What began as mere amusement for the audience, they themselves hadn't realized, but now they were gripping the armrests, leaning forward, staring at the stage, at the man and woman crushed under the weight of fate.
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Till that moment, the audience believed that this play called Arcadia was following the tradition of romantic storytelling, that it was celebrating "freedom" and "love."
But the instant Paris and Seris embraced, that belief was utterly overturned.
The play's tension and contrast reached their peak.
And what caught the audience most off guard was that, before this moment, there had been no grand foreshadowing, no deliberate buildup, everything came so suddenly, so suddenly that many spectators were left completely blank-minded.
By the time the story reached this point, there was no need for more words.
It was enough to let the light fall upon Paris and Seris, locked in their embrace.
"How could he dare?"
"Coward… an absolute coward!"
"I knew something was wrong with him, he spoke too prettily."
"Seris too, they're practically dancing on Phinoc's grave!"
The whispers swelled into a roaring undercurrent.
Some audience members frantically replayed the story in their minds, and only then did they realize, the playwright had not deceived them.
The clues had always been there.
Paris's reason for rejecting Seris's affection was far too worldly.
He had fashioned himself as an idealist untouched by worldly concerns. But now that realization felt even more ironic.
Because the very thing that made the audience ignore those clues, the thing that made them stubbornly believe Paris's reasoning, was the same excuse Paris himself used to mask his true nature.
They both called it romance.
"He's a romantic, so his actions make a sort of sense."
"I can't entirely agree, but one must admire his devotion to romance."
Such thoughts, not once, but many times, crossed the minds of the audience.
"Avoiding conscription wasn't for ideals, but simply out of fear of death."
"He didn't save the Titankin out of love, but because she had never 'known love,' like a beautiful artifact that could display his 'romanticism.'"
"He urged the Titankin to defy fate, only to make her obey the fate he had chosen for her."
"So then, what is Arcadia, after all…" A deep sense of disillusionment enveloped the theater.
Because just like the Titankin, the audience too had been deceived by Paris's lies.
What they had expected was an epic of love breaking free from chains, yet what they received was the unmasking of a selfish man.
How ironic.
And to think, while Paris and Seris indulged themselves, the Titankin was still struggling outside the city, clinging to the romance she shared with him.
The thought made the audience almost hysterical.
"She… she's still waiting for him outside the city!"
All the lights went out.
A single beam illuminated the left side of the stage.
In that empty space stood only the Titankin.
After a long and bloody battle, she still clutched the golden thread in her hand, her body trembling, barely upright.
The gray-haired traveler walked slowly to her side, his eyes reflecting the scenes unseen by the audience.
And so he began to speak.
"Her first prey was her countryman. He stood at the army's front line, saluted her with the blade held high, and was pierced through the heart by her arrow."
"Her second prey was her own kin. He tried to climb the city wall and sneak into the market by night, but the Titankin shattered his skull."
"The third, the fourth, the fifth…"
"The Titankin slaughtered her countrymen without rest."
Listening to the traveler's words, the audience felt their hearts twist in pain.
The more the Titankin sacrificed, the greater their anguish grew.
With each slain comrade, each fallen relative, the Titankin was cutting the last ties between herself and her past world, and all for the sake of a future that no longer existed.
"Stop… please stop, he isn't worth it…" A woman in the audience could no longer hold back her tears.
Her trembling voice echoed the hearts of many.
They watched helplessly as a being who had just gained soul and freedom marched step by step into the abyss, and there was nothing they could do.
The more emotional among them imagined what must have been in her heart, that with every arrow loosed, she was numbing herself with Paris's promises, that distant, unreachable Arcadia, convincing herself that this slaughter was the path toward romance.
Such sacrifice, built upon lies, became the cruelest of illusions.
Yet no matter how much grief filled the hall, no one could take their eyes off the stage.
Under the traveler's gaze, the Titankin fought on, again and again, driving back the Holy City's enemies, but when she tried to return to the city herself, its guards took her for an enemy.
Wounded by both armies, she searched that friendless battlefield for her lost companion, but there was no place left for her in the world.
All she had was the golden thread still clutched in her trembling hand.
Then, from afar, came a voice carried by an unseen power:
"That girl… the cursed Titankin must have been stirred by her kin's bloodlust, she's returned to the army of Castrum Kremnos…"
It was Paris's voice. The Titankin could not have mistaken it.
"Don't worry, Paris, I'll protect you," came Seris's voice, drifting through her mind.
"I'll cut this golden thread, so that traitor can't find us." Then Paris's voice again.
The Titankin could barely stand, but more and more voices came, mixing together, battering her mind,
"Yes, you're a traitor! You betrayed Castrum Kremnos, your own kin, and now you betray the Holy City that saved you! You are faithless!"
