Chapter 74: The Book of Tyrkanzyaka - Old Testament (Part 1)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 74: The Book of Tyrkanzyaka - Old Testament (Part 1)
The deepest part of the underground armory. The final chamber, where a hideous sculpture worships the darkness.
An eerie energy flowed through the air, which was as still as death. It was so quiet that not even the sound of the wind could be heard.
Beneath a pitch-black darkness where one couldn't see an inch ahead, a girl lay in a luxurious imperial juniper coffin as if it were her bed. The vampire, her faint silver hair undone, had her hands neatly folded as she gazed at me in utter silence, not even a single breath escaping her lips.
Lying gracefully in her coffin, the vampire spoke to me, her voice filled with pure curiosity.
“Is this truly all that is required? Is there no need to reveal my heart?”
“You don’t need to reveal your heart for now. Instead, hold this.”
I placed a card in the vampire’s hand. The Ace of Hearts. After confirming the card’s suit, the vampire smiled pleasantly.
“A heart, of all things. Why? Is it a talisman?”
“No. Say hello. From now on, it will be Trainee Tyrkanzyaka’s new heart.”
“Hmm?”
The vampire looked at the card again but could find nothing unusual about it. I let out a dry laugh and continued my explanation.
“Of course, it’s not a real heart. I prepared something with a similar shape for the sake of suggestion. Hold it tightly in both hands and bring them to your chest.”
The vampire followed my words without a hint of suspicion.
I once thought it would be nice if everyone in the world obeyed my every word. But now that such a person was right in front of me, it was incredibly uncomfortable.
It really is better to just live by using a little mind-reading.
“Alright, Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Close your eyes and breathe easy. Relax your body so your blood flows calmly… though I suppose I don’t really need to tell you that.”
A vampire’s blood flows calmly anyway. I’d be better off worrying about myself.
I took a deep breath. A tension I hadn’t felt in a long time constricted my body. It was an unwelcome feeling, but since this was a guest I had personally invited, I had no choice but to accept it.
I positioned myself at the head of the imperial juniper coffin, as close to the vampire’s head as possible. Our faces were close. Even in the jet-black darkness, her crimson eyes still glowed red.
Meeting her gaze, I explained briefly.
“Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. Your heart does not beat, but you can move your blood. In effect, you have no need for a heart. Regaining one won’t make the abilities you possess disappear. In a way, you are wishing for something useless. Do you still wish to regain your heart?”
“…I do.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I wish for my heart to be beyond my control.”
A paradoxical statement, in a way. But within it lay the vampire’s deeply held desire.
“Why? When you resent someone, isn’t the ability to cut them off without any pain a fine thing? An ordinary person would covet it, to say nothing of a ruler.”
“Do you seek to test me, even at this stage?” the vampire said, feigning anger.
“There was a time when I, too, was human. Though I left it in the past, that era still pulls at me, even after countless days and nights have passed. That time, as brief as a spark, has faded with age, but it was that time that ultimately made me who I am now. It was because my heart was not mine to command that I was able to change… but after death, no matter how I tried, I could not change.”
“Is that so.”
It was a story I had already read, but I pretended not to know.
The vampire’s goal wasn’t to move her blood. She could already control it at will, and if she wanted, she could grind her original heart to dust and create a new one of the exact same shape. She could even make it beat simply by squeezing it herself.
Having reached the pinnacle of Bloodcraft, she was no different from a creator when it came to her own body…
And that was what the Progenitor Tyrkanzyaka hated.
Because she could not use an ability of control to create something that could not be controlled, she had no choice but to keep seeking a method from others.
“Very well. I understand. I will grant your wish.”
A wish is like the wind, meant to simply pass by, but sometimes, a wind like this stagnates and pools.
As someone with the ability to read minds, I would recklessly open the windows to people’s hearts, only to be struck head-on by such winds.
And I had been struck again this time.
I closed my eyes and sank deep into my inner darkness.
A faint candle flame illuminates the darkness.
