SN Chapter 22

"Whether you can ... reclaim ... in this darkness ..."

He hadn't caught her final words clearly. Itserion covered his ears with both hands and urged him away with mounting insistence, and so Rikardis, too, left from in front of the solitary cell.

He reconstructed her final words on the way out. Her lips had traced each shape, one by one. A curse, perhaps. Or the hint of something. He couldn't know yet. He moved without looking back once at the cell that held her.

'Whether you can reclaim the white night by Idelabheim's existence alone—in this darkness, I'll be watching, Rikardis.'

Itserion had chattered and nagged without pause until Rikardis's ears were going numb. The source of the complaint: that Rikardis had engaged in something resembling friendly conversation with Ketrin—a former executive of Dark Moon, the fanatic cult devoted to Kreyan Tithanion. That vicious speech had appeared friendly. Staggering.

The fact that magical power had been mixed into the poison meant to kill him was now confirmed by her own mouth. The people belonging to Elpydion and the Emperor, who had been present in the underground prison when she spoke. They would testify: that Dark Moon, and the Kingdom of Balta besides, had created a new poison capable of rendering even holy power meaningless. A threat not only to Rikardis, but to the Illavénian Imperial House entire. The enemies of one's enemies were always welcome. The problem was a supposed ally who had taken the enemy's hand.

Rikardis tossed and turned for a long while, tracing the pattern on the ceiling with his eyes. He had never slept easily, but tonight was particularly difficult. His body was exhausted; his mind was sharp. A kind of sleep disorder, acquired courtesy of the frequent assassination attempts of childhood. He closed his eyes and counted sheep against a dark backdrop, recalled lullabies that might be sung to small children. Despite every effort, his mind only grew clearer.

Rikardis exhaled and raised himself. Tonight, too, sleep was plainly out of the question. There was always work enough to make the long night pass without boredom. On sleepless nights he had generally reached for his quill... but—

Tonight his eyes kept returning to the cabinet where the wine bottles lay in their neat horizontal rows. Rikardis knew that on nights like this, the desk was not the right choice. He took a bottle and settled loosely against the long sofa. There were only a few candles; the room was dim. Which made it all the more conspicuous—a faint white light resting on the wine glass and the table. Moonlight that had worked its way through the slight gap in the curtains. Rikardis followed it with his gaze.

A portion of the round moon was visible. It looked like the eyes of a woman gone wholly white.

His mood soured instantly and he tipped the wine back in one swallow.

Dark Moon. White Night. These were not simply the name of the fanatic group devoted to Kreyan Tithanion, nor the name of the Second Prince's order of knights. The brilliant past of a continent now withering and dying. A legend handed down from ancient times.

⌜The God of Light Idelabheim, on the day his holy power reached its very pinnacle, drove the God of Darkness Kreyan Tithanion out of the night.

A blessed white light, brighter than day itself, illuminated the whole world. All life was revived. The black curtain that had covered land and sky slowly withdrew to one edge of the heavens. Even shadows—the mark of darkness—disappeared entirely, so that not a single shadow remained on the earth. A white night blanketed the world. Kreyan Tithanion, driven from the night, hid in the moon, and dwelled in the blackened moon until the night that Idelabheim had dyed white came to an end.⌟

...or so ran the legend spread throughout Illavénia—throughout the entire continent, in fact. Legend. Rikardis tilted his head slightly. He turned the word over briefly, testing whether it fit, and arrived at the same conclusion he always did: it couldn't simply be called a legend. And yet calling it truth made it sound like an endlessly fantastical tale, and he knew that too.

It was known that until approximately three hundred years ago, the Day of Revival—the "Night of Blessing," in which the White Night and Black Moon rose together—had appeared. But hundreds of years was sufficient time to turn truth into just one legend among countless others.

Many people assumed the Night of Blessing was no more than what all founding myths claimed: something attached to confer legitimacy upon royal authority. The era was one in which even the power of legend had greatly faded. But Rikardis knew. That unrealistic divine world where even shadows vanished—the brief window of that time. The Night of Blessing exists.

In the Illavénian Imperial House. In the temple. An old archive hidden in the deepest reaches, where not just anyone was permitted to enter. In booklets written by various hands over many generations, the vivid record remained of the white night and black moon that had repeated since Illavénia's founding.

Year 1 ...... Year 47 ......

