# Shadows& Stone
"Yes. The current King's only sister. They say she gathered curses and devoured her own parents."
"Curse?"
"About ten years ago, the King and Queen died while traveling to see their young daughter. The King fell in battle soon after, and a string of victories turned into disasters. There was quite the uproar—everyone whispering it was because of the Princess."
The man gave a short, contemptuous snort.
Valdina might be known for its brave cavalry, but clearly not for its sense.
All that fuss over a child.
"Do you believe it?"
"Not really. But the timing was… convenient."
Gallo shrugged.
"I thought idiots were a Valdina specialty."
"That's harsh, boss."
Gallo pressed a hand dramatically over his heart, feigning injury.
"Curse…"
In the glass, a seal glimmered faintly. Sunlight threw a long, dark shadow across the floor.
"People love to talk about curses when they've never seen a real one."
The edge of that shadow trembled, as if stirred by something unseen.
"Boss, I—"
The words died on Gallo's lips.
The man had lowered his head. The fingertips resting on the map were stained a vivid, unnatural blue.
"Sir, what should we do?"
— Three Years Ago — Three years earlier, Cesare—First Prince of the Katzen Empire—had ordered the Kequeg tribe annihilated.
They'd been crushing minor kingdoms along the empire's southern frontier, cleaning up the border.
"The Kequeg are savages. They butcher people and offer them as sacrifices to their god. After the ritual, they *eat* what's left. They abandoned their humanity long ago."
There could be no mercy for those who discarded the bare minimum required to be called human.
"Burn everything."
Under a sky smeared with smoke, blades of silver steel turned black with blood. The "power" of the god the Kequeg worshipped meant nothing before disciplined soldiers and organized slaughter.
Villages, shrines, fields—wherever murder and cannibalism had been offered up like daily bread, fire answered.
"*Ahhh—!* You black-hearted fiend! Even the devil isn't as vicious as you! The primordial darkness will not forgive you! Aren't you afraid?!"
The tribal leader shrieked, eyes bulging, veins standing out like cords.
"It's Cesare, not 'black-hearted fiend.' Remember the name of your land's true master when you're groveling to your god."
Cesare's voice cut through the chaos from the back of his warhorse.
The arrogance was staggering—placing the Kequeg's god beneath him.
But no one present could refute it.
This boy, as blinding as the noonday sun, would one day become master of the greatest empire on the continent.
"*Cesare!* The blood in your veins will turn cold and pale as snow! Your heart will blacken like your hair! Even if your talent and ambition reach every horizon and cut down every enemy—"
Black smoke peeled off the chieftain's burning body and coiled around Cesare like a living whip.
"—you'll feel your arrogant body turn to *stone!*"
"Your Highness!"
Cesare woke on the ground, the priest's curse lodged inside him.
The sword that had once moved faster than thought began to feel heavy. His instincts, once like honed steel, dulled at the edges.
Sometimes his body seized—bones locking, breath freezing—before he vomited blood and collapsed.
After the third time he woke to the taste of iron and the weight of his own limbs, he stopped calling it coincidence.
Something had changed that day among the burning Kequeg.
"Your body is hardening from the inside. If it continues at this pace… three years at most."
Cesare rejected it outright.
He summoned the finest physicians on the continent.
"It's a disease where the body slowly cools and petrifies. Forgive me, but… even I, whom they call 'divine,' have never heard of such a thing."
Everyone shook their heads.
He went to the Holy Kingdom.
He stood before priests whose holy power was said to be unsurpassed.
"It's a terrible curse. I can feel the primordial darkness in it. I'm sorry—no amount of sacred power can touch this. Our strength and that… thing are not on the same path."
The Pope said this with Cesare's sword at his throat, so there was no room for comforting lies.
While they exhausted every method they knew to drive out the primordial darkness, the curse crept on, slow but relentless.
"Long live His Highness, the First Prince!"
At the victory parade, in front of the cheering crowds, another seizure struck.
"Your Highness!"
The rumor scorched through the empire: the First Prince had caught a terminal disease during the war.
The Emperor, forever suspicious of ambitious sons, wondered if it was a ruse.
The other princes rejoiced. Their strongest rival was crumbling.
Pathetic.
"If something is to be called a curse, it should be at least *this* powerful. It had to reach high enough to bite even at the sky."
Present Day "It does make a certain sense. There's a reason Valdina stays small despite its excellent cavalry."
Gallo's light tone returned, as if the taste of blood in the air were an illusion.
"Anyway, seems the infamous Princess has finally woken. She's loud now—but can she keep her footing against the head maid's faction?"
