𝒲𝒾𝓃𝓉ℯ𝓇 𝒲ℴ𝓃𝒹ℯ𝓇𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒹： 𝒯𝒽𝒶𝓌 ℴ𝒻 𝓉𝒽ℯ ℱ𝓇ℴ𝓏ℯ𝓃 ℋℯ𝒶𝓇𝓉

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑒－𝑅𝑒𝑑 𝑇𝑦𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑡： 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑡𝑒𝑟 26

*
"Feel my pain (World is but vanity End in misery)"

**
Ramshackle Dorm - Your Room

When Anemone shut off the lights in Y/n's room, she glanced over her shoulder at the slumbering girl nestled in blankets, her features soft and peaceful in the moonlight. A quiet smile touched her lips. "Good night, my lady."

"Aw... no 'good night' for me, Anemone? You wound me," Vanitas drawled from across the room, reclined on his bed with a book in one hand, a dramatic pout on his lips. "Truly, my heart shatters."

Anemone blinked, deadpan. With a sigh, she offered a half-hearted bow. "Good night, sir."

The door clicked shut behind her.

Vanitas didn't spare her a second thought. His attention was already back on Y/n, the book in his hands forgotten. He watched her chest rise and fall in rhythmic little motions, soft snores—so light they sounded more like sighs—reaching his ears.

He leaned back on his pillows, a lopsided smile creeping across his lips. "Sweet dreams, mon chérie."

His voice was a breath, possessive and tender all at once. He drank in the sight of her, every inch of her lovely, vulnerable form like a lullaby meant only for him.

She was so unaware. So soft. So perfectly his.

If only he knew what dreams stirred beneath her fluttering lashes... or perhaps, it was better that he didn't.

*
Somnium Patientiae

Y/n awoke with a start—the sharp clang of a gavel reverberating through her skull like thunder. "Ah...!" she gasped, her hand flying to her chest. But this wasn't her room, and this certainly wasn't reality.

She sat trembling on the cold marble floor of a courtroom, not the rose-choked garden from her last nightmare. The air reeked of roses and old blood. Before her, a trial was underway—Alice, the young blonde girl, stood tall and defiant at the witness stand, while high above loomed the petite Queen of Hearts, perched smugly on a judge's throne that towered like a scaffold.

"Another dream...?" Y/n whispered, trying to rise—only for her legs to collapse beneath her. Her dress clung to her body, soaked through with warm blood. Scarlet vines, sharp as thorns, coiled around her limbs and burrowed into her skin.

"Ah—ah!" she whimpered, writhing as crimson rose thorns bloomed from the wounds.

"And as for you, Your Majesty... 'Your Majesty,' indeed!" Alice exclaimed, scoffing as she pointed a figure at the Queen of Hearts with a fierce look in her eyes. "Why, you're not a queen. You're just a fat, pompous, bad-tempered old ty...tyrant..."

"Mmhmmhmmhmm... What were saying, my dear?" The Queen tilted her head, smiling with sickening sweetness as she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

Y/n's agony intensified—frost exploded from her bare feet like shattered glass, ice rapidly crawling across the courtroom floor, encasing it in a beautiful, deadly bloom. Her breath fogged, eyes wide in terror.

Suddenly, a flash of color—a pink-and-purple-striped cat reclined atop the Queen's crown, grinning ear to ear. "Well, she simply said that you're a fat, pompous, bad-tempered old tyrant! Hahahaha!" the cat repeated mockingly before bursting out in laughter while disappearing as he had appeared.