In a shabby library packed with the books of the forgotten, there is a small candle reserved for the librarian. A dim candlelight, just enough to illuminate a single page. It is the small light that separates the books from their keeper, the thing that allows the librarian to be a custodian.
I lifted the candle. The flame was weak and hazy, as if it would die out at any moment. A fragile flame that seemed ready to be extinguished by a single gust of wind.
In contrast, the book before me was thick and heavy. Not even an encyclopedia would be this vast. A single volume that felt like an epic poem bound together. To read it all with this tiny candle, I would need dozens more…
However, to do what I was about to do, a librarian was not needed.
By looking down, one can only read the letters written in a book. It is an objective view, but…
It prevents one from knowing the chill that has seeped into the paper, the faint fragrance, the pressed-in marks, and the things that were meant to be left in the margins.
Therefore, I decided to stop being a librarian for a moment.
I blew a breath at the candle.
Whoosh. The flame vanished in an instant.
And in the world, there was darkness.
On the night of the new moon, when even the moon itself has turned its head away, there is not a speck of light in the world. Those who fear the dark hide inside their homes, lying in bed with their eyes shut and hands clasped, praying for it to recede.
On such a pitch-black night, a father and daughter were walking along a dark road, pulling a cart.
Those who walk the night roads are one of two things.
Either they are in such a hurry that they must risk the dangers lurking in the darkness.
Or they wish for the darkness to hide their forms, and with them, their sins.
This pair was the latter.
“Tyr, I’m sorry. For getting you caught up in this…”
The father’s low voice drifted through the air. The girl brushed away the shadows cast on her face and smiled brightly.
“It’s alright. If I think of it as a night stroll, it’s rather nice. As you know, I love looking up at the night sky.”
But both the girl and her father knew that her smile was not for herself, but for him. The father, his face clouded with guilt, pulled the cart in silence.
The wooden cart moved smoothly and quietly. Fearing it might make a sound, they had wrapped the wheels in leather and generously greased the creaking axle.
It was an attempt to conceal even the slightest escaping sound.
Just what terrible sin had they committed to be moving with such caution?
The answer lay inside the cart.
Inside the swaying cart, covered by a single blanket…
Lay a corpse that had been buried just last week.
A lifeless body finds its rest in the embrace of Mother Earth.
Therefore, to disturb that rest was considered a profoundly wicked act.
If that alone was so, what of desecrating an exhumed corpse? It was beyond words. Only a death that served as an example to all, like stoning or burning at the stake, awaited such a person.
But there are always those who commit sins.
“Look, Tyr. This is how the paths of the blood flow.”
The father used a knife to peel back the corpse’s skin. It was a method different from butchering meat, and for that reason, all the more gruesome and nauseating.
He peeled it back, layer by layer, from skin to muscle. Once the leather that tightly wrapped the body was removed, a sticky membrane followed. The real work began only after cutting and tearing that membrane with the knife.
When he forcefully tore the fascia from the bone, the internal organs, pooled with dead blood, greeted them. These were either decaying or spoiled and couldn't be touched carelessly. He carefully cut them out and set them aside or pushed them to one side, moving deeper and deeper into the body.
And then, the heart and blood vessels were revealed.
The father lifted a blood vessel with a long rod and said:
“This is the heart. The source of our bodies, the place that purifies the blood. All blood begins here. When the heart beats, the blood sets off and travels throughout the body. The blood leaving the heart is on the inside, and the blood returning after a full circuit is on the outside. In this way, the body circulates in a great loop.”
Though she had heard it dozens of times, her father always made sure to emphasize it whenever he rummaged through a new corpse.
The girl could have recited her father’s words by heart, but instead of pointing that out, she simply nodded.
“But I still don’t quite understand the process in between… It seems the incoming blood pools in the organs for a moment before passing through, but it’s difficult to confirm in a body that is already dead. I need your help, Tyr.”
“I understand.”
