Aria Desmo, Chancellor of the Kingdom of Luhan, sat in her office reviewing documents.
‘This one has a different face shape. This one is far too tall.’
The documents the Chancellor was examining contained portraits of people, with their personal details recorded beneath them in great detail.
The portraits all had one thing in common: they depicted men with blond hair and golden eyes.
‘In short.’
Having sorted through dozens of imperial royals as though conducting an ideal-type tournament, Aria stared at the final two portraits.
‘Neither of them is right.’
The Witch of Ashes furrowed her brow at the realization that all her work had ultimately been for nothing.
A long pipe favored by witches sat in one corner of her desk.
She put the pipe to her lips and looked out the window with a frown. The cool, cloudless sky greeted her as though to taunt her.
CAW, CAW, CAW.
A crow called from somewhere outside, and one flew across the blue sky toward the Chancellor’s window.
“You’re here.”
Aria’s frown vanished when she spotted the crow. She set her pipe down on the desk, flicked a finger to open the window, and picked up a biscuit for the crow with the hand that had held the pipe.
CAW, CAW.
The crow slipped through the open window and settled on the Chancellor’s forearm, pecking at the food she offered. While the bird ate, Aria untied the note attached to its ankle.
FLAP.
Having finished the biscuit, the crow flew back out the window. Aria flicked her index finger to close it again, then unfolded the note the crow had brought.
‘So I’ve finally learned what the Queen and the Commander of the Royal Knights were searching for in secret.’
The Witch of Ashes’s red eyes scanned the contents of the note.
‘An eighteen-year-old girl with blond hair and golden eyes. She came from the Empire ten years ago?!’
The identity of the person the Queen and the Commander of the Royal Knights had been secretly searching for.
“……?”
Aria fell into thought after confirming it.
Then she suddenly turned her head toward the documents on her desk.
‘A young man in his early twenties with blond hair and golden eyes. Past unknown.’
Portraits of blond, golden-eyed men were piled high on the desk.
‘An eighteen-year-old girl with blond hair and golden eyes. She came from the Empire ten years ago, but her current whereabouts are unknown.’
Her gaze shifted from the desk back to the note in her palm.
‘Put these two together, and they’re siblings.’
The Chancellor’s red eyes grew still.
“Solacius. Lunacirne.”
A moment later, the answer came from her lips.
‘No wonder the Queen would be interested. A First Imperial Prince and First Imperial Princess are in a different league from the other imperial royals. But how is the Queen so certain that the two of them are alive?’
At the same time, she wondered how the Queen could be so certain that they had survived.
‘Either way, this has become interesting.’
A cold smile formed at the corner of her previously expressionless mouth.
***
The Royal Council.
A meeting where the kingdom’s ministers gathered before their sovereign to discuss state affairs.
It had not been held in the Kingdom of Luhan even once since the Snowfield Succession Ceremony ended in failure.
Yet the Royal Council had convened three times in the past week alone. Three times.
At the far end of the audience hall, the ministers stood in orderly ranks, divided into groups on the left and right.
FWOOSH.
A brazier stood between them.
It was no ordinary brazier. Magic stones had been set into a brazier atop a magic circle.
There had been no such brazier during the Royal Councils of the previous Queen, whose memory had itself grown hazy. In the first place, the previous Queen had held the Royal Council in a private audience chamber rather than the audience hall. Still, the throne in the audience hall remained empty as the ministers blankly watched the brazier and waited for their Queen.
“Now that His Excellency the Regent has returned, there are certainly changes.”
One minister looking at the brazier spoke without thinking.
“The Curse of the Snowfield was so severe that we could not remain near Her Majesty for long.”
There had been a reason the Queen had received audiences one person at a time until now.
“The Regent is a fire mage. It is a truly remarkable magical artifact, working even ten meters from Her Majesty.”
“Thanks to it, we can all gather here and have an audience with Her Majesty. How fortunate that we can discuss state affairs near Her Majesty for an entire hour.”
Many things had changed since Lucas became Regent. He was a fire mage, and as soon as he returned, he had created a magical artifact through research with the Mage Tower.
With this brazier, each person could remain somewhat longer at the closest distance they could safely approach. Even so, one hour was the limit.
As the group standing to the Queen’s left praised Regent Lucas, hostile gazes gathered from the group on the opposite right.
At the heart of those gazes stood the Witch of Ashes, with her striking gray hair and red eyes. Naturally, she did not cast even a single glance in Lucas’s direction, only stared intently at the empty throne in the audience hall.
“By the way, can this brazier be trusted?”
