Meriz and Quasa stared at Veneri like he had just casually announced that the sky was made of glass.
"Chinese? I… don't know what that is."
"Believe me Lady Quasa, you wouldn't. It's from Earth. The people who originally live in the Hidden Citadel aren't native to Spheraphase. They were transmigrators taken from another world and brought here."
That alone was enough to make the room fall into stunned silence again, but he kept talking.
"On Earth, Mandarin Chinese is the second most spoken language. English is the most spoken and that's actually where Spheran came from. Spheran is basically a derivative of early English adapted and altered over generations."
Meriz's brows furrowed deeply as he tried to process that.
"So the language our ancestors considered sacred is… just a modified foreign tongue?"
"Pretty much. Languages evolve, especially when you rip people out of their home world and throw them into a completely different reality. I know Chinese, Japanese, Italian and English, obviously. At first, when I saw these characters, they felt familiar. I just couldn't place why. But now, I can see it clearly."
He took a small step closer and, without warning, began to speak aloud.
The words he uttered sounded nothing like Spheran. The tones rose and fell in unfamiliar patterns. None of us understood a single word but the throne room did. The moment he finished reading the first line, the carvings on the pillar began to glow.
Golden light seeped out from the engraved characters, lifting from the stone. One by one, the glowing Chinese characters detached from the surface and floated into the air, arranging themselves in neat, vertical columns in front of us. It was like watching a ghostly script rewrite itself in midair.
More pillars responded with their inscriptions igniting in the same golden glow. Lines of text formed a large, floating tapestry of words that floated between the thrones and us.
Quasa let out a quiet gasp.
"It's… reacting to your voice."
Veneri folded his arms, staring up at the glowing text.
"Looks like it was keyed to the original language. Probably a security measure to make sure only someone who could actually read it could access the records. This… is a diary."
"A diary?"
"Yes, Nari. It's from the Emperor of Vienshternhein. This is the first entry. I'll translate."
He paused briefly, scanning the text before speaking in Spheran so the rest of us could understand.
"He writes that strange humanoid creatures were spotted at the far edges of the realm. They called themselves Krepsunas. According to the entry, a group of scouts was sent to investigate. They described the Krepsunas as vaguely human in shape but wrong. The Emperor noted that the creatures seemed to be observing the realm rather than immediately attacking."
That detail alone was disturbing. It meant the Krepsunas hadn't just appeared randomly. They had been studying their prey.
"The scouts returned and reported everything to the capital. At that point, the Emperor still thought they were just a hostile race. He didn't realize they were dealing with an infection."
The golden characters shifted slightly. The next set of lines glowed brighter as if inviting him to continue.
"Second entry. Five days later."
His tone grew more serious.
"The scouts… began to transform into the same creatures they had encountered. They attacked several people in the capital. The Emperor says that it was chaos at first. Nobody understood what was happening. But once they realized that the condition was spreading from person to person, they concluded that it was an infectious disease rather than a curse or possession."
Quasa covered her mouth slightly.
"He ordered immediate quarantine. Anyone showing symptoms was isolated. Anyone injured during the attacks was monitored. They tried to contain it like a plague."
The third set of characters flared brighter than the others, stretching longer than the previous entries. Veneri went quiet for a moment as he read through it all.
"This one was written two hundred days after the first scouts were infected. By this point, the Emperor had gathered enough data to understand the basics of the virus."
He began translating again.
"He records that the infection has a maximum incubation period of five days. No matter the individual's strength or power, if they are going to turn, it will happen within that time frame."
That matched perfectly with what we already knew.
"He also says that they had exhausted every known medical and spiritual technique trying to find a cure. Alchemists, healers, soul mages, none of them succeeded. He explicitly states that, as far as they could determine, there was no cure."
A quiet tension settled over the room as he went on.
"He describes in detail what happens during the transformation too. The infected undergo extreme body metamorphosis. Their bones restructure, their organs shift and their skin changes composition. Their entire physiology—and even their genetic structure—is rewritten. They don't just get sick."
"There's also a note about power levels," he added. "One of the palace guards who had been on the verge of a breakthrough achieved it only after he turned into a Krepsuna. The Emperor writes that the transformation seems to forcibly push the infected to the next stage of strength."
Meriz's eyes widened. "So the virus strengthens them?"
"In a twisted way, yes, It grants them one level of power at the cost of everything else."
He continued translating.
"The Emperor also lists confirmed transmission methods. The virus spreads through any contact with bodily fluids from the infected. Blood, saliva, anything. It can also be transmitted through injuries inflicted by Krepsunas, even if the wound itself is minor."
The third entry ended on a bleak note.
"He writes that the number of infected was steadily increasing despite their quarantine efforts. And he mentions that he had only been on the throne for five years at that point. He took the throne as a teenager."
Nari's expression softened slightly at that. After all, ayoung emperor was thrown into a full-blown biological apocalypse just a few years into his reign.
"There's a fourth entry. This one is… more personal. In this entry," he translated in his own words, "the Emperor writes less like a ruler and more like a... scared young man. He talks about the weight of responsibility crushing him. How he wakes up every day expecting to hear that another district has fallen or that another member of his court has turned."
The golden characters shimmered faintly as if echoing the emotion behind the original writing.
"He mentions that people are starting to lose faith in him. Some nobles are secretly preparing escape plans. Others are demanding harsher measures like public executions of the infected or sealing entire neighborhoods behind barriers."
Veneri's voice grew quieter.
"He says that he knows he's making decisions that will stain his name forever. But he also says that if he hesitates, even for a moment, the entire realm will collapse."
The room felt suffocatingly still as he finished translating that part.