The girl extended her hand without a hint of reluctance. Then, something incredible happened.
From within the corpse, crimson blood began to well up.
The blood, which had hidden deep within the body in the face of the unprecedented event of death. The hardened blood awakened at the girl’s call and slowly began to move.
As she drew the blood forth, the girl asked her father:
“Should I push it this way?”
“Please. I’m always grateful, Tyr.”
Unlike other children her age who played in the dirt, the girl, who had often dug up graves and corpses with her healer father, had gained a strange power.
The ability to control blood.
It was only enough to stop the bleeding from a scraped knee, but it was exactly what her father had desperately wished for.
The father, who had been reluctant to let his daughter join in his crime, did not refuse her help after that day. He couldn't. Her ability was that special, and that helpful.
Of course, the girl helped her father without a single sign of displeasure.
“I just need to make the blood flow along this path, right?”
“Yes. As you push the blood, I will see if it pools in the organs.”
Her father, who had been a fairly competent healer, became an increasingly skilled one after a certain day. Rumors of his prowess spread so far that people would seek him out from the next village over.
He instantly became the pride of the village, and the villagers themselves were proud of him.
“…Your mother died because her lungs were filled with blood. To be precise, the passage for the blood that was supposed to exit was broken. This shell was riddled with holes, like coarse hemp cloth…”
Whenever the villagers introduced her father, they never failed to mention how his skills had improved by leaps and bounds after losing his wife to an unfortunate illness.
The tragic death of a wife with a chronic illness and the healer who awakened his skills thereafter. What an easy to understand and beautiful story.
“Tyr, if we could find the damaged blood passages and gain the ability to heal them… we could conquer disease.”
But the girl, who had watched her father from the closest vantage point, knew the truth.
That his awakening was built upon a mountain of corpses.
“The disease that killed your mother… we can erase it from the world.”
As he spoke those words, a strange madness and desire mingled in her father’s eyes.
Her father was a healer.
He could hardly be called a physician. In an age where people adapted to the work given to them rather than choosing a profession, it was common for a village to have one or two people in very complex positions.
Tyr’s father was one such person. The seventh son of a noble but not particularly wealthy family, all he had inherited was a handsome face, refined speech, and the knowledge from a few books. In surviving the harsh world, they were useful in precisely that order.
While wandering, he met a woman from a certain village, they fell in love, and he married her and settled down.
He was a teacher to the children, a healer, and he volunteered to negotiate whenever something happened in the village. It didn't take long for him to become a part of the community.
But the woman had a long-standing illness. After giving birth to their child, her condition only worsened. The knowledge from a few books was not enough to save her. The hour of sorrow only drew nearer, never receding.
One day, on a night of cold, falling snow, the girl’s mother splattered red blood upon the freshly piled snow. A fierce wind masked her father’s anguished cries.
It was from then on that her father began to handle corpses.
At first, he acted without the girl’s knowledge. But after her mother, who had tenaciously managed the household, passed away, the girl naturally took over her duties and soon noticed her father’s transgressions.
Naturally, the girl feared her father at first. The sight of him dissecting and dismembering a corpse was a difficult scene to accept, even for family.
But she could not abandon her father, her only remaining family, so the girl endured it and stayed by his side. And at some point, she began to help him.
Was it because she was still young, or because she had learned from such a father? It was from that point on.
The girl’s way of thinking began to change, little by little.
Aside from the bizarre act of dissecting corpses, her father was an exceptionally fine adult. He cared for and healed the injured and was respected by many.
Though he had touched more corpses than anyone, her father had never actually killed anyone. He saved patients, if anything.
Digging up a corpse was a grave sin. He wouldn't have a word to say if he were branded a servant of the devil.
But what if it could be used to save people?
An already dead body, something that would be torn apart by beasts or gnawed on by bugs and mold anyway. If her father used it to save someone who was dying…
Who could possibly blame him?
Around that time, the girl learned to control blood.
And she went from being her father’s accomplice to his equal partner.