely, cascading onto the markings like a living tide, seeping into every groove and sigil etched into the ground.

She closed her eyes as it flowed.

"This is my answer," she whispered.

Meanwhile Arabella in her room had crumbled, a sharp cry torn from her throat that gathered her people around her. She had clutched to her chest where the sharpest feeling had stabbed her. There was no way around this pain as she knew it must have been from the magic circle that had been activated by her blood.

"There will be monsters coming after us now," she said with great difficulty while Circe helped her to stand up. With eyes squeezed to hold back the pain, she spoke louder, "He used my blood to have the creatures from Hell to come after me. Their plan is to kill me and take my body as the sacrifice."

"Since he moved his pawns, it’s our turn," Circe answered her, looking at her palm and making eye contact with Atlas before she pressed her palm to the magic circle that they had made, fillinng the entire room which they had moved to create a bigger space.