Shadows in Paradise - Chapter 103

Dietrich pressed a white cloth into blood and began inscribing additional runes over the crimson circle where Luise stood.

“Unfortunately, to complete black magic, the procedure requires the sacrifice of life. Countless souls were already offered as sacred tributes to create you, Luise.”

From his fingertips, scarlet symbols spread across the floor. The stench of iron thickened as grotesque shapes took form in blood.

“But if the life itself could never die… wouldn’t it serve as an endless source of power for black magic?”

Setting the bloodstained cloth aside, Dietrich finally voiced the question that had been on his mind for so long. The moment to seize his answer had come.

The complete realization of black magic — power surpassing both divine grace and aura — a liberation from the cruel toll of sl*ughter, the price God had reserved for Himself.

Immortality won without death.

Dietrich reached for the sharp blade at his side. Bathed in the light emanating from the circle, the steel blade glowed red, as though it were already drenched in blood.

In that instant, Eve felt it — an instinct so sharp it pierced her chest. She could not explain how or why, only that something dreadful was about to happen: her mother was in danger.

Her heart pounded so violently that her vision blurred.

“No…! You monster! Stop it! Don’t hurt my mommy!”

Eve’s scream tore through the chamber—and with it, black power burst from her tiny body, lashing straight toward Dietrich.

“My, my.”

Caught off guard, the High Priest hastily raised divine power to shield himself. The dark energy struck the white barrier and shattered into sparks.

“You’re so young, yet you wield such strength.”

Dietrich adjusted his glasses and his eyes glimmered with fascination. The idea that a three-year-old could summon such force was almost unbelievable.

However strong, though, a child could never beat the High Priest.

With a mere tightening of his will, the divine pressure he exerted pushed back against the black surge. Eve’s small body was thrown aside and crashed onto the cold stone floor. Her eyes fluttered shut and her consciousness slipped away.

Dietrich gave a slow, indulgent nod as he watched the limp figure.

“Sleep quietly, little one. Your turn will come soon enough.”

He wiped his hand clean with a handkerchief, not hurried in the least, then raised the blade once more.

With almost leisurely steps, he moved to stand before Luise.

“You’re used to pain like this by now, aren’t you, Luise?”

He turned the blade in the crimson light, testing its sharpness. Once satisfied, he lifted his gaze to meet her clouded eyes.

A smile curved his lips as he gently caressed her beautiful face as though it were precious.

And then—

“Let us share… eternal life.”

He drove the blade straight into Luise’s heart.

She let out a wet gasp and blood spurted from her lips, splattering across Dietrich’s cheek. Her body collapsed onto the crimson floor.

Immediately, he felt the rush of black magic surging through the runes and pouring into him.

Yes. It had been right to complete you in advance.

Everything became easy. Simple. Perfect.

Dietrich could feel his divine power slowly being corrupted by a heretical force. It was as if every drop of blood in his veins was being replaced, and yet it was bearable.

Until—

“…What is this?”

The flow of that forbidden power stuttered and then began to fade.

Scowling, Dietrich looked down.

Luise was having convulsions and clawing at the stone floor until her nails cracked and split.

“Don’t tell me… you’re suppressing it by instinct?”

Of course. The woman he had found again had that same ruinous habit. She had concealed her black magic for so long that, even with a blade through her heart and in agony, her body struggled to contain its regenerative power.

“No. That won’t do. That won’t do at all. It only delays the process, and makes you suffer longer.”

Dietrich clicked his tongue in rebuke and wagged a finger before hurrying to his research desk. He opened a drawer and took out a vial.

“Be good now. Unlike the poison Felix once forced on you, this is safe. No risk of rampaging.”

Forcing open her bloodied mouth, Dietrich shoved the pill deep down her throat.

“Ghh—kughk!”

The moment it fell, black energy poured from her body in waves.

The wound on her chest festered, closing and splitting open again and again, the blood turning into darkness that curled and reformed.

Luise died — over and over again. And each time, she was dragged back to life.

Dietrich drank in the raw, intoxicating power flowing into his flesh as she perished and revived countless times.

The sharp sting through his capillaries was ecstasy; agony transmuted into rapture.

From a being cursed to live forever, he received eternity itself.

This power could overthrow God’s tyrannical dominion. Or perhaps God Himself had left this possibility in place as a hidden grace for mankind.

The final blessing of a merciful God.

And he—he would take the first step toward salvation, with this great work.

Dietrich Lester was filled with a pure, exultant joy born of sacrifice, and of eternal life.

🌺⟡───⟡🌺 🌺⟡───⟡🌺

Shed pulled on his shirt and turned to the window.

At this hour, the dawn should already have broken. But the sky outside was still dark, shrouded in heavy clouds.

Last night the air had grown cold and weighted—perhaps, by morning, the rain would fall.

