The Funeral of a Peaceful Daily Life
What should I do? Should I jump out the window right now?
A red emergency siren screamed inside my skull like a madman hammering a gong.
The silver cylinder in my pocket suddenly felt like a ball and chain.
In that instant, I frantically dragged up one of the countless romance-fantasy survival rules I had secretly devoured in the imperial library.
Rule 1: The best defense is overwhelming audacity!
Bang—!
“Brother!”
The office door flew open so hard it nearly shattered. The moment I burst inside, panting, the air in the room froze solid.
My second brother, Cassian, who had been radiating the aura of a rebel mastermind while pressuring his subordinate, looked as if his eyes would pop out of his skull. The quill slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.
“Huk! M-Maknae?! What are you doing here…!”
Cassian turned deathly pale. He tried to kick the guild member who was kneeling on the floor and shove him under the desk, but failed spectacularly.
“Ugh!”
I planted my trembling legs firmly on the ground and shrieked in my signature spoiled-brat tone.
“Why on earth are you kicking a perfectly fine person? You’re the one who screamed all the way down the corridor and assaulted my eardrums, Cassian!”
“Anyone listening would think you’d sold the entire country!”
I shot a pitying look at the guild member half-buried under the desk, then narrowed my eyes at Cassian and drove the nail in deeper.
“Besides, what could possibly be so important for a mere information guild to cause this much chaos? Don’t tell me… you really did sell the country?”
“Hey, words have power! Why would you say something so terrifying?!”
Cassian jumped like a guilty thief and tried to clamp a hand over my mouth in case anyone overheard.
The way his eyes darted anxiously in every direction told me everything I needed to know.
Speak of the devil… So he really…?
“It’s not quite that simple. This is a far deeper issue than merely selling the country… No, it’s a matter that threatens the very lifeline of my entire existence!”
Lifeline? So… something like ‘I can only survive if the rebellion succeeds’?
I swallowed hard and scanned the desk.
The more I talked with my brother, the more certain I became that the object he was desperately searching for was the silver cylinder currently burning a hole in my pocket.
“So what exactly is this ‘lifeline’? Some kind of object? Something you hid away for a big move later… a secret of some kind?”
“You’re sharper than I gave you credit for, Maknae. That’s right.”
Cassian thumped his chest, sniffling. “It’s the one and only record containing the secret list and financial ledger I’ve poured my heart, sweat, and blood into for years!”
My mind was already playing a full horror movie.
Secret list = roster of recruited rebels.
Financial ledger = war funds account book.
This was irrefutable evidence.
“Brother… have you lost your mind? What are you going to do if this reaches our eldest brother? Does Carlyle even know you’re plotting something this enormous?!”
“That’s exactly why I’m causing such a scene!”
“The moment he finds out, I’ll be erased from the Lucerne family register and frozen alive into the northern ice wall! He hates it more than anything when I let personal desires cloud my judgment and do things behind his back!”
In Cassian’s head, a dazzling future was blooming like clouds of steam: himself showering in the finest champagne, buried beneath an endless cascade of multicolored jewels, reaching the absolute peak of debauchery.
But what Elinor saw when she looked at him was an entirely different scene.
She saw a traitor named Cassian, arrogantly perched on a blood-soaked throne with the emperor’s crown tilted on his head, burning with ambition to devour the entire empire.
Desire…? I never knew my second brother harbored such monstrous ambition. The position of second son in the Lucerne ducal house wasn’t enough for him?
“Right? You’re the only one who understands me!”
“Exactly. Every human wants to tend their own ‘secret garden,’ don’t they? Sneak off to eat delicious things in secret, buy shiny trinkets… That’s the joy of life!”
Secret garden? Is that the name of the rebel headquarters? And the shiny things… don’t tell me he means a golden crown?!
A chill raced down my spine.
My brother was far more insane than I had realized.
“Anyway, that object must never see the light of day. Especially not in the hands of the imperial guards…”
“If they get it, we’re finished. Understand?”
Cassian gripped my shoulders tightly as he made the plea.
I felt the cold touch of the silver cylinder hidden in my sleeve and nodded with firm resolve.
I understand, Brother. I’ll make sure no one finds out, and I’ll take care of it before your head flies off!
The brother desperately protecting his slush fund and the younger sister desperately trying to prevent the family’s destruction gazed at each other, eyes brimming with determination.
It was the beginning of a tear-jerking sibling alliance born from perfect misunderstanding.
