The early hours of dawn, the same day they arrived at Arachrene Manor.
Pernoa went directly to the archive where the ancient texts were kept.
It was a place he had long neglected out of sheer indifference, never once finding cause to visit — but tonight was different.
The moment he stepped inside, the musty smell of old books hit him like a wall.
He was still wrinkling his nose at the stale air as he moved deeper into the room, when he noticed that someone had already beaten him there. He stopped in his tracks.
It was Arcmund. He had arrived first.
“It seems you had the same idea as me.”
“…Apparently so.”
“Come and sit. I knew you’d come, so I prepared your share in advance.”
Across from where Arcmund sat, a second teacup had already been set out.
Pernoa walked over and took the seat facing him.
Arcmund already knew everything that had happened the night before. Pernoa had explained it all to him during the carriage ride home.
“Haah.”
His thoughts a tangled knot, Arcmund reached for a cigarette for the first time in a very long while and placed it between his lips.
Grandpa, I want you to stay healthy and not get sick and live a long, long time with me.
It had been a single sentence from his granddaughter that had made him give up cigarettes without a second thought.
Pernoa watched him quietly for a moment, then flipped open one of the books stacked on the table and asked in an offhand tone, “Found anything yet?”
“…Nothing that looks like a lead.”
What the two of them were searching for was the starting point of something. The event that had set it all in motion — the reason no divine beast had been born since the reign of the previous emperor.
If the divine beast’s words were to be believed, there had to be a sign worth noting. A mark left somewhere.
The dark magic sealed inside the control phrase is absolutely vicious. For a human being to wield dark magic of this caliber, they’d have to be in a state where living isn’t truly living, and dying isn’t truly dying.
The divine beast had said exactly that.
Pernoa’s eyes narrowed as the memory resurfaced.
“Whatever the precise reason the control phrase was created… if someone was willing to reduce themselves to a state where living isn’t truly living and dying isn’t truly dying, then there has to be at least one record of a related incident somewhere.”
“You think this was born from a grudge?”
“That’s my working assumption, at least.”
To sacrifice oneself as a willing offering — it pointed to one of two things: a grudge, or love.
One of those two felt the most likely.
Flip. Flip.
Silence settled over the archive. The only sound was the turning of pages.
Then Arcmund spoke.
“If it is a grudge… it should have come to an end at some point. And yet here we are — it seems to have carried on from the previous reign all the way to now.”
“Then I suppose the grudge simply hasn’t been resolved ye—”
Pernoa stopped mid-sentence.
His crimson eyes went wide, then locked onto a single spot on the page before him.
“What is it?”
Arcmund looked at him, puzzled. Pernoa began reading the passage aloud, line by line.
“‘Senuart willingly wielded the Staff of the Demon Dragon, which devours the soul, in order to save the Declair Empire. He became, at last, the hero of the Declair Empire in its hour of crisis.’”
“What on earth are you rambling about all of a sudden? That has nothing to do with the divine beast.”
“I practically fed it to you on a spoon just now, and you still don’t see it…”
Pernoa let out a quiet sigh and pressed his fingers to his temple.
Arcmund’s eyes flashed at his son’s insolence, and his hand had just begun to move toward the ashtray sitting nearby — when Pernoa spoke again.
“I still don’t know exactly why the control phrase was created… but I believe we’ve found our culprit.”
“…!”
Arcmund’s grip on the ashtray went rigid, and he stared back at Pernoa with an expression of genuine shock.
“But why would that person do such a thing? He was… a war hero of the Declair Empire.”
“He was also someone who met his end at the Emperor’s hand.”
“…”
“It’s hardly an uncommon story, is it? A war hero abandoned and discarded by the very emperor he served.”
An emperor who had felt threatened by the hero who saved the nation, and reversed his stance without hesitation — it was a tale that appeared in nearly every history book ever written.
One only had to look at the Arachrene family’s own history to see the same pattern.
And if this suspicion turned out to be true…
Then this was the very secret that Sion Senuart had kept hidden all this time.
⁂
Riersha didn’t open her eyes until the sun was well past the middle of the sky.
