* * *
Like leaving a goodnight kiss for a lover, he softly pressed his lips to Vivisian’s forehead and whispered.
A tear traced down his pale cheek, following the line of Vivisian’s closed eyes and falling gently down.
The droplet slid down his long eyelashes and across his cheek, making it look as if Vivisian himself were crying.
Sia stared at that face for a long, long time, then gently wiped the remaining dampness from Vivi’s cheek with the back of his hand.
‘Don’t cry.’
A clumsy voice, like someone trying to comfort him, echoed from somewhere.
Knowing it was just an illusion, Sia’s face still crumpled as if about to cry—but he forced a smile and replied to the hallucination.
“Okay, I won’t cry.”
So don’t worry too much. I promise….
✽ ✽ ✽
The preparations for Vivisian’s funeral were carried out quietly.
But the nobles, suspicious of the prince’s sudden seclusion, eventually discovered the news of Vivisian’s death.
And so, news of his passing spread, wrapped in carefully phrased condolences—each carrying their own agendas.
At first, Hesia tried to suppress the rumors.
He didn’t want to see anyone speaking thoughtlessly about Vivisian’s death, no matter who it was.
‘Let them mourn. No matter their intentions, if enough people mourn him, maybe… maybe that child can go to a better place.’
But the Grand Duke had stopped him with those quiet words, and Hesia had no choice but to let it go.
There weren’t many who sincerely mourned the prince’s companion, who had lived quietly and committed no real wrongs—but then again, there weren’t many who cursed him either.
Whether that was a blessing or a misfortune, Hesia didn’t know. He looked up at the white statue towering over him.
Unlike the statues in the Eris Empire, the ones in the Merien Principality had carved faces.
The god looked down with a gentle and serene expression.
Hesia stared blankly at that face and finally asked:
“…Did you love Vivi?”
All apostles are loved by God.
Then Vivisian should have been loved by God, too.
But why, then, did someone like him die so meaninglessly?
He just couldn’t understand it.
Hesia buried his weary, sleepless face in his hands and took a deep breath.
“…Why was it so easy… so easy to leave this world….”
He couldn’t understand the will of the divine.
Pouring his resentment toward the silent god, Hesia slumped into the chair beside him.
Since Vivisian’s death, what came to visit Hesia was an overwhelming sense of despair and frequent hyperventilation.
As he struggled to calm himself, having learned to care for his condition, he heard a bit of a stir outside the temple. Soon, people barged in.
He didn’t even have the energy to ask what was going on.
Letting out a sigh of irritation and closing his eyes, he heard someone shout among the newcomers:
“Your Grace! Lord Ian’s, his… body…!”
The moment he heard the word Ian, Hesia sprang to his feet.
He turned to face the people, and the man who had spoken, pale as a ghost, finished his sentence:
“It won’t go into the coffin. We tried to place him inside, but every time we do, strange things happen… the lid—it won’t close….”
As the stammering explanation continued, Hesia’s eyes widened as he realized the truth.
“…It wasn’t a natural death.”
The murmured words sounded as if he were possessed, and the attendants who had followed him to the temple exchanged anxious glances.
Some of them understood, and were struck with shock.
Vivisian was an apostle.
And when an apostle dies an unjust death, the gods intervene.
Until the matter is resolved, their body cannot be burned or buried.
Which meant—someone had killed Vivisian.
With clear, deliberate malice.
“…Fuck…”
Cursing under his breath, Hesia raised a trembling hand to rub at his eyes.
Who the hell dared to kill Vivisian?
And if they did, what method did they use?
He paid no mind to the panic setting in among the palace guards and instead rifled through his memories.
Vivisian had woken in the middle of the night complaining of chest pain, and then died in agony.
There were plenty of poisons that affected the heart, but Vivisian’s meals had been meticulously controlled.
The chance of poisoning via food was extremely low.
“It wasn’t poison. If not poison… then… a curse?”
Where there are gods, there are also curses.
Hesia, recalling how many people had died from curses, racked his brain—until something suddenly came to him.
There had been a time, while changing Vivisian’s clothes, when he had accidentally seen a tattoo.
