GRP Chapter 23

Murky darkness blanketed the earth. Mariaeks remained among the humans even then. People didn't pay much attention to who she was or why she was there. The incident that had occurred left everything in such disarray.

The Paldoa sisters who had brought Mariaeks here also flew off somewhere after the Yak god departed, spewing curses and shouting they would find that son of a bitch bastard and carve him into one hundred eighty-eight pieces. A group rushed after the sisters in a mass, crying that mad dogs had been let loose and had to be stopped somehow. If anything, Mariaeks thought they seemed more like mad birds than mad dogs.

As a result, Mariaeks found herself standing alone in a corner of the congested thoroughfare where people came and went. The few glances that had come her way slid cleanly off once she pulled her hood down low. She suppressed her presence by habit, and among the large-bodied humans with equally large voices, Mariaeks's existence became less noticeable than a pebble by the roadside.

She could leave this place and slip outside the outer wall without anyone noticing, so returning to the castle would pose no problem at all. Yet Mariaeks waited. Her feet wouldn't quite move. The child of god frozen stiff beyond the castle wall kept flickering before her eyes.

'Tell the lord of this land. With white flames that illuminate the night, burn the child.'

The god's incomprehensible words were also one of the factors weighing down her steps. The lord of this land surely meant that man. Hero Garthe. A human to whom tremendous power capable of destroying anything, a cruel disposition, and the thick stench of blood suited him like his own possessions.

To entrust a child to that brutish human who felt awkward to call a hero? Even knowing their own child had been murdered by humans? Her head felt complicated. Either way, for things to reach a conclusion, the man needed to be there. She never thought she'd end up waiting like this for someone she'd hoped would never return for the rest of her life.

"Are you waiting for the Anir?"

At the question aimed precisely at her, Mariaeks's head turned. It was Oze, made even harder to spot in the night. Mariaeks swallowed. Had he recognized her and spoken to her...

"Lady Mariaeks?"

"...Yes."

"You must have missed him a lot."

Had she ever looked at another person this coldly in her entire life? Even though Oze couldn't see Mariaeks's expression, he smiled slightly as if anticipating her reaction.

"Just joking."

"Not funny."

"I find it funny."

Oze laughed with a chortle and removed his cloak, then draped an extra layer over Mariaeks's shoulders.

"I tried to bring this to you sooner, but the Paldoa sisters were running wild so I went to stop them. They don't listen well to other people."

Trouble showed on his dark face. Mariaeks recalled the youngest—presumably the smallest woman—who'd had her wings grabbed by people earlier. She'd simply knocked down the men desperately clutching her wings and limbs one by one, spat with a ptui while declaring, "I don't listen to anyone weaker than me!" and flew away. The women were clearly exceptional even among Garthe's followers, whether judging by the amount of divine power or anything else. Seeing that Oze had stopped them, he might be stronger than he appeared.

"Oh, already?"

Oze's murmur broke through her recollection. He smiled brightly and looked at Mariaeks.

"You have good instincts, Lady Mariaeks."

Oze's face turned toward the darkness-covered castle wall beyond.

"The Anir has returned."

Exactly ten minutes after those words, the lord of Olgidphaenn returned. Thanks to advance notice, the Paldoa sisters, Oze, Samthyeon, and Garthe's followers had gathered noisily before the castle wall.

The man on the massive black horse swept his gaze indifferently over the faces of those assembled. Mariaeks peeked at him from behind a large-bodied man while her hood was pulled low. Garthe's face, with dried blood blackly caked on it, truly looked savage.

The subjugation that was supposed to take at least a week and at most a month had ended in a mere three days. It was hard to imagine how fierce the battle must have been. The man's aura was much sharper than usual, separate from the calm expression revealed on the surface.

"I don't recall seeing anything good when you all gather like this, so... what is it this time?"

Samthyeon approached Garthe and exchanged words with him. It was the full account of today's incident. The reason the Paldoa sisters returned late to the fortress was because they had a separate assigned mission. That mission was tracking a group of "regressors" who hunted gods to eat their hearts and flesh and become even stronger beings. They had recently discovered traces of regressors near Olgidphaenn. Following that trail, the Paldoa sisters had returned to Fox's Den Fortress first.

