184.

The cool, thin lips slowly opened.

“It’s simple.”

“……”

“Make that woman open the last sarcophagus and call me with her blood. And make her beg me for the end of the curse herself. Then the chain around the woman’s neck will be removed, the devil’s body that fulfilled its final power will return to ashes, and my son will finally rest in peace.”

“……”

“As per the natural order set by that miraculous being called God.”

With that final answer devoid of any inflection, Kretzman closed his mouth. Johannes, who had stiffened his entire body in intense tension, also lost his words for a moment. Following Kretzman’s words, his nervously heightened nerve endings suddenly went damp and felt extremely heavy. Like firewood that had burned brightly then suddenly extinguished.

He couldn’t comprehend at all, yet in another sense understood completely, that the curse which seemed so much like his own bloodline and fate could be lifted by such a simple act. He simply lacked the courage to examine what he understood.

He didn’t want to know.

The voices of the man trapped in time and the boy abandoned by time no longer echoed. The underground hall was as quiet as a deep, calm lake, just azure blue. Only the sound of candles burning down here and there between the floor and bookshelves pooled deeply. Kretzman, who had lowered his upraised arms at some point, was staring at Johannes with an expression that even looked somewhat gentle. If not for the head he was ruthlessly gripping in one hand, it would have been a calmness no different from any other teacher in Duke Gustavus’ library.

However, Johannes slowly, very slowly, confirmed what was absent in Kretzman’s words.

As if opening his final gate.

“…Then what about me.”

“……”

“What will happen to me?”

Johannes’ voice asking this was strangely detached. Even his gaze at Kretzman was blank, like that of a dazed orphan. There was no expectation. Kretzman’s forehead tilted slightly to one side. His sweat-soaked black hair slid down, covering the deeply wrinkled cheek on one side.

“A foolish question. Do you need to ask to know?”

“……”

“You will simply return from nothing to nothing. It may feel like death to you, but that’s the only truth. In the end, nothing changes.”

Johannes quietly closed his mouth. With empty pupils, he blankly felt the heavy, wet sensation spreading from his solar plexus to just below his chin. When it reached his tongue, it seemed as if water would spill from between his lips that had drowned without a sound or movement. This shock felt so much like moisture. Inside and out, all was underwater. After a long silence like that of an inanimate object, he asked colorlessly.

“Isn’t it strange?”

“What is?”

“If everything you say is true… I’m saying I’m not an unnecessary surplus.”

“Surplus?”

“Did I need to wake up at all? There was no need for that, was there?”

Kretzman let out a scoffing laugh. Although Johannes did not take his eyes off the man’s face for even a moment, he hardly felt the derision directed at him. He asked slowly.

“Certainly… I may not be a beneficial existence for Inette. Cruel… Difficult to even speak of… I fall into such delusions. There is… clearly a part of me… that trembles even at such… unspeakable thoughts about her… that I dare not tell her. I won’t deny it. But if I may dare to excuse myself, the beginning of those delusions was your son’s memories.”

“……”

“In my younger days, I simply cherished her deeply. We were happy. Truly…. Her. I….”

Johannes’ pupils, fixed steadily on Kretzman, widened as he traced his own memories. Deep nostalgia was filling his eyes. The heat of summer, clever and hot, used to crash and shatter against the slender shoulders that leaned against him ostentatiously.

In that light, when he buried his nose in the warm, pale nape, the bitter scent of medicinal herbs would rush in hotly between the collars. That temperature was so adorably, lovably burning that he would burst into laughter even at his sister’s obvious greed. It was a brilliantly hot time. Even his trivial emotions were all sincere. Without a speck of falsehood or denial in it.

The two of us were pure together.

“If the purpose of the curse is to make her unhappy… Rather than creating something new and expending unnecessary effort, you could have simply let your son wake up.”

“……”

“Am I… wrong?”

Kretzman’s gaze, tinged with a faint smile, fell about a span lower. As if avoiding Johannes seeking an answer, he roughly lifted his son’s head, which he had been clutching in one hand, to eye level. Between the horn tips that seemed to pierce the ceiling, the black hair of ‘Idris’, as dark as Kretzman’s, swayed briefly.

“It takes considerable time to break a human soul.”

Kretzman suddenly spoke.

“Do you know that from God’s perspective, the human body is in the form of a vessel?”

“How can you… claim to know the view of the omniscient one?”

“There are ways to know. Nothing is impossible with intellect. After bloody research and repeated experiments, am I not now a prophet and seer? No longer just ordinary eyes.”

