182.

“I cannot do it.”

“Mother, you do not know how many times I have thrown away my life. It is unfortunate, but this body is immortal. It is not something I can accomplish by my own will. Don’t you know the history of this body better than I do?”

“Did you try to die?”

“Of course! I…”

“…”

“How could you…”

“Enough!”

“…”

“You, go to the inner palace underground immediately.”

The duchess, who had suddenly retreated a step back, took rapid breaths. Her eyes, wide open like fire lanterns, were already slightly distant from Johannes. With trembling shoulders, her gaze wandered aimlessly. She seemed to be calculating her own interests in her mind, or perhaps anticipating what was to come in an instant.

Just as Johannes, unable to calm his emotions, was about to cry out asking what scheme this was now.

“Why are you standing there dumbfounded.”

The duchess raised her head.

“You have your remaining pieces, don’t you? Go now and awaken the guardian embedded in your sarcophagus…!”

“…”

“I said…”

The weakened duchess could not handle the speed at which she had raised her head. Her entire body fell backwards along the path her head had risen. The back of the duchess’s head hit the floor with a thud. Sprawled out, she couldn’t even let out a short scream.

Bent backwards and looking as if struck by lightning, she remained motionless for a moment before suddenly exhaling rapid breaths. It seemed she had completely exhausted what little vitality remained after the intense emotional expenditure. Having spoken of death all night long, she finally received her due.

Johannes clenched his teeth, with the fallen duchess at his feet. His passion was no less overwhelming than hers. He lowered his face, which was flushed red and heaving up and down, to touch below his eyebrows. It was maddening. If he could have his way, he would have poured out all his pent-up feelings right then and there.

As if shaking off his anger, he lowered his hand. He approached the duchess and supported her haphazardly. Her upper body, trembling sporadically, hung like a load on one of his shoulders. As she was laid on the bed by her fake son’s hands, the duchess whispered with her fading breath.

“That person… Ca… ll…”

“Speak clearly. It’s difficult to understand you.”

Johannes cut off the duchess’s groaning voice firmly. His hands, which insisted on tidying up the duchess’s bedding that she couldn’t lie straight in, were indescribably rough. I have to do even this? His lips, swallowing back anger close to revulsion, were so tightly closed they had lost all color. The duchess moved her lips with all her might.

“Ca… ll. If you. Perhaps with a noble, heart… With a heart that deeply cherishes your sister… If you would even accept death for her sake…”

“…”

“Ca… ll. Solve it. That person… Kre… It’s Kre…”

“…”

“Kretzman…”

…What?

Johannes’s nerves, which had been about to cover his ears rather than deal with this irrelevant patient any longer, suddenly stood on end. Every little hair on the back of his neck, all of it.

He doubted his own ears.

***

“Griselda! Griselda… Call my daughter. I must warn her…”

“…”

“I’m afraid, afraid… That even this might become a gesture to summon him…”

The duchess’s voice coming from the women’s quarters was like a storm pushing at Johannes’s back. Somehow his limbs felt weak, and his steps across the corridor kept faltering. Throughout his journey to the inner palace underground, daylight poured in through the narrow arrow slits that dotted the walls.

That light rhythmically swept over his golden hair. Don’t call. Johannes muttered, staggering. In such a bright moment, if he were to sense even the faintest trace of that person, Kretzman, he felt he would truly lose his mind.

Don’t make a sound.

It wasn’t anger. Losing his mind no longer meant just emotional agitation. Rather, it was closer to sinking into a world of hallucinations and delusions, having lost touch with reality. A world where the unconscious replaces consciousness. Inevitably falling into the state of a madman.

It felt like a hangover had set in. He didn’t know with what state of mind he was descending the dozens of steps. It felt like his crown was stuck on the end of a screw, drilling him down into the underground inner palace. With eyes drying intermittently in the sun, he was certain without any solid evidence. He had been a plaything from the start. He was Kretzman’s naked plaything.

Every living breath was hot.

Surely Kretzman must be standing behind Johannes even now. He knew it without seeing. He must be watching and laughing, observing Johannes’s every move as he staggered along, following his mother’s orders like he had watched every unit of their argument. It was fortunate that he couldn’t hear Kretzman’s presence or his terrible prophecies urging Johannes on. He had gained some time to collect himself before formally facing Kretzman.

He would confirm it with his own eyes and ears. Then he might at least find some peace in the name of resignation. Yes, just say it to my face properly.

Say it.

Just as he felt he might lose consciousness completely, he arrived at the first floor of the main tower. Johannes found the entrance to the inner palace hidden in the deepest part, after passing through one more winding corridor around the perimeter of the hall. In the dusty pit where no light entered, two guards blocked his way. It wasn’t an impious act. Originally, only the lord’s wife and daughter were allowed to enter the inner palace.

“I have permission.”

“But…”

“Must I bring someone bedridden with a serious illness all the way here?”

He asked coldly, having bathed in cold sweat on the way down several floors, now looking even more ill than his own mother. Sensing his unusual demeanor, the guards exchanged glances with troubled expressions. After a fierce silent deliberation, they seemed to reach an agreement and parted to the left and right.

“We apologize, young lord.”