"Yes, you're a curse! You brought turmoil to Okhema, you broke the city's promise, you are its grey star!"
After Paris saved her, fighting for him had become her new purpose, her reason to exist.
And now, every voice proved that even this was a lie.
She could not return to Castrum Kremnos, nor would Okhema accept her. Her arrows no longer knew where to point, for she had lost all reason to fight.
The world was vast, yet there was nowhere she could belong.
The pain of betrayal cut deeper than any wound.
From the audience came quiet sobs. In despair, they pinned all their hope upon the gray-haired traveler.
"Tell her the truth, please!"
"Save her! You have power, save the Titankin!"
"The traveler can move through time, he must be a god's messenger! He can change this ending!"
But the traveler only watched. He was here for truth, and this tragedy was only one part of it.
Once again, the power of Oronyx revealed the end.
Under such crushing despair, the Titankin fell into madness. Like a stray dog lost in the wilderness, she knew only how to fight.
Until one day, amid the chaos, she saw a coil of golden thread.
That familiar glimmer brought her mind back into focus.
But before her lay not only the thread, but also a man lying on the ground, a ring still on his hand.
It was Paris.
Perhaps it was fate that led the deranged Titankin to him, and with her own arrow, she pierced his heart.
The cruelest irony of all was that Seris, the one who had sworn to protect him, fled in a carriage without even looking back.
The Titankin gazed at the corpse at her feet, her heart empty as ash.
"Even now, I still don't understand," she murmured, "what did you mean by 'romance'?"
The lights faded to black. The traveler walked slowly, deep in thought.
"The acts of gods come in countless forms; they do not follow mortal expectation. What we foresee rarely ends as we wish, while what we never anticipate shapes our path. So it is, and so this story ends."
And now, time returned to the very beginning.
In the ruins of Castrum Kremnos, the dying Titankin lay on the ground.
"No Arcadia found."
"Paris, forever lost."
"This journey… was all for nothing?"
The gray-haired traveler whispered to himself. As the Titankin lay fading, she too whispered, so softly that he had to lean closer to hear.
"Pa… ris."
"Arcadia… Arcadia…"
"Where… is it?"
...
She said no more, lying motionless, turned into a true statue.
The sobbing in the audience could no longer be contained, mingling with curses and despair.
The traveler rose, heavy-hearted. He too had no answer.
He looked upon the fallen flag of Castrum Kremnos beside her, hearing only the distant war drums of Nikador, but no voice ever came from Arcadia.
The traveler shook his head, picked up the coil of golden thread, and returned to Okhema.
There, he met a familiar figure, the so-called romantic demigod, who had once crossed paths with the Titankin.
The demigod's form in public was that of a headless puppet draped in splendid robes.
The traveler, struck by a thought, showed him the thread.
The demigod fell silent, then spoke unexpected words:
"Sadly, it's nothing but a common thread, dyed gold."
And with that, all was said.
What remained for the merchant, and for the traveler, was only silence.
The audience felt a crushing wave of disillusionment.
The entire play had begun with the merchant's claim that this was a relic of Mnestia, a priceless symbol of undying love.
Paris had seen it as the key to Arcadia. The Titankin had given up everything to protect it.
Yet at the heart of it all, the source of every event and every tragedy, was a fake.
Paris deceived everyone, and the golden thread deceived even him.
And earlier, when the Titankin met the demigod of romance, they had said: "To fuss over whether a counterfeit is finely made… is the greater insult to romance."
That strange line now sounded like prophecy.
Just as everyone thought the play was ending, the traveler moved again.
Cruel though it was, he wished to let her know the truth, for she had the right to it.
He returned once more to Castrum Kremnos. But the Titankin was gone, her body turned to ash.
Only a strange butterfly remained.
"The envoy of romance, a nymph, drawn by love's longing, the sign of the Titan's response to its faithful," said the traveler, recognizing it at once.
Hearing this, the audience's hearts lifted with sudden hope.
Could it be that the Titan of Romance had finally answered the Titankin's prayer?
"Buzz, I am a nymph," came a gentle, childlike voice from behind the stage. "Stranger, do you know who was calling Mnestia?"
"How odd, I heard the call clearly, but when I arrived, no one was there."
The traveler shook his head. "You came too late. The one who called you is dead."
"Ah… I see. What a pity," the nymph sighed. "May Cerces soon return her to our cocoon."
"Thank you, stranger. Then I'll go back now."
"Wait!" Just as the nymph was about to leave, the traveler stopped it and asked the question that had never been answered.
"Arcadia… where is it?"
"Arcadia?"
The nymph paused, puzzled.
"What is that?"