Chapter 86
Chapter 86
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 86
Chapter Title: Echoes from the Tomb
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“Erich must not be feeling well. That's why it's just the three of us today.”
I furrowed my brow at Father's calm explanation.
Until yesterday, he'd been sitting ramrod straight, attending the new professor's class as if nothing was wrong. And now suddenly he was sick?
'He probably still hasn't gotten over it.'
Of course, it was too much to expect him—a kid who was still just elementary-school age—to let go of his deep-seated resentment and hatred after a few words from me.
The family mausoleum was located on the outskirts of the duke's estate, so we had to take a carriage to get there.
Father didn't say a word the entire ride.
Even as we stepped into the mausoleum at the central sector, his lips remained sealed.
“Father, is this...?”
“Yes. This is Lucy's tomb chamber.”
In the innermost room where the direct descendants of the duke's family were laid to rest stood a single small tombstone.
'Lucy Kalenberg.'
The first time I met my mother was through that single line etched into the cold stone.
Erich Kalenberg stood by the window, staring after the carriage departing from the annex for a long while.
Inside it rode his father and younger siblings.
Today was the anniversary of his mother's death.
'Hey, defective product. Weren't you abandoned by your parents because your body was too weak?'
Mark's words were always laced with malice, but that didn't make them entirely wrong.
Erich's body was weak, after all. That much was fact.
Born frail from the start, Erich fell ill frequently.
When he thought back to his childhood, the first memory that surfaced was always his hazy consciousness amid raging fevers, followed by the agonizing seizures.
And finally, the small house where he had lived with his parents, Dietrich, and himself—the four of them together.
Dietrich had been just learning to walk back then.
It was their family home, right up until the year Erich turned seven and was left behind at the main estate alone.
'You can't even use Divine Grace, right? Is it because of that commoner blood mixed in?'
Mark's sneers rang true.
The physician had examined the seven-year-old Erich and declared him one of those rare cases in Divine Grace-wielding families: born with a body incapable of bearing it.
He'd heard there had been exactly two such children born in the Northern Duke family as well.
After learning that, Erich pored over the entire family lineage.
The two ancestors born with constitutions like his had died at ten and thirteen years old, respectively.
Cursed with flesh too frail to withstand what was called the power of the gods—Divine Grace.
He started brutal treatments: potions so bitter they numbed his tongue, wracked with excruciating pain. But there was scarcely any improvement.
Erich remained weak. He even collapsed right in the middle of a lesson once.
The venomous mockery from those around him only grew.
'A defective product his own parents gave up on.'
From that point on, Erich agreed with them.
In the North, where martial prowess was everything, what else could you call a body too feeble to even pass as human, let alone a knight?
Absurdly, the ones who refused to accept it weren't Erich himself, but his little brothers.
'You mock my brothers one more time!'
When he overheard the servants gossiping about the fight between Dietrich and Mark, he'd thought Dietrich was sticking his nose in where it didn't belong.
The one involved was staying quiet, yet here was Dietrich flying into a rage. It even irritated Erich a little.
Unlike him—the abandoned one—Dietrich had grown up with their parents this whole time.
What did he know?
How much could a healthy, energetic eight-year-old—the North's youngest Divine Grace awakener—possibly understand?
'Hey, talk to me for a minute!'
When tiny Mariella, like a squirrel doll, came charging up with that desperate look on her face, Erich had been furious down to his fingertips.
All while she remained oblivious to how much it tortured him that the parents who discarded him were living happily—and had even borne a baby sister.
'Daddy wouldn't abandon Eri.'
An ignorant little thing, barely four years old.
'If your body's not great, exercise with me, eat lots of food, sleep plenty... Huh? Can't you just keep up the treatments steadily?'
Recalling Mariella's eyes brimming with tears made his chest constrict.
She clung to him time and again, simply because he was her brother. She even strained to drive out Professor Manfried, the one who tormented him...
“Prepare the carriage.”
The servant blinked in surprise at his abrupt order, sneaking a glance, but Erich didn't spare them a look.
“We're going to the mausoleum.”
Those bright blue eyes were too much like his own—turning away from them hurt.
...In that case, maybe he should crash into Father right in front of Mariella. Shatter like the discarded child he was.
Then she'd finally stop pestering him.
The carriage carrying Erich quietly departed for the mausoleum.
“Daddy, there's something I wanna ask.”
The mausoleum was utterly silent.
So Mariella's voice, slipping through the wall between them, drilled straight into Erich's ears.
“The kids say Eri's gonna die before he grows up.”
“What?”
“Is that really true? Is Eri's body really that bad?”
“Hey, baby Ella! What're you saying? Father, is what the baby said true?”
Erich simply listened to Dietrich's heated outburst.
“That's not true. Erich's body is weak, yes.”
Father's calm tone, directed at his young siblings, was something Erich hadn't heard in ages.
It took him back to when he was little like them—the voice Father used while resting a hand on his fevered brow.
“So you abandoned Eri?”
That was the question Erich wanted to hurl at Father more than anyone.
He pressed his hand to the cold stone wall, awaiting the response.
It didn't take long.
“No. That will never happen.”
Leopoldt denied Mariella's question in a voice firm as iron.
Only belatedly did Erich realize he'd been holding his breath. His head reeled.
“But Mark said it.”
“How could I abandon Erich? He's your brother—our child, mine and your mother's. I love him dearly.”
...Lies.
“Then why'd you only leave Eri at the main house?”
His baby sister's blunt words stabbed into his chest like a spike.
“Because Erich was so sick. So desperately ill it seemed like he'd die any second if nothing was done.”
It sounded like the desperate grasp that had clutched his delirium-ridden body in fever.
“So I brought Erich to His Excellency and begged. To save him. That I'd do anything if he just spared Erich's life.”
“Anything?”
“Yes. I'm sorry to you children, but your mother and I had to save Erich—even if it meant spending our remaining days on the battlefield.”
“So you went to war... because of Eri?”
“That was the deal we struck with His Excellency.”
Lies.
He'd never heard a word of it before.
Erich briefly pictured the duke's perpetually stern face.
'Is your body holding up?'
That was the extent of it—the only thing the duke ever said to him, every time their paths crossed.
Could that have been concern?
Now, after all this time?
“But in that war... Mother...”
Dietrich's halting words doused him like ice water over the head.
The day Mother returned from the battlefield—not alive, but in a coffin.
It had poured rain.
Floods ravaged the borderlands, wiping out an entire village. The duke had been away in the flood-prone regions.
So Erich alone had gone to receive her.
With resentment outweighing any grief.
'You ditched me... just to come back like this?'
That's what he'd thought, standing soaked in the downpour, seething with hatred.
He hadn't even watched as she was interred in her tomb chamber.
He'd turned his back on it all, blatantly.
“I don't regret it. Neither does Lucy.”
So it had to be lies.
“The treatment's almost complete. He can't manifest Divine Grace, but once it's done, Erich will live healthily, just like you two.”
Erich couldn't stomach another lie. He flung open the mausoleum door.
His eyes landed first on Mariella's bright blue ones, glistening with tears.
Her pink hair—like Mother's—was neatly tied back in a single ponytail today.
A child with that hair, those eyes, sniffling as she listened to Leopoldt's words.