Forgotten Temple
“……You failed to retrieve it?”
The quiet voice drifting from beyond the blood-red banners beneath the colossal goddess statue was terror itself.
The boy with his forehead pressed to the floor trembled like an aspen leaf, unable to utter a single word in his defense.
“I-I’m sorry… I bumped hard into someone at the market. It must have fallen out then. I’ll go back immediately and find it!”
Swish—
The red curtain parted. From the thick darkness emerged the one whom no mortal eyes should ever behold.
Pale skin without a trace of blood, dry ash-gray hair, and silver eyes with vertically slit pupils that gleamed like a serpent’s in the dark…
“……”
Every time he drew breath, the entire temple seemed to shudder with unnatural horror.
The being with an eerily heretical appearance no human could possess was Zahak, true master of the underground temple.
Zahak approached the prostrated boy and laid one large, icy hand atop his head.
“Ah… agh! AAAAAAAGH!”
A scream tore through the temple’s silence.
The instant Zahak’s silver eyes flashed, the boy’s memories shattered into fragments and poured vividly into Zahak’s mind.
It was the forbidden art even mages considered taboo—Memory Extraction.
The fleeting moments the boy had experienced flashed through Zahak’s consciousness.
The noisy bustle of the lively market, the soft hand that had steadied him when he lost his balance, and the glimpse of the other person’s face beneath the hood.
She possessed brilliant platinum hair and held a gentle smile in her cool blue eyes.
In his memory, she was a dazzling existence that clashed violently with this damp, gloomy underground temple.
A cruel, intrigued smile spread across Zahak’s lips.
The boy whose memories had tangled and then shattered beneath his touch collapsed in mere moments, body and soul utterly destroyed.
The empty shell that had once housed a soul rolled across the floor, yet Zahak showed not a flicker of emotion.
His gaze remained fixed not on the corpse, but on the afterimage of the platinum-haired woman that had brushed through his mind.
“……Why do I sense the aura of Goddess Lucetia from that woman? The goddess’s children should have vanished for all eternity.”
Zahak turned without hesitation and walked slowly toward the massive goddess statue guarding the center of the temple.
On the weathered altar sat a crude earthenware bowl containing gems that seemed to scream with the voices of the dead: ashen gray, abyssal black, and, strangely out of place among them, a brilliant silver.
With his eerily long, slender fingers he plucked the most radiant silver gem.
He injected the memory fragment forcibly torn from the boy. The gem instantly lost its luster and turned a cloudy gray.
He tossed the discolored gem carelessly back into the bowl, then looked up at the goddess statue with indifferent eyes and murmured softly.
“It will not be long now, Lucetia. This time, victory shall be mine.”
His voice dripped with cold, viscous obsession.
“Thou mayest have slipped from my grasp once, but a second time shall not be permitted. Anticipate it—the day I force thee to kneel once more at my feet.”
“What could possibly bring thee joy?”
“Shall I tear apart those thou loved most, one by one, and carve them to pieces until thy beautiful voice expends every scream it possesses?”
“Or perhaps I shall etch the sight of this world thou so pitifully protected crumbling into ruin forever into those noble eyes of thine?”
“If not that… shall I shatter thy soul into fragments, seal it within this cold gem, and make it gaze only upon me for all eternity?”
“So that the light of mine eyes—which thou hatest so deeply—becomes the entirety of thy world.”
Zahak let out a hideous, satisfied cackle.
The spine-chilling laughter echoed off the temple’s high ceiling and sank deep into the darkness.
He twisted away from the goddess statue and let out a short, sharp whistle.
At once, the deathly still shadows rippled and revealed themselves at his feet.
Hunting dogs cloaked in darkness deeper than pitch black held their breath, awaiting their master’s next command.
Zahak’s silver pupils flashed toward the northern sky where the Lucerne ducal mansion lay.
“Go. Break the flower of Lucerne and lay it before me. If the screams of that child who carries Lucetia’s aura can fill this temple, I shall welcome it as well.”
At that very moment, the silver cylinder held in Elinor’s hand on her bed emitted an ominous vibration, as though foretelling its owner’s fate.
The glamorous, lazy days of peace were beginning to shatter into pieces. A chilling prelude of rupture sliced thinly through the night.
Entangled in different ambitions and misunderstandings, the night over Lucerne grew ever deeper.
For some, it was the beginning of the hunt.
For others, it was the end of the long-dreamed rest they had desperately sought.
[Zahak]
