ICM Chapter 101
“Why are you suddenly talking about the founding myth?”
“There aren’t three founding families blessed by the gods—there are four.”
That’s the only way it all makes sense. The inexplicable hallucinations Ashika experienced at the Grand Duke’s Castle, the mysterious assassins targeting the two of them, and Maiheller.
“What are you talking about? How do you know that?”
Drushia looked down at her with narrowed brows.
“At first I thought I was mistaken. I’ve seen Lord Maiheller’s face up close before, and like you, his irises weren’t white.”
“Couldn’t it have been a mistake?”
The evidence seemed weak compared to such an unexpected claim. However, Ashika was certain.
“No. There are definitely four founding families, not three.”
She had seen them. In the hallucinations at the Grand Duke’s Castle, the faces of those who survived that terrible disaster.
“What does that have to do with Maiheller infiltrating the Grand Duke’s Castle?”
“He was looking for something called the ‘Divine Chamber.'”
“Divine Chamber? What’s a Divine Chamber?”
His face showed genuine confusion.
“Well…”
Perhaps it was some place to summon the gods. Both the Emperor and Maiheller wanted to meet the gods.
But she couldn’t say that much. To do so, she would have to tell the entire story surrounding the Grand Duke’s Castle. That included a fatal secret she wanted to keep hidden.
Ashika subtly changed the subject.
“Wouldn’t the Duke know?”
Drushia fell into quiet thought. He too seemed confused by this unexpected story.
“I’m sorry for calling Shafri.”
For him, Shafri was painful evidence of betrayal. No, she must have approached him with that purpose from the beginning, so Shafri was also evidence of Drushia’s own complacency.
“If you had known, you wouldn’t have sought help from Shafri.”
At the time, Ashika had collapsed in an unstable mental state. She had been ill the entire time, and not long after returning to the capital, this incident had occurred.
“You should have come to me from the beginning.”
Drushia muttered bitterly as he looked down at her.
Ashika silently hung her head. No matter how much she suppressed them, emotions kept seeping out. Even if she tried to turn away, she would eventually face this again.
“Isn’t it time you realized? One way or another, you can’t avoid me.”
So accept it now. Stop hurting each other when you can’t even hide your true feelings. Drushia was pleading with desperate eyes.
****
The long-unused room had a musty smell. The carpet on the floor and the newly brought bed sheets and blankets were all expensive materials, but they couldn’t erase the stale odor in the room.
Iben carefully traced the closed window frame with her fingertips. No matter which corner she pushed, the window wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be fixed from the outside to prevent it from opening.
“How can this be happening?”
She hadn’t spent all those long years running away just to be caught so helplessly. Iben pounded on the unopening window, gasping for breath.
“I let my guard down. I did.”
In the more than ten years since moving to the capital, no one had recognized her, so at some point she had begun to relax.
When she heard the sound of the door opening with a click, Iben jumped back in surprise. A grating laugh. The sound reached her before the person’s appearance.
“You were here. You really were alive!”
Like a deep-sea fish that had never seen a ray of light being dragged to the surface and feeling brilliant pain, a voice filled with explosive emotion.
In Iben’s blurry vision, a human figure barely came into focus. The figure soon became the form of a familiar person. The nightmarish form of a man she didn’t want to encounter even in her dreams.
“Ahaha, haha. Ibis, Ibis, my Ibis!”
The man approached with long strides. Iben’s pale face turned not just white but blue. With no place to escape but driven by the instinct to flee, she felt like screaming would burst from her throat.
Her long-accumulated wisdom and experience were useless. The moment she faced Marquis Maiheller, her memories instantly traveled back through time. Memories she thought she had forgotten. The persistent greed of a man she thought had disappeared forever.
“You were alive. Yes, of course you were alive!”
Marquis Maiheller laughed convulsively. He was so dizzy from the ecstasy overflowing throughout his body.
Iben, who had been frozen with a pale face, barely managed to take a step. The moment her stiff legs tried to move toward the door, her hair was yanked back sharply.
“Aaaah!”
The hand gripping her scalp roughly threw her to the floor. She clawed at him with both hands with all her might to shake off the man’s grip, but it was useless.
“I’ve been living all this time just to meet you. Of course!”
Madness dripped from his glistening eyes. He slammed her against the floor to avoid losing what he had gotten his hands on. Under the man’s brute strength, Iben’s body was tossed about like a dry branch caught in a typhoon.
“Aaah!”
Marquis Maiheller was not in his right mind. He didn’t intend to do anything to her. He simply didn’t like that his possession, which he had searched for so long, was trying to escape.
“Gerbeau! Cursed Gerbeau!”
“Yes, struggle more. Scream. Ibis, ah, Ibis!”
The man’s laughter echoed loudly in the spacious room. Iben’s anguished screams were buried in that laughter.
“Let go!”
Iben clawed frantically to tear away the Marquis’s hand. But even as flesh was torn away, Marquis Maiheller laughed mindlessly.
“Aaaah!”
Iben was dragged along by her hair. Unable to overcome the man’s strength, she was tossed about, her legs tangling with chairs and her ribs hitting the corners of furniture. The more she screamed in pain, the more frantically the Marquis shook her.
Finally, when her voice was so hoarse she could no longer scream, she saw a silver candlestick that had rolled onto the floor. While being dragged, Iben desperately grasped it in her hand.
“Let go, you demon!”
Thud—a collision sound. Iben wildly swung the silver candlestick. The Marquis, unable to withstand the impact, staggered and tumbled to the floor. Even then he didn’t let go of his grip, so Iben frantically struck him with the candlestick.
