“Duke Lester.”

Shed’s heavy steps cut swiftly across the temple hall, the priests scattering in alarm at his approach.

“Where is High Priest Dietrich?”

“If you mean the High Priest, he returned after the Harvest Festival yesterday, saying he was going to rest, and has not come out since.”

“Rest?”

“Yes. He told us he was tired and not to disturb him… and that we should prepare for High Priestess Giselle’s arrival on our own.”

An uneasy look clouded the priests’ faces.

He had told them since yesterday not to disturb him?

Shed’s expression grew colder still.

“I will see him.”

He strode toward the inner section of the temple. Beyond the main sanctuary and prayer chambers lay the Seongsa, the living quarters for priests and acolytes. Dietrich, as High Priest, resided alone in a separate building at the farthest end.

“We should go and inform him first—”

“No. I’ll ask him myself.”

Brushing aside the protesting priests, Shed raised his hand and rapped hard on the High Priest’s door.

No answer.

Any other day, he would have turned away. But not today. Not with this gnawing dread burning in his gut.

Shed gripped the gilded handle tight and shoved.

Crash—!

The lock snapped uselessly, and the grand door to the High Priest’s residence swung wide open.

“D–Duke Lester! You cannot break in like that—!”

Ignoring their protests, he stepped inside.

The room was immaculate, orderly—eerily untouched. The white bed was made as if no one had lain in it, and the air was thick with gloom, the lamps unlit.

The priests who had followed him looked around, dazed and baffled by the emptiness.

“Where could the High Priest have gone?”

“He certainly entered yesterday, but we have not seen him since. He wasn’t at morning prayers either…”

As the priests floundered in confusion, Shed turned his head with an icy glare.

“Find High Priest Dietrich.”

Strictly speaking, a duke held no right to command the temple’s priests. But pressed beneath the sheer weight of his presence, none of them dared object. They nodded hastily and scattered to search.

Shed too prepared to leave and join the hunt.

Then—something faint in the corner of the room caught his eye.

A small, elongated shape, half-hidden in shadow.

As though drawn by an unseen hand, he stepped further into the darkened room. Bending down, he picked up the object, which caught the little light there was. Dim yet unnervingly smooth, it seemed to reflect back at him as though it had been waiting for him.

He could feel its unmistakable presence in his hand.

“This is…!”

Etched upon its surface was the crest of Ideana—the very dagger he had once given to Luise.

‘Why is this here…!’

There was undeniable proof that she had been in this place. More precisely, from last night until just a few moments ago. After all, she had been carrying this dagger at yesterday’s festival.

Yet the surroundings were pristine, as though nothing had happened. There wasn’t a trace of a struggle to be found.

‘Luise, Eve…!’

She looked around as though searching for unseen ghosts. Maybe there would be a clue as to where Luise and Eve had been taken.

He scoured the area where the dagger had fallen. The lone blade seemed as though Luise herself had deliberately left it there.

Lighting a lamp, he cast its glow across the room.

At that moment, he saw a faint shimmer beneath the desk, like mother-of-pearl catching the light, but it vanished immediately.

“A ward…?”

He moved the lamp closer to the floor. Faint patterns resembling runes inscribed upon a thin sheet of aurora emerged, spread over the marble. Hidden beneath the desk and blending with the stone, the dagger was almost imperceptible. Without the dagger, he might never have noticed it.

Shed struck the warded floor hard with the back of his blade.

But even under the force of the blow, the ward did not budge.

‘D*mn it, if only I still had my aura…’

Neither divine power nor aura—nothing less than something beyond brute strength could break it.

“Priest!”

He immediately summoned a priest from outside, one with divine power.

“Lord Lester, if you go rifling through the High Priest’s chambers like this…”

The priest tried to stop him as Shed shoved the desk roughly aside.

But Shed ignored him, dragging the priest to the spot and forcing him before the ward.

“Tell me what this ward is.”

Now fully revealed beneath the shifted desk and lamplight, the ward glowed clear and undeniable.

“W–well? Surely it’s a seal for safeguarding temple secrets…”

“Is that so? Is it customary for the temple to keep such ‘secrets’ in the High Priest’s private chamber for him to tamper with at his leisure?”

Matters relating to state affairs or sacred relics were never entrusted to just one person. Proper protocol demanded multiple locks and keys, which were divided among trusted retainers. In House Lester, for example, no heirloom or vital document was left solely in the custody of the duke.

The temple would be no different.

“Can even a High Priest manage the order’s possessions without the Sub-Priest’s knowledge?”

“T–there’s always the chance… it could be a personal belonging, perhaps?”

“And a priest casts a ward this strong to guard his personal belongings?”

Shed’s patience was wearing dangerously thin.

Priests, at least in name, were supposed to avoid accumulating personal wealth. When they did acquire property, it was usually registered in the name of a family member or spouse. There was no reason for anything of personal value to be stored in the sanctuary.

“Open it.”