Gallo's dark brown eyes gleamed with interest.
"Boss, should we keep an eye on the Princess's palace? First time in a while something amusing's happening."
"Are you that idle?"
The cold question made Gallo's shoulders hunch.
"Did you find the shaman?"
"Ah—still tracking her. But the last confirmed stop was Valdina. The trail goes cold at the border."
When every priest and healer had failed, one had spoken almost reluctantly:
"If you could find a shrine maiden of the Shadeia… she *might* discover a way. They say the Shadeia can read the old records—the ones written back when the world was new."
So this is what clutching at straws feels like.
It was the only hope left.
Cesare had crossed borders in disguise as an arms dealer, following every rumor of a Shadeia shaman.
"That's it?"
Gallo puffed out his cheeks.
"You talk too much."
"Damn it, I searched everything from the border inward! She's definitely in this city. I'll stake my neck on it!"
He shouted. Cesare's gaze chilled a fraction.
"That will have to do. If you're wrong…"
His fingers tapped the map.
"I'll collect the neck you bet."
The threat was spoken quietly, but it landed like an execution order.
"Okay, okay, I get it!"
Gallo sprang up and headed for the door, tapping the table as he went.
On the circular tabletop lay a silver half-mask.
"Even if you hate it, don't forget this. If anyone connects you to who you really are, the whole continent will be lining up to split us in half for fun."
Cesare's eyes dropped to the mask.
"Do you really hate covering your face that much?"
Once that silver plate was in place, he stopped being Cesare, First Prince of Katzen—the one who made ministers tremble and generals whisper his name.
He became just another mercenary in a merchant's skin. A mask with coin behind it.
Even if it gave him freedom, it stirred no joy.
"Boss, you like that face of yours too much, don't you? You'd show it off to the world if you could, but the mask steals all the attention."
"Your tongue is too long."
"Alright, alright, I'm going!"
Gallo darted through the door—just in time.
A polished dagger buried itself in the wood where his mouth had been a heartbeat earlier.
The blade had spun from Cesare's fingers in a lazy, practiced arc.
He didn't even bother looking up.
— The Princess's Palace — A corridor of petty tyrants and polished resentment.
"So you just *watched* Her Highness walk out?"
A shrill voice shook the corridor walls.
"Sh-she ran out so fast—"
The maids lined up, heads bowed, swallowed the storm of accusations aimed at them.
Flame-red hair and thin, sharp features made the woman resemble a burning twig.
Marieu.
Officially, she was a palace maid. In practice, she behaved more like a petty noble whose orbit just happened to cross the Princess's.
Her dress was cut in the latest style, corset laced viciously tight. Satin and lace clung where plain linen would have done.
"I told you—if she left her rooms, you were to report to me *immediately.* Why didn't you?"
Her hand lashed out.
A sharp crack sounded as a maid's cheek snapped sideways.
"You'd all better wake up if you like your positions."
The main reason Marieu could act with such arrogance was simple: blood.
Her mother had been the Princess's wet-nurse. When the woman lay dying, she had clutched Medea's hands with the last of her strength and begged her to look after Marieu.
The Princess had wept and called Marieu her "younger sister," closing the old woman's eyes herself.
"What will we do if something happens to Her Highness and they find out we weren't with her—"
"*Silence.*"
Marieu, unable to release the pressure building in her chest, snatched up a porcelain vase to throw.
"Her Highness the Princess!"
A lookout maid's shout cut through her fury.
"Your Highness! Where have you been? It's so cold outside—"
Marieu spun, anger melting from her face like wax under a flame.
By the time she saw Medea in the doorway, she'd already arranged her features into worried affection.
Then her expression froze.
Because beside the Princess—half-leaning against her, clothes torn and body bandaged—stood Neril.
And the look in the Princess's eyes as she took in Marieu was not warm gratitude.
It was cool. Assessing.
Like someone finally seeing clearly the people who had always been around her—and quietly measuring where to cut.
All the practiced cruelty on Marieu's face fell away like costume.
Medea's eyes were small, pale lanterns. They held no tenderness, only a quiet question that felt like accusation.
Marieu, for once, found nothing to say. Her lips tightened. The vase trembled in her hand.
"Where are they?"
Medea's voice was small, but it filled the hall.
It was not the childish curiosity of a spoiled girl. It was an order folded into a sentence—a line drawn.
Marieu's smile died like a struck candle.
End Chapter 5 ## Shadows & Stone
"Some curses are earned. Others are awakened."
[ Continue to Chapter 6 ]