“So Giselle Marlhein has arrived in Recherdam…”

Shed recalled the report he had heard the night before. She had come all the way to Ideana after all. By today or tomorrow, she would likely arrive in Faradel.

Just then, Butler Werner knocked and entered the chamber.

“My lord, Lady Liana and the child are nowhere to be found.”

The hand fastening his shirt buttons stopped cold.

“What do you mean, nowhere to be found?”

His straight brows furrowed deeply.

“They are not in their chambers, and we have searched every place within the estate they might have gone. There is no sign of them.”

She had planned to have breakfast with Luise and Eve that morning, to enjoy a meal and a chat before Giselle arrived. They had been out late the previous evening, so they must have slept in. But for Eve to be missing at this early hour as well? That was troubling.

‘No…’

His blood turned to ice. Luise’s disappearances had never once brought good memories. She vanished without a word far too often.

Shed bit anxiously into his lower lip.

“Find out if anyone has seen Liana. If she left the estate, I want to know when.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

Werner, struck with a sense of déjà vu, bowed and hurried off to question the servants.

Shed threw on his jacket and took up his sword.

‘There was no sign of this yesterday… none at all.’

Even his beast-like instincts had failed to predict this. Yet she was a woman who made a habit, almost an art, of disappearing without warning. Experience-fed dread quickened his stride.

‘Eclace?’

Perhaps that cunning merchant had moved while he wasn’t watching. Perhaps Luise and Eve had been spirited away to Scizlon—or hidden somewhere even more secret.

Shed’s fist clenched so tightly his knuckles ached. Eight years wasted once before. He would not squander another decade—ten years or more—searching again.

And then—

“High Priest Dietrich visited yesterday.”

A name he had not expected fell from the servants’ lips.

“Dietrich?”

“Yes, my lord. Before we met you, he asked to speak briefly with Lady Liana. We showed him to her chambers. Beyond that, we know nothing.”

The servants did not suspect Dietrich. To them, the awkward, timid high priest hardly seemed the sort capable of wrongdoing. And besides—he was of House Lester. Though he resided at the temple, to the servants he was, like Shed himself, one of the family’s elders to be respected.

Shed’s eyes trembled.

By the time Luise should have returned home, it was already quite late.

“Why… Dietrich?”

The servants said he had come to see Shed, but Shed had never met him. Had he lied, claiming he had business with Luise?

The veins stood out on Shed’s clenched fist. From the moment Dietrich set foot in House Lester, Shed had disliked him. There had always been something… off. Every conversation left a trace of unease behind.

But why? Was it his stammer? Or his strange eccentricities, as though he was lost in his own world? Or was it because he had once stood as Shed’s rival for the Lester dukedom after the former duke’s death?

No, that alone wasn’t enough. Shed had known other men who stammered, other eccentrics and other ambitious nobles. None of them had ever caused him the same unease.

For years, he wondered, but could never find the answer. In the end, he dismissed it as his own oversensitivity and chose to ignore his instincts.

A fatal mistake.

Shed remembered the gleam that had always burned in Dietrich’s blue eyes whenever they lingered on Luise. Perhaps once he had suspected it might be affection.

But no — there had never been love in that gaze. It was something far stranger. More twisted.

‘He abducted her because he loved her…?’

Impossible! Would a high priest really lie and take her away in the middle of the night? Although eccentric, Dietrich was not so foolish as to risk his reputation, honor and future for love. He would have confronted her using his rank rather than gambling everything on a reckless abduction.

And if it truly were love, why take Eve as well?

It was strange. And it was ominous.

He armed himself, mounted Gardwell, and spurred the beast towards the temple.

The reason for his dread was clear and singular:

Luise and Eve wielded black magic, and Dietrich was a high priest.

‘Could it be… he recognized her?’

He thought back to the first time Dietrich had seen Luise. That day, Dietrich had stared at her face for a long time. As though memorizing her features. As though checking against a face he already knew.

The gnawing sense of foreboding grew.

“I… I sense black magic here…”

Back then—had Dietrich truly been ignorant of her power? That man, who knew more than anyone of heresy? That man, who pursued research with relentless obsession?

In that moment, Shed realized what had felt wrong all along.

Dietrich’s gaze was as intense and consuming as it was whenever he encountered evidence of heresy.

“Ah, if only I could have seen it for myself!”

The same hunger he showed for proof of forbidden things.

“It… it was an official report…”

Dietrich himself had signed off the final account of House Ideana, which had been falsified.

So, did he really not know that Luise was alive? Did he genuinely believe that the entire Ideana line was extinct when he submitted that report?

“D*mn it…!”

Shed twisted the reins in fury, enraged at his own blindness. Gardwell tore through the night air with a sharper pace.

Dietrich knew.

He knew she bore black magic.

He knew she was Luise Ideana—the one who had slipped through his grasp all those years ago.