“I only hope it does not cause another catastrophe like the one ten years ago.”
The nobles, witches, and mages who followed the Chancellor began trying to disparage Lucas’s brazier.
“Moreover, it consumes an extreme amount of magic stones……”
“Certainly, that is a burden in wartime.”
As they said, the brazier’s problem was its consumption of magic stones. It devoured an enormous amount of them. That was why it was not used for individual audiences and only during the Royal Council.
“Honestly, if they’re going to pick a flaw, they’re going to pick that?”
“You’re probably more worried that your good days are over.”
The nobles and mages standing with the Regent replied without backing down.
They were fewer in number than the Chancellor’s side. They also fell behind in the strength of their power, such as titles, wealth, and magic grades. Still, considering that Lucas had lived in seclusion for ten years, quite a few people had gathered around him.
“Is that not a strange thing to say?”
“It sounds as though you are accusing us of corruption.”
“If you look at the ledgers thus far, we have done the opposite of commit corruption. We have spent our own assets for the sake of the Kingdom of Luhan.”
“Honestly, it seems that the people most responsible for that day have trained their shamelessness while we were apart.”
The Chancellor’s people responded as though they had been waiting for the Regent’s side to speak.
The atmosphere between the two sides grew vicious. Still unable to escape the original sin of failing to protect the Succession Ceremony, the Regent’s people could only swallow their anger.
At present, only Lucas knew that Aria Desmo was a traitor and a subordinate of Evil Empress Octana.
That was because there was not yet conclusive evidence to reveal the Chancellor’s crimes.
As the atmosphere between the two groups on the left and right grew tense, a voice came from the direction of the throne.
“Her Majesty will be out shortly.”
At the far end of the audience hall, a door behind the Queen’s throne opened. The maids and the head maid emerged from the bedchamber, trembling.
“Everyone, please maintain your distance.”
Though they wore layers of fur clothing, the maids shivered as they quickly crossed the audience hall and stood behind the brazier.
“Your Majesty! Preparations are complete!”
Once everyone had moved behind the brazier, the head maid, Vanessa, informed the Queen.
Her voice was not loud, but it carried clearly over a great distance. Before becoming head maid, Vanessa had been a low-ranking witch.
Having finished speaking, Vanessa also hurried to stand beside the brazier in the audience hall. Then she disappeared outside the hall with the maids.
Perhaps ten seconds passed after the head maid and maids disappeared.
The bedchamber door opened, and the ruler of the Kingdom of Luhan appeared.
After looking at the brazier at the far end of the audience hall and the ministers standing behind it, she took her seat on the throne.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
As the Queen sat on the throne, Chancellor Aria and Regent Lucas stepped forward.
Ten meters, eight meters, nine meters, seven meters.
The two stopped sharply at the same distance. The ministers followed, walking forward until each reached the closest distance they could endure, then stopped.
“We greet Your Majesty.”
As the Regent began the greeting, the other ministers also bowed their heads in respect.
“Yes. Have you all been well?”
Lucifurne greeted them warmly as she looked to the left and right of the audience hall.
There was a trace of excitement in the Queen’s sapphire-like eyes as she looked down at her subjects, and her cheeks were flushed as well.
‘Her Majesty appears to be in an especially good mood today.’
‘Did she perhaps have a pleasant dream last night?’
Each person stood between seven and eleven meters from the Queen, but they all looked uncertain at the sight of their sovereign, who appeared particularly happy today.
During the previous two Royal Councils, the Queen had radiated a cold, lonely, expressionless, and dark atmosphere.
“Begin at once. How are the Empire’s movements?”
As she received her subjects’ puzzled gazes, Lucifurne announced the beginning of the Royal Council.
The Queen’s manner seemed somehow hurried.
‘I want to see Solacius soon.’
In truth, she was rushing. She simply did not realize it herself.
Although she had stayed awake all night, she was neither sleepy nor tired. If anything, her spirits seemed to be floating, and her heart was still thumping away.
Even now, it felt as though Solacius’s figure from last night were faintly visible before her. If she closed her eyes, it felt as though she could sense his breathing, skin, warmth, and firmness from that time.
The warmth and comfort she had felt for the first time since the curse. No, perhaps it had been the first time in her entire life.
The Queen’s eyes hovered somewhere between languid and vacant. Her lips kept parting slightly, and the foolish smile on her face did not fade along with the blush on her cheeks.
With such a Queen seated upon the throne, the Royal Council began.
“The Imperial Army has densely encircled the border territory of Marquess Moonlight.”