Johannes, who was about to respond to the courtesy, bowed his head straight forward as if collapsing. Barely maintaining his balance, he shook his dizzy head briefly and stepped onto the stairs leading underground. The end of his long exhale after a deep breath was trembling. He raised his face.

Though the space beyond the bottom of the stairs was pitch black like the bottom of a well, he did not take the torch hanging on the entrance wall. No, he didn’t even think he needed to take it. Weren’t his eyes more accustomed to darkness? He was naturally drawn in.

How could I summon the guardian protecting my maternal family’s assets? Perhaps it was because he had lived his life always being pushed, pulled, and chased away. This time too, he was only resolved to face it, without exploring the cause or means.

By the time Johannes realized once again his innate ignorance and helplessness, gritting his teeth, he had already reached solid level ground. When he reached the end of the staircase, where there was nothing but the presence of the boy and darkness.

“How does it feel to be cut twice by your father’s hand…”

Johannes stopped abruptly. A voice.

“The first time was five pieces, and now nine pieces, so perhaps the situation has actually improved.”

A man’s low murmuring voice was spreading through the gap in the entrance blocking the inner palace, along with an unidentified blue light. Johannes’s eyes widened between rapid breaths. He seemed to feel the temperature of the sound and light touching his cheeks. A coolness just enough to raise goosebumps on his skin. But not enough to freeze him solid.

There, the usual eerie contempt that would penetrate to one’s bones was absent. Because of that, he knew. The man was not whispering to him now. He was addressing someone else. But behind this door there might be only that voice. Without form.

Johannes grabbed the doorframe with a force as if throwing away a moment of despair. An emotion that could be called stubborn rage beyond fury was rising up to his chin. Bang! He flung the door open.

“I don’t know if you can hear me. I will put you in a coffin and offer you as tribute. I can’t even imagine how it would feel to be preserved as a precious corpse in the hands of a lover possessed by a ghost.”

The end of the man’s voice, buried under the sound of splintering wood, carried a faint hint of laughter. Johannes, who had burst into the inner palace as if apprehending a traitor, stood rooted to the spot.

“I believed it was the unchanging principle for things to flow downwards. Yet here I am, atoning for my son’s sins. No, is it my sin for raising you to be such a worthless fellow…”

The man sitting on the coffin in the center of the inner palace covered the back of his head with both hands. As if trying to hide his face from Johannes. No.

As if trying to embrace an unidentified sphere resting on his thighs.

“This is…”

Johannes could not finish his words. His gaze, which had shot up at once, swept from the ceiling to the floor of the inner palace. It was truly a surreal sight.

He had vaguely imagined until now that his mother’s underground inner palace would be a stone chamber filled with the rumored sarcophagus of Duke Comyn, or treasures inherited from her maternal family. However, the inner palace he actually arrived at was a scene that could rather be called deep underwater. The entire air rippled with a dark blue light. Even those waves were vivid to the eye.

Amidst all that blue, the surrounding walls, as if someone had slaughtered a horse indoors, were covered in blood and filled with furniture that was difficult to distinguish as bookshelves or display cases. At a glance, ancient books that had clearly aged considerably and scrolls as long as an adult man’s arm were piled up, overlapping and overturned like garbage.

Candles burned haphazardly without proper holders, stuck with wax to furniture and floors all over, seeming to testify to the man’s eccentricity. Moreover, lines drawn with white chalk between the candles intertwined complexly, forming indecipherable patterns across the entire floor of the inner chamber. And as Johannes’s gaze traced, traced back to the man’s feet.

“…It’s a world not worth exploring further.”

There, the body of a huge beast with its head, wings, and limbs severed lay overturned like a dark mound.

That body.

Finally, a crack appeared in Johannes’s field of vision. The ominous premonition was like some kind of claw. A horror of the same degree as when he had witnessed his own hand, severed long ago by the duchess, crawling alone on a table, was now raking across his entire back.

That body.

He unconsciously took a step back. Thud, something caught on his heel. He knew by the sensation alone. Heavy, massive, firm, flesh. Johannes’s entire body stiffened like an old tree.

He had to twist his neck with the same stubbornness as when he entered. His gaze dropped slightly. After confirming what had caught on his foot, he firmly closed his mouth, which had been gaping open at some point. The object caught on his foot was a piece of a black snake. A piece of a black snake with a thickness that seemed about the size of Ynette’s waist in childhood. No…

That.

It was a forearm severed from below the beast’s shoulder.

“Eyes… Eyes.”

The man suddenly stood up. Ignoring Johannes, who was petrified and motionless with shock, he paced around the entire room, holding the sphere up to his forehead with both hands. The man muttered incoherently.

“…the third eye obtained in exchange… You…”

“…”

“Ah… It’s still blurry. Damn it… That is… Yes… It’s your iron bars.”

“…”

“It is the ritual of opening eyes to fulfill the mission inscribed in your power the moment that woman makes her third wish… Is that so? Yes…”

“…”

“Right, it is a brake mechanism designed and calibrated out of necessity… An ancestor suffering from daydreams, mistakenly believing they’ve gained life. An automaton that will return to being an object the moment it realizes the truth. Yes…”

“…”

“…Johannes.”