RAMHM Chapter 142

The Truth That Had Been Hidden Surfaces

Even the priests lined up behind me, following the Grand Prelate's lead and reaching their hands toward the sky, made the watching crowd's mouths fall slowly open.

"It must be the oracle!"

"Oh God—to witness an oracle being received with my own eyes!"

In the midst of the crowd's murmuring, Bliea's eyelid twitched.

Seeing it, Telrn swallowed a sharp breath and cried out.

"The true saint, blessed by God—Adrienne Trovika—will return from Abadhelia, bearing God's will!"

Just as everyone drew in a breath at the sight of Grand Prelate Telrn, his voice rolled back, his eyes rolled back—

I saw it clearly.

A flash. Eyes opening. A face gone pale.

Bliea Pirreta's pale-green eyes, glinting the same color as my own.

And I was not the only one who saw Bliea's eyes open.

"The moment the dead return to life!"

"Your Eminence!"

Sensing that something had gone wrong, Doris let out a scream that seemed to tear the air itself.

But leaving Doris behind, Telrn, already entranced by the miracle, shouted louder still.

"The truth hidden deep within the palace surfaces! And on Ronteaux, a new—a new—!!"

His voice was thunderous, as if blood might burst from his throat.

"A new sun! The next sun! Shall shine bright on Ronteaux!!"

"Hh—hk. Hgh—!"

Witnessing the miracle with his own eyes, blood finally broke from Telrn's mouth along with his ragged breath.

The plaza, which had been surging with murmurs, went silent as the grave.

The color drained entirely from the Emperor's face where he sat at the high seats.

And at last, Rhodness—standing beside the Grand Prelate—spotted me and shot up to his feet.

A still more astonishing miracle followed.

Clunk!

The lid of the tilted glass coffin gave way and fell open.

"Oh God!"

A pale-haired woman began, unsteadily, to walk out.

The people below the dais, jaws dropped wide enough to come unhinged.

The eyes of those who'd seen the miracle with their own eyes, wide enough to burst.

Drawing in his breath, Grand Prelate Telrn, on the verge of collapse, shouted with blood pouring from his lips.

"The next sun shall shine bright on Ronteaux!!"

He pointed, precisely, at Rhodness, who stood bolt upright.

The sacred and solemn ceremony grounds became chaos in an instant.

"An oracle! An oracle!!"

"The saint isn't the Crown Princess—it's—"

"The dead Grand Duchess?"

"Her Grace the Grand Duchess is the saint!"

"The saint who returned with God's blessing from Abadhelia!!"

A roar started up that nearly burst the ears. The cries of those who had seen the miracle bordered on shrieks of anguish.

Feeling my ears go numb with the noise, I supported the Grand Prelate, who had only just managed to gather his wits in the arms of a priest.

"Adrienne…… Pirreta……? It can't be……!!"

Watching Bliea, who had finally managed to stand, leaning unsteadily on the coffin, Doris shook her head like a madwoman.

"No. No. It can't be. This is a dream."

Ignoring Doris, who had lost her mind and was muttering like someone possessed, I stood in silence and watched Bliea.

Her blonde hair, disheveled but clean.

A dress trailing flower petals, still neat.

A face slightly hollow but white and lovely, across which countless confusions flickered, for one brief instant.

Holding her head and shaking it for some time, Bliea sensed my gaze and looked at me.

The moment she saw me, her face crumpled all at once, then she shook her head as if she couldn't believe it.

I waited quietly for Bliea, leaving the ear-splitting roar behind me.

Bliea's green eyes—the same shade as mine—went to me. To the Grand Prelate.

And then to the dazed Doris, and the Emperor seated in the high seats. And then to the tens of thousands gathered below the dais.

Wherever Bliea's gaze passed, cheers and groans burst out in its wake.

Bliea's slowly drifting gaze lingered a little longer in one place before moving on.

It was where the Pirreta people stood.

And the last place her gaze settled was where Rotsy stood, watching her with eyes that burned like fire.

The unfocused haze in her eyes slowly began to clear, glinting back to life.

The instant she spotted the book in Rotsy's hands, her eyes curved—impish, sudden.

Her lips, crooked with something roguish, curled into an arc—as if she'd already sized up the whole situation.

Her hand, white to the point of paleness, closed into a fist, and she shut her eyes and opened them again, as if feeling the blood moving through her own body.

The watching crowd, holding their breath, let their mouths fall open at the sight.

Bliea opened her hand and murmured something, and in an instant, the book flew clean out of Rotsy's grip.

People's eyes lit with anticipation, eager to know what the first words would be from the mouth of the saint who had died and returned—the Grand Duchess of Trovika, Bliea.

And then they erupted in excitement at the old book that had cut through the cold air and appeared before them.

"It's a holy relic! A relic!"

"A revelation from God!"

And the Emperor's eyes, recognizing that record, slowly widened.

Onto the flames kept burning in great urns, called sacred fire, Bliea threw the book.

Far from catching fire, the book rose into the air on Bliea's low murmur, and—just as it had when Rotsy showed us Bardenaldo's past—it fanned open on its own with a rapid riffling sound.

And then, into the air, the letters carved themselves, miraculous.

I was certain it was Bliea's doing, accomplished through her own mana.

"The founding Emperor Kyrphos was a traitor!!"

Grand Prelate Telrn rushed forward and shouted himself raw.

He had very nearly lost his mind entirely at the countless miracles unfolding before him.

"The symbol of the Ronteaux Imperial House is not the traitor Kyrphos's blue eyes. Kaldaeon's red eyes—!"

Telrn's eyes, slowly recognizing what he had just blurted out, gradually came back to their senses.

But the momentum his mouth had already gathered could not be stopped.

"Kaldaeon's red eyes are the true… the true symbol of the Ronteaux Imperial House!"

