Chapter 14

“Erik…how…did you…get here?” Her voice was no more than a breath. “I ran.” “I…know…that much.” Shizuku was panting too heavily to speak properly. She wished he was a little more considerate. He must have picked up on her silent frustration because he quickly gave a proper answer. “The presence of the forbidden curse suddenly vanished, so I came to investigate and found you being eaten by a panther.” “I hadn’t…been…eaten yet.” Shizuku wanted to object more to Erik’s version of events, but she found herself too overcome with relief. Erik was here, and he’d assured her that this terrible ordeal would be over soon. The two of them were unquestionably racing toward some kind of conclusion. It was close now. Shizuku was sure that things would work out in their favor. If their shared journey had taught her anything, it was to always believe. Erik turned around, still leading Shizuku by the hand. “Oh, looks like it’s already managed to escape,” he remarked. “Whaaat?!” Shizuku cried. “Don’t worry. We’ve arrived.” Erik came to an abrupt halt in front of a door and threw it open. He urged Shizuku in first. The room was unduly spacious, and several magic arrays were etched into the floor. Shizuku needed only a moment to consult her mental map to realize which room this was. “The transit-ring chamber…” “That’s right. We can escape the castle.” “But if I leave…” “It’ll be fine. There are people on their way who will figure out what to do.” Erik joined Shizuku inside and hurriedly checked each of the arrays to find the right one. Shizuku headed over to one of the transit rings, wanting to help out. A moment later, however, she looked toward the door—and froze. The miasma didn’t assume the form of a panther anymore. It drifted through the air, making its way toward Shizuku. She wanted to scream, but she held it in. “Master!” Mea pulled on Shizuku’s clothes. Panicked, Shizuku took her assistant demon by the hand and dashed to Erik, who’d gone to the back of the room. When he saw the miasma, he quickly began to invoke a spell. What was happening? Shizuku’s mind almost went blank. She hadn’t foreseen this development. What was she supposed to do? She looked around for some clue. Suddenly, one of the transit rings came to luminous life. The space above it warped as the blue-white light shone. Shizuku looked to Erik, who’d stopped his chanting to watch. Shizuku held her breath, clueless as to what this meant. Erik pulled her toward him and shoved her behind his back. In the brief amount of time that she’d been distracted, the miasma had charged for her. Shizuku lost her balance and tumbled onto the transit ring immediately beside her. The last thing she saw as blue-white light suddenly engulfed her was a beautiful woman with long black hair. She’d emerged from the neighboring transit ring. Shizuku stood firmly rooted in place. The word that best described the incredible sight before her was splash. The young woman, still dressed like a court lady, looked down at the foaming waves crashing against the rocks. Mea stood silently nearby. Behind them, the rocky shoreline sloped gently upward, leading to a wooded area. The dense foliage painted a complementary palette with the bright sky. There looked to be a small gap between the trees, suggesting a path there. The ocean stretched as far as Shizuku could see. The horizon waited far in the distance. Shizuku was barely able to take it all in. At last, she turned to the young man beside her. “This is just like the Sea of Japan! I feel like I should belt out some enka songs!” “What are those?” asked Erik. “…” They’d escaped the forbidden curse. All three of them were safe. However, the transit ring they’d used had sent them to an unknown shore far from the landlocked nation of Candela. “I think the spell formations that power those transit rings might have been altered by the forbidden curse’s presence,” Erik theorized. “No castle transit ring would take you to a place like this.” “Where are we?” Shizuku asked. “Who knows? It looks like there’s a path up there, so we can search for a town later and ask some questions.” Shizuku sat Mea, who’d turned back into a bird, on her shoulder and started climbing the rocky slope, albeit with difficulty. Once she and Erik made it to the top, they entered the forest and sat beneath one of its many trees. Erik used Mea’s magical powers to heal Shizuku’s wounds, then let out a big yawn. “I’m sorry, I think I need to get some sleep. You can wake me if there’s a problem.” “Okay. Get some rest,” Shizuku replied. Erik began snoring so quickly that she questioned whether he heard her. He’d probably barely slept in two days. Shizuku felt for him. The exhaustion was plain on his face. Shizuku felt terribly worn out, too. She examined her legs. They had no visible wounds, but blood still decorated her skin in places. “I guess I didn’t imagine it after all.” Were Tarkis and Lydia safe? What had become of the embodiment of the forbidden curse? Now that Shizuku had teleported away, she’d likely never know. Her only option was to hope things worked out. She leaned against the tree trunk, utterly drained. In no time at all, she succumbed to sleep. “I’m back,” the woman announced to her older brother. “How was it?” he asked. “So-so.” She made no effort to hide her annoyance