When he asked about it, Vivi had just smiled and said:
‘It was done by my family.’
He had spoken so casually.
Now recalling it, Hesia slowly lowered the hand that had been covering his face.
That mark—he remembered it now.
It wasn’t something Vivi had carved himself.
It had been carved by the person who killed him.
Realizing this so late made Hesia feel utterly pathetic.
He murmured, his expression dazed, as though possessed:
“…Bring in a curse specialist. Immediately.”
“Pardon?”
“We need to find out why Ian died—bring in a curse specialist!”
At that order, the attendants rushed out of the temple in a frenzy.
Hesia, who had been watching them flee, finally tore his gaze away and stood still, glaring up at the statue of the god.
Viewed from the side rather than the front, the statue looked cold and somber.
Had the god foreseen all this, and that’s why he named Vivisian with the word “grief”?
The will of a god was never something humans could comprehend—but just this once, Hesia desperately wanted to understand.
“What kind of fate did you lay upon Vivi?”
It’s said that when a person is born, the god weaves their destiny into their life like intricate warp and weft—too complex for any mere human to even touch.
Still, now and then, very rarely, a human’s desperate will manages to overcome that fate.
And for those people, mankind has reserved a special word: miracle.
If Hesia’s suspicions were right, then the god had loved Vivisian.
The fate he had written for him—he had grieved it.
The name Dolor wasn’t just an instruction to mourn Vivisian; it was a vow from the god himself to mourn.
“Was there never a path for Vivisian—Vivi—to be happy? Was he destined to suffer no matter what?”
Only silence filled the stark white temple.
As always, the god gave no answers but silence, demanding that truth be found within it.
Hesia turned his back on the statue that stared down at humanity with its usual cold, grim expression.
“I hate you.”
His voice, quiet but soaked in restrained pain and sorrow, echoed through the still air.
After he left, a pale light drifted down to where he had stood. It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat—growing, then shrinking again in rhythm—before finally sinking into the statue.
A few days later, the curse specialist Hesia had summoned adjusted her glasses and let out a low murmur.
The tattoo etched on Ian’s pale skin was extremely old, and its form unfamiliar, which had delayed identification.
But truth, no matter how long buried, never stays hidden forever.
After multiple cross-references and verifications, she now stood before the young heir, carefully weighing her words.
If it were anyone else, she would’ve just blurted it out.
But this was Hesia, and so she chose her words with care.
“Speak. Now.”
But the young heir, having already waited too long, cut in with a voice fraying at the edges of patience.
Abandoning any attempts at graceful explanation, the expert began to speak in a rush.
“So, uh… to get to the point—it was a curse. A type of sealing ritual, actually. It was used to seal off the heart. Even from a distance, the curse could be activated to stop the heart from functioning. It’s not something commonly used in the Merien Principality… this is a technique usually seen in the Eris Empire. Even there, though, it’s almost never used anymore. It takes a lot of time and effort to cast.”
Creating a sealing ritual for the heart costs an enormous amount of time and money.
And activating it is just as resource-intensive.
In short: it’s incredibly expensive and laborious from beginning to end.
As the expert rambled on, Hesia kept his gaze fixed silently on the corpse lying in bed, his expression unreadable.
Unsure if he was following, the expert cautiously clarified:
“Ah, I mean—it costs a lot of money.”
“…I understood. Just keep talking.”
His curt reply wasn’t exactly warm, but she continued obediently with what she’d uncovered.
It looked like the seal had been engraved nearly twenty years ago.
The seal, even dormant, exerted constant pressure on the heart.
So even if the curse hadn’t been triggered, Ian likely would’ve died before reaching his forties.
And she was certain Ian himself had known this.
Hesia’s face, which had been gradually stiffening, turned ice-cold at her final words.
“…You’re saying Ian knew?”
“He would’ve felt pain in his heart. That’s certain. There’s no way he couldn’t have known. A curse like this one—just existing in the body is enough to cause damage. And… I think he was aware of it.”
“Why?”
“He must’ve been in pain. But he never once sought medical help.”
He must have anticipated his death would come early.
And accepted that it was irreversible.
* * *