“But the High Priest—!”

The protest cut short as a blade pressed cold against the back of a neck.

“I told you to open it.”

Shed’s voice, drained of patience, rang out like a sheet of ice. The priest could only nod, unable to muster even a reply.

With Shed’s sword at his back, the priest bent low and began unraveling the ward. But it was no simple task.

Dietrich’s barrier had been inscribed in ancient script—more intricate and complex than even the protective wards guarding Faradel. The priest’s brow furrowed as he worked, unease creeping in. The seal was too elaborate, too deliberate. Worse still, within the ancient prayers lay fragments of heretical scripture, woven like poison into the chant.

Realizing he could not undo it alone, the priest summoned others. Yet even with reinforcements, the barrier held firm.

The candles burned down to stubs, wax pooling at their bases. Sweat trickled down the priests’ foreheads.

Time stretched, thin and taut, frayed by gnawing unease.

Shed could not bear to simply stand idle. He dispatched knights and servants to scour the grounds in search of Luise and Eve.

D*mn it all—this delay was intolerable.

By the time half a day had slipped away, rain began to patter against the windows. The earth outside turned sodden, the air heavy with damp, the last warmth leeched from the wind.

And still, Shed stood powerless in the dark, forced to wait.

It was always like this. He had clawed and bled his way upward, grown stronger, seized power with unrelenting will—only to find, at the most critical moment, that none of it mattered.

Luise always forced him to remember: that he was only human, that he was powerless, and powerless still.

How much time had passed? Now the rain lashed harder, the wind sharpened bitter cold.

“The ward is undone.”

At last, the priests collapsed where they knelt. It had taken nearly the whole of a day, every one of them straining together, to break the seal.

Shed had no patience left to give. He slammed the end of his scabbard against the marble where the ward had been.

With a deafening crack, the stone split, fractures spiderwebbing until the floor shattered apart.

Beneath the broken marble lay an iron door. A lock hung upon it, but that was no obstacle.

Clang!

Shed struck it once, the metal bursting apart, and wrenched the door open as though tearing it from its frame.

Beyond stretched a black passageway—a tunnel plunging into the earth.

And as he stood before it, an oppressive wave of déjà vu pressed down on him.

A memory stirred—of the time the heretic Pamen had dragged him into an underground pit.

“To think there was such a place beneath the temple…”

The priests, who had expected nothing more than a modest vault, could not conceal their astonishment at the sight of a passage plunging so deep into the earth.

While they stood frozen in shock, Shed seized a lantern and leapt down without hesitation—ladder or no. He had already wasted too much time.

He sprinted into the darkness, with no idea where the passage might lead. Only his instincts guided him: that at the end of this long, lightless road, Luise would be there.

Rain from above had seeped into the soil, thickening the air with damp until the gloom itself seemed doubled.

At last, a faint light flickered at the tunnel’s end. Shed pressed forward, cutting through the dark like a blade.

And there—he stopped short.

The space before him was immense, far larger than he could have imagined hidden underground.

Something about it struck him with a disturbing familiarity.

Suddenly, a sharp, splitting pain clamped down on his skull.

Memories he had long tried to carve away burst free against his will.

The stench of blood. The coarse laughter of soldiers. T*rture. Screams.

“D*mn it…”

The memories he had buried deep rose vivid and merciless.

He shook his head violently, forcing them back down. He could not afford to be chained to the past now.

Lifting his gaze, he took in the chamber anew.

Freed from memory’s haze, it resembled the t*rture rooms of his past—yet was something far worse.

Towering shelves of ancient tomes. Rows of glass vials. Unfamiliar materials hanging from the walls. Plants that could never survive underground. Slabs etched with incomprehensible formulas in an archaic tongue.

The stale air of the subterranean chamber mingled with the copper tang of blood—so heavy it made his head reel.

It was the same foul stench he had breathed on countless battlefields, and it magnified his dread all the more.

“Luise…”

His fear had grown so immense that it was overwhelming him.

He knew what was causing the stench. He had seen it far too often. He knew it all too well.

“It can’t be…”

His hand, trembling, curled into a fist as he pressed deeper inside. He had to find Luise and Eve.

He tore through the laboratory, until at last his eyes caught a curtain, half-draped to the side.

Squish.

Something wet spread beneath his polished boots.

The smell of iron thickened.

So too did his dread and certainty.

A trail of blood led straight to the curtain.

His trembling hand grasped the heavy fabric.

Its lower hem dragged along the floor, sodden and heavy with blood.

For a moment, his fingers faltered.

He was afraid. Afraid of what lay ahead.

But hesitating would only push Luise and Eve further away.

As always, he had to overcome the weakness of his own humanity.

His deep violet eyes fixed upon the suffocating gloom.

Veins straining along his clenched hand, he tore the curtain aside.

There it was: the floor, soaked in crimson blood.

A body lay on it, drenched in blood.

It was the very sight he had feared most.