Yandere Monster Evolution: My Blind Wife Will Become a Demonic Queen

Chapter 128: Calm Storm

As we all walked behind Carmilla and her father, a heavy sense of guilt slowly rose up in my heart.

My eyes moved toward Carmilla. She was walking just a step behind her father, quietly listening to his deep voice.

She smiled whenever he looked back at her, pretending with everything she had that she wasn’t carrying the horrific memories of his brutal death. She was acting like a normal daughter returning home from a long, exhausting journey, rather than a ghost who had watched her entire world burn to the ground.

For a brief moment, the urge to speak up hit me hard.

I wanted to reach out, to pull her aside, and to scream right into her face that soon all of this warmth would completely disappear.

I wanted to tell her that the grand spires would crumble, the beautiful waterways would turn into thick streams of blood, and the noble king walking in front of us would become nothing more than a mindless, sleeping corpse trapped in a ruined graveyard.

But I swallowed those words back down.

I forced them deep into the pit of my stomach because I knew the cold, hard logic of our situation. Saving just one person in this timeline could easily destroy everyone standing right beside me. It could erase Hana, Jisu, Seok, and even myself from existence entirely.

And looking at the slight, trembling tension in Carmilla’s shoulders, I realized something.

Maybe she already knew that. Maybe she wasn’t looking for a way to rewrite the tragedy. Maybe she was just trying to have her very last, precious moment with her family before letting it all go forever.

Maybe?

I couldn’t be entirely sure, but it was a gamble I couldn’t afford to interfere with.

After walking down the wide, twisting marble stairs, we were finally able to reach the ground level of the palace courtyard.

Out here, the atmosphere was completely electric. Thousands of vampires were cheering, laughing, and drinking some unknown, shimmering crimson liquid from silver glasses. They were celebrating a grand festival, a day of absolute peace and triumph for their empire.

And as soon as we went out of the massive archway of the building, a sudden, dead silence fell over the whole kingdom... again.

The elegant music of the orchestra faded into the wind, and every single person present in front of us bowed their heads slightly, lowering their bodies in the presence of King Val.

Except for a few of us, of course. My group just stood there like a bunch of awkward sore thumbs in our tattered armor and ridiculous expressions.

"Don’t mind me. Carry on with what you were doing," Val said smoothly, waving both of his hands with a casual, easygoing grandeur that showed just how much his people adored him.

Everyone slowly raised their heads back up, but surprisingly, none of them dared to even take a single sip from their glasses.

The silence didn’t break. In fact, the tension in the air actually grew thicker. It wasn’t because their absolute lord was standing in front of them anymore, but because their eyes had just caught something completely, utterly unexpected.

"P-princess Carmilla?" one of the high-ranking vampire knights standing right in front of the line let out, his voice cracking with pure disbelief.

"Princess?"

"Where?"

"She is actually alive?"

The whispers and frantic murmurs began to erupt like wildfire from the massive crowd behind him. The sea of pale-skinned nobles parted instantly, their ruby-red eyes wide with total shock as they stared at the girl standing beside the King.

"Carmilla?" a woman suddenly gasped from the center of the path.

She was one of the very few who hadn’t bowed in front of the King when he walked out. She was dressed in flowing, elegant robes of deep crimson silk with a beautiful silver tiara resting on her dark hair.

She was Carmilla’s mother. The Queen.

I recognized her instantly because when Carmilla had been looking down from the high balcony earlier, her eyes had never left this specific, tightly knit group of nobles.

Standing right behind the Queen was a young, sharp-featured vampire who was preferably Carmilla’s brother, along with a few younger cousins. All of them looked as deeply shocked as humanly possible, their eyes wide and their jaws slightly parted as they stared at the girl they thought had been slaughtered on the northern borders.

"Mo... Mother..."

That was the only word Carmilla could bring herself to say.

And that single, broken word also seemed to be the only thing her mother wanted to hear. The Queen didn’t waste a single second trying to ask questions or demand an explanation from the guards. She simply opened her arms wide, waiting for Carmilla to run into them.

With a soft, choked sob, Carmilla abandoned all her royal etiquette. She dropped her dark blade to the floor and sprinted straight into her mother’s embrace, burying her face into her shoulder. Her brother and cousins immediately swarmed around them, locking her into a tight, emotional group hug, their tears spilling freely under the bright afternoon sun.

I watched the scene for a moment before turning my gaze away. I knew that Carmilla would now hug her mother, meet with her brother, and talk with her cousins for a while, but it was honestly none of my concern right now. As harsh as it sounded, we were technically standing in the middle of an impending, catastrophic war.