“Ugh!”
The solid shaft of the silver candlestick struck the Marquis’s face. She struck once more at the momentarily weakened grip and shook it off. Iben quickly backed away.
“Haa, haa.”
“Kehe, he.”
Manic laughter leaked from the mouth of the collapsed Marquis. Even though blood was dripping from his hand, scratched by the candlestick, the Marquis laughed. He was too delighted not to laugh.
“Did you think I wouldn’t recognize such a meager disguise? I remember your face, every single eyelash. You shouldn’t have run away from the beginning.”
Looking at the gasping woman, the Marquis giggled. The changed eyes and changed hair color. But no matter how she hid, he could see through it.
That night when moonlight poured down, the ethereal silhouette that even darkness couldn’t conceal. A mysterious being with pale platinum hair and blue-violet eyes that didn’t seem to belong to this world. The girl’s form melting into the moonlight was terrifyingly beautiful.
He had coveted her from the moment he first saw her, which was why he had incited the Emperor who wanted the Grand Duke’s Castle.
“You never would have imagined. That cowardly Igraine brat would dare to smuggle out the blood of a rebel house.”
Weive had been only nineteen at the time. It was too elaborately planned to call it youthful folly—he had hidden the young Grand Duchess with unimaginable meticulousness.
“If it weren’t for you, the Grand Duke’s Castle wouldn’t have ended up in such a state.”
“Ridiculous! Did you think I didn’t know you’d been targeting the Grand Duke’s Castle all along?”
“Perhaps I might have used different methods. Not the destructive result like now, but another way. Look at your persecuted people.”
“Demon! You are a demon, Gerbeau!”
“The real demon who brought disaster is someone else. Look at your father who turned blessing into calamity!”
Suddenly Iben held her breath. The nightmare-like memories she had buried were vividly painted as if they were yesterday’s events. Her angry voice quieted.
“No, Gerbeau. That was divine wrath brought about by you and the mad Emperor. Payment for harming my father.”
“Doesn’t the benevolent god never ignore the calls of blessed descendants? So you should hold your father responsible for awakening the god.”
Iben looked at the Marquis while catching her breath.
“Don’t tell me you targeted the Grand Duke’s Castle with such thoughts? ‘Benevolent god’? ‘Never ignores calls’?”
Sensing something strange, the Marquis closed his mouth. At his silence, which meant affirmation, Iben’s eyes widened.
“Yes. That’s what it was. The Emperor chased after us saying he would break the curse and demanded to know about the Divine Chamber, while you searched for the Divine Chamber to use it for your own purposes.”
Laughter burst out involuntarily. The laughter grew louder until cheerful giggling filled the room.
“Who on earth planted such naive delusions? Poor Gerbeau. Abandoned royal blood Maiheller. Ah, yes. Perhaps that could have been the case.”
The Tridelia Empire began in the hands of the Contilia imperial family and the Arkpella ducal house. And far more stories had been passed down about Arkpella than about the imperial family, which had lost both power and divine artifacts. Incomparably more stories than the families known as the founding origins.
“Yes, Gerbeau. Looking for the Divine Chamber? I’ll tell you. If you want the name of the god, I’ll tell you that too. But leave those children alone.”
The Marquis’s expression changed subtly.
“Igraine and Talion, you mean? Those two children who have now reached the point of being madly in love with each other?”
He was talking about Ashika and Drushia. The Marquis burst into laughter again.
“You’re attempting a cute bargain, Ibis.”
“You want the Divine Chamber. I’m offering to give it to you.”
“I want to get my hands on the Divine Chamber, not see it destroyed.”
Marquis Maiheller slowly rose from his position. Finding Iben’s attempt at negotiation amusing, he let out snickering laughs.
“You think that record left by the founding king exists only in the imperial palace? Not at all. Let me see, I believe the content was something like this?”
The Marquis, thoughtfully recalling his memory, let an ancient verse flow from his lips.
“It was a blessing granted by a single sip of water….”
A passage quite familiar to Iben followed. The original record that had been deeply sealed in the ducal library long ago.
It was a blessing granted by a single sip of water
The compassionate hand extended by a wandering traveler
The weak god received a single sip of water and gave the most precious thing
The greatest gift given to those who lost their homeland was
Fertile land to take new root and a never-drying river
Water is the source of life and the beginning of this land
The source of power rooted in the land where life was conceived
The wise king commands his vassals: Build a firm and sturdy house
So that the god may sleep peacefully and bless this land for generations
Lock the door with the blessing the god shared
Give the key to the one the god cherished
So that the insolent may not dare set foot
So that the sacred land may become the god’s refuge
Therefore do not awaken the god who sleeps soundly
Do not withdraw the power firmly locked away
Do not give away the key
Do not put the shared power in one vessel
That alone is your complete power
The foundation of this nation and the life of this land
Marquis Maiheller added coldly with a laugh.
“The Divine Chamber is a prison, isn’t it?”
A prison created by those blessed by the god to confine the god. Arkpella and Talion, following the king’s command, used the power they received from the god to imprison the god.
The warning not to awaken the sleeping god, the warning not to put the divided power in one vessel. No one knew exactly what that meant.
“Arkpella and Talion must not meet. If I had gotten my hands on either one of them, the story would be different, but not now. Strangely, both sides attract each other like magnets.”
The Marquis clicked his tongue while recalling past memories.
At the sudden realization, Iben’s face became blank.
“So… was that why?”
The incident from 14 years ago that drove countless people to death through sudden disaster.
“Was collapsing the Rosha River dam on that particular day for such a trivial reason?”