The Unveiled Truth (2)
"What did you just say?!"
The Eshua estate erupted into chaos.
The young head of House Eshua had summoned Rillai and Benyamin to Isaac's room, and both wore faces of pure shock.
"...Say that again. Who did what now?"
"Noel is... what?"
Isaac, the one who had called them here, let out a long, weary sigh.
"Are your ears broken, old men? That bastard got hit with the Eshua Curse."
"So... wh-what?"
"Ugh, eunuchs, I said eunuchs! So shut your mouths already. Your jaws are going to fall off."
No! How is this NOT something to be shocked about?!
Even Shuri, who had only come along to nag Isaac about visiting the Saintess Awakening Site, dropped everything he was holding with a crash.
"Uncle Noel is... an eunuch?!"
Seeing everyone's extreme reactions, Isaac grimaced and sighed again.
"What's with all the fuss? Like you've never seen an eunuch in the Eshua family before."
Under his nephew's gaze, Rillai felt deeply, terribly wronged.
"Isaac... I think you've got some strange misunderstanding. That's not what the Eshua Curse does......"
Oh, it's not?
"Since it's not, could you please stop looking at me with such pity...? I mean, I'm... perfectly functional in that regard. I just can't have children, that's all......"
Same thing, if you ask me. Poor sucker.
Well, Rillai was pitiable enough that Isaac intended to lift his curse for him anyway.
In any case, the news had clearly dealt them all a massive shock.
"...Could it be false intelligence?"
At Benyamin's words, Isaac gave a hollow laugh.
Excuse me? False?
"It's from the Imperial Archive — the records the Pope was willing to kill Uncle over to keep buried. Everything in there is recorded by magic, so it can't be forged, and you can't even access it without imperial authorization."
At the declaration that forgery was absolutely impossible, everyone seemed awestruck for a moment — then furious. Benyamin especially looked like he'd swallowed something vile.
"So that bastard had the exact same condition as you, Rillai, and he still nagged you like that? Called you a defective product and looked down on you?"
"Please don't compare us. It's offensive......"
Before Isaac came along, Rillai and Noel had both been candidates for head of the family. Both were 9th Tier, both exceptionally capable. The only difference was whether they could produce an heir — and it turned out that one of them had been made of the exact same stuff all along. How absurd could it get?
Wait — in a way, doesn't a thief freeze at his own doorstep? Maybe that's exactly why he was so relentless about it?
But there was a far bigger problem at hand.
"...Then whose children are Kaya and Samael, exactly?"
Right. That was the real issue.
"Samael could, I suppose, have been adopted from the Pope's family... but Kaya is the problem here."
Kaya was famous, alongside Leah, as a future Saintess. Beauty, swordsmanship — she had it all. There was a certain instability to her mind, but unlike Leah's perfect balance, Kaya was a child who prided herself on raw, explosive power.
Isaac asked.
"Is there any chance Kaya is from a different bloodline?"
"Have you not seen that silver hair? It's the classic mark of the Saintess bloodline."
Even Saintesses who weren't born of House Eshua all turned silver-haired upon their awakening.
True — the Crown Prince brat was the same way.
Kaya was, without question, of Eshua blood. Come to think of it, they should have realized something the moment she was the only silver-haired child ever born to the Pope's line.
"Could she be from a cadet branch?"
"No. The ages don't line up."
"Then among the direct line, the only one capable of having a child would be......"
Isaac glanced slyly at Benyamin, who scrunched up his face.
"What do you take me for? I'm clean."
Shuri sighed too.
"It won't be my father either. Honestly, it is my father... but if he'd fathered a girl, his ego would be... no, his shoulders would have punched through the ceiling and ascended straight to heaven by now."
Well, knowing Goel, that's underselling it.
Rillai pondered.
"What about our third brother... Kaliya?"
"...Kaliya was too sickly to ever leave the estate. And the maids are all well past that age."
Shuri cut in.
"Then what about the sixth uncle? I've never even met him, but......"
For some reason, both uncles made faces of utter disgust.
"Ah... you can rule him out. There's basically no chance there."
"???"
It was then that Shuri noticed Isaac, who had gone strangely quiet, staring at something.
"What's wrong? Isn't that the Eshua family record journal from the head's study? Is there something odd in it?"
"Something's been bothering me."
"Bothering you?"
"In the month Kaya was born, two teams of midwives visited the villa, didn't they? One was for Kaya. Who was the other one for?"
"Ah. That would be your older brother, Isaac."
Isaac's eyes went round at Benyamin's answer.
Wait — what?!
"My brother?"
"You were told you had a sibling who died, weren't you? Eldest Brother's first child."
Ah, right. I did hear something about that.
It was at a recent Eshua family gathering.
"Come on, really? The accident that wiped out Eldest Brother's family might have been Noel's doing too."
"And the death of Eldest Brother's first child as well. The Pope's faction has been suspicious from the start."
Then Benyamin spoke up.
"Your mother and Noel's wife conceived around the same time. Their due dates were nearly identical."
That much wasn't strange.
To conceive a child bearing a special blessing — or a special being like a Saintess — couples were instructed to conceive during periods when a particular god's power waxed strong. Some even synchronized the timing down to the hour, so needless to say, there had likely been a divine oracle behind it, divination-style.
So none of that was suspicious.
"Then why wasn't the birth at the Eshua estate? Why, of all places, at a villa in a distant region? This place is practically the middle of nowhere."
Rillai answered.
"Word of the pregnancy had somehow leaked. Demons were hunting for an Eshua child. There was a prophecy that a girl would be born to one of the two women."
"!"