I slowly raised my head toward the sky, squinting through the cutouts of my brown paper bag mask. The heavens were shining with a perfectly clear, vibrant blue hue.

There was no oppressive darkness, no bruised red clouds, and absolutely no scent of thick, metallic blood lingering in the air.

And that, ironically, was my biggest concern.

The peace felt fake. It felt like a beautifully constructed glass ornaments that was waiting for a single hammer to shatter it into a million lethal pieces. I couldn’t just sit here idly and enjoy the view while this entire world was getting ready to tear itself apart to the point of total planetary destruction.

If my memory of the research articles was right, whatever destroyed this kingdom didn’t just leave ruins—it wiped entire civilizations off the face of the earth in a matter of days. I had to find a clear variable, a clue, or a way to get out of this timeline before the very first body could even fall to the ground.

....

After about half an hour...

For all the extensive knowledge I had about vampires from progression novels and entertainment industry, there was always one fundamental rule which never changed about them alongside them being blood-sucking creatures.

It was the simple, universal fact that they absolutely could not stay under direct sunlight. It was supposed to burn their skin, turn their mana chaotic, and reduce them to literal ash.

But here they were.

Not only were thousands of them standing directly under the hot, shiny yellow sun without a single care in the world, but they were also actively enjoying themselves, drinking and laughing in the open courtyards.

I was kind of incredibly confused. How could a vampire not be hurt by the sun? Were they even real vamps? Or was the ambient mana of this 300-year-past era so dense that it somehow shielded their biology from the solar radiation?

While swallowing a piece of perfectly roasted, tender meat, my eyes drifted away from my plate, shifting toward the sun and the vast, bustling race gathering under it across the grand dining room’s glass window from time to time. No matter how much I stared, the logic just didn’t click.

After the emotional reunion of Carmilla with her family, we had all been ushered into a private, luxurious dining hall to eat a grand lunch. It was a massive, incredibly long wooden, around which we were all currently sitting.

Vera was sitting right beside me on my left.

To manage the food, both of us had our paper masks folded slightly upward, just to the point of our noses, so that we could easily eat our lunch without revealing our true identities to anyone else.

To be honest, it looked absolutely ridiculous—two people in modern clothes and folded grocery bags sitting at a table fit for emperors—but the royal guards were too polite to say anything.

The food was honestly fantastic, rich and savory, but there was one more glaring thing that was seriously bothering me in addition to the weird sun logic.

Why on earth were Seok and Black sitting flat on the floor?

I blinked behind my mask, looking across the room. Even after all of Carmilla’s immediate family, Hana, Jisu, Grog, and the two of us had taken our respective seats around the massive table, there were still two perfectly fine, velvet-cushioned chairs left entirely empty at the far end.

But for some bizarre reason, the Queen, Carmilla’s mother, had absolutely refused to let those two specific men sit with the rest of us.

’She just said that those two can’t sit on the chairs.’

That was the exact, polite yet unyielding command she had given when we entered the room.

For Seok, I could kind of understand the logic.

The bright, cartoonish mask he was wearing literally had a crude, hand-drawn image of a jagged blade driving straight through a vampire’s jaw all the way to the top of its head. It was basically a walking hate crime against the vampire race, so the fact that the Queen hadn’t ordered his execution on the spot was already a massive miracle.

That explained Seok, but why Black?

The powerful, terrifying mercenary was currently sitting cross-legged on the polished marble floorboards, his back leaning against a golden pillar, quietly chewing on a piece of bread with a look of irritation on his face.

He hadn’t done anything offensive. He hadn’t even taken his hands out of his pockets until the food arrived. Maybe the Queen just possessed some absurd, maternal instinct that told her he was an incredibly dangerous entity who didn’t belong near her children.

Whatever the actual reason was, I can’t say I disliked it.

On the contrary, I liked seeing this so much that I was barely holding myself back from openly mocking Black.

Seeing him forced to eat his royal lunch while sitting on the floor like a misbehaving puppy was easily the highlight of my week.

I let out a soft chuckle, making sure he caught me looking at him. Black simply narrowed his eyes at me, chewing his bread a little harder.

Gradually, my gaze moved away from the floor and drifted back to my left, settling on Vera.

She was still eating her food, but she was doing it really slowly and cautiously.

Because her sightless eyes couldn’t see the plate, she was being incredibly careful, but despite her best efforts, she had managed to get a few small stains of dark sauce on her upper lip, and right at the corner of her mouth.

A small, helpless smile automatically appeared on my face.

