Chapter 97: Uncovering Truths
After returning from the interrogation they had carried out, both Arwyn and Lyra walked back into the Captain's office. Their expressions were heavier than before, and it was clear that on their way here they had already exchanged their findings so their report could be delivered without hesitation.
Seraphina's eyes narrowed faintly as she leaned back in her chair, her hands loosely resting together as if she had been waiting for this moment. Her voice was calm yet cold as she asked, "So, what did you learn from the two of them, and what conclusions have you drawn?"
Lyra glanced at Arwyn first, uncertain whether she should speak. Receiving the smallest nod of permission, she lowered her gaze and allowed Arwyn to step forward.
Arwyn inhaled slowly, her tone steady but carrying weight. "Captain, the situation is far worse than we had imagined. Our suspicion that Eska knew Rowen has proven true, but the truth of their relationship is far more twisted than we thought." Her hand curled into a tight fist before she continued in a restrained voice. "After the arrest of Eska's husband, Rowen used him as leverage. For an entire month, he broke her down, forcing himself upon her again and again while she was powerless to resist."
For a brief instant, Seraphina's gaze shifted; a faint shadow passed through her usually clear eyes. Yet her composure remained unbroken, her voice only slightly duller when she spoke. "Continue."
Arwyn looked briefly toward the window before resuming. "From questioning both Eska and Caelum, we reached another conclusion as well. Caelum himself was innocent in every respect. He admitted to insulting Eska yesterday, but the accusations that he hired bandits or had ties to the masked man were completely unfounded. In truth, he was simply caught in the wrong place and at the mercy of Rowen's schemes." She inclined her head slightly. "That is the end of my report, Captain."
Silence pressed down on the room until Seraphina finally broke it. Her voice was smooth, but each word carried a sharpness that cut like ice. "So it is as we feared. Rowen orchestrated every detail. First, he placed the relic in Caelum's home. Then, under the guise of searching for it, he ensured Caelum would be discovered and immediately arrested. Within the prison, he had Caelum tortured beyond his sentence, inching him closer to death. At the same time he preyed upon Eska, leaving her broken in body and spirit, all while using her husband as a chain to keep her silent. Every thread of this was tied to his hands alone."
Lyra's throat tightened, and she swallowed nervously. Her eyes flickered toward Arwyn before settling back on Seraphina, who remained unreadable.
Arwyn took a breath and finally voiced the doubt that lingered in both their minds. "That may all be true, Captain, but how did he manage to sneak the relic into Caelum's house in the first place? And more importantly, why target them at all? I cannot see what grudge they could possibly have borne against him, since they had both not even known Rowen before."
Seraphina leaned back further, her fingers interlacing while her expression cooled until it was almost lifeless. "We were mistaken earlier in searching for a grudge, Arwyn. There was actually none. Rowen frequented the tavern where Eska worked even before everything happened. On the very day his plan unfolded, he did not hesitate; he seized the girl without restraint, and the reason is simple." Her eyes sharpened like frozen steel. "It was not hatred that moved him, but a twisted form of desire. He was consumed by a warped obsession, not affection, but something darker. His cruelty toward Caelum was not born of justice but because Caelum was her husband."
Lyra raised a trembling hand to her mouth, her voice breaking in a whisper. "How could a man sink so low? To twist power into something like this, I can hardly bear to hear it without feeling ill."
Arwyn's brows furrowed as her hands clenched at her sides. "If that is the truth, then Caelum was indeed innocent all along."
Seraphina studied the thought for a moment before replying with icy certainty. "Yes. He was never guilty. From the beginning there was no evidence to prove otherwise. There was no justification for his arrest, nor any clarity on who the relic truly belonged to. Without proof, guilt cannot stand. He has taken punishment for nothing."
Arwyn exhaled quietly and lowered her head. "Then at the very least, Captain, should we not issue a formal apology from the Knight Orders? We cannot undo the past, but perhaps an official notice might lessen the wound."
Seraphina's gaze slid toward her, cold and cutting. "No, we will not send an empty piece of paper. Instead, one man will stand before the entire town and humble himself, not only to Caelum and Eska but to every witness who will see his failure laid bare. He is the man who signed off on the case without reading carefully, who passed judgment without questioning the lack of evidence, who allowed Rowen's scheme to thrive through negligence. That man is Lieutenant Hermes of the Knight Orders Prison. He will learn his lesson in the open."