Watching the scene, Rotsy's face twisted, sudden, with some unnameable emotion.

And having set the whole thing in motion, Bliea turned the languid gaze she'd given Rotsy toward me instead.

At me—watching her, my face tense—she gave that same impish smile as before.

The Emperor, who had gone pale, finally rose from his seat.

But the crowd's attention was less on the Emperor's reaction than on the old book that wouldn't burn, and on the Grand Prelate who'd shouted aloud, without a moment's hesitation, every letter that had risen from its pages.

As if answering that very moment, the awakened Grand Duchess pointed to the book still floating in the air.

"This record is one that has long been hidden by the imperial family. A record that does not burn, that cannot be torn no matter what harm is done to it. We call such things holy relics."

When someone began crying out to God, a smile touched the woman's lips.

"The mana that the Sun God granted for the benefit of mankind—the blue-eyed imperial family hid it away out of greed for power, and weakened the nation's strength by doing so. Does the Emperor acknowledge this record?"

The crowd's gaze shifted to the Emperor, who looked on the verge of fainting.

But the Emperor's gaze was fixed past the resurrected Grand Duchess's body—on the glass coffin that had stood waiting all this while, draped in white cloth.

Another coffin, its cover pulled away by someone unseen.

Visible only from the high seats since it had not been tilted upright, the Emperor could not tear his eyes from that coffin.

Despite the uproar in front of him, his gaze stayed fixed there, his face slowly collapsing.

"……Letina."

Empress Letina.

Emperor Julius's first love, the only woman whose likeness he had wanted to keep near him even after her death.

The one he had meant to pass the throne to—regardless of what storm Rhodness's red eyes might one day stir—because Rhodness was the only son left to him by her.

The woman he loved that desperately, that achingly.

That woman now lay there, as if merely sleeping, in a glass coffin.

Just as—

'Just as Baroness Kuroseida had.'

His gaze, frozen rigid, turned at last to Rhodness, who had sunk down where he stood, every bit as rigid as the Emperor himself.

"……Rhoan."

"That's right."

The Emperor swayed.

Empress Grace cried out low and caught him, holding him up.

"That's right, Father. This is Bardenaldo's doing."

Feeling as though something were closing around his throat, the Emperor clawed roughly at his own collar.

Rhodness's gaze, like the Emperor's, stayed nailed straight ahead.

"Bardenaldo saw that record. He heard Mother's true will—and unable to let go of her, he kept going back into the imperial archive's hidden vault. And he saw it. That record. And from that day on, he hated me for the rest of his life. The way you hated your other red-eyed brother, when he died."

"Rho……an……!"

"And the real last wish of our mother—the one Bardenaldo hid—was…"

The Emperor's face going whiter and whiter, people began to stir.

No one's hands had closed around his throat, but the Emperor—who appeared to be only exchanging words with the Second Prince—flushed in an instant as if being strangled by several hands at once.

Just before the physicians waiting below could climb the dais, the Emperor, rising unsteadily once more, stopped at some point behind the Grand Duchess's coffin and stood frozen there for a long while.

Somewhere invisible to the people below the dais. Before Empress Letina's coffin.

The veins in his neck rose and faded, over and over, and the Emperor looked up—at the Grand Duchess who had died and lived again, at the Grand Prelate, and at the sky.

No one had ever seen him so steeped in regret, and the whole gathering held its breath.

Even Doris, her ragged breath rasping in and out, could not bring herself to disturb the Emperor's silence.

"I acknowledge……"

And then, the Emperor's voice, amplified by some unknown force, began to carry across the whole plaza.

"I acknowledge the record."

With that, the Emperor's body folded over Empress Letina's coffin, and he wept, low and broken.

The physicians and knights, startled, rushed to support him and carried him back to the high seats to examine him.

"Red eyes are the symbol of the most powerful mana—a flame that protects the people, a flame strong enough to burn away every monster, a light bright enough to save mankind."

At the resurrected Grand Duchess's voice, the chaos in the ceremony grounds gradually began to settle.

But now it was the nobles below the dais whose faces had gone pale.

The Emperor, who had just acknowledged a record that overturned the very foundations of Ronteaux.

"The dead—the dead returning to life. The truth hidden deep within the palace surfacing. The next sun shall shine bright on Ronteaux……!"

Stunned senseless by one miracle after another.

His body utterly limp, and yet his eyes still brimming with every kind of wonder, the Grand Prelate—who seemed able to do nothing now but repeat that oracle of his, the one currently responsible for everything—kept only his mouth moving.

The Grand Duchess of Trovika, who claimed to have died and returned bearing the will of God.

And then there was Doris.

The nobles of the Crown Prince's faction could feel Doris watching them with a terrifying expression.

Among them, the western nobles couldn't bring themselves either to avoid Doris's gaze or to meet it. They simply froze.

"Is it not absurd that the senior ministers of this nation would sit in silence after hearing such nonsense!"

Doris began her final, desperate thrashing.

Pressing forward to the very edge of the dais, her face was now nothing short of a demon's.

"Why are you not defending me—what exactly are you doing! When my father hears of this—"

The voice, pouring out like rapid-fire shots, stopped dead in the middle of a sentence.

Only then did Doris understand.

Already overwhelmed by the newly arrived saint. Already frozen stiff by that nonsense called the truth—the faces of the western nobles had long since lost whatever loyalty they'd once held for her father, Duke Castagna.

'Ah—!'

She understood, then.

The very backbone of those damned western nobles had been her father, lying helpless now.

And it was none other than herself who had put him there.

"Hurry. Hurry and support me. Say you'll believe only my word. This useless… useless……"

At a chill stare she had never once faced before, Doris began shaking her head, fast, as if she could deny the world itself back into shape.