The first person to enter the banquet hall was Kadan. He greeted the lords and their troops, who came in surrounded by their own guards, one by one with a welcoming demeanor. The atmosphere was incredibly hostile and the tension taut, but no one had drawn a weapon or shouted in excitement yet. Though suspected of usurping royal authority, Kadan had not yet claimed the title of King, nor was he the one who had harmed the King, so there was no justification to attack him.

  Kadan merely claimed outwardly to be the Prince's guardian, and until the lords could verify if that was truly the case, Kadan remained the legitimate protector of the Royal Palace.

  "Thank you all, my lords, for traveling such a long way."

  Once the seats were filled, Kadan stepped up to the podium and offered his greetings.

  "Not long ago, due to the curse of the jar, many regrettably met their end. Among them was our liege, the rightful successor and legitimate ruler."

  "Who committed such a horrendous act?! Was it the Witch of the Jar, as the rumors say?!"

  One lord, unable to contain himself, shouted. Because everyone had entered armed, a clatter of metal erupted around the hall with his movement.

  "The exact cause was an accident. I captured and interrogated the Witch of the Jar, but there was no evidence whatsoever that she was the culprit."

  "What evidence would there be if a witch sold her soul to a demon and cast a curse?!"

  Another lord yelled in agitation.

  "Now... please, calm yourselves. First of all, regarding that matter, I will personally summon the Witch later. You may ask her any questions you have directly."

  Kadan pacified the crowd.

  "More importantly, there are matters you must attend to first in this grave situation."

  At his words, the lords instantly fell silent, the tension heightening.

  "First, His Highness the Prince will join us here to speak. I know this is not the proper etiquette, but I ask for your understanding given the severity of the situation."

  Kadan immediately ordered the servant beside him to open the door. The young Prince entered, trembling slightly. At such a young age, with so many events erupting all at once, he was not in his right mind.

  "He is the one who will now stand tall as the new, legitimate, and rightful ruler. Everyone, pay your respects."

  Kadan's servant shouted loudly in time with the Prince's entrance. As the Prince entered, Kadan bowed his head and offered his respects.

  The lords in the hall also stood and paid their respects.

  "I, the primary suc... successor of the Kingdom... am..."

  The Prince looked at the audience with a trembling voice.

  "Because I am still young... and weak... and it is difficult to fulfill the duties entrusted to me..."

  As the Prince continued speaking, everyone stared at him.

  "I hereby bestow a castle upon Kadan Erdenei here... and appoint him as my guardian..."

  The Prince spoke as if reading a given script.

  Hearing this, the lords stood up in uproar all around.

  "This cannot be! The guardian of His Highness the Prince must, by tradition, be chosen from among the nobility. That man has no such qualification!"

  One noble protested. Kadan quietly observed that seat. As expected, it was the table right in the center.

  "Insolent."

  Kadan shouted.

  "Are you denying that the legitimate successor has designated his guardian of his own free will?!"

  A murmur rippled through the hall at Kadan's words.

  The banquet hall was a powder keg, a bizarre mixture of cold silence and hot rage. Behind Kadan’s seat of honor stood guards holding heavy, lead-lined shields like a fortress wall, while in front of him, the sharp metallic ring of swords drawn by the lords tore through the air.

  "Free will?! Look at that child's eyes! He is terrified and merely reading the script you wrote for him!"

  The large lord sitting at the centermost table kicked his table and stood up. His heavy armor clashed, making a chilling metallic sound, and the surrounding lords drew their swords as if they had been waiting.

  "We can no longer watch a merchant's ambition soil the throne! Retract that false order immediately and hand His Highness the Prince over to us!"

  The lords surged roughly toward the center, aiming their swords at Kadan. Fierce shouts and the stomping of feet filled the marble hall. Ari watched the scene with bated breath from a corner of the banquet hall. The very ground the lords were stepping on was right above the targets of death Kadan had marked.

  "This is clear treason."

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Kadan looked at the Prince. The Prince, trembling with fear, nodded.

  He pointed to the overturned table to the servant behind him. The servant cut a single tripwire.

  Ping—

  The sound of the taut wire snapping was completely drowned out by the commotion in the banquet hall. However, the sound of the massive steel chisel, which had been hanging high on the ceiling, falling under the pull of gravity was a prelude to destruction.

  Kwang!

  The heavy chisel plummeted vertically, striking the exact center of the ornate dining table. The white tablecloth was torn, and the silver vase and the thin lead sealing layer hidden beneath it were ruthlessly crushed.

  It was in that fleeting moment.

  A cold, transparent blue flash, inexplicable in human language, swallowed the entire banquet hall. There were no flames, no smoke. Only an eye-piercingly vivid blue radiance swept over the lords like a massive wave.

  The lords, who had been charging forward with shouts, stopped in their tracks as if struck by magic. The strength left the hands holding their weapons, and swords clattered loudly onto the marble floor. The faces of the lords, which had been flushed red with anger just moments before, turned as pale as paper in a matter of seconds. And soon, as if unable to bear the weight of their heavy armor, they collapsed.

  A knight escorting a lord a few steps behind suddenly vomited and fell to his knees.

  The lords who had taken the wave of light head-on staggered as if pierced tens of thousands of times by invisible arrows. Some collapsed on the spot as their eyes clouded over, while others flailed their paralyzed hands in the air and screamed.

  The banquet hall instantly turned into pandemonium. The lavish dining hall was transformed into a massive slaughterhouse filled only with screams, the sound of vomiting, and the clatter of heavy armor hitting the floor.

  Kadan looked down coldly at the scene from behind his lead shields. A fishy metallic scent brushed the tip of his nose as well, but he did not move a muscle. He simply seemed satisfied that this 'phenomenon' had operated exactly as he had anticipated.

