MHHC Chapter 78

The Other Realm

'Even though it's still cold, the season is early spring, but here the leaves are still clinging to the trees.'

The landscape was as desolate as early winter might be. That's how she knew this wasn't her world—couldn't be, shouldn't be.

Winter and spring could mix, but fall and spring could never intertwine. It was a law written into the fabric of things. Valentin didn't answer and instead climbed the collapsed temple's stairs while still holding her, his steps sure despite the burden.

"Um, if you put me down, I can walk up myself. At this rate, you'll fall too."

The stairs were steep enough that if something went wrong, he might get hurt as well. But instead of putting her down, Valentin held her even tighter, as if she were something precious he couldn't risk losing.

"Are you anxious that I might hurt you?"

"That's not it, but..."

"Then conserve your strength. We don't know how the situation might change."

"...Am I not heavy?"

"Not at all. I could hold you with one hand."

At those words, she recalled the past when he'd actually done exactly that—effortless strength that had seemed almost casual.

She'd completely forgotten it recently because he'd become so skilled at controlling his strength, but she remembered how in the early days he'd break glassware and brass cups alike at the slightest touch, as if everything were made of eggshells.

Adelheid obediently closed her mouth.

"Just be patient a little longer. We're almost there."

The gentle explanation followed, as if she'd made the request out of frustration, as if he needed to soothe her like a restless child.

Adelheid realized that the anxiety she'd constantly felt from Valentin after coming to the capital had completely disappeared, melted away like frost under sun.

He seemed much more relaxed now, but Adelheid somehow thought that this composure was connected to a kind of resignation—the peace that comes when you stop fighting what you cannot change. She could guess the reason too.

'It's probably because the situation he'd been carefully trying to avoid finally happened. Probably... because of me...'

She wrapped her arms tightly around Valentin's neck and buried her face in his solid chest, breathing in the scent of him—shadows and something wild. In the end, she was the one who had made all his efforts come to nothing, reduced them to ash and regret.

After passing through a corridor lined with massive arches, a huge pond appeared in the center, unexpected and arresting.

She was a bit flustered because she hadn't expected such an open space inside the building. Of course, that lasted only a moment.

'I definitely feel like I've seen this somewhere...'

The realization about the strange sense of déjà vu came immediately. The strange ownerless cottage he'd taken her to last time—like something from a dream half-remembered.

That secluded space and this place were as similar as twins might be. Even down to the tree planted densely along the edge of the lakeside...

The only differences were that the tree here was overwhelmingly larger, and in the space where the cottage should have been, there was instead a massive black rock—or something like a rock, something that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

"We're here."

Valentin gently set Adelheid down by the lakeside, his movements careful as if she were made of glass that might shatter.

His eyes, checking whether her small feet could stand on the ground, were the same as usual, but his face without shadows somehow looked strangely peaceful—the kind of peace that comes after long suffering, when you've finally surrendered to fate.

Adelheid found herself absurdly wondering if perhaps this situation's occurrence might not be a bad thing for his mental and physical state, if the crisis had brought some twisted form of relief.

Along with the self-blame that perhaps her complete disappearance from his life would be more helpful to him—a mercy for them both.

"What a thing to think."

Valentin looked down at her as if dumbfounded, then soon twisted only his lips into a smile—sharp and knowing and sad all at once.

He seemed to have given up trying to hide the fact that he could now look into her mind, as if maintaining that fiction had become too exhausting.

"Wait here for a moment."

"...Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere, stay here."

Where would she go in a place like this anyway? When Adelheid nodded, Valentin narrowed his eyes—that look that had always made her heart race despite everything she knew. Then in the next moment, his form completely disappeared from before her eyes.

"...Valentin?"

Naturally, no answer came back. Even though she'd long known he wasn't human, every time she witnessed it directly, bewilderment followed like a shadow she couldn't shake.

Adelheid erased her surprised feelings and turned her gaze elsewhere, trying to make sense of this impossible place.

Outside the temple was bleak, and this place looked eerily peaceful—like the calm before something terrible. If not for that massive black rock marring the scenery...

'Wait... is that really a rock?'

She narrowed her eyes and examined the alien object more closely, drawn by curiosity stronger than fear.

It looked at first glance like very black, viscous liquid had solidified firmly into shape—like exploded lava that had surged up and become a cliff or rock in the moment of its fury.

So for a moment she thought it was inanimate. If the back part of it hadn't risen and fallen minutely during the brief time she watched, the illusion would have continued indefinitely—safe and simple.

'Did... did that just move?'

If something that enormous was a living creature, she had absolutely no idea what it could be, what nightmares might birth such a thing.

The outer shell was very hard and smooth, and the light that gleamed off it was strangely, unsettlingly elegant—beauty married to something ancient and terrible.

While she watched for some time, it only writhed very slightly and didn't show any large movements, as if it were pretending to be stone, playing at stillness.

If it really was a living creature, it seemed to be in a very deep sleep—the kind you might never wake from.

'...What is that? Scales?'

Curiosity overcame fear and dread of the unknown creature. When she raised her hand above her eyes to shade them and see more clearly, wanting despite everything to know—

"Don't worry about that and come here."

