The Star of Ruin and the Faint Light

As I reassembled her stuttering words in my mind, I caught my breath. The prophecy, the real content. This meant that the prophecy Mayril had announced was a lie—or at the very least, a distortion.

“You’re going to tell me the real prophecy?”

“That is correct.”

“…Why? Aren’t you and the Elder on the same side?”

I looked at Ita with eyes full of suspicion. She was a woman I couldn’t trust. Following the orders of the true Elder, Mayril, she had spent this entire time pretending to be the one in charge. And now she was going to betray her? It was hard to believe so easily.

In response to my doubt, Ita gave a sorrowful smile and waved her hands gently, as if to say she had no ill intentions.

“I heard. That child… that Your Highness is looking after him.”

“That child? …Are you talking about Chase?”

Ita nodded. What on earth was the relationship between Ita and Chase? Of course, it likely had more to do with the concubine Dalia than with the boy himself.

As I waited in silence, Ita spoke again.

“I am the younger sister of Asana’s father…”

Ita picked up some twigs and stones to arrange something on the ground. A short twig lay between the stones, and another twig ran straight down the center. At the end of that branch, three stones hung in a row, with one more stone attached below the first one. Pointing to it, Ita said this was Asana. Then, she pointed to the last stone in the row above and said it was herself.

‘A family tree?’

But who was Asana? My confusion didn’t last long. Ita added another stone below Asana and spoke again.

“This is the child. I… am the younger sister of the child’s grandfather.”

My jaw dropped. In the original work, not a single relative of Chase ever appeared. The paternal side was one thing, but there had been zero mention of any relatives from his mother’s side, Dalia. I had naturally assumed she was an orphan or someone in a similar position.

But Chase had a great-aunt? Seeing my look of disbelief, she spoke again, thinking I hadn’t understood.

“So, I am the child’s grandmother.”

“I understand that you’re Chase’s grandmother, but why come forward only now? If you had told me at the start…”

I felt a surge of frustration. If I had known Mayril would be this relentless from the beginning, I would have hidden him outside the palace. I didn’t like how Ita was pretending to care for Chase only now. Seeing my cold gaze, Ita’s brow furrowed as she spoke sadly.

“I am watched. The two are always near. I could not speak.”

“…”

“The Elder used me as bait. If someone aimed for the worthless necklace, they were someone who knew something. So, even though I didn’t say the necklace was broken, the Elder already knew.”

“…”

“I walk around. The two beside me watch me. And the Elder watches from afar.”

It meant she was under double surveillance and couldn’t speak to anyone. I understood her situation.

“The Elder does not know Asana became a concubine. She thinks she went to the Empire to work. So I only looked for a worker, but for the Elder to find out about that child…”

It seemed the Elder believed Dalia had gone to the Empire to become a maid. Ita had known she became a concubine but had lied to the Elder. What kind of grudge did the Elder hold that made her so persistent even after Dalia had left the Great Forest?

When I asked what had happened between them, Ita hesitated for a moment before answering.

“Asana was…”

Ita’s story was as follows: Since the Great Forest is a female-centric society focused on priestesses, the only thing a man can do there is become a husband to a priestess. Therefore, Dalia’s father—Ita’s brother—left the Great Forest, married outside, and had Dalia.

“But when Asana was young, the couple had an accident.”

Having lost both parents, Dalia came to her aunt, Ita. After living in the outside world, Dalia struggled to adapt to life as a priestess in the Great Forest and began to wander. Mayril, who possessed a strong sense of elitism, despised her. Eventually, having been targeted by the Elder, Dalia fled to the Black Dragon’s lair.

There were factions even within the Great Forest, and changing the dragon one served was unthinkable. In Mayril’s eyes, Dalia fleeing to the Black Dragon’s lair was nothing short of betrayal. Of course, Dalia hadn’t actually become a priestess of the Black Dragon; she was simply hiding from the Elder.

Dragons have little interest in humans. The White Dragon stood by while the Elder bullied Dalia, and the Black Dragon treated her unauthorized entry into his lair with indifference. To Dalia, who was being hounded by the Elder, that indifference might have been a relief.