  Kadan slowly opened his mouth.

  "Do not move! If you move even an inch, I will make everyone feel with their own bodies what the curse of the jar truly is!"

  Kadan waited for the uproar to subside before speaking again.

  "Now... who will question my qualifications as guardian again?"

  In the pandemonium of the banquet hall, only Kadan held the power of the kingdom in his bloodless hands.

  Sometime later.

  Kadan's bedroom.

  He was leaning diagonally against the bed. The victor from a few days ago was nowhere to be seen.

  "Tell me the cure."

  Kadan's voice was not a command, but a plea. Ari did not answer. Instead, she pulled an old piece of parchment from her bag.

  [Goiania Incident Report]

  Kadan took the document with trembling hands. He turned the first page.

  [249 villagers exposed to Cesium-137 powder]

  [4 deaths, 28 severe radiation burns]

  [Cure: None]

  [Only symptomatic treatment possible]

  Kadan dropped the document.

  "Powder..."

  He muttered.

  "Did I... miss something?"

  Ari shook her head.

  "You didn't miss it; you were ignorant."

  "But I was... at a safe distance..."

  "The powder spreads through the air."

  Ari opened her mouth for the first time.

  Kadan's face turned pale.

  "The lords?"

  "All of them."

  "...The Queen and the Prince?"

  "You said the Prince was with them..."

  Kadan laughed.

  The laugh turned into a cough.

  Black blood stained his handkerchief.

  "I tried to become... King..."

  He looked at his hand.

  "And killed the entire kingdom."

  Ari did not answer.

  Kadan looked out the window.

  The merchant guild building could be seen in the distance.

  "I wanted to be... an honest merchant."

  Ari did not answer.

  "But this kingdom mocked honesty.

  Because I was an illegitimate child, because I was a merchant."

  He stared at the black blood on the handkerchief.

  "So I followed their ways.

  With power, with machinations."

  His voice cracked.

  "In the end, I too... became just like them."

  Kadan looked at the chandelier on the ceiling.

  It was still shining without candles.

  "Ari, tell me just one thing. If I had remained an honest merchant... would this kingdom have acknowledged me?"

  Ari remained silent. She also knew the answer. That such a thing would absolutely never happen.

  "I suppose so."

  Kadan smiled.

  "Then it's fine. At least... the choice was mine."

  "What about Eren?"

  Kadan asked.

  "He is alive."

  "For how much longer?"

  Ari could not answer.

  "Then what about me?"

  "I am not a doctor. I merely interpret excavated artifacts."

  Ari spoke coldly, and Kadan nodded.

  As if he understood.

  "The Witch of the Jar..."

  He smiled bitterly.

  "Not a witch... but a witness."

  Kadan looked at the ceiling.

  The ornate chandelier was shining without candles. Kadan spoke no more.

  Ari left the bedroom, leaving behind the slowly collapsing man of power leaning against the bed. The sound of Kadan's rough breathing from behind her was buried in the silence the moment the door closed. The hallway was the most lavish place in the kingdom, but to Ari's eyes now, it looked no different from the cold tomb of the ancient archives.

  She looked toward the banquet hall. The night wind blew through the open windows, carrying the scent of lilies, but at the end of that scent, there was still an indelible metallic fishiness mixed in. All the spaces Kadan had believed to be at a 'safe distance' were already filled with invisible particles of death.

  Ari headed to Eren's room.

  Entering Eren's room, Ari muttered quietly.

  "The answer is easy once you know it..."

  The price of that easy answer was far too heavy. What the ancients had sealed so thoroughly was not a simple weapon, but a disaster itself, beyond human comprehension.

  Listening to the faint sound of Eren's breathing coming from inside the room, she made a resolution. What she had to do in the time she had left was not to search for a futile hope of a cure. It was to record even a single line more of how this once-glorious kingdom had dug its own grave, its foolishness, and its horror, to pass it on to the next generation—to anyone who might survive.

  She was no longer a witch, nor a wizard. She was merely the last chronicler of a perishing world, the sole witness to a civilization swallowed by an invisible flame.

  Cold moonlight poured in through the window. The brilliant lights of the royal palace went out one by one, but only the invisible light of death still roamed the castle like a ghost.

  Eren's room.

  He was lying down.

  The necrosis in his fingers had now spread to his wrist.

  "You're back."

  Eren smiled.

  "Yeah."

  Ari sat beside him.

  "And Kadan?"

  "He's dying."

  "The lords?"

  "All of them."

  "The kingdom?"

  "It's over."

  Silence flowed.

  "Then it's just us left."

  Eren said.

  "Eren, you too will soon..."

  Ari couldn't finish her sentence.

  "It's okay."

  Eren held her hand.

  With the hand that wasn't necrotic.

  "You leave the record."

  "I don't even know who will read it."

  "Someday, someone will read it. And they'll probably repeat it. But you still have to record it."

  Ari shed tears.

  "Why?"

  "Because that's what a witness does."

  Eren looked at the ceiling.

  There was nothing there.

  But he seemed to be looking at something.

  "You saw it too, right?"

  He asked.

  "Saw what?"

  "The blue light."

  "...Yeah, from far away... But it was beautiful."

  "Do you think the ancients saw it too?"

  "Some people saw it... It's left in the records, and someone else will see it again."

  "Yeah... That would be good. Write it down clearly and distinctly so they don't do something stupid again."

  "They'll probably interpret it differently then, just like me."

  Ari sighed.

  "You... saved me."

  Eren said.

  "I didn't save you."

  "No. You were..."

  He smiled.

  "A wizard."