Day 30th, Second Month of Winter, New Age Calendar Year 599.
I was in capital.
After the cleansing with the Archbishop was done, I was summoned to the capital along with Dhana, Dharma and Duke Paras.
As soon as I arrived, I was checked by another healer, before I was led to a special room. The room was big, but except for that, there was only a bed in the middle of it. Apart from that, there was nothing.
Not even a window.
Day by day, I tried to leave the place, but the guard at the door didn't let me. After a couple of attempts and almost throwing a tantrum, I understood where I was. It was the special detention suite of the Investigation Bureau.
It is reserved for two types of people. High level suspects and high level witnesses.
Nobody knows exactly where this place was. The entrance of the place indeed lies in the Bureau tower which acts as the headquarters, but the entrance that looked like a door was not actually a door. It was a spatial door that leads to a corridor which in turn leads to these suites.
Each door has its own assigned Eight Circle Knights as Guards.
I never knew that the kingdom has that many Eight Circle knights to just employ as mere door guards.
Anyone inside that room should feel safer than ever.
But I didn't feel any of that.
As I laid down on my bed day after day, looking at the white walls, white floor, white ceiling and even the while sheets…
I felt colder and more threatened than ever.
I couldn't understand why I was detained and by the third day, I was ready to blow my top off. I would just use all of my means and leave this place. Only then did I realize my magic was also restricted. I couldn't feel it at first, but when I tried to use it, not only was I unable to do anything, I even alerted the guard.
He ran in and slammed me against the wall, beating the living crap out of me before he left me alone.
I gritted my teeth and lay down on the floor as I looked at the door hatefully.
"FUCK…YOU…"
I still remember that day like it was yesterday. My scream reverberated throughout that corridor and I almost heard the echo.
The only silver lining was that some red of my blood disrupted that pristine white that disrupted my madness.
At least, that's what I thought initially.
But that tantrum brought me something else. Even if I wasn't able to get any contact with the outside world, I was given access to the Gazette. The same newspaper that I worked for. At first, I relaxed when I came into contact with it, but only when I read the news did my mood go from bad to worse.
I wasn't just given the Gazette of that day, but the gazette of the days before as well.
The first piece of news was of the very next day the Kurma incident happened.
The news read like this.
"Reappearance of Demons. Destruction of the Kurma Family."
That was the headline.
Not very catchy, I agree. But at that time, I wasn't really in the mood to judge how well the whole thing was written. The gist of the news was that the Demons had appeared in the Daksh kingdom and the portal happened to be closest to the Kurma city. The Kurma family in the hopes that they could save as many people as possible, evacuated the city and stayed behind to fight the demons. In the process, they were all dead.
A complete lie.
Maybe the only part that was true in that news article was the appearance of Demons.
The news of the day after that was that the destruction of Anta Duchy was also the cause of the demons. The man in black, the horse, and the wolf, that was all the ploy of a high-ranked shape-shifting demon, who could be the first one to come out of the portal.
Another lie.
If before the Kurma incident, I would have believed that he was really a demon, but no. He called Parvir 'Uncle'. I couldn't believe it.
The news next day was completely different.
It brushed off the deaths of two Dukes and focused mostly on the war that was happening on the southern front.
The whole page was filled with all kinds of victories they gained over the demons.
The victory of how General Garud chased down a Demonic squad that almost destroyed a village. It was accompanied by the smiling face of a child kissing the man on his cheek.
There was another article about how they discovered a small camp of demons, surrounded them, and annihilated it. There was a picture of the actual camp's encirclement.
Then there was the news of how they managed to take back two towns and three villages in a single day.
The whole gazette was focused on painting the picture on how the war was going in the favor of the humans and how all of their victories were dedicated to the two dead dukes and their families.
There was no matter of curse, there was no matter of that weird circular portal that we saw in the mountain valley, there was no matter of how a young man who looked to be in his twenties kicked the ass of the strongest duke of Daksh Kingdom.
I understood what was happening.
They swept everything under the rug. They were trying to shape a narrative and that was the reason they locked me up.
I guessed that even Dhana and Dharma were locked up. Heck, I wouldn't have been surprised if the Duke Paras was locked up as well.
And my guesses were confirmed when the guard opened the door and prompted me to get out.
My wound was still fairly fresh since I couldn't use my magic to heal.
So, when I was dragged out of that long corridor and back to the HQ of the Bureau, Duke Paras who was waiting for me along with Dharma and Dhana noticed it.
He frowned and looked at the guard.
"You hit him?" He asked, his voice several degrees colder.
"Sir, he was acting out of control. He tried to use magic. The Deputy Chief gave me the authority to.."
Before he could finish his words Duke Paras waved him off. He pursed his lips and looked at me. He placed his hand on my shoulder and said.
"I am really sorry." His voice was low. Almost like a whisper.
I looked at him in the eyes. His hair turned a bit more grey than it was before. The crow's feet at the edge of his eyes grew bigger and he seemed a bit thinner and less muscular with his hunched position.
It seemed like he aged quite a bit in the last few days.
However, that didn't make me feel sorry for him.
*PAK*
I slapped his hand off. That's right, I slapped the hand off the Strongest Duke. Dhana and Dharma frowned at this. Even though they were angry at the measures taken by the Duke, they didn't show it as he did.
Of course, they would.
Their interests lie in keeping people safe, at least that is what they believe they do their service for. But my interests lie in truth.
And for the past couple of days, I was locked up to keep my mouth shut and witness as the propagandized lies were fed as truth and they used the medium that at that time I thought was sacred, the gazette.
I couldn't be more angrier.
"I understand that you are angry, but we had to keep you locked up for a while. Its…"
Duke Paras was about to explain, but I cut him off.
"Because we were emotionally unstable because of the incidents and we might take severe actions. That was why we were locked up, weren't we?"
Duke pursed his lips but he nodded.
"So, the lies that were published in the Gazette were a happy coincidence?"
The Duke closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.
"The King would like to see you. If you have any questions ask him. Whether you can get the answers to your questions or not, depends on him."
All three of us exchanged a glance. Duke Paras himself directly escorted us to the King's Palace.
I had been in the capital for quite some time. However, I only entered the King's Estate Once.
We stopped at the estate entrance as Duke Paras finished the procedures and that gave me the chance to take it all in.
The estate was massive. So massive that the distance between its front gate and the actual Royal was almost two football fields long. Even though we could see the Royal Palace, we couldn't take in its majesty. We had to suffice with the massive estate walls and gates.