“After making such large movements, they have ultimately chosen a tight encirclement.”
“What in the world could they be planning?”
The subject of the ministers’ discussion was the Imperial Army’s movements. It was also why the Royal Council had convened three times in a single week.
‘History has changed.’
Even Lucifurne, still immersed in last night’s excitement, watched the meeting with serious eyes at this moment.
“As long as the Blessing of the Snowfield remains, the likelihood of them starting an all-out war is low.”
“Then what is the purpose of their current movement? Could they have found a way to break the Blessing of the Snowfield?”
Everyone recalled the Necromancer’s recent rampage.
The Blessing of the Snowfield was weak along the border territory’s outer reaches and the frontier itself.
Even if unjustified slaughter occurred, the blessing did not activate unless the scale was large enough.
The Punishment of the Snowfield only descended when one person killed more than ten people at once.
“The Necromancer clearly slaughtered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Yet the Blessing of the Snowfield did not mete out punishment.”
“Could the Empire truly be behind the Necromancer?”
“The connection between that Necromancer and the Empire has not yet been established.”
“What do you mean, it has not been established? The Imperial Army has been moving on a massive scale ever since the Necromancer died.”
“If there were no Blessing of the Snowfield, the existing Imperial Army alone would be enough to conquer the Kingdom of Luhan. There would be no reason to add such massive reinforcements.”
At the border, the Blessing of the Snowfield was only a burden to powerful individuals such as knights and mages, who could kill dozens of people in a single battle.
It did not mean much to ordinary Imperial soldiers, who killed at most four or five people in a battle.
Even so, the Kingdom of Luhan was grateful for it. Compared to the Empire, it had an overwhelming shortage of high-level forces such as knights and mages, so something was better than nothing.
“We have already sent every available force to the border.”
“Even if we conscript new soldiers and gather supplies, it will take at least three months.”
“Even if we wish to conscript more soldiers, there are no men left in the country. Women are already handling everything from farming to hunting.”
“If we conscript any further, we will have to conscript the elderly and women as well. If that happens, the country will be completely ruined.”
“Even if we cannot conscript more soldiers, we must continue sending supplies to Marquess Moonlight. Financial support as well! I hear rumors that House Moonlight is on the verge of bankruptcy!”
“What we need now is high-level personnel such as knights and mages, not ordinary soldiers. It would be better to discharge the soldiers and have them farm instead.”
The ministers all raised their voices. The Queen, Chancellor, and Regent simply listened for the time being.
“Even so, we cannot ignore numbers. We cannot abandon the outer reaches of the border territory, can we? Our knights may be able to kill dozens or hundreds of Imperial soldiers at once, but the Imperial Army is still far too numerous.”
At this point, one might think they should simply abandon the outer reaches of the border territory and retreat to the inner regions, where the Blessing of the Snowfield was strong. But that was not the case at all.
The Blessing of the Snowfield was an organic barrier that only exerted its effects as far as the Kingdom of Luhan’s administrative power reached.
In other words, if its territory shrank, the Blessing of the Snowfield would shrink as well.
“Hmm…….”
“What in the world are they planning……?”
The ministers on the left and right, who had been voicing their opinions, fell into thought.
At least at this moment, everyone was worried about the Kingdom of Luhan without dividing themselves into the Chancellor’s side or the Regent’s side. Whether they were genuinely concerned or merely acting, no one knew.
‘What are they planning?’
Lucifurne also sat on her throne and searched through her memories from before her regression, pondering the Empire’s intentions.
History had changed. The Shadow Core and the Grand Witch of Death no longer existed.
Evil Empress Octana and Aria, the Witch of Ashes, had surely found an alternative. That was why they had moved their army like this.
‘The Sunwell Ring? A World Tree Sapling? The Eastern Great Plains?’
Too many possibilities came to mind. She looked at the Chancellor, who stood quietly with her head lowered. Lucifurne wanted to freeze that gray crown of her head.
“Your Majesty! An urgent report!”
At that moment, the audience hall doors flew open, and Commander Haimar rushed in with an urgent expression.
“Marquess Moonlight has sent an urgent report through magical communication.”
Haimar’s expression was heavier than ever before.
“The Dark Legion and the Dark Grand Duke have appeared near Volka Mine, at the southernmost tip of the Kingdom of Luhan.”
The atmosphere in the audience hall collapsed at the urgent report the Commander of the Royal Knights had brought.
‘…….’
Queen Lucifurne’s expression froze, and Regent Lucas’s face twisted. The other ministers were the same.
Only the Witch of Ashes remained expressionless.