As expected, the regressor group had been hunting gods while posing as mercenaries at Fox's Den Fortress during the period Garthe wandered the continent. Then Garthe returned to the fortress. Before leaving Olgidphaenn to escape Garthe's eyes, the regressors hunted a god while exploiting a brief gap—that was today's incident.

Thanks to this, they'd wiped out all the regressors at Fox's Den Fortress in one sweep, but Garthe listening to the report didn't look particularly pleased. It was simply marvelous how he could look threatening even while raising the corners of his mouth. Samthyeon's story gradually approached its end. At the part where the god asked them to burn the child, his eyebrow twitched.

The man moved forward, wrapped in the thick night air. The followers standing where he was heading quickly cleared a path. Mariaeks also hurriedly hid behind another human. A chilly gaze seemed to brush against her for a moment. She raised her head to look, but Garthe's eyes were directed only toward the white god's corpse in the distance.

He stood before the corpse of the young god who hadn't fully grown. Unlike others who looked troubled, his face was calm. Not as if he were forcing down emotion, but as if he felt no emotion about this situation at all.

"Thul'mhoriae."

White breath leaked from Garthe's mouth. Mariaeks knew the meaning of the words he murmured quietly. Into the god's embrace.

Wind blew. The man's black hair melted into the dark night sky and swayed. Warm wind blew gently and tickled Mariaeks's cheek. Such warm wind in the frozen land that was always frozen. Mariaeks traced the wind's path with her eyes as if drawing it. The flow's destination was Garthe.

A wondrous sight unfolded. The man's face gradually brightened, and light filled even his dark eyes. Warm white light began to envelop the frozen corpse. Ah, Mariaeks let out an exclamation. It wasn't white light. It was white flames that shone white.

The white flames wrapping the god swirled and gradually grew larger, then soared high into the sky like a waterspout. The dim night brightened. People's hair and clothes rippled continuously in the vortex of light.

"This is Olgidphaenn's funeral rite."

Mariaeks only listened to Samthyeon's voice coming from beside her.

"We express melting away into earth and water, fire and wind as returning to the god's embrace. But Olgidphaenn is the only place where that's impossible. Isn't it a land that freezes everything, living or dead? Cases of finding intact corpses from a hundred years ago are common."

Thul'mhoriae. Into the god's embrace. Mariaeks reconsidered the meaning.

"The Anir's flames possess the power to destroy things with form and return them to the god's embrace."

After a long while, Garthe slowly brought his separated hands together. The vortex of white flames also began to shrink. The gap between his hands narrowed further. A little more, a little more. Before long, Garthe's hands met softly. The white flames simultaneously vanished without a trace. Though it was merely a gesture to extinguish the flames, Mariaeks somehow thought he looked like he was praying.

Nothing remained where the flames had disappeared. Not even remnants of the corpse or ashes. Only the ground that had been covered by snow was revealed clearly. Nowhere on that ground was scorched black. Though the power was strong enough to burn the corpse without a trace, it hadn't harmed anything else at all.

A snowstorm raged. No, the sound of a snowstorm raging came. Mariaeks looked around. It was the voice of a god visible nowhere. At the same time, the darkened night brightened. This time not with Garthe's flames, but with very fine particles of light floating in the air.

She unconsciously reached out to touch them, but the light powder didn't settle in her hand or touch her. She only felt a cold and familiar energy.

Mariaeks realized this light was the young god's power. The young soul shone its last light in harmony with its parent's voice. Not just where the corpse had been, but the entire space filled with light. Like a quiet snowstorm, the light powder drifted slowly and scattered without wind.

After a long while, the light that had brightly illuminated the night began to grow faint. But it wasn't disappearance—it was the process of seeping into the cold air and moonlight. Into the god's embrace. Only then did Mariaeks understand why the god had asked them to burn the child.

The god sent its voice on the wind blowing from afar. Not eternal pain of loss, but only the glimmer of brief meeting melted within it. The emotion was conveyed deep in her chest, but Mariaeks found it difficult to fully understand. Death was ultimately only miserable separation, wasn't it?

Flickering, blinking, the young soul returned to the god's embrace one by one. A cluster of light floated before her eyes. In the time Mariaeks closed her stinging eyes briefly and opened them, the light blocking her vision had disappeared. Beyond it, only the man wreathed in darkness remained.