"Besides, it's when a Saintess is at her weakest, so it would have been a convenient chance to deal with her at the same time. That's why Father and House Chi launched a full smokescreen operation, at locations far from the actual birth sites."
Isaac understood immediately.
The demons would assume a heavily guarded location meant the birth was happening there, and swarm toward it.
"That's why Noel alone was left at the real birth site. The eldest son was so famous that wherever he went, the hideout would be exposed — or so he claimed — and he ran the decoy operation together with Father."
Benyamin clicked his tongue, the memory still vivid.
"But in the end, the birth site was discovered and the demons attacked. Countless servants died, and your newborn sibling died that day too."
At those words, Isaac remembered what he'd said to Leah.
Why was I 'born outside House Eshua, kidnapped by a fake wet nurse, and forced to suffer like hell?!' — that's what I asked her. And she answered like this:
"Your mother was attacked when she gave birth to her first child. So when you came along, she must have feared it would happen again — she kept the pregnancy secret and gave birth away from the estate."
Yeah. Now those words finally make sense.
While everyone sank into gloomy silence, remembering that day, Isaac alone wore a contemptuous sneer.
"So here's my question. Was the one who died actually on my mother's side?"
"What?"
Seeing their baffled faces, Isaac curled his lips upward.
"I take it you didn't follow, so let me rephrase. What I mean is — what if it was actually my mother who was carrying the girl, and the dead boy was Noel's child?"
"......!!"
The meaning of his words hit them, and every face drained of color. Then the dam burst, voices rising hoarse and loud.
"Isaac, I understand what you're implying, but that can't be it!"
"Yes — surely there was some confirmation......"
Isaac snickered. Kuk, kuk.
"You said yourselves that all the servants and midwives there died, and the only survivors were Father and Noel."
Both uncles froze solid.
Right, that's how it went. The demons stormed in during the births, and Eldest Brother — Adam — entrusted his wife and unborn child to Noel before going out to fight.
And that was why, at the funeral, Noel had wept and begged forgiveness from Eldest Brother.
"I'm sorry, Brother. You entrusted her to me, and in the end I couldn't protect your child. By the time I arrived, they were already......"
Of course, none of them were fools, so afterward everyone had grown suspicious of Noel. Hadn't he been the one to lure the demons there?
The eldest son's child — and moreover, the child of a Saintess — would have stood a high chance of becoming the next head of House Eshua after Isaac. No proof, but they'd assumed Noel had eliminated a rival to the succession in advance.
But that hadn't been all, had it?
No — that bastard's true objective was......
Benyamin couldn't help but grind his teeth.
"Don't tell me... you're saying that bastard swapped the babies back then?!"
"!!"
At that outburst, Shuri and Rillai reeled in shock.
"W-wait, hold on. So Kaya is... I mean, she's your full-blooded older sister, Isaac?!"
"Eldest Brother's first child is... what??"
At their reactions, Isaac burst out laughing, clutching his belly. Puhahaha. At last, he grasped the full meaning behind the Papacy's motives and every one of their moves.
"I always wondered. Why the Papacy left me — that thorn in their eye — alone for years. Why Noel, who craved the headship so badly, left the young head of the family untouched. It never made sense. Now it all does."
"!"
Isaac snapped the journal shut as if the thing disgusted him. His eyes glittered, feral and bright.
"If the condition for a Saintess's awakening is offering up your own kin — then the moment Kaya awakens, I become her living sacrifice, automatically. Isn't that right?"
"......!"
The uncles, and Shuri too, gaped in horrified disbelief.
They couldn't possibly have missed what that meant.
And sure enough, Isaac chuckled darkly.
"They must have figured that if they quietly made Kaya a Saintess, I'd die on my own. Those bastards."
No blood on their hands, and the young head of House Eshua neatly disposed of.
Just how filthy and underhanded can these bastards get?
Which was exactly why Isaac found it so entertaining.
'Ah — I should have caught on when the God of Awakening said that.'
"Out of my generous regard for House Eshua, I was thinking of rewarding you — for eating you lot, I'll see to it that these Saintesses awaken splendidly."
That creature had said Saintesses — plural. At the time, Isaac had simply taken it to mean the god would lend a hand when Kaya awakened as well.
It had meant nothing of the sort.
'That bastard wasn't doing anyone a favor. Benyamin and I were each a living-sacrifice candidate on our own — so he just threw that line out for fun.'
"The original plan was probably to swap the children in order to kill my father. Raise Kaya as his own daughter, then when the time came to awaken her as a Saintess, sacrifice Father to do it. And honestly, if the man who should have been head died, who else inherits but Noel? The Papacy knew that too — that's why they cooperated."
"......!"
They reeled, shock piled upon shock.
"And as a bonus, he got to hide his own defect. Two birds with one stone. When the sacrifice was made, they'd only need to disguise it as an accidental death."
At the same moment, Benyamin pressed a hand to his forehead.
Come to think of it — right around the time Brother and Sister-in-law vanished after Isaac's birth, a strange letter had arrived.
Benyamin — investigate the grave of my dead son again.
—
At the time, he'd had no idea why Brother was asking him to look into the first child.
'If Brother figured out the truth back then, and was attacked to keep his mouth shut......'
Just as everyone stood stunned, unable to speak after Isaac's revelation, Benyamin clutched the back of his neck and asked.
"...Have you told Grandfather about this?"
Isaac snorted.
"Nope? The moment he found out, his eyes would roll back and he'd try to kill them all. That's too easy — and a waste. It'd be a shame, after being handed such excellent material to work with. Pffht."
...Material?!
What exactly are you planning to do with it??