“Adelaide, I promise you, the royal family will send the best doctors for her arm.”
The white-haired girl in the wheelchair shut her eyes, then nodded, a quiet leaf settling on water.
That wrapped the little incident, but the tournament’s rites weren’t over.
“Skela, congratulations on taking first.”
“…Huh?”
“It means you’ll go up and receive your medal in a bit.”
The reminder snapped her from a fog. She flapped her hands like a startled sparrow.
“Maybe skip the medal…?”
Her gaze flinched toward the arena, blown apart like a cratered shore. She took off her cap, hugging the soft furred thing to her chest.
“I caused so much trouble. If not for Mira, someone might’ve been hurt…”
She mumbled and tangled on, the drift clear: she didn’t think she deserved it.
She had a point. A moment ago terror still rang like thunder, and most students looked ghost-pale. An award ceremony felt like drumbeats over a funeral hush.
Samir still shook his head.
“No. You have to.”
His gold-rimmed glasses caught the light like a blade, his voice both helpless and firm.
“It’s His Majesty’s decree.”
Half an hour later, the Academy Festival grounds were scrubbed clean, the arena reborn like fresh-cut stone.
Speed meant one thing: the king was coming.
“His Majesty Richard VI!”
A trumpet cut the sky like a bright spear. The crowd fell silent, lining the red carpet like reeds in a wind, bowing as a blond man swung down from his horse.
His presence wasn’t public knowledge. Outside of royals like Samir, only Adelaide, who’d read the “script,” knew.
Even so, a chill like rimed glass bled into her eyes.
The Douglas Family’s support—what she’d bled to win—had turned to a jest among nobles at this man’s word, tossed like a pebble into a well.
She hated him. One look at that face dragged up the god’s cruel laughter in her memory, and her fists clenched like knotted roots.
Still, this should be the last time she’d have to see him.
She smoothed her mask back on, the perfect lady’s calm like still water, as the king passed.
Beside her, the silver-haired girl shook like a leaf in frost, unable to settle the way Adelaide did.
“W-what do I do? I’m not ready, I—I—I—”
Skela’s grip on Adelaide’s sleeve trembled like a trapped bird. When the king neared, she ducked behind the wheelchair on instinct, small as a shadow.
“I don’t even know what to say. Do I start with an intro? I’m from the Ha-Shi Diocese, I’m seventeen, but in two months I’ll be eighteen—”
Her panic spiraled, words tumbling like loose beads—until Adelaide’s hand brushed her hair. Skela’s eyes narrowed in a blink, then lifted to a soft smile warm as lamplight.
“Skela, do you know what your name means in Hilgu?”
“Uh…?”
“Skela means ‘the pure one beloved by God.’”
Adelaide lifted a stray lock, fingers like a breeze, covering the singed ends burned during her fight with Neprah.
“When the High Abbess named you, she saw your goodness. You shine, a being held under divine shelter…”
She straightened the little fuzzy cap, then touched foreheads with her, voice a hush like falling snow.
“So don’t worry. Just show His Majesty your truest wish. He’ll acknowledge you.”
Affection and praise landed like sun on frost; Skela’s expression melted. She could only blush and nod, then drift toward the stage as if in a dream.
Watching that wavering back, Adelaide’s lips curved with a touch of irony, a knife sheathed in a smile.
Such an easy child to coax.
She didn’t know what was about to happen, or how that “wish” would saddle her with murder.
As Adelaide had primed her—when the king asked why she’d come all the way from the Ha-Shi Diocese to study in the capital, Balad, Skela drew a deep breath.
“I want to obtain the Sacred Heart!”
She declared it like a bell struck in a cathedral, and every stare froze, wide as full moons.
The Sacred Heart—the very heart of God.
Legend says the sky and sea of the Sumerland Continent once tore like silk, and a boundless rift hung above, driving all who met its gaze mad. The ocean’s skin hid unseen abysses that eroded souls like salt.
Nameless, formless, soulless Chaos Spawn crawled from the tear. Wherever they passed, an eerie hush fell, until the storm-lashed full moon, when the last screams of the lost echoed through the ruins like broken flutes.
It was hell on earth, an age of Chaos. Humans, Elves, and beastkin sank into despair like stones.
—On the thirtieth day, a stubborn infant’s cry woke the being called God.
He saw slaughter and sorrow and shed a single tear. It fell as a driving rain on Elf lands, and from dead soil bloomed Savia Rose, a flower that pulled life back from graves.
He roared, and an angry oracle rang in every beastkin ear pricked like spears, gifting strength and speed beyond other lives.
Then, for the frailest—humans—He thrust His hands into His chest, drew out a pounding white heart, and set it inside the infant who had woken Him with a cry.
Humans asked why He gave Elves endless years, beastkin mighty bodies, yet bestowed His grace on only one of them.
He answered.
—No. This is my most generous gift.
—The child who bears my heart won’t be perfect. He’ll stumble. He’ll stray for a time. But in the end, he’ll choose rightly and lead the three races to victory—
—A king.
As He said, He gave humans the gift they needed most: a king to bind the weak together like twine around arrows.
Under the Sacred Heart’s blessing, the human king won every battle. His stories swept Sumerland like wildfire, and people called him hope. Because of him, humans, Elves, and beastkin laid down prejudice like old shields and formed an alliance.
Without him, even with divine power, a scattered host could never have driven the Chaos Spawn back into the abyss that birthed them.
All of that—just a legend, and truth long lost like dust in wind.
From Adelaide’s own life, she didn’t buy it. If a god exists, He isn’t that kind.
But the point now: the king who turned the tide was real. He was the Sarman Empire’s first king, Emperor Belior.
And after he died, he did leave a pure white heart—the Sacred Heart Skela had named.
No later king ever fused with it, like in the tale. But it stayed a royal sigil, locked away like winter under ice.
Skela, raised in a monastery in the far north, knew none of this. She had no sense of how presumptuous her words sounded, like a hand reaching for the sun.
That alone wouldn’t be trouble.
The larger trouble was this: by the “script,” the king would be poisoned tonight.
And as someone who’d stood close to him and blurted words one breath from “I’ll seize the throne,” Skela would naturally fall under suspicion like a shadow at noon.
Of all people, only the straight-laced Neprah wouldn’t believe it. That night, he’d rush to warn her and smuggle her out of the city like a fox in brush.
After that, Skela would flee the royal hunt and, with Neprah, track the real killer—step by step, flint on steel.
It was a critical turning point in the “script,” the key flag for the Neprah route. If it fired on time, no earlier drift would break Adelaide’s plan.
So when Adelaide saw the king staring like a statue, as if Skela had scared him witless, laughter almost bubbled up like spring water.
At last, events flowed with her design. The control warmed her like sun on a winter back—
Right then, a needle of cold pricked her spine.
As if eyes far away were fixed on her like a drawn bow.
She turned on instinct, following the wrongness like smoke.
At the edge of her sight stood an ordinary classroom window, dull as stone.
Am I overthinking?
A heavy dread pooled in her chest like lead, squeezing her breath thin.
No. Something’s off…
“Hey, why isn’t His Majesty saying anything?” whispered a voice by her ear, a moth’s wing against glass.
Her gaze snapped back to the stage. The king’s face stayed blank, dazed as fog.
Then, before everyone’s eyes, his body seemed to lose its bones, and he crashed to the floor with a hard, echoing thud.