“……”

“So understand this. Long ago, God struck the heads of all earthly creatures with lightning, hollowing them out, and filled them with that useless thing called a soul. That day, we humans gained the flaw of emotions and lost both invincible reason and immortal bodies. In other words, we came to repeat the cycle of suffering from petty emotions all our lives, briefly recovering through sleep, then returning to this earth in the state of complete idiots with the bodies of mindless infants.”

“…But heaven is.”

Johannes reflexively countered. Though his state of mind did not waver, the ingrained way of thinking made his lips open automatically. However, Kretzman ignored his rebuttal and continued speaking smoothly.

“Thus, the intellect of our human race, once said to have been more brilliant than the stars in ancient times and to have surpassed the realm of gods, met such a terrible downfall. Truly an absurd tragedy, is it not?”

“……”

“However, there were a few beasts among the earthly creatures that managed to escape God’s eye and maintain immortality. Though originally different species, the other humans who had fallen to mortality called them all by one name, devils, and considered them ominous. Again, from God’s perspective, the bodies of you devils are not like vessels. They simply form a single slab, straight and flawless like marble, of the power you’ve possessed since the beginning. There is not even a speck of unevenness on that slab. No soul or such can be put in, nor can anything be caught on it. That’s how you avoided the cycle of rebirth.”

Kretzman’s head, which had been looking into his son’s dead eyes, gradually fell. Though Johannes, standing in front of him, couldn’t see clearly because Idris’ head obscured his face, Kretzman seemed to glance sideways. His lowered head twisted slightly. His gaze was directed at the desk piled high with scrolls of poisonous parchment. At that moment.

“…And my son’s soul was trapped in such a hellish slab.”

A grinding voice flowed from Kretzman’s mouth, which had been quiet for a while. It was. Miserably low.

“The only space for the boy’s soul… is the half-remaining human flesh. Even that, combined with a beast like you, is twisted this way and that, deformed, blocking even the breath… Thus, with all his soul forcibly crammed in, that boy writhes and howls, unable to bear the sensation of suffocation and being crushed every hour, every second… He has forgotten his original nature. He has forgotten himself. Only memories of that woman. That hideous woman. Only impure memories like pain, anger, grief, and vengeance that remained like dregs, unable to be resolved in a lifetime. It must be because the soul was twisted inside a devil’s body…”

Then.

“You… Live as my knight. Please believe in me… No! Live on. Ah, forgive me… Why do you torment me? I love you. Don’t do this, Xavier is my brother. No. I love you… If that… is what… you call… love, then I… too… am not… unaware. I love you. It’s just… that person… is not… you. I love you. I don’t… know love, you say. I… Love… I don’t know… Live on.”

“Come back to me.”

It was not like a voice. It was like a deeply resonating explosive sound.

The hair on Johannes’ ears stood on end at that tremendous roar. He stepped back, almost falling, with eyes wide open. In fact, what had come rushing in a single stream to strike his eardrums was the voice of Giovinetta from his memories.

As if it had taken form in this bizarre underground hall, her various voices left dark blue arrow-shaped stains along the path they had rushed towards him. They had cut through the water.

Johannes, startled as if his breath would stop, blinked with slightly dazed eyes. Kretzman, seemingly uninterested in Johannes’ state, had been continuing his monologue all along.

“…Even opium was useless for the pain his spirit endured. So the only option was to seal and put him to sleep like you devils. Each time that woman’s descendants use the devil’s power, my son’s soul also opens its eyes a little, but the day his suffering will end is not far off now. Ah… yes. The moment the power is fulfilled, it’s eternal rest. It’s just that now is the critical moment.”

Kretzman lowered Idris’ head. Waving his empty hand casually, he strode towards Johannes. Johannes looked up at the man who had suddenly come right up to his nose without moving. Though it seemed too much like being dragged along to be voluntary concentration.

“Imagine it.”

Kretzman, holding Johannes’ attention, curled up one corner of his mouth.

“Perhaps it’s an unreasonable request for a doll? Since you’re under the illusion that you yourself are capable, try it anyway. Now. With that woman back on this earth, if my half-devil son, who has almost fully opened his eyes, discovers her, what do you think he’ll do?”

Johannes’ pupils finally showed signs of life. For a moment, they wavered.

“Do you think he’ll obediently follow your princess’s final circle? Do you think he’ll quietly submit to the devil’s power that bound him when the woman he’s chewed over with hatred for hundreds of years is right before his eyes? Do you think that woman will have the leisure to bear a child? Do you think he’ll have the composure to inflict such long, terrible pain as to prevent that woman from entering deep rest through a momentary death, shattering both the armor of the body and the soft soul within into pieces?”

“……”

“Don’t you know? You’ve experienced my son’s soul.”