Chapter 127
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His nephew’s right hand, shattered into pieces, could not be restored even through surgery and rehabilitation.
Forget about painting—he was unable to write neatly or perform any movements requiring fine motor control.
Fortunately, aside from his painting becoming terrible and his once-neat handwriting turning somewhat messy, there seemed to be no major issues in his daily life. He had no trouble picking up objects or even wielding a sword.
Judging by the space Felix occupied during his brief stays at the imperial palace, it wasn’t as if he had stopped painting altogether. Smudged sketches and indecipherable abstracts were often scattered about his studio.
So, it didn’t significantly hinder his life.
But it wasn’t perfect either.
Perhaps that was precisely what was driving that man mad.
To be imperfect was to be lacking in something.
That lack was poison. A venomous self-loathing, the first of its kind he had ever experienced, stung Felix acutely. It shattered the shred of humanity he had maintained, however superficially. For an artist who could no longer pursue perfect beauty, the only images he could paint were chaos and destruction.
Hugo glanced sideways at his nephew’s hand with a sense of unease. His right hand, resting on the desk, was tapping the surface in a peculiar rhythm. Tap, swish, tap… It resembled the motion of drawing a line while holding a long brush or pen.
Felix, his gaze fixed outside the window, moved his hand unconsciously until he found a pen rolling on the desk and picked it up.
The ink-soaked nib danced across the paper. In an instant, a few lines took on the shape of a human figure.
Hugo assumed he was sketching the woman again, but for some reason, the form was different from before.
The body was stockier, and the hair was shorter. At first glance, it looked less like a woman and more like a small-framed man.
‘A man?’
Hugo was quite taken aback. But compared to what followed, his bewilderment was nothing.
Felix’s lips slowly parted, and a languid sigh escaped him. As if struggling to swallow his thirst, he licked his lips with his tongue. Before he knew it, the front of his pants had bulged noticeably.
Hugo felt like he was about to faint.
“…Your Majesty?”
Why on earth? What on earth is going on in that head of his!
Had he finally lost his mind? Since the one he was looking for hadn’t shown up, had he decided to turn his attention elsewhere? If not, then why on earth was he suddenly painting such a picture…? Hugo felt like tearing out the white hairs that had sprung up so rapidly over the past year.
Looking closely at his nephew’s sculpted face again, he realized it was fundamentally different from just a few months ago, when he seemed ready to cut down anything that caught his eye. In other words, the temperature was different.
A flicker of heat was passing through those blue eyes that had once held such cold, ruthless intent.
Felix’s pen moved frantically. His uncle, who had come calling under cover of night, was no longer even in his thoughts.
Rough, jagged lines were continuously added, transforming into sharp contours. Eyes appeared on the previously blank face. Only Felix knew the color of those irises, which he had not been able to depict with precision.
An opaque light green.
Sometimes blurred by tears, sometimes clouded by pleasure, sometimes overwhelmed by hatred—yet always unfocused and out of sync, never touching anything.
And now…
“……”
Translucent light-green pupils, pooling with light, were superimposed over the shoddy sketch. A gaze that had once connected so clearly. Eye contact. The moment he recalled that ecstatic act itself, his lower body stiffened violently.
Unable to withstand the pressure, the pen tip snapped with a click.
Felix glanced at the paper, now a mess of smudged ink, and let out a wry chuckle.
“How much longer must I wait?”
“…Yes?”
It was the first word Hugo had spoken since entering the c
Commander’s office. His voice was hoarse, as if the very act of speaking had been a long time coming.
Hugo didn’t immediately grasp his meaning. No sooner had he asked than an impatient demand followed.
“How long must I wait for her to recognize me? Duke.”
“Yes…?”
There was no way he could answer a question that was missing the crucial part.
Yet a strange premonition sent a chill down Hugo’s spine. If the Emperor was waiting for someone he couldn’t recognize, there was only one person who fit that description. Regardless of gender, there was only one person.
Without realizing it, Hugo leapt to his feet.
“Your Majesty, have you found what you were looking for?”