Lyra shifted uncomfortably and lowered her head as if wishing to hide behind Arwyn's presence. The thought of a superior being disgraced in public unsettled her, yet she said nothing.
Both she and Arwyn, however, knew that one question still weighed heavier than all others, and they turned their eyes toward Seraphina. Before they could speak, Seraphina's voice cut in, quiet but certain, as though she had already read their thoughts. "As for Rowen's death… I considered whether Eska might have taken vengeance herself. Yet the killings bear the signature of the other murders. The masked man was the one who ended him. The question remains: did he kill Rowen as punishment, or for another reason?"
Arwyn hesitated, then asked carefully, "Could it be that he acted in the name of justice?"
Seraphina's lips curved faintly, though without warmth. "If that were so, then why did he slay an S-rank adventurer and a young woman whose past holds no darkness? And why, above all else, did he try to end Eska's life as well?" Her gaze drifted, her words lingering. "Wait... why target Eska in the first place?"
Arwyn straightened slightly, her brow furrowed. "Captain, are you suggesting that she was pursued because she alone carried the knowledge of Rowen's crimes?"
Seraphina's eyes glimmered coldly, and she exhaled in quiet agreement. "Exactly. Rowen could not move away from the dead body. Which means there is another, someone who worked with him in his grand plan, someone who now wishes to erase Eska as the last trace of his sins so that the person can get away."
Lyra's eyes widened in alarm, and her hands tightened against her own sleeves as if to ground herself. She could hardly bring herself to speak, yet Arwyn stepped forward and pieced the thought together. "Then it would make sense. This accomplice did not know Rowen was already dead. When no word came from him for a whole week, they feared discovery and tried to remove Eska quietly by using bandits disguised as civilians. That would explain the timing, why they moved only after a week had passed."
Seraphina's gaze grew sharper, her voice final and merciless. "Yes. Which means we have not seen the end of this. There is still another guest hiding in the shadows beside the masked murderer… and we will bring them into the light."
Both Lyra and Arwyn took a moment to let the new information settle in their minds, the air between them thick with the slow turning of possibilities, and then Lyra spoke, her voice quick with worry, "If another criminal exists, does that not mean Eska is still in danger? Why, then, did they take no further action after the attempt on her life failed?"
Seraphina considered the question with the careful, unreadable patience that had become her armor, eyes distant for a breath before she answered in a tone stripped of warmth and weighted with logic. "A good question," she said evenly. "Most likely they realised, or perhaps they saw with their own eyes, that the Knight Orders are watching Eska closely, that we have placed her case beneath a lens and will not let it blur. To strike now would have been foolish. It would have drawn attention, and attention would have risked revealing the perpetrator's identity. That explains why they eliminated the bandits instead. The presence I felt yesterday was not the masked man. It was someone else, someone at least his equal in power and perhaps greater. This person moves with restraint, observing, measuring, and taking steps that are slow, careful, and calculated. Whether they are connected to the masked man I cannot say."
Arwyn's expression remained composed, her voice carrying the quiet nobility that made others listen, "What, then, is our next move, Captain? It no longer seems likely that we will unmask this figure easily, and they will surely wait for the storm to pass before deciding what to do next."
Seraphina's reply came after a deliberate pause, the words precise and cold as a blade, "You are mistaken, Arwyn. They will act because Eska has already spoken. Once someone has started to shed light on their deeds, they will move to silence that light. They will seek to remove the next piece of evidence that could lead back to them."
Lyra raised an eyebrow, both afraid and inquisitive, "What evidence could they be after, ma'am?"
---
Sitting at the edge of the bed, Kael slowly closed the tome, and for a brief moment he wondered how he would lock it again, but it turned out there was no need, since the moment he pressed it shut the book sealed itself on its own. Unlike before, there was no glimmer of light, no strange glow, only the quiet click of the lock returning.
He exhaled, tossed the tome aside, and then lay back on the bed, using both his palms as a pillow, his gaze fixed first on the plain ceiling and then drifting toward the round clock on the wall, its ticking marking the passing of time in the silent room.
