Resurrection

Fainting for the second time. When I came to, I stared blankly at the ceiling before finally bursting into tears, anger churned into every sob. The emotion curdling in a corner of my chest refused to be contained.

Calm down!

The only thing that ever put a brake on it was the memory of my mother's body, surfacing unbidden in my mind. And every time it did, an unbearable wave of nausea had me doubling over, voiding my stomach until nothing remained. Only Mary, at my side, would quietly clean the floor with eyes full of pity.

"Oh—! Forgive me, Your Majesty."

"Leave us."

As I pressed a hand to my forehead and fought to steady my breathing, my father entered my chamber. The worry in his gaze was so revolting to me that I worried my lip raw between my teeth.

"I am sorry."

But when he abruptly dropped to his knees before me, all I could manage was a hollow, breathless laugh.

Every warped, trembling stroke of the letters carried the full weight of what I felt — so much so that I wondered if he would even be able to read them.

"I know this was my doing."

"...Imperial authority is not absolute," my father, the Emperor, said with a bitter smile. "If the powers within the Bertian Empire were divided only between nobles friendly to the throne and those who were not, I would have acted with iron resolve. But the strength of the neutral faction is considerable. I could not afford to let either side run wild at will..."

In every era, the neutral faction was always the largest body — yet because they refused to gamble for influence and would sooner cut off their own flesh than suffer a loss, they were a gray collective forever without a voice. Still, if my father, as Emperor, had publicly refused to kill my mother even with the evidence laid bare, even those cowardly neutrals would have gladly moved. And the most likely outcome of that? The deposition of my father from the throne itself.

But in the end, the only things I could give him in return for those words were scorn and mockery.

Scritch!

The nib I was writing with punched clean through the paper, tearing it apart. I crumpled it into a ball, hurled it aside, scrawled my words onto a fresh sheet, and lifted it up.

Had I always been someone who could flay a person's feelings open like this? I poured vicious, relentless cruelty onto my father's grieving face without pause.

But when he stubbornly held his silence, I finally shot to my feet, seized his clothing, and shook him with all my strength.

Swish.

Yet my father only reached out with those enormous hands and, slowly stroking down my back, patted me gently instead.

Hah...

Perhaps here, at least, he stood not as Emperor of the empire, but simply as my father.

"You may curse me further. You were always strangely wise, grown-up beyond your years — but your mother is dead now. So weep more, rage at me more. I cannot deny a single word you say; in choosing my seat as Emperor, I may as well have chosen it over Euphemia herself. I will not cowardly hide behind the excuse of an adult's circumstances. I will live out my days as a criminal — and I will remain your father."

For him to play the father only now — I loathed him for it, hated him so bitterly. And yet, blood could not be deceived. From his embrace drifted a warmth, a scent of the body so like my mother's and yet different, that steadied heart and mind alike. And before I knew it, tears were spilling from both my eyes as I broke into endless, soundless sobs.

That's right. In this moment, at least... I was, undeniably, a seven-year-old child.

After truly wrenching every last emotion out of myself, all that remained was emptiness. But my father held me by the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠shoulders and spoke in a grave voice.

"You seem calm enough now, so I will ask, and I ask you to hear me out. The knights report that it is strange — that you fell from the third floor without a single wound. The barrier of ice that sealed the prison door, and now that inexplicable fire. The same as then. Rohen. Was that your power?"

I could not find an answer to give. "Duke Alteir has demanded your deposition," my father continued. The moment my mother was executed, he showed his hand — so predictably transparent that a dry laugh nearly escaped me. "This entire situation may well have been orchestrated by him. So, Rohen — if all of it truly was your power... then you could draw Duke Asis, leader of the neutral faction, over to your side."

When I gave him a questioning look, my father went on. "Duke Asis's daughter is presently in a state of total paralysis. Below the cervical spine — from the neck down, she has no sensation at all. It is incurable; even surgery offers no answer. But if you could heal Duke Asis's daughter, the entire neutral faction would become your stalwart ally."

In a word — I could take them as a staging ground on my road to the throne. The nobles friendly to the crown would never truly be mine, after all. Certainly, if I could bring the whole of the neutral nobility under my protection, it would be no bad bargain. But whether from vengeance or anything else, everything — absolutely everything — sickened me right now.

The nib trailing on and on after the question mark spoke for the hollow emptiness inside me.

Huh...?

But the instant I showed my father those words, a thought pierced through my skull and my fist clenched tight.

She can come back to life! If I could assemble the word Resurrection, couldn't I bring my mother back?

It wasn't like action, an umbrella term for countless deeds. It held none of the variability that words like truth carried from person to person. The meaning of resurrection was unambiguous — to take a dead life and bring it back.

And whether by coincidence or not, my current consonants already included B, H, and L — everything Resurrection would consume. All that remained to acquire were the vowel U and the compound vowel WA.

"Rohen."

Reading what I had written, my father finally nodded and left my chamber.

Even if I had thought of the word Resurrection, could it truly be assembled? I already knew the power of my Kotodama was not some fairly balanced gift. To raise the dead was what men called a defiance of heaven itself.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Cradling that faint sliver of hope, I threw myself into obtaining the vowels I would need to assemble it.

