CHAPTER 82…………………
“Haaah!”
Kyle woke with ragged breaths, gasping as if dragged out from deep water.
He had escaped the dream, but Rubert’s beast-like face remained burned vividly in his mind.
“Ugh!”
A searing headache struck at once.
Though headaches had always plagued him, this pain was sharper, more unbearable than anything he’d ever endured.
“Urgh…”
Clutching his head, Kyle buried his face into the pillow.
As he gritted his teeth to stifle his groans, Rubert’s life and his own life began to blur together in his mind.
Screaming out loud might have helped, but this was the Imperial Palace.
He bit down on the pillowcase, muffling his strained cries.
As the two tangled lives started settling into place, his consciousness faded into darkness.
Sunlight streamed in through the open window.
Kyle squinted against it, a faint groan slipping out.
He lay still, staring up at the ceiling as the events of the previous night replayed in his mind.
With a frown, he scrubbed both hands roughly over his dry face.
“What on earth is happening to me…?”
Rubert’s memories stormed through him in vivid flashes.
The era Rubert had lived in. The countless people he had met.
The wild freedom of racing across the northern mountains. The rage and grief that consumed him after founding the Empire.
It all rose within Kyle as if he had lived it himself.
His heart pounded violently, swept up in the alien flood of emotions.
Me… Emperor Rubert?
The strange sensations soon tightened into fear, binding him.
He said to find the forest shamans, didn’t he? Was that man I saw speaking with him a shaman?
The southern forest—so vast and mysterious it was said even gods slumbered within.
No one who claimed to see the shamans inside had ever returned.
Rumors piled upon rumors, layer after layer.
Over the years, people came to see the southern forest as a forbidden place, never to be entered.
Though the South had once lent Rubert vast military aid, now it was a world hidden entirely behind its own veil.
Piecing together the fragments of memory, Kyle suddenly remembered something.
He sprang to his feet and dashed toward the Imperial Library.
He slipped through a secret passage and hurried down into the underground archive.
By then, Ventus must have finished clearing the blocked walls, for the corridors were pristine.
Ignoring every other chamber, Kyle strode straight into the secluded room where he had once found the blueprints.
Unlike that frantic day of searching, this time he reached without hesitation for a roll of parchment on the shelf.
One hastily scrawled line of text:
The forest shamans and their army entered the capital. While crushing the last of the rebels…
The rest was too faded by age to read.
Yet Kyle murmured the lost words aloud as if remembering them:
“While crushing the last rebels… Anishu died.”
It was a note written by Rubert himself, drowning in grief after losing his beloved.
“Ha…”
A bitter laugh twisted Kyle’s lips.
This was Rubert’s private archive—the very one he had designed himself and often visited.
Kyle knew without looking what was in the other rooms, what the parchments contained.
Then his eyes fell upon the canvas that had once shown him hallucinations.
Rubert’s memory returned—how he had sorrowfully wrapped the canvas in black cloth.
“Anishu…”
The emotion stabbed through Kyle so fiercely that he whispered the lost lover’s name before he realized it.
“Young lady, breakfast is ready.”
Daisy cautiously opened the door—and screamed.
Everett lay collapsed beneath the table. Daisy rushed forward, shaking her.
“Young lady! Lady Everett!”
Everett groaned faintly, curled tightly into herself.
“Young lady, why are you here on the floor? Are you hurt? Are you very sick?”
Daisy’s voice cracked as she fought back tears, clinging to Everett’s name.
Slowly, Everett opened her eyes.
Ah—the Arcana!
She bolted upright and scanned the table.
The Arcana lay just as she had left them at dawn.
As she flipped through the cards one by one, her eyes widened.
They’re gone. The pictures are gone.
All seventy-eight Arcana cards, blank.
Daisy watched anxiously as Everett kept flipping through them in disbelief.
“Young lady… what’s wrong?”
Only after confirming all the pictures had vanished did Everett collapse back into the chair.
“They’re all gone.”
“What is it you’re looking for? Tell me—I’ll find it for you.”
“Ha… how could this even happen…”
The sight before her was so unreal that her vision swam.
Sensing how dire her condition was, Daisy lifted her up and guided her to bed.
“Please lie down. You absolutely must rest today. You collapsed because you pushed yourself too hard yesterday.”