as she tied up her black hair. “I had to deal with the aftermath of a forbidden curse.” Candela Castle had fallen prey to a forbidden curse, resulting in the death of the king and most of his high-ranking officials and generals. The woman went on to explain how she’d eliminated the two beasts that had formed from the forbidden curse. “The people who’d broken into the castle to stop the forbidden curse had already fled by the time I ended things. There are plenty of casualties, and I haven’t found any survivors who could provide a useful account of events. Some people in the city died, too. Crowds are surging into the castle with no one to drive them away.” “Sounds terrible.” “Don’t act like this is none of your business. What do you intend to do?” The king responded to his younger sister’s pointed question with little more than a hostile smile. “What can I do?” he asked. “Ultimately, this is another country’s business.” “The nation of Candela is going to collapse.” “You reap what you sow. When a king is foolish, his people suffer. It’ll be a good lesson for them.” “I similarly suffer because of a brother who hates getting his hands dirty.” The king went quiet at the biting rebuttal. For all the supposed strength he projected, he was weak when it came to his sister. After a brief pause, the king scrawled something onto a piece of paper and handed it to his sibling. “Take this and implement emergency governance in Candela. And try to keep the chaos to a minimum.” “Should we really make the matter of a forbidden curse public?” “Farsas lacks a reason to seize control unless we do. Choose a witness from the surviving people of Candela. Also, request cooperation from a neutral third-party nation so people don’t see this as an invasion.” The woman had already looked at the piece of paper that her brother gave her, yet hearing him express his plans aloud brought a skeptical look to her face. “A third party? Is there a nation qualified to help us? We’re dealing with a forbidden curse, you know.” “There should be. Depending on how things proceed, we might need someone to govern Candela for us temporarily, so we need to pick a capable ruler. Didn’t Rozsark just conquer Anneli to the south? Its king is one of my…” “Treat this seriously!” “Sorry.” The king stuck out his tongue with a nonchalant face. The expression made his sister exasperated, but she left to return political order to Candela without further complaint. Once he was on his own, the man relaxed his shoulders, which had gone stiff from all the paperwork. “Those guys who broke into the castle and wreaked havoc sound like an interesting bunch,” he mused to himself. “I’d love to meet them.” He grinned. The sky was blue. A girl with long black hair stopped in the middle of the road, gazing intently at the lazily drifting clouds above. The man walking beside her turned, having noticed she was lagging behind. “What’s wrong, Lyshien?” “How come the sky is blue, even at this time of day?” “Because we’re at the western edge of the continent. The sun sets much later than in Anneli, where you were before.” The man beckoned the girl over. She looked to be sixteen or seventeen. Her petite frame made her seem fragile, and she was abnormally beautiful. Her eyes, dark and profound like the night, twinkled as she surveyed the scenery of the small town, and her long eyelashes fluttered. “Can’t we go back to Anneli or Rozsark?” “Not for the time being. There are rumors circulating about a princess imprisoned in Anneli and later taken to Rozsark.” “Have they also heard that the princess, who was supposed to have been a hostage, escaped Rozsark and is standing right here?” The question sounded entirely innocent. The man smiled at Lyshien like he would with a curious child. “They think you’re dead, but you don’t need to worry. It won’t stay that way forever.” The present king of Rozsark knew where the princess was, but he also understood that she was a prize he’d merely happened on. Thus, she was beyond his control. He’d made no attempt to prevent Lyshien from escaping. “It’s Farsas that we really need to avoid.” “Farsas? How come?” “Well, it’s complicated.” Lyshien cocked her head to one side, intrigued. This catlike gesture brought a smile to the man’s face. “Just try not to wander off. That’s the important thing. You’ll get lost.” “I’ll be fine. I’m with you, Oscar.” She took the man’s sleeve. He grinned at her. His dusk-colored eyes held tremendous love. Farsas announced that the calamity that had befallen Candela Castle had been caused by a forbidden curse, stirring up commotion among Candela’s neighboring countries. Chaos gripped the palace for three days, at which time, Farsas finally seized control. This period, later dubbed the Three Days of Silence, left a lingering mark on the continent’s history. No records were made about the girl who’d found herself in the center of the crisis. Nobody who knew her name remained to speak of her. Only a few of the people who’d seen her had survived. That girl who’d come from another world and been dubbed an “abnormal thorn” by the fountainhead of the forbidden curse was resting peacefully in a faraway land. It would be some time before she made her mark on yet another tumultuous chapter in history, but it was coming all the same. END OF BABEL ACT ONE