Villainess is being pampered by her beast husbands-Chapter 390 --.

Someone wanted Sparrow. Someone else wanted ’her’. Old people sitting in high places, sending killers down like stones kicked from a wall.

And the books. Always those damn books.

Old pages, old words about humans in beastmen lands, about poison that walked upright. Veer had mentioned them once and then dodged the subject like it burned. If there was an answer to why her blood melted people from the inside, it was probably inked in one of those. Far from here. In the hands of people who already thought she was a problem.

Her skull felt too full. Bullets. Sparrows. Elders. Books. Poison. Wings. Claws. It all spun together until it was just one heavy, buzzing knot.

She blew out a slow breath through her nose and dropped her gaze.

Cutie’s head had tipped further, his temple almost resting against her shoulder now. In her pocket, the Sparrow bundle pressed warm into her side. Between one blink and the next, Kaya realized she was boxed in by bodies she hadn’t let herself admit she was holding onto.

Her hand slid over the pocket without thinking, palm curving around the small rise of cloth. Tiny warmth against her skin answered. On the other side, Cutie’s arm brushed hers, solid and quiet.

Kaya told herself she was just making sure nothing fell. Nothing rolled. Nothing slipped where she couldn’t catch it.

Her eyelids got heavy anyway.

"I need a smith," she thought, words already blurring. "And answers. And fewer idiots trying to stab me in hallways."

The stars above smeared into soft light. Her grip on the pocket stayed iron even as her muscles finally gave up. Shoulders loosened. Jaw unclenched. Her head dipped forward until it almost touched Cutie’s.

Sleep dragged Kaya under without asking permission.

One second she was staring at stars, hand warm over her pocket. The next, the ridge dissolved and she was standing in the hotel corridor again—except the walls had stretched wrong, too tall, bleeding into shadow at the top. The floor under her boots wasn’t wood anymore. It was stone. Wet stone. And the blood wasn’t just pooled in corners; it was moving, crawling across the ground in slow, black lines like veins spreading through skin.

Bodies dropped around her without sound. The jackal. The fox. The boar. They fell in wrong angles, limbs folding the way paper did when you crumpled it. She tried to step back but her feet wouldn’t move. The gun in her hand felt too heavy. When she looked down, her fingers were locked around the grip so tight the knuckles had gone white.

She squeezed the trigger.

No bang. No recoil. Just red—thick, dark red—pouring out of the barrel and running down her wrist like the gun was bleeding instead of firing.

"What—" Her voice came out flat, swallowed by the air.

Above her, something shifted.

She looked up and there was a balcony now, hanging in the dark where the ceiling should have been. Stone railing. Figures leaning over it, faces pale and smooth like masks. Elders. She didn’t know their names but she ’knew’ them, the way you know a shape in the corner of your eye is watching you.

Their mouths moved in perfect sync. No sound at first. Then one word, over and over, layered on top of itself until it felt like it was coming from inside her skull:

’Vessel. Page. Vessel. Page.’

Kaya tried to raise the gun toward them. Her arm wouldn’t lift. The red kept dripping, faster now, pooling at her feet. When it touched her boots, the stone underneath hissed and smoked.

The air thickened. Every breath tasted like iron and ash. She looked at her hands and her palms were wrong—veins standing out too dark, pulsing under the skin like something was trying to crawl its way to the surface. The blood on the floor reached for her ankles. Not random. ’Reaching.’ Like it recognized her.

When it touched her skin, the stone cracked.

"Give it back," a voice said.

Hers. But colder. Sharper. Like someone else was using her mouth.

The elders on the balcony didn’t flinch. They just stared down at her with those blank faces and waited.

One leaned closer. Its mouth opened wider than it should have. "Open."

Kaya’s chest split.

No knife. No wound. Just a clean line down the center of her ribs like someone had unzipped her. Light tried to push out from the gap—white, burning, wrong. She clamped her jaw shut, teeth grinding so hard she tasted blood. Her hands came up, trying to hold herself together, but the light kept spilling through her fingers.

Where it touched the floor, the bodies softened and folded into ash.

"’Stop—’"

.

.

.

On the ridge, in the real dark, Kaya’s body jerked.

Her fingers curled into a fist so tight her nails bit deep into the cut on her palm. Fresh blood welled up, hot and slick. Heat rolled off her skin in waves, thick enough that the air around her shimmered faintly. The stone under her hand hissed—a low, quiet sound—and a dark stain spread across the rock, edges glowing faint orange before fading to black.

Beside her, Cutie shifted in his sleep. His brow pulled tight, lips parting on a soft, confused sound. Instinct dragged him closer without waking him, shoulder pressing into hers like his body thought she was cold and needed the warmth. He didn’t know he was leaning into a fire.

In her pocket, the Sparrow twitched once—a sharp, sudden movement—then went completely still. Frozen. Like a small animal that had just sensed a predator too close to run from.

The dream pulled tighter.

The elder’s hand reached down from the balcony, impossibly long, fingers brushing her jaw. "You are the page," it said. "We will read you until there is nothing left."

The light in her chest flared. The corridor filled with smoke. The bodies on the ground turned to dust and blew away, and she stood alone in the center of a black, empty room with her ribs open and something burning its way out.