Nearly three hours had passed since he first opened the tome, and the weight of it lingered in his mind as well as in his tired eyes. His vision burned faintly, unused to the strain of such long reading, and yet he could not deny that the writing itself was beautiful. The tome was far shorter than its thick binding suggested, and the words had been written with such grace that compared to his own crude attempts at writing it seemed almost unbearably elegant, as though crafted by a hand that belonged to another world entirely.
From it, Kael had learned many things, truths about the demons and about the so-called hero. Everything his father-in-law had once spoken of was proven right within those pages. Yet what unsettled him most was not the confirmation of old tales, but the revelation that the Goddess who had given her power to seal the demons was none other than the War Goddess Astreya.
Even so, the tome spoke not a single word of the hero's name, and that silence struck Kael as strange. Who was he really? Why was he hidden from history, reduced to nothing but a faceless shadow behind the seal?
And more troubling than that absence was the lack of detail about the seal itself. How had they bound an entire race? Where had such a seal been placed, and what kind of power could hold for a thousand years before loosening? Even the matter of their release remained unexplained.
Kael had his own suspicion, though, and as he pieced together fragments in his mind he came to a conclusion that both unnerved and intrigued him. That strange vision he had seen after falling into the Silent River, the world that felt so utterly different, was not simply a dream or illusion. It was the inside of the seal itself, the place where the demons were trapped. He had not wandered into some unknown land, but into the prison that bound them, at least that's what he believed because of the word demon.
But one thing he couldn't understand was how Mr. Handsome and that blue-haired girl ended up there in the first place. Also, the seal hadn't been broken yet, just maybe a small flicker of crack had appeared, and it would take five more years, so then how could they have ended up there? That could only give him one explanation: the strange vision was actually a glimpse of a future that awaited to come. But why had he seen that vision of all things instead of seeing himself?
He muttered to himself, voice low and uneasy. "Confused... It's making me confused."
Even so, the demons themselves pulled his attention more strongly than the mysteries of the seal, since the tome described them with such intensity that Kael could almost see their forms before his eyes. The writer's words painted them as creatures beyond imagination, horrifying and terrifying, a force that defied the very scale of strength known to mortals. If someone had never even believed in the existence of dragons, then upon learning of demons they would surely consider them gods themselves.
Kael knew little of dragons, his education lacking since he had never studied in any noble academy or whatsoever, but even with the fragments of knowledge he had gathered he understood well just how powerful they were.
The world remained in peace only because dragons had chosen to withdraw from it, shutting themselves away, and most people preferred to think of them as highly cultured and dignified beings. Yet Kael suspected the truth was far harsher.
Dragons wanted nothing to do with lesser beings such as humans, elves, beastkin, or dwarves. With their strength, one dragon could easily destroy a nation if it wished, yet they refrained not out of kindness but because they had no reason to interfere. It could be called a noble restraint, yes, yet at its heart it was indifference. If they had wished, they could have enslaved all races, claimed dominion as gods themselves, and none would have been able to resist. That, Kael thought bitterly, was the way humans often behaved when given too much power.
Perhaps that was why, during the great war, dragons had sided with the demons. They had no desire to protect the weak or to slaughter them, they simply stood aside and let the world burn. It was proof in itself that when the demons were finally sealed, the hero, humanity, and the other races were still left alive. And how did Kael know the hero survived that war?
The answer was simple enough. The noble families that traced their lines to him as disciples still existed, and their very existence was evidence that he had lived beyond the battle.
Truthfully, the dragons, in the end, had withheld their true might, and not out of mercy, but because they sought peace of their own making.
When his thoughts returned to the demons, Kael recalled how the tome described them. They were not mindless monsters, but beings of humanlike intelligence bound to monstrous and terrifying forms, shapes so ghastly and hellish that they seemed more like walking nightmares. Once a thousand years ago or so, they had their own empires and kingdoms, perhaps even kings of their own, but the tome was strangely vague on such details. It did not speak of their rulers, whether they had one or many, and left much hidden in shadow.
What it did reveal, however, was that demons were divided into seven ranks, beginning with Civilians and rising through Soldiers, Demonic Beasts, Demonic Panics, Demonic Fears, Demonic Horrors, and finally Demonic Terrors.