No answer was needed. As his line of sight rose, the bottom of the paper—which had been hidden from his seated position—came into view. Beneath a sketch so rough it was hard to tell if it depicted a woman or a man, there were words scrawled as if pressed firmly onto the page.
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13. The World of Perception
He could never forget the moment he discovered the woman.
It was a night when the moonlight felt particularly bitter. The Royal Palace of Dortes, to which he had hurried back before the aftereffects of the bloodshed in Riporsa had even faded, was as desolate as ever.
Sleep would not come, and the autumn night was long. Wandering about like a ghost of the castle, his footsteps eventually led him to the audience chamber. It was the place where the entrance to the Unknown Spring lay.
The space behind the throne had walls entirely made of glass, allowing the moonlight to stream through unimpeded. It was a beautiful sight—a universe where hundreds of millions of stars twinkled. Had it been any other time, he might have wanted to capture it on canvas.
How long had he been lost in thought? He heard a rustling sound near the doorway. It was a sound as small and light as a squirrel stepping on a blade of grass, yet it strangely caught his attention. The moment he glanced toward the source of the sound, his soul gave a jolt.
Beyond the door, which was ajar by half a span, were a pair of pale green eyes that had been haunting his dreams.
It was a fleeting exchange of glances.
The moment their eyes met was so brief he couldn’t even count the seconds; Felix thought he had seen a mirage. He assumed it was an illusion created by the pouring moonlight and the sound of flowing water.
It wasn’t until he heard the frantic footsteps running down the hallway that he realized what had just happened was neither a hallucination nor an auditory illusion.
As soon as he snapped out of the illusion that time had stopped, he flung open the door to the reception room. Only silence filled the hallway; there was no sign of anyone.
Was it an illusion?
Those round eyes that had been watching him, hidden in the shadows.
Because of the distance, he couldn’t make out the color of the irises or the shape of the eyes. All he could make out were the short, spiky hair and the hem of a coat disappearing behind the door.
But his animal instincts whispered.
No, it wasn’t a mere illusion.
A small droplet of water lay where the unknown figure had stood.
It was a minor trace, but there was no source of water nearby. The round droplet evaporated quickly, as if fleeing from Felix’s gaze.
This only strengthened Felix’s conviction.
“You’re here, Diana.”
The Spring stirred.
Every day for the past few months, whenever he stayed at Dortes Castle, he had watched the Spring’s entrance without fail. He had sensed no movement whatsoever in the dry, parched basin. He knew that the “Tears of the Spirit” were the key to opening the entrance, but no matter what kind of water he poured in, the Spring never opened.
It steadfastly blocked the uninvited guest.
When Felix returned to the audience chamber, he heard the sound of water flowing from beyond the invisible boundary of another dimension.
It was less a sound and more a vibration that stirred the air ever so slightly. Something was changing within the Spring. Was it preparing to welcome someone?
Felix did not sleep a wink that night.
He spent the entire night collecting and examining the passes of all the knights and servants entering and leaving Dortes Castle, and, as if that were not enough, he scrutinized the identities of every immigrant who had recently arrived in Kairam.
The sentries, summoned unexpectedly by the dawn breeze, could not hide their bewilderment, but such matters were of no consequence.
As the morning moon began to sink toward the west, the identity of the intruder who had been wandering the castle at such a late hour was revealed. He was said to be a servant of Senz Rossi, the youngest son of the House of Rossi. He had reportedly just started working under Senz alongside his younger brother… As he received that report, his blood boiled.
“Send him up immediately at first light. Just him.”
His heart pounded as if it were racing out of control.
Before his mind could fully process it, he had seated Pierre—his deputy commander and personal knight—at the desk in the Commander’s office, and he sank into the sofa diagonally across from the doorway. His heart was beating so fast it was giving him a headache.
His reflection appeared in the mirror on the opposite wall. A man with a flawless exterior, as always, yet one who, upon closer inspection, resembled a damaged statue with hairline cracks everywhere, was staring at him with bloodshot eyes.
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