"I can't do this anymore!"

"Anna!"

"I might actually die — do you understand?!"

Just as my father had said — if I kept devaluing myself, I would only be handing them a perfect pretext. So I staged no more suicide attempts; I simply unleashed boundless hysteria upon the maids. The voice bleeding through my door now belonged not to Mary, but to one of the other maids assigned to me. And truly, I had nearly killed the girl, so her words were no lie.

From that, I was able to deduce another fact. Deliberately driving someone toward death and begging me to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠spare them did not transform into a quest. And so I had heaped a critical mass of stress upon a maid named Anna until she gave up serving me altogether.

"I can't be Prince Rohen's maid a single day longer! Please, replace me, I beg you — Head Maid!"

The voice beyond the door was piteous beyond measure. Still, anticipating what would unfold next, I sat myself obediently on the edge of the bed. Before long, a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knock sounded, and the Head Maid entered and bowed to me. The matter on her lips was, naturally, the replacement of Anna.

Not a single day — no. Days upon days of it. She had endured my hysteria and faithfully carried every grievance of the maids suffering under it; the stress must have piled sky-high. For a Head Maid managing the maids beneath her, it would have been a merciless headache. Small wonder that this plea of hers carried such genuine feeling.

"Yes. Understood."

Stiff and businesslike as her tone was, the faint sigh she released and the way her knitted brow eased told me she was carrying a profound weight of relief. And the moment the Head Maid opened the door and stepped out of the room, a notification bloomed — the quest was complete.

Got it.

I stilled my trembling hands and rose from the bed. Mary, hurriedly arriving on shift, tried to follow me, but I pointed toward the detached annex and stopped her in her tracks. A place where no voice could reach anyone anymore — and there lay my mother's body, buried in bitterness. A false charge though it was, the nature of her crime meant not even a grave would be granted her. This was the first and last request I had ever made of my father.

It's cold.

Outside, rain came lashing down in rough sheets, wrapping itself around my body. And the closer I drew to the annex, the more each and every drop seemed to tell me I could bear it no longer — until I sank to my knees before my mother's resting place. Then, with shaking hands, I began to assemble the word.

And if it doesn't work...?

An anxious thought flickered to life behind my eyes. In the world of mortals, there existed one absolute, unchanging truth that could never be broken: the dead never return alive.

Don't think about that now.

I shook the thought from my head, set my heart right, and attempted the assembly.

I doubted my own eyes. Honestly speaking, I had half expected the assembly to fail. But beyond anything I had imagined, the word Resurrection had come together. The peculiar part was this: unlike before, every homophone that carried the same meaning as Resurrection yet was written differently had now become impossible to assemble.

That's right. If the price of bringing my mother back was only a risk this small, I would shoulder it as many times over as it took.

And so, before a garden left to wither with no one left to tend it, I began digging into my mother's grave. The soft flesh of my palms scraped raw against shards of stone, and blood welled at my fingertips and ran down. A stinging pain seeped in, but I could not feel it. At last, the coffin bearing my mother's body emerged, and I carefully lifted it open. Inside lay my mother, beheaded, at peace.

With no time to properly read the warnings, I nodded furiously. The word Resurrection vanished from my list, and the rain that had been streaming down around my mother gathered into a banquet of gold, swirling in toward the coffin. At the same moment, her severed neck began to reattach itself to the cut plane of her gently reclined body. Her stilled heart, too, seemed to stir and beat once more — the pallor of her skin slowly flushing with color...

The word I had assembled only moments ago announced its complete dissolution. And when the banquet of gold at last came to an end, I carefully bowed my head and pressed my ear to my mother's heart.

Thump. Thump. Thump...

I could hear it. The drumbeat of a heart that only the living could ever feel — the pulse that had felt like a lullaby, familiar as my own breath, every time she had held me in her arms from infancy until now.

Swish.

Then, over the head I had buried against her chest, I felt the touch of a familiar hand. I knew without being told. It was my mother's warm hand. And a silence-soaked sob came pouring out of me all at once.

"Rohen...?"

At my mother's voice, I lifted my face. This moment — surely it wasn't a dream. Her beautiful silver hair and eyes like a bottled galaxy were imprinting themselves upon me, carving me into memory.

"Heal."

Toward my mother, who still looked drained of all strength, I cast the word. She frowned in puzzlement, marveling at how vitality was returning to her body — and no wonder, for she surely knew full well that she had died.

"So people dream even after death. To think I would hear Rohen's voice..."

Her face was bitter and moved all at once. At those words I shook my head, reached out, took her hand in mine — and pressed it to my own cheek. To show her this was no dream. To prove that I was a solid, breathing, living thing. And feeling that unmistakable warmth through her fingertips, a look of confusion spread across my mother's face.

Onto the rain-soaked earth, I stretched out my hand and wrote.

She must have had a thousand questions she longed to ask — how she, who had died, had come back to life. And yet my mother simply drew me into her embrace and quietly stroked my back. The freezing rain came hammering down so savagely, and yet I was not cold in the least.