She pulled the blanket over Everett, her voice firm.
“Young lady, you mustn’t move at all today. I’ll stay right here and watch over you.”
But Everett barely heard her.
Her mind churned over the dreamlike events of last night again and again.
As she drifted in and out of uneasy sleep, familiar voices reached her.
“Is the young lady asleep?”
“She woke for a bit earlier… I’ll let her know Lady Shallet is here.”
“No, don’t wake her. I’ll come again later. I just brought this—she seemed to enjoy it before.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“The nobles are in an uproar, desperate to find who started the fire in the square.”
“I see.”
“If they catch the culprit, perhaps Lady Everett can be compensated for her injuries.”
Peeking through the door, Shallet checked if Everett was awake.
But Everett lay motionless, unmoving.
Shallet sighed at the pitiful sight and quietly withdrew.
Time passed, and dawn came again.
Daisy, who had stayed by Everett’s side all evening, finally returned to her own room.
When Everett awoke, she slowly rose and went to the table.
She picked up the stack of Arcana Daisy had neatly arranged.
What she thought was plain white was now etched with intricate golden patterns.
“Phew…”
Everett’s eyes sparkled.
She feared the pain might return, yet she also longed to see if the images would appear again.
Taking a steadying breath, she began to shuffle the Arcana with care.
She glimpsed the picture side—they were blank, like empty frames.
Strange, shuffling blank cards feels unsettling.
After spreading the Arcana into a half-circle, she asked softly:
“Who are you?”
She flipped a card. From it appeared The High Priestess.
Everett’s lips curved into a wide grin.
“So I wasn’t imagining it.”
As if responding, the High Priestess bent her knees even deeper than yesterday in a graceful bow.
“The High Priestess, huh…”
Suddenly, she recalled Yankeller’s words.
At first, he had called them genuine Arcana.
Only after seeing Everett’s startled reaction had he laughed it off, calling them replicas.
“Don’t tell me… this is the real Arcana? Not Yankeller’s replica?”
At her murmur, the High Priestess nodded as if to confirm.
“Should I be laughing… or terrified?”
The Priestess vanished.
The Arcana of the goddess Anishu…
Though she hadn’t chosen this, Everett felt as if she had opened a forbidden box that should have remained sealed.
Fear rippled through her—but so did excitement.
Did the pictures enter my body? Then… could I summon them just by thought?
She gazed at the overturned cards, thinking:
Do you have something you wish to say to me?
Just as she expected, the images appeared even without flipping the cards.
Everett’s face lit with a bright smile.
The Emperor of Card IV sat arrogantly upon his throne, while the Charioteer of Card VII circled the table playfully.
But when the last image emerged, her smile vanished.
The woman bound and blindfolded of Card VIII, Justice.
“What does this mean?”
The Emperor rose from his stone throne, pulled a sword from behind the woman, and raised it to strike her.
At the last instant, the Charioteer leapt from his cart and took the blow instead, collapsing to the floor.
It felt so real that Everett squeezed her eyes shut and whipped her head away.
“Is this a warning to me?”
Before her muttering ended, the scene dissolved—only for another card to appear.
“The Tower?”
The very card that had once warned Hilde instead of her.
“Does this mean it’s connected to the tarot shop explosion…?”
Figures in the card hurled themselves again and again from the tower’s peak.
What warning was the Arcana trying to give her?
Everett exhaled a low hum, her black eyes sinking deep with thought.
“Sir Yankeller, you’ll need to step outside for a moment.”
The temple had been noisy since morning, and he was about to call for his aide when the man appeared—anxious, restless.
“Why is the temple so loud?”
“It’s the nobles shouting—they’ve come to see the Saintess.”
“If they came to see her, why not simply wait? What’s with all the shouting?”
Angelus’s aide grumbled, face full of resentment.
“Sir Yankeller, the Saintess is not currently at the temple.”
Yankeller’s straight brow furrowed slightly.
“So the nobles, tired of waiting, are causing this uproar.”
The aide looked at him with pleading eyes, as if begging for rescue.
Yankeller pressed a hand to his temple, fighting down irritation.
“Did you check her residence?”
“Yes. A maid said she left in a hurry, saying she had urgent business.”
“Where did she go?”
The aide shook his head.
“The maid didn’t know. She left without a word…”