“And then Asana, there… she met the child’s father.”

Ita hesitated when she mentioned that Dalia met Chase’s biological father in the Black Dragon’s lair. She lowered her voice to a whisper, covering her mouth and huddling her shoulders as if terrified someone might see her speaking.

“I cannot say who the father is. Must not say. Taboo of the Great Forest.”

“…”

“And the Elder was angry when she learned Asana met him. She tried to kill Asana, who was with child.”

“I see.”

I could guess why. Ita didn’t name the father, but I already knew the details from the original work. The priestesses loathed “him,” and Mayril, with her elitism, surely went beyond dislike into pure hatred.

Because Mayril and the old me shared certain traits, I understood her well.

‘If I apply it to my own situation, it makes perfect sense…’

If I put the old me in Mayril’s place and Chase in Dalia’s, the picture was clear. Mayril hated Dalia for not acting like a proper priestess, just as I had hated Chase for not acting like proper royalty. And in the place of Chase’s father…

‘I can’t think of a specific person. Let’s just put those who insult the gods by their very existence.’

Heretics. What if Chase, who shared my roots, went around meeting those who denied those very roots? Of course, Chase wasn’t blood-related to me, but since the old me didn’t know that, it was a valid comparison. Framed that way, Mayril’s grudge wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.

Regardless, Dalia left the Great Forest to escape Mayril’s death threats. Luckily, imperial envoys were in the Great Forest at the time, and the Emperor was among them. Dalia gave herself to the Emperor and left the forest to become a concubine.

“The Elder… she hated the child’s father very much. She hated Asana too, so she hates the child.”

“Just because of that, she left the Great Forest and came all the way to the Empire to cause this mess?”

Ita shook her head at my words.

“Not ‘just’ because.”

“…”

“The Elder truly, really, very much hated him. She said he must not exist, and so the child must not be born.”

In the end, Ita was saying Mayril loathed Chase’s biological father. A being who should not exist. Certainly, his existence was a threat to this land, so it was technically true. But he hadn’t done anything yet.

‘Besides, with the woman he loved and his biological son existing in this land, would he really drive the world into danger?’

He hadn’t properly appeared in the original work, and the only thing I had heard about him from Dalia was his name. I didn’t understand his character well, but I knew one thing for certain. He cherished and loved Dalia, and that was why he had no choice but to leave her when she was pregnant with his son.

‘It’s certain because a dragon said it.’

It was a fact stated by the Black Dragon, a friend of Chase’s father. When Chase had demanded to know why his father had stood by during his mother’s death and his own misfortune, doubting if he had just played with Dalia, the Black Dragon had shaken his head and spoken: ‘He truly loved you both.’

He had sworn it in the Dragon Tongue. Had it been a lie, he would have perished, but he lived. Thanks to that, Chase’s anger had subsided, and I, too, was certain of the man’s heart.

‘So there’s no way he would put the place where his loved ones live in danger.’

I didn’t think Chase’s father was someone so wicked and thorough that he could deceive a dragon. Even if the Black Dragon didn’t act like a typical dragon, a dragon was still a dragon. He wouldn’t have become friends with such a person.

Now that I knew why Mayril, the true Elder, was so hell-bent on destroying Chase, it was time to learn about the prophecy that allowed her to run rampant.

“Fine. Let’s set that aside. Tell me about the prophecy.”

“The prophecy…”

Ita hesitated. She likely wondered if I could properly understand the prophecy through her limited imperial speech. After a moment’s thought, she scanned the surroundings once more, then grabbed my hand tightly and leaned in close. I reflexively pulled back as her face suddenly approached, but I flinched as she opened her mouth.

The words that came from her were not in any human language, yet they pierced through my ears and embedded themselves into my mind.

[The Star of Ruin has risen over the Empire.

He was raised in misfortune, and pain has awakened him.

Only despair accompanies his steps, and a river of blood flows behind him.

And his wrath shall finally set the world ablaze.

Just as I saw it all and turned away, a distortion occurred.

Within that distortion, I saw a faint light rising above the Star of Ruin,

but I cannot know what influence it shall wield.]