"Your Highness, that's a land of guaranteed death… I can't allow you passage; you'd have to take my little life to get past me…"
Anxiety riddled the hoarse voice of a devoted aide. Clad in black darker than the moonless night, he braced himself and stood between Her Highness, the Disgraced Queen, and a vast stretch of silent woods swaying to the weeping wind.
The tall ancient trees were surrounded by a wall of obscure, black mist that ebbed and flowed irregularly.
The Disgraced Queen paused for a moment, her eyes beneath the imperial gause fleeting from the anxious aide to the little girl by her side. The little girl was as confused as she was infuriated, yet her expression was a mask of calm.
She braced her dainty hand tightly on the woman's palm despite the cold glove separating their skinship.
The woman smiled in reciprocation to the entrenched coldness in those round and innocent eyes. She spoke endearingly, "Caidie, my dear, are you scared?"
Caidie's eyes, an incarnation of pure darkness swirling with a trace of imperial indifference, glared long and hard at the aide who blocked their path into the depths of the forbidden ground.
In response to the question of no significance or substance, Caidie clenched her pale, small hand tightly while her tender lips parted, gracing the dim ambiance with two, soft words.
"Move aside."
"Princess…" The aide's voice was hoarse, and his body trembled even more. "Therein lies the Immemorial Citadel, a land where our forefathers and ancestors received their divine punishment! It's not a land for mortals to tread carelessly, please do not throw your lives away, your grace!"
Caidie didn't respond immediately. A long silence followed—it was agonizing. Then, she turned her small head and retraced the mountains and rivers marred by their rushed travels so far.
She said lightly, "And therein lies the hot blood and cold steel of our devoted subjects. Fortresses of obsidian lay in wreckage, lands riddled in agony and despair, the so-called fruits of our ancestors' glory."
The aide gnashed his teeth in ardent hatred, hissing hatefully, "We've kept to ourselves all these years! Why wouldn't they let us be?! Our race has already declined to this state! Why won't they relent?! What danger does our existence pose to them?! Must we face extinction so they can rest at ease?!"
As the aide spoke, his red eyes rose to stare at the sky.
A motionless crimson moon hung low, almost descending into the charred grounds of this barren world. Behind the moon was a dusty horizon and churning, gray clouds.
The two colors intertwined and shed a dim semblance of hazy light on the bleak world, though it was unknown whether the crimson in the air was a product of the moon's rays or a product of relentless slaughter.
Caidie's eyes finally rested on the aide's body once again, the confusion therein no different from the bewildered despair in the aide's voice.
However, the confusion quickly melted into cold determination as she replied softly, "I also want to know why, and my intuition tells me that these answers are hidden in the so-called forbidden land of our race."
The aide snapped from his episode of hatred, alarm rising in his eyes as he exclaimed, "Your Highness! You can't allow Princess Caidie to go there! Answers… all of us seek them, but not there… not in the Immemorial Citadel!"
The aide was so anxious he was practically shouting toward the end of his sentence. Body trembling incessantly, he didn't notice the darkness in the misty grounds behind him sway and howl in low hums.
There seemed to be an ancient call from times unknown that stirred not only the forbidden land but the entire continent. Wherever the crimson glow of the low moon penetrated, thin wisps of sanguine threads crossed over from all corners of the world, congregating in the direction of this ancient call.
The aide, the Disgraced Queen, and Princess Caidie felt a simultaneous jolt through the depths of their bloodlines.
It was the former that spoke shakily with apparent disbelief in his voice, "A call that resonates with our bloodline totems… This… This… H-how can this be?!"
The Disgraced Queen's expression shifted multiple times before she spoke in desolate weakness, "This is not any random call… This is the Ancient Totemic Sacrifice—a mysterious force is accumulating the bloodline power and resentment throughout the realm…"
The aide's body trembled in realization as he observed the direction of the flowing bloodline energy and substantiated resentments as it slowly transitioned from a deep ruby to a dark red, and eventually, a sliver of darkness surfaced within.
He immediately understood that the ancestors did indeed leave a legacy—a contingency plan in the event of imminent extinction to the race—a plan with the blood of their brethren and descendants as the foundation.
A sacrifice of millions—a sacrifice no different from a bloody calamity!
The aide didn't know why had this misfortune befallen the disgraced race. Those sacred races didn't find satisfaction in sealing the disgraced race at the bottom continent of the Spiral Abyss, they even descended from the higher continents of the Sacred Staircase to carry an indiscriminate slaughter.
He suddenly felt hysterical at the irony of it all—as the ancestors' path to salvation was through sacrificing the millions of their descendants for some twisted path to hegemony.
While the aide was distraught, the Disgraced Queen tugged at Princess Caidie's hand and rushed through a gap in the aide's defenses, plunging into the churning wall of absolute darkness behind him.
The aide was shocked, remorseful, and mortified as his body whirled around with the intention to follow, but his body suddenly went rigid, unable to move…
…
In the depths of this churning mist of darkness was a small, hollow city littered with half-collapsed buildings stationed in the periphery of an empty mansion.
The mansion had no gates, no windows, no doors, and almost no steady walls devoid of cracking marbles.
The shrill cry of a newborn infant echoed throughout the empty mansion—perhaps the only semblance of life in this city of death.
It was a baby boy wrapped in decaying white cloth with a hint of age to its fabric. Looking closely, thin filaments of blood, quantities in the millions, were seeping into the body of this infant. The more there was, the more vibrant was his vitality.
It almost seemed as though a mysterious power at play was working to reanimate the baby, but even as he cried and cried, there were no tears on his face.
The baby's small eyes were squeezed shut as the crisp cries rose in volume and pitch.
As the baby's voice climbed to a crescendo, his stiff body suddenly twitched, and his limbs went flailing about just enough to reveal the corner of the cloth where a stitched elegant calligraphy was depicted into the fabric.