With my suspicions about him still lingering, I couldn’t bring myself to follow him outright.
Still, the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Maybe if he rested, he would recover.
‘Forget it. Let’s just leave him be.’
Turning around, I asked Havel,
“Havel. Where’s Mary?”
“Mary. Don’t know.”
Havel pulled a piece of bread from somewhere in his pocket and chewed on it noisily.
“Out of energy.”
“What power? Don’t tell me it’s because I told you to find some cloth?”
“It was hard.”
“…”
This guy didn’t seem suspicious in the slightest. From the start, he didn’t strike me as the type clever enough to deceive anyone. For now, I set aside the issue among the survivors and returned to the letter I had been reading. The skeleton in the corner with its soul erased. The letter from Carus Ravenwood.
‘Could this Karus person be…’
Was he the former head of the household who abused and mistreated Basileon? Looking around the room more carefully, I found things too grotesque to look at directly. There were documents summarizing research and results of human experimentation, and poems praising the Evil God.
‘Everyone in this family was completely out of their minds.’
I set down the letter and flew back to Havel.
“Havel. You’re saying Lilith touched a shining heirloom and that’s how the castle became like this. And according to your claim, Evan pushed her.”
“Mhm.”
“The castle’s structure changing at will is a problem…. I suspect it might be a layout that favors the Evil God.”
I stared at the corridor open in one corner of the room.
“Havel. Lead me there.”
“D-don’t know. Don’t remember.”
As if frightened, Havel shook his head.
“We have to go back there and check it out anyway. Lead the way, even if you don’t remember.”
“Forgot. All of it.”
“Maybe a good smack will help you remember?”
“You’re mean, evil spirit. Uuugh….”
Havel whined, but I ignored him and pressed on.
‘I need to go to the place where the problem started and investigate what happened to that heirloom.’
I moved to enter the corridor with Havel in front, but at that moment he misstepped near the corner and tumbled over.
“Waaah!”
“Watch where you’re going, fool!”
At the same time, someone entered the room.
“My Lady!”
When I turned, I saw Krius flying toward us, holding the Death Scythe.
“My Lady! I’ve been looking for you!”
‘Oh. Come to think of it, I’d completely forgotten about that.’
“Where have you been wandering off to, leaving this important thing behind!”
Krius approached and handed me the Death Scythe.
“Thanks. How did you find me?”
“I asked the knights. There isn’t just one or two ghosts who claim they saw you in the first-floor corridor.”
Krius looked back and forth between Havel and me. His gaze was flustered and lost. I could sense a meaningful look in his eyes.
“Uh…. Surely I haven’t interrupted a secret rendezvous between the two of you?”
“What insane nonsense are you spouting!”
Apparently, seeing Havel lying there with his legs splayed in an awkward position after his fall, and me scolding him right in front of him, led to a massive misunderstanding.
“Hmm. Oh-ho?”
Krius stroked his chin with one hand and stared at us in deep contemplation.
“I know it is rude to meddle in My Lady’s romantic affairs, but… well, your taste is quite unique….”
“Stop that ridiculous imagination and delete it from your head!”
In irritation, I swung the Death Scythe I had just received.
“Eek! My Lady, I understand you are angry at having your tryst discovered, but please, not this! That is not why I gave you the Death Scythe!”
“It’s not like that! You lunatic!”
I drove Krius all the way to the corridor entrance by swinging the scythe.
“My Lady, stop. Please stop!”
“Ugh…. No. I want cake. Afternoon tea.”
“Shut up.”
In the end, thanks to the fearsome Death Scythe, I succeeded in herding both Havel and Krius into the corridor.
“I never even taught you, yet somehow you swing that well?”
“That’s because you started causing a scene over some absurd misunderstanding.”
“Wa-wait, My Lady. How far are you pushing us in! This is the dangerous passage that caused the current situation!”
“Move. Now.”
I used the Death Scythe as a tool of intimidation.
“This is practically a crime! If something goes wrong and my soul is erased—”
“Did you forget that it was your fire that nearly erased me?”
“….”
Krius was silenced by my sharp reminder.
“Hungry, evil spirit.”
“What happened to the bread you pulled out of your pocket?”
Havel opened his mouth and pointed a finger down his throat.
“Went down my esophagus.”
“If you’ve eaten, then shut up and stay put, you whiner.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Krius preparing to bolt while I was talking to Havel.
“Don’t even think about it.”
The Death Scythe was long and narrow, and my arm span was long as well. With only a slight extension of my arm, I could swing the weapon wherever I wanted.
‘Though it does take some strength.’
“Eek!”
“You’re not getting away. Get to the front with Havel, now.”
“I shouldn’t have handed over the Death Scythe if I’d known it would be used like this!”
“You gifted it to me! You’re not the kind of petty ghost who gives and then snatches it back, are you?”
In the end, Krius seemed to abandon the idea of fleeing and let out a thin sigh. Krius, then Havel, then me—we entered the corridor in that order. Krius muttered complaints under his breath, and Havel began listing foods he wanted to eat.
“By the way, what exactly do you intend to do here?”
“The survivors couldn’t escape this corridor and ended up trapped. One of them touched an heirloom. One disappeared, and three were scattered.”
“…So?”
“The inside of the castle has been completely rearranged and turned strange, so we have to go fix it, don’t we?”
Krius looked back at me with displeasure.
“We didn’t cause it. What exactly are we supposed to fix?”
“You hate the Evil God, don’t you?”
“Ugh! My Lady, didn’t I tell you to avoid mentioning that if possible!”
Krius covered his ears as if he didn’t want to hear it.
“Anyway. You hate it, right?”
“Is ‘hate’ all it is? I loathe it. It’s the root of all this, a being that ought to vanish.”
“Then we should interfere with whatever that thing is trying to do!”
Krius stammered in confusion.
“Didn’t it try to devour ghosts with the soul-collecting mirror last time? It used the heirloom to make Basileon lose consciousness along with the Flamberge and the mirror. It’s obvious that thing used the heirloom to do it! Can’t you see?”
“You’re not joking—you mean to say there is truly an heirloom in here?”
“Yeah. You didn’t know?”
“….”
Instead of answering, Crius quietly drew the Flamberge he was carrying.
“What, you brought a weapon too?”
“How could you mention such critical information only now? I had no idea an heirloom was here.”
He swung the modified Flamberge and advanced forward. Yet for some reason, his legs trembled slightly.
‘…Coward.’
* * *
Basileon Ravenwood’s bedroom. He lay in sleep, bathed in the morning sunlight filtering through the window. Most people would have stirred from the brightness, yet he sank into slumber with practiced familiarity.
“Mm….”
The torment of nightmares that came at set times— That too was something he had grown accustomed to. Merely part of his routine Most of the nightmares were of the violence inflicted by his father. At times, those killed by the family returned to instill guilt in him. But today was different.
Before falling asleep, he had a premonition that he wouldn’t have a nightmare. And with his eyes closed, he thought only of Evien. Her dainty features that felt both elegant and cute. Her beautiful silver hair. Her dreamlike violet eyes that held the universe. She, with the unique twin beauty marks under her left eye. The result of falling asleep while thinking these thoughts was the playback of a recent memory.
“What if, you know… I’m like a star floating in the sky. If I’m a foreign entity from there, would you still feel that way?”
Why had Evien said such a thing? And not in a joking manner, but with a quite serious face. Come to think of it, there were times when a dark shadow could be seen on her. Perhaps there was something he didn’t know. Basileon wanted to know more about Evien.
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