The hour changed from yellow to red.
The Throne Room, which was usually open to the public and full of worshippers, was completely empty. Not a hint of a whisper, not a single footstep could be heard. Belle stood in front of its doors, feeling as if the entire castle had fallen silent.
On this day, at the start of a season when Earth disappeared in the sky, all the Farm and Construction Symphonists stopped playing and the castle settled into a silent state of rest. This was the only day when the scales blooming from the God Tree didn’t weigh anything—the one day that everything was in a state of total, undisturbed equilibrium that made it seem as if time stood still.
Swords were sheathed in their scabbards, and with that sound everything went quiet as both good and evil rested.
It was on this day that those seeking to become Nomads played the Key.
It’s almost like whoever does it just disappears…
There was no audience to watch over the proceedings, no one to bear witness. People of Park City left on their journey as if they’d just suddenly vanished.
The meaning of that dawned on Belle.
…Freedom.
Passing through the doors from this side to the other freed someone from something and left them open to becoming someone else. Being liberated from Park’s Thema to take on your own.
Kitty talked about this. Knowing who I am and not being bound by it. Trying to explore it further without being trapped… That strange word of theirs: kuu…
Maybe this was Kitty the All’s way of inviting her on a journey, just like Belle had done with Adonis. Not out of a fear of loneliness, but so they could both acknowledge one another as individuals. Both shouldered curses that kept them from understanding others and pursued a wish, wanting to ring out freely like a single clear sound.
Belle turned to look at the castle. As she scanned the halls and the landings to the stairs, she thought she could see Adonis even though he hadn’t arrived. It wasn’t just him, either. Her foster parents and all the other people she’d met thus far—even the shadows of Tiziano and Kir, who’d died by her hand—were there watching over her.
They were all people on this side of the door. In opening the door and passing through it, Belle would bid them farewell and meet them anew. As silence descended over her, the countless shadows appeared on the other side of the castle’s pillars, walls, and stairs, then faded.
“I will become a Nomad…,” she said aloud.
Her gaze wasn’t confirming the ones she was speaking to weren’t there, but rather seeing them despite their absence. Before long, Belle was all alone, but she came to a sudden understanding as to why she had invited Adonis along on her journey.
With a serene smile, she turned back to the door and placed both hands on it.
It was a lot like a door she’d seen once before. A door that always gave her a hint of the endless possibilities spreading beyond it, but always felt too distant, taunting her with how it was always out of reach. Right now she was reaching out to that door from her earliest memories, encouraged by the idea that she was about to open it.
I’m leaving. I don’t know where I’ll go, but it won’t be here…
That thought had remained ever since she’d first laid hands on Runding. It urged Belle on, alongside a sense of elation.
The slow, heavy grinding sound of the door opening broke the silence, and the Throne Room was revealed to her, surrounded by blue spectator seats. King Rawhide was already standing on the God Tree’s stage, his two sets of eyes fixed on the door, acknowledging her at last.
“Ye who enter the Throne Room, forgoing this day of repose. Speak thy name.”
“Belle Lablac. That is my name.”
As she identified herself, Belle stepped onto the passage leading up to the stage. The images of countless bird flowers in flight were chiseled into the sapphire floor, giving the illusion that the birds were soaring through the air in the transparent blue stone.
“Named one, for what purpose do you forgo repose to come to this Throne Room?”
“I come to leave Park and cross the border of the country demarcated by God. My reason for being here is to obtain the Key.”
As she walked down the sloping sapphire flower path to the stage, Belle felt something within her go quiet, like it was resting. The Guidance. Whenever Belle asked it a question, internally or externally, it would answer loudly in her thoughts. But today it said nothing.
Just what was the Key? What was the final trial before someone departed on their journey? She had no way of knowing until she saw it for herself.
“For what purpose do you wish to depart this country, refusing to rest to come here to this throne room?”
“To become a Nomad.” Belle stopped walking. “Everything I do, I do to learn who I really am.”
The steps up to the stage were already before her eyes, and at their end was that austere throne, which looked like a grave marker. Standing far above that was the God Tree and the king, whose two faces looked down on Belle.
Belle was under an intense pressure, greater than anything she’d felt on her first visit to the Throne Room. She didn’t resist it, though, and instead accepted it calmly and let the awe and fear become part of her heart.
Suddenly, Belle heard the door behind her, at the other end of the stone path up to the throne, slowly close shut. The moment the door fully closed, the entire hall trembled with a low rumble, followed by a complete and total silence the likes of which Belle had never heard before. Even so, Belle didn’t turn around or falter. She kept her chin up and her eyes on the king’s twin faces, her lips curled into a gentle smile even she wasn’t aware of.
She had nothing left to fear. Never before had Belle experienced being so alive, so whole, nor had she ever known she could feel this way. This complete silence taught her, through the sound of her heartbeat and the many pulsations within her, that so long as she lived she was a vessel, a living musical instrument in and of herself.
In that moment, with Belle and the king facing each other, they were the only two sources of sound in this silent, transparent blue world.
One, residing in the eternal sword tree, stood closest to God and ruled over the people, governing the balance of the scales. Embodying the Motif of ruling over every race in this country, he had the traits of each species. The sounds he created were that of a being both singular, yet all-encompassing, whose voice cut through the silence of the resting castle. The king.
The other, standing all alone, didn’t know her origins and lacked all racial traits. A featureless. She had appeared in this world seemingly as if she were the template all races were based on and was now trying to escape God’s control, a similarly unique yet empty, hollow sound.
Both were abnormal, and their strangeness shook the world. Suddenly, blue-mantled figures appeared between the two. Masked priests. It was like the blue space between the two suddenly came to life, and they all turned their masks, each with a subtly different design, to Belle.
She was slightly taken aback by their presence, eyeing them carefully. It was like a ghost story, as if they were hidden behind some kind of blue curtain or had been hiding in the walls somehow.
“Ye who tread upon the shadow of repose, what name dost thou wish to be called by this Throne Room?” the king’s two faces asked solemnly in unison.