Without overthinking it, I reached across the table, grabbed a clean, white linen napkin from the silver holder, and gently leaned closer to her shoulder. I reached out my hand and began to softly wipe the sauce away from the corner of her lips.

"Huh? Woo— Brian?" Vera let out a soft, surprised murmur.

The moment she felt the gentle texture of the napkin against her skin, she instantly stopped speaking. Her entire posture went slightly rigid, but after realizing exactly what I was doing, she didn’t pull away. She just sat there quietly as she let me finish wiping her mouth.

"You could have just asked me to feed you, why are you taking so much trouble?" I whispered softly near her ear, my voice dropping into a light, teasing tone that only she could hear.

Wiping her mouth completely clean, I snatched the silver spoon straight out of her small fingers, scooped up a perfect, bite-sized portion of the sweet dessert on her plate, and held it right in front of her lips.

"Say ah..." I murmured.

Vera tilted her head slightly and blinked her eyes in confusion, but a tiny smile quickly pulled at the corners of her lips. She obediently opened her mouth and let me feed her the sweet fruit, her teeth lightly clicking against the silver spoon.

"My, what a thoroughly heartwarming sight," a deep, amused voice suddenly could be heard from the head of the table.

My movements instantly froze. I slowly turned my head, realizing with a jolt of awkwardness that the entire royal family had stopped eating.

King Val was leaning back in his massive golden throne, a wide, genuinely delighted grin stretching across his features as he watched the two of us.

Beside him, Carmilla’s mother was smiling softly into her silk handkerchief, while Carmilla herself just stared at us with a completely blank, exhausted expression, as if she were too emotionally drained to process our sudden public display of affection.

"It seems true romance crosses even the borders of the outer provinces," King Val chuckled warmly. He reached out and gently placed his massive, armored hand over the Queen’s fingers, squeezing them affectionately.

"Seeing the two of you reminds me so vividly of my younger days. I used to steal the finest sweet wines from the royal cellars just to feed my beautiful wife when we were hiding from the Grand Council. A man who truly loves his companion will always ensure she is fed before all else."

"Dear, please, not in front of our guests," the Queen murmured, though her pale cheeks flushed with a prominent, loving warmth as she smiled back at him.

I felt a sudden wave of heat rushing up my own neck. I quickly cleared my throat and dropped my hand back to my own plate. "I apologize, Your Majesty. She... she just has trouble seeing her food sometimes."

Vera, however, didn’t seem embarrassed at all. She simply leaned her shoulder heavily against mine, and her small hand reaching beneath the table to lock her fingers tightly with mine.

Then, just as I was about to lift my fork to take another bite, the joyful, celebratory noise echoing from the open windows completely vanished.

Outside, the distant sound of the orchestra suddenly stopped. The cheerful music died out in a split second, replaced by a strange, collective shift in the atmosphere of the entire city.

Thousands of people who had been drinking and celebrating suddenly began to murmur, their voices carrying a sharp, erratic edge of confusion and sudden alarm.

The people eating inside the dining hall noticed it too. The King’s amused smile instantly vanished, his golden eyes narrowing into sharp slits as he turned his face toward the massive glass panels overlooking the avenue.

The royal guards standing near the doors immediately placed their hands on the hilts of their swords, their postures going completely rigid.

"What is happening?" I muttered under my breath.

A violent feeling of dread suddenly gripped my chest, screaming at me that the fragile peace had just broken. I stood up from my chair, letting go of Vera’s hand as I slowly walked toward the large, open window to see what the crowd outside was noticing.

Then, I leaned my head out to look up at the sky.

The brilliant, clear blue sky wad still there, but high above the grand spires, a strange, massive shadow was rapidly expanding, blocking out the bright yellow sun.

Thousands of vampires in the plaza were pointing upward, their voices rising into a frantic, terrified crescendo of screams.

And then, suddenly, at that exact monument, a massive, black-feathered arrow fell straight from the sky.

Whoosh!

The projectile tore through the air with a deafening, sonic screech, traveling with such immense velocity that it looked like a streak of pure black lightning.

Before anyone could even blink, the heavy arrow drove itself directly through the chest of a vampire standing in the courtyard.

CRACK!

The physical force behind the strike was so immense that it didn’t just pierce him—it impaled him flat against the stone floor boards, dropping him stone-dead in a pool of dark crimson blood.

"Enemy attack!!!" a guard screamed from the courtyard.

SWISH!

SWISH!!

SWISH!!!

But his voice was instantly drowned out. High above the palace, the blue sky completely vanished, replaced by a terrifying, dense cloud of thousands of identical black arrows raining down like a torrential storm of absolute death.

’Has it begun?’