With most of the Cavalry members already having departed for the courthouse, the interior of the Cavalry grounds was eerily quiet—so much so that one couldn’t see a single shadow of a person. Seated in the carriage, Kishiar began reading through the summary document from Inon that Yuder had handed him, flipping pages without pause.

“Have you already gone through this, Assistant?”

“I read through it once before bed last night.”

Most of the material Inon had selected as relevant consisted of stories from a distant, now-forgotten past. With unfamiliar terminology and names, it was difficult to grasp what information was supposed to be drawn from them, even if the eyes could follow the words.

But Kishiar was someone especially skilled at extracting value from obscure narratives.

“Impressive. If any scholars who study non-human races saw this, their eyes would pop out of their heads. This section here even reads like an excerpt from a historical text... Judging by the attached notes, it looks like this is all that was preserved by the Great Mage. A historical record from before the Great Cataclysm—if published, it would be the first of its kind. It’s a shame we don’t have the full volume.”

While Kishiar spoke with genuine admiration, Yuder’s reaction was far more subdued.

“...I had a feeling that chapter full of unfamiliar terms was going to be something like that.”

“Haha. With none of the names of people or places matching anything from today, of course it felt foreign.”

“It’s only natural,” Kishiar said with a bright smile.

“As expected of something collected by the Great Mage Luma. While the topics and themes are consistent throughout, there’s one thing I can say with certainty.”

“What’s that?”

“That even the people who lived before the Great Cataclysm believed in gods and fought monsters—just like us.”

What’s so remarkable about that? As Yuder blinked, Kishiar gave him a knowing smile. He flipped to a page in the summary and spread it open so Yuder could see.

“There’s something here that suggests why they fought so hard. Can you spot it?”

It was a tale of a heroic swordsman.

Born of a dragon father and human mother, he had sealed half his soul into a mystical blade, granting him miraculous abilities. After risking his life and securing a hard-won victory against the “aberrations,” he went before the king to receive a reward. Kishiar pointed to the final exchange between the king and the swordsman.

‘–The king asked: Now that the aberrations are vanquished, need we still fear the return of the Age of the Unknown?’

‘–The swordsman replied: Your Majesty! Worry not. The aberrations I destroyed were mighty, but they are nothing compared to the six-winged flame that once scorched half the sea during the Age of the Unknown...’

Kishiar tapped his finger on the phrase Age of the Unknown.

“‘The Age of the Unknown.’ A phrase I’ve never seen before—but everyone in this story seems to know exactly what it means. It appears in various forms elsewhere, too. Doesn’t that sound... familiar?”

“...That’s...”

As Yuder furrowed his brow, Kishiar nodded with a smile.

“Exactly. It’s similar to how we now think about the time before the Great Cataclysm. Unlike them, most people today don’t seriously fear the return of that age, but the feeling is similar.”

But Yuder had seen what it looked like when the world truly began to collapse—and so he understood that feeling all too well.

“The fact that even before the Great Cataclysm, there was another ‘cataclysm’ in the more distant past—and that long-extinct races were aware of it—that’s a fascinating detail.”

Yuder slowly nodded in agreement. What had felt like meaningless text became much clearer when Kishiar walked him through it.

“Luma also speculated that there were more heroes who turned back time—not just the Founding Emperor or the pre-Cataclysm founders of old. I suppose this could be seen as supporting that idea.”

“Indeed. And this talk of ‘aberrations’ and a ‘six-winged flame’—I’ve seen those terms elsewhere.”

“Where else?”

“In the old scriptures of the Black Moon Cult, borrowed from the Imperial Library’s restricted archives.”

Kishiar grinned.

“In the current Sun God scriptures, it refers to a demon who stabbed the Sun God in the gut with a spear—but in the ancient versions, it’s described more like this.”

Yuder recalled the brief mention in Luma’s journal of the ancient rivalry between the Sun God cult and the Moon God cult—and the speculation that both religions may have originally shared a common root.

“Then what about the older versions of the Sun God scriptures?”

“The copies I have match today’s version. But the oldest versions housed in the Grand Temple might be different.”

And Kishiar had already declared he planned to sneak in and inspect them anyway.

“So now we know exactly what to look for when we get into the Grand Temple.”

“Exactly.”

The magically enchanted carriage rolled along in silence. Kishiar gazed out the small window, watching the scenery stream by, and murmured:

“According to the Black Moon scriptures, the god created the moon as a gate and sacrificed himself to keep all unclean things outside the world. When demons outside tried to break in and gnawed at the gate, the moon grew thin and cracked the sky—but in the end, the god’s power kept restoring it, over and over again, to protect humanity.”

That story, of course, was nowhere in the Sun God texts.

Once, he might have dismissed it as mere mythology. But Kishiar now seemed more willing to interpret it through the lens of what they’d learned so far.

“If the one who left a «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» warning for the world was a divine messenger—and the scripture records his words—then this might provide a framework for understanding how monsters and dimensional rifts came into being. It’s exactly the kind of truth Duke Oblik van Ta-in spent his entire life trying to uncover.”

Rifts, and the monsters that came through them.

Yuder had seen them already.

He recalled the hazy darkness from his dreams, the unspeakable dread that came just from looking at that chaos.

From there, it was only natural for the image of a white-gloved hand to follow in his mind.

...

The hand Kishiar had once glimpsed at Peleta Castle—a hand Yuder hadn’t seen again since.

All unclean things...

At first, that hand had felt like the very embodiment of something ominous. But now, it didn’t.

He didn’t want to label it a monster or “unclean,” even if the hand itself claimed it was.

For some reason, his head began to ache. Yuder closed his eyes, then shook his head slowly.

“Is your head hurting?”

Kishiar asked with concern.

“Shall I turn the carriage around?”

“No, I’m alright. I just... tend to get headaches when I think too hard about overly complex things. I like things to be simple.”

Kishiar looked at him for a moment, as if to confirm for himself whether Yuder was truly okay. Yuder gave a faint smile to reassure him and then steered the conversation away.

“You should hear what Inon guessed about my grandfather as well.”

“...Alright.”

Thankfully, Kishiar let the matter drop.

Yuder gave a brief summary of his conversation with Inon. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

“Inon agrees my grandfather probably wasn’t an ordinary man. As for our speculation about him belonging to a magical school or being linked to magic... he said that if it were anyone, it’d have to be someone like the Great Mage Luma.”

“Mm.”

More precisely, Inon meant there probably weren’t many others who’d have the motive and the power to pull off something like that.

“He also suspects that if the spell called ‘Blessing of the Great Mage’—the one passed down through that magical sect—actually exists, it must be closely related to the kind of soul-transferring magic he used to create himself. That is to say...”

Though the conditions would have been different—Inon had a body created for a spirit—Yuder slowly voiced the phrase Inon had compared to the legends of dragons and old scriptures.

“A spell that makes the idea of demonic possession—a foreign soul inhabiting someone else’s body—a reality.”

“I see.”

Kishiar nodded slightly.

“Inon also said that even if the spell had succeeded, it likely wasn’t perfect. He expected to be born with spirit memories or traits, but instead came into the world with none at all.”

“No memories, huh... Then yes, that would explain things. Makes sense.”

“Yes. You once said it seemed like my grandfather acted like someone who’d been locked away for a long time and only just emerged into the world, didn’t you?”

The carriage came to a stop in front of the courthouse. Their conversation paused there—for the time being.