At that part, Kael could not help himself. He burst out laughing. The names sounded so ridiculous that he thought the so-called hero who had written them down must never have done his homework. In truth, the hero had not fought at all in the early days, only arriving after humanity had already been defeated and the demons had the upper hand. Then, conveniently, he appeared and took the Goddess's strength that had been given to him and sealed them away. Sometimes Kael doubted if that man had even fought at all, but in the end, he realized he did not care.
In truth, if he had not seen that strange vision with his own eyes, if he had not felt even the faintest touch of that place and the weight of its reality, then he would never have believed a single word written within this tome. The existence of demons, their history, their strength... it would all have sounded like the rambling of an old storyteller meant to frighten children.
Yet because he had witnessed it himself, he had no choice but to believe, and so he pushed himself to learn more. Page by page, line by line, he had followed the words carefully, and though much of it told only of their overwhelming power, he realized he still knew almost nothing of the true nature of that power itself. Just what kind of power did they hold?
When at last he reached the end of the tome, he thought he would find closure, yet instead he found himself unsettled.
Those final pages spoke of the awakening of a new hero, and as he read them, his eyes sharpened, his thoughts growing colder. The hero, it was said, would rise again from the hero's bloodline, yet among those words Kael saw something he had already suspected back when the old man first spoke to them.
If the Goddess alone chose the hero, then how could the heads of noble families decide the candidates themselves? How could mortals, no matter how powerful, hold such authority over what should have been divine will?
The answer was hidden in the rule explained there. The Goddess allowed the families to select the best among their bloodlines, the strongest and most skilled, and from those chosen and trained candidates she would, in her own time, select the one to inherit the power.
That was exactly why the heads of noble houses carried such influence, why their choice mattered. It explained much, yet to Kael it meant nothing. He cared little for such rules, and he cared even less for the pride of nobles. What lingered in his thoughts instead was Seraphina. She had the highest chance of all, that much was clear, but did she even need such strength in the first place? If she were to inherit it, then yes, she would become something greater, yet Kael could not help but think that Seraphina was already powerful enough.
What truly widened his eyes, however, was not the matter of heroes, but something else entirely. Between the section that described the final ranks of demons which he didn't know, and the part that spoke of the hero's awakening, several pages were missing. Torn out or hidden, it was impossible to tell, yet their absence was undeniable.
At first Kael had noticed it only faintly, brushing it aside while he continued, but now as he thought it over, the missing pages made no sense. Why remove those particular parts, and why leave the rest untouched?
His brows furrowed as he muttered to himself. "The old man was the one who gave me this tome. If the pages are missing, then was it him who tore them out? Or was it the previous head before him? Wait... could they even open the tome?"
But Kael already knew the answer. The old man could indeed open it, because he carried the blood of the hero. Kael had already realized that the tome could only be opened by those with the legacy, which meant Seraphina could have opened it as well, had she ever tried.
Yet if she had come across it before, she would have dismissed it as nothing more than a fairytale, just as Kael himself had once thought. After her father's visit, though, Kael was certain she now knew much more than she once did. Even so, she was far too noble, far too proper, to touch her husband's possessions without reason.
He groaned softly and rubbed his temples. "I think… I'm straying too far from the point here."
Still, he circled back to the thought that refused to leave his mind. The missing pages. What possible reason could there be for tearing them away? Was there knowledge the old man did not want him to see? Even though he must have believed Kael would never bother reading such a tome, had he hidden it deliberately? Or was it the work of someone else, some former owner long before?
A heavy sigh left Kael as his thoughts tangled further. "No... it must have been him. It fits too well. That man... he is the most mysterious person I know, more clever than anyone else I have met. I should be grateful that he stands on my side, grateful that he entrusts me with his daughter, yet at the same time I cannot shake the feeling that he is supporting me and using me both. Using me... yes, he has been using me for a long time now. I should not even be surprised if he hid something from me."
Kael closed his eyes for a moment, his voice quieter now. "Perhaps it is better this way. If he will not speak, then I must learn the truth myself. I cannot keep leaning on him forever."
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(Chapter Ended)