“Mm…”
She surfaced in a bleary daze, and found that her hand was still tightly wrapped around her crystal orb.
She had meant to contact Sion the moment she got home…
But sleep had claimed her before she ever had the chance.
Right — and I should have reached out to Isierd, too.
As soon as dawn had broken, Isierd had needed to make a swift return to the castle that had been bestowed upon him. Now that he had been named an Imperial Prince, he was expected to pay his morning respects to Calius every single day.
He had gone straight from that morning’s events into the packed schedule awaiting him, and they had parted without much more than a goodbye.
“I’ll send you a way to reach me soon, Riersha. It’s better if we can contact each other right away whenever something comes up. There will be things even the Arachrene family’s intelligence network can’t handle on its own.”
He had gestured toward the divine beast as he said it.
“This one did spend eight years living inside the temple, after all. I’m sure there are other ways it can come in useful.”
It was a remarkably persuasive argument.
Pernoa had told her to keep her distance from Isierd going forward… but this was for a clear and specific reason, so it ought to be all right, shouldn’t it?
The expression on Pernoa’s face as he stood nearby and heard all of this, however, was far from pleased.
“…Tona. Where are you?”
Riersha mumbled through yet another yawn and climbed down from the bed.
As she stumbled forward on still-sleeping legs, a pair of gentle hands reached out and steadied her.
“Did you sleep well, Miss Riersha?”
“Mm-hm. …Haaah. No matter how much I sleep, I’m still tired.”
“Then why didn’t you sleep a little longer? You’ve finished everything you set out to do — you really must rest for a while now.”
Starting with Sonnet’s trial, Riersha had been running from one thing to the next without a moment’s pause, all the way up through their time in the Imperial Palace. Being tired no matter how much she slept was only natural.
“You didn’t sleep properly at the palace either. Why in the world were you still awake past dawn? And the Young Lord and the young masters, too…”
“That’s because, you know. The divine beast appeared.”
“Ah, the divine beast appeared… Pardon?”
Sona’s hands stilled in the middle of tidying Riersha’s hair.
She stood there blinking slowly, wearing the expression of someone who wasn’t entirely sure what they had just heard.
“It’s Isierd’s divine beast, apparently.”
“What do you mean…? Divine beasts haven’t been born for two generations now.”
“Turns out that wasn’t exactly true.”
Riersha shook her head as she replied.
She settled into her seat at the lunch table and popped a cube of steak into her mouth.
Chewing steadily, she continued with the rest of her explanation.
“It turns out divine beasts were being born all along — they were just being kept locked up inside the temple. That’s why Papa and my brothers and I were up all night listening to the whole story.”
“…Pardon?”
Sona kept repeating the same word, over and over.
Then a question Oberon had asked her before they left the Imperial Palace came back to her mind. He had mentioned that temple personnel had been scouring the capital since before dawn, and had wondered aloud what on earth had happened at the palace…
And this was what had been happening.
“I… I see.”
“Mm.”
“…”
“And there was something I thought of before I fell asleep in the carriage yesterday…”
Riersha talked without stopping, telling Sona about everything that had happened the day before. Part of it was simply wanting to share it all with her — but it was also a way of sorting through the events herself. There had been so much said and done the previous night that she needed to work through it again from the beginning.
“What was it you thought of?”
“I remembered that the Tower Master had been looking for the Staff of the Demon Dragon.”
Once she had eaten enough to feel reasonably full, Riersha set down her fork.
The Staff of the Demon Dragon.
She had recalled that Sion Senuart had wanted that staff. Had been searching for it.
For something wanted out of mere curiosity and greed…
It was an extraordinarily dangerous thing to desire.
The dark magic that resided within the Staff of the Demon Dragon was said to drive anyone it consumed to madness.
And no one would know that better than Sion, who was the Tower Master.
But looked at from another angle — it also meant that whatever his reason for needing the Staff of the Demon Dragon was, it was clear and compelling enough to make him willing to bear that risk.
It has to be connected to the secret Sion is hiding.
That was what Riersha’s instincts were telling her.
