Investing In My Lv.999 Devoted Wife Makes Me a Tyrant

Altar smelled of dust and disuse.

Allen Veton stood before it, hands at his sides, shoulders loose. He'd stopped expecting anything from his family years ago, but even he hadn't expected this.

"You should be grateful, Allen."

The voice belonged to his cousin, Darian. Three rows of empty pews stretched behind them. No guests. No witnesses beyond the three Veton cousins who'd come not to celebrate, but to watch. Darian leaned against a pillar, arms crossed, mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"We found you a wife. A former S-rank Hunter." He said it the way someone might announce they'd found a stray dog. "You know what S-rank means, don't you?" A pause. "Of course you don't. Trash like you couldn't reach E-rank if you trained for a century."

Allen didn't answer. He'd learned a long time ago that words were useless against people who'd already decided you were worthless.

His gaze drifted to the woman beside him.

Seraphina Valemont sat in a wheelchair at the foot of the altar. She didn't move. Didn't speak. Her hands rested in her lap like abandoned things, pale fingers curled inward. A white cotton dress hung loose on her frame, the kind of garment you'd find in a slum market, threadbare at the seams, faded to the color of old bone.

Her hair was silver, like moonlight caught in running water, spilling past her shoulders and pooling in her lap. And at the tips, where the light hit just right, a darker shade bled through. Garnet. The color of dying embers, or a sunset that had given up on morning.

Allen stared.

Her face was oval, pale as porcelain, with high cheekbones and a jawline that belonged on a painting. Her lips were full, pink, slightly parted. And her eyes—

They were violet. Pale violet, ringed with silver at the iris, like a winter sky just before snow. They should have been beautiful.

They were empty.

She stared at nothing. At everything. At the altar in front of her, at the dust motes floating in the weak light from the chapel's single window. She didn't blink. Didn't react. Whatever was behind those eyes, it wasn't here.

Silver Death, they'd called her. The most feared Hunter of her generation. S-rank. Level 999. Solo-cleared gates that would have killed entire parties. And now she couldn't even lift her own hand.

"I heard she can't even feed herself," said the second cousin, Mira. She had their family's dark hair and a sharper tongue. "You'll have to bathe her, spoon-feed her, wipe her ass. A perfect wife for trash like you."

The third cousin, Kellan, laughed. "A match made in the slums."

Allen still said nothing. He'd stopped reacting to them years ago. Every flinch, every flash of anger, that was what they wanted. So he gave them nothing.

The guild officiant cleared his throat. He was an old man with a bored expression, reading from a worn book. "By the authority vested in me by the Hunter Guild, I pronounce you husband and wife."

He closed the book. "That's it. Sign here."

Allen signed. Seraphina couldn't. The officiant didn't seem to care.

Darian clapped slowly. "Congratulations, cousin. Your wedding gift is waiting outside."

The wedding gift was a shack.

They walked. Allen pushing the wheelchair through muddy streets, the cousins following at a distance like escorts to a funeral. The slum spread around them in layers of decay: rotting wood, leaking roofs, sewage running in shallow trenches. The smell was a living thing, thick and sour.

Their destination sat at the end of a narrow alley. One room. A wooden bed frame with no mattress. A wobbly table. One window without glass. No fireplace.

Mira wrinkled her nose. "Charming."

Allen lifted Seraphina from the wheelchair. She weighed almost nothing, her body had atrophied, muscle turned to memory. He carried her inside, laid her on the bare bed frame, and returned to the doorway.

Darian stood there, arms still crossed. "Father wants you to suffer, Allen. That's the only reason you're still breathing." He tilted his head toward Seraphina. "She's your problem now. Try not to die too quickly."

He turned and walked away. Mira and Kellan followed, their laughter echoing off the alley walls until it faded into the general noise of the slum.

Allen closed the door.

The room fell silent.

He lit a candle. The flame was weak, barely pushing back the darkness, but it was enough. Enough to see the cracks in the walls. Enough to see the dirt on the floor. Enough to see her.

Seraphina lay on the bed frame, motionless. The candlelight caught her hair, made the silver glow and the garnet tips smolder. Her violet eyes reflected the flame but held none of its warmth.

Allen dragged the room's single chair to the bedside and sat down.

He didn't know this woman. He knew her reputation, everyone knew her reputation, but the person behind it? Nothing. What did she like? What did she hate? Did she even know he was here? Could she hear him? Could she think?

He ran a hand through his own hair. Black. Unkempt. He was tall, but his body was thin, underfed, arms without definition. Level 7. F-rank. The lowest of the low.

Trash, Darian had called him. And looking at himself now, in this shack, with a wife who couldn't speak or move, Allen couldn't find a reason to argue.

He looked at Seraphina again.

"I don't know if you can hear me," he said. His voice came out rough. He hadn't spoken much today. "But we're the same. You and me. They threw you away too."

No response. Of course there wasn't.

He leaned back in the chair. The candle flickered. Outside, someone shouted in the distance, a drunk, a fight, the usual music of the slums. Inside, there was only silence and the slow dance of the flame.

Allen watched his wife's face for something. Anything. A flicker. A twitch. A sign that she was still in there somewhere.

Nothing.

But her eyes were open. And somewhere in that violet emptiness, he thought, just for a moment, that he saw something looking back.

The candle burned lower. Allen didn't move. He'd figure out what came next. Food. Water. A way to survive. But tonight, he sat with his silent bride in their shack at the edge of the world, and he waited.

For what, he didn't know.

Maybe for her to blink.

Or for the candle to finally die.

Something. Anything to prove that either of them was still alive.