Before she knew it, Valentin had approached behind her, silent as thought. In one hand he held a glass bottle, in the other a dagger that looked similar to the one he'd given her—twin blades for twin purposes.

He held out the glass bottle to her, liquid sloshing inside like something alive.

"Drink this."

"This is..."

"It will make you expel the magic dwelling in your body. I need to confirm what exactly you ate."

"You mean... I ate magic?"

"In human language, to be precise, you consumed divinity."

She didn't quite understand. She hadn't eaten any food today that she could remember.

She'd skipped the lunch Margaret had prepared for her at the hunting grounds, and after going out, all she'd eaten was... A scene flashed through Adelheid's mind as she continued her thoughts, sudden and sharp as broken glass.

'The preserved plums His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince gave me.'

Divinity had been embedded in that food? Adelheid looked at Valentin with disbelieving eyes, unable to reconcile this accusation with reality.

He was always skilled in lies and trickery, but she hadn't known he would go so far as to slander an innocent person like this—to accuse royalty of such calculated malice.

Valentin seemed to notice her resistance and let out a short sigh, the sound heavy with things unsaid.

"It seems it's already starting to take effect. I'm sorry, but right now I don't have time to appease you."

Valentin tilted the glass bottle and put all the liquid inside into his own mouth, then grabbed Adelheid's chin and lifted it—firm and inescapable.

He pressed her lips with his finger and transmitted through will alone:

[Open your mouth.]

With a gasp, Adelheid opened her mouth, and Valentin gently covered her lips with his own—a kiss that tasted like medicine and shadows and something she couldn't name.

His large hand wrapped around her exposed white throat as if to cradle something fragile. Soon the hot liquid seeped into her mouth, foreign and burning.

Her shoulders trembled at this first experience of such forceful intimacy—violation wrapped in necessity. She pushed against Valentin's shoulders in resistance, but he didn't budge even slightly, solid as the stone around them.

Instead, he gently massaged her throat with his calloused thumb, coaxing and soothing like you might gentle a frightened animal.

[Just a little more...]

At his skillful actions, Adelheid forgot even to resist and unknowingly swallowed all the liquid she'd held in her mouth, the heat of it spreading through her chest like wildfire.

Immediately, her stomach heated up intensely, burning from the inside out.

"Ahh."

She let out a short moan and covered her mouth. Her stomach twisted violently, incomparably worse than the nausea she'd felt earlier—like something inside her was trying to claw its way out.

Before she was even aware of it, Adelheid bent at the waist, surrendering to the rebellion in her body.

Her throat constricted with a lurch, and soon something hard fell from her open mouth to the ground with a dull thud that seemed too loud in the silence.

Adelheid panted and wiped her lips with the back of her hand, tasting bile and bitterness.

"This is..."

It was a round object that had turned black. Surely the flesh she'd easily crushed and swallowed with her teeth had clumped together in her stomach and transformed into a hard seed—corruption made solid, malice given form.

Adelheid looked at the seed with disbelieving eyes, panting as if she'd run a great distance through nightmare.

When Valentin crushed it with his boot, the seed crumbled and transformed into black smoke that disappeared like a lie—like it had never existed at all.

"It's a seed of doubt that Morig often plants. Thanks to it, I noticed the situation you were in far too late."

Undisguised revulsion oozed from Valentin's face, which had sunk coolly—the kind of hatred that goes bone-deep and doesn't fade.

Adelheid was still in a daze. The emotions that had been raging with resistance toward him just moments ago had cooled instantly as if they weren't hers at all, revealing themselves as foreign things that had been planted like that seed.

"You mean—"

"The one who gave this to you is Morig's avatar."

Could it be that the Crown Prince... When she looked at him as if she couldn't believe it, Valentin readily affirmed, his voice flat and final.

"That's right. I'm talking about Crown Prince Mikhail."

"Then... you're saying His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince is... Morig?"

"Similar. Though he's not always that way. Morig doesn't keep just one avatar body. His consciousness briefly dwells in whichever avatar body is convenient to use at the time—like trying on different masks, different skins."

"That's..."

"That's why I told you not to trust anything."

"..."

"I should have taught you earlier to be wary of food given by those you don't know."

Now his voice was practically teasing, like he was mocking a child who'd touched a hot stove despite warnings. Adelheid bit her lip hard, then quickly defended herself.

"But I had no choice either. You didn't tell me anything, Valentin. You made no indication to me about the marriage annulment either, and you didn't warn me about the effects magic would have on me."

Adelheid's eyes sank coldly, the green of them like winter ice. The emotions she'd forgotten in the rush of chaotic circumstances came vividly alive again, raw and bleeding.

The bewilderment when she'd heard about 'magic' from Joachim, the sense of betrayal that had cut deeper than any blade...

Most terrible of all was that she still felt her heart flutter when she looked at him—her body betraying her even when her mind knew better.

"..."

Valentin gazed at her with a quietly sunken face, as if he'd guessed everything beyond what she hadn't said—reading the spaces between her words like another language.

With those eyes that had always made her overwhelmingly heated. Heartbreakingly so.