Year 236 ...... Year 243, Year 263

Year 297 ...... Year 345 ...... Year 3 ...... 4 ......

⌜The Illavénian Emperor, by the blessing of Idelabheim, drove Kreyan Tithanion to the moon and summoned the White Night. The earth from which shadows had departed was dyed in blessing. Life circulated, and buds opened, and flowers bloomed, and fruit was borne.⌟

To summon the Night of Blessing required a vast amount of holy power. It was a natural consequence that those possessing immense holy power became Emperor. But as time passed, the Night of Blessing gradually ceased to appear, and voices began to be heard questioning whether successive Emperors had lacked the necessary capability. These voices pointed to the insufficient holy power of the Emperors two or three generations before the current one. But since the Night of Blessing had not appeared for far longer than that, those voices could never gather real force, and could never be fully silenced either—still quietly buried to this day.

Hundreds of years had now passed since the last recorded Night of Blessing. The continent was slowly dying. Land blessed with holy power and holy water recovered, but the steady decline in grain harvests and fruit-bearing trees could not be halted.

This was because holy power applied to dying land did not restore it completely. Without periodic blessing, it reverted to arid ground immediately. Through various experiments at the temple, the conclusion had been confirmed: reviving land with holy power was possible. But it was only a first-order measure—like brewing medicinal herbs for the gravely wounded.

A visible effect. The underlying problem unchanged. The situation was urgent.

Rikardis had investigated the Night of Blessing out of the Emperor's sight. If the materials held by the Imperial House were insufficient, he would need to find oral traditions passed down in each region, or scriptures from old libraries. But as time passed, materials had been lost, and old accounts had been distorted and forgotten.

The detailed truth about the process and conditions was known only to the Emperor. Because summoning the Night of Blessing was the greatest duty and exclusive right belonging solely to the Illavénian Emperor. Put differently: another person raising the Night of Blessing constituted an act of rebellion against the Emperor. Even if Rikardis could summon it, he must never attempt it. Not until he had inherited the throne.

A thoroughly absurd situation. The current Emperor lacked sufficient holy power himself—could not have summoned the Night of Blessing even if every other condition were met—yet he scraped and clawed, clinging desperately to power all the same.

Absurd. And stifling to the point of nausea.

If it ever came to light that he was digging into the Night of Blessing, he would not die pleasantly. It was an act of resistance against the one and only person standing at the apex above all—the single figure who could end tens, hundreds, tens of thousands with a word. Rikardis recognized that his position was, in some measure, dangerous, but judged the risk worth taking.

On the day all conditions were met, it would be a considerable threat to the Emperor. This was a kind of insurance. Not a sword for cutting others down—a sword for protecting himself. For that reason, through every campaign, through serious injuries, through even the deaths of those close to him, he had pursued clues to the Night of Blessing.

What had been too formless even to hold a shape had, today at last, revealed itself slightly.

'Whether you can reclaim the white night by Idelabheim's existence alone—in this darkness, I'll be watching, Rikardis.'

Rikardis drank the wine down like water. So then. He would acknowledge it—that he had been searching for one thing only. From the witch Ketrin's final words, he had obtained an important clue. On the days the White Night appeared, the Black Moon had always appeared alongside it. If he could not find information about the White Night, all that remained was the Black Moon.

Rikardis took his wine glass and moved toward the balcony. He opened the window, his face slightly flushed with wine. Before he could take a single step onto the balcony, he froze—

Eyes met with someone on a tall tree branch growing directly outside.

Rikardis's expression went entirely wrong.

"This ... what on earth ... wh— what are you doing, Dame Rosaline?"

It was uncharacteristic, how flustered he became—stuttering, his voice climbing an octave. Honestly, the fact that he didn’t just let out a scream was a feat in itself. There on the faintly moonlit branch, sitting like a cat: Rosaline of Redwheel.

She answered with an air of complete, practiced innocence.

"On guard duty."

"... Your guard hours were from morning until evening, were they not?"

"Assassins don't come considering my guard hours."

And Rosaline immediately confirmed it. From inside the dense cover of the thickly grown trees, she seized something and hurled it to the ground. It was a person dressed in black. Already unconscious—apparently dealt with by Rosaline prior to this moment. Rikardis looked once at his absurdly capable guard knight, once at the assassin lying bleeding beneath the tree, and rang the bell to summon someone. Before long, knights converged on the sound.