The Inscription's Revelation
It was only after passing the entrance that Lisbel realized she had entered the ruins. Realizing it belatedly, but now that she was gazing upon the ancient stones, the thrill of discovery was tempered by the man beside her. She swallowed her gasp of awe, keeping it locked deep within.
The ruins had the form of a temple from the outside. Even though the space was sealed off from the exterior, time’s erosion had not conquered it, and the broken stone pillars stood in orderly rows like guardians of the outer corridor.
“The inscription is over there.”
Hendrick’s footsteps carried no hesitation, as though he had walked these halls many times before. Lisbel longed to study the pillars’ forms, their textures, and the broken statues that adorned their tops, yet she followed him reluctantly.
The deeper they went, ancient architectural styles and motifs that she had only ever seen in history books began to reveal themselves at every turn. None of it was something one could simply pass by. Yet Hendrick only halted after reaching the farthest depths, the central altar.
“Is this the inscription that appeared recently?”
“Yes.”
At first glance, the stele itself appeared ordinary. Of course, its placement in the very core of the temple made it profoundly anomalous.
This ruin had been a meticulously calculated structure, with uniform stone material and color, and precise symmetry in the pillar spacing.
Yet in the center lay a plain, jet-black stele bearing no traces of carving whatsoever. It did not belong with the rest at all. Like a rough smear of paint over a beautiful painting, the stone stood out unnaturally.
“Will you be able to interpret it?”
While Lisbel studied the inscription, Hendrick’s quiet question fell. It was a voice that reminded her this was not a research expedition to examine the historical value or origins of the inscription.
Recalling her true purpose belatedly, Lisbel stopped her wandering steps around the stele and stood facing the front filled with dense characters.
“Why is it so heavily damaged…”
As expected, it was difficult to even take rubbings.
The spot received little light, and the rough, black stone surface of the stele was severely eroded, making the shapes of the letters nearly impossible to discern.
Just in case, she touched the surface lightly, and a weak crumbling of rock fragments reached her fingertips. In this state, even moving outside seemed impossible.
“Decoding, I’ll attempt it.”
She had known him since childhood, but it was the first time she showed her archaeologist side in front of Hendrick. If it hadn’t been for this situation, she might not have, but she did not want to appear helpless now.
“What kind of characters are these…”
Lisbel possessed a talent for ancient scripts among the fields of archaeology. Her papers that perfectly deciphered ancient documents from hundreds of years ago had quickly elevated her to professor.
But the characters carved on the stele were unfamiliar in form, unlike any artifacts or ruins or texts she had seen before.
With a tense expression, Lisbel moved her fingertips along the letters, starting slowly with the most intact ones.
“Baldor… buried in mud, lying prostrate… begging for the dew of mercy?”
Then something strange happened. It was clearly a character she had never seen, and she should not have been able to read it, yet the meaning began to read in a form she could understand.
“Is it being decoded?”
“Th-that…”
Lisbel trailed off, not knowing how to explain this phenomenon. How could she say that a character she had never seen was being interpreted in her mind? Especially when she was already accused of being a heretic.
“Yes, it seems I can decode it.”
But soon, recalling the conditions of the deal she had made with him, she corrected her thoughts. After all, as long as one finds the rules of the characters, one can understand their meaning.
So, there was no need to explain the strange anomaly happening in her head. She could just compare the sentences that interpreted themselves in her mind with the characters recorded on the stele, and find the rules in reverse. Then her words would not be false.
“Have you figured out what is engraved?”
“That is still… It is only written in metaphors, so the meaning is ambiguous. But since ‘Baldor’ is included, it seems to deal with the founding of the empire.”
She was tense, fearing she might be suspected or interrogated, but Hendrick showed no reaction. Lisbel felt relieved by his attitude that did not take her words seriously. Then she continued reading the inscription.
“Hmm…?”
The following records were also a series of excessive metaphors. But assuming it was about the founding history, some meaning could be guessed.
“Why?”
“Ah…”
Lisbel wondered if she should say it.
Hendrick was the legitimate imperial bloodline, and the founder Baldor was his ancestor. However, the content recorded in this stele dealt with a founding history completely different from that recorded in the empire’s history books.
“It is too different from what I know and what is written in the inscription.”
“…The founding history of the empire?”
Lisbel nodded slowly with a tense expression. By voicing the content of this inscription, she might become the real heretic who distorted and belittled the empire’s history.
“You don’t have to be careful; read it as written.”
Hendrick was very calm. There was no sign of surprise or displeasure in his voice.
“First… At the very top, there is the passage I just read: ‘Baldor, lying prostrate, begging for the dew of mercy.’ After that…”
It was a fact known even to children that the founder Baldor, who built the empire after sweeping away the monsters that occupied the land, created the current Barboska Empire.
But combining just a few words from the metaphorical stele made it vastly different from the known history.
After reading one paragraph of the inscription, Lisbel cautiously looked at Hendrick.
She expected him to be angry or shocked at hearing a record that seemed to mock the founder. But Hendrick said nothing.
Instead, his jaw muscles were slightly hardened, and his dark red eyes never left the inscription for a moment.
Could he already know this content?
A fleeting doubt crossed Lisbel’s mind, and she shook her head.
No matter how she thought, it was impossible. That Hendrick knew historical records that even the archaeologist herself did not know made no sense.
“Just read the readable words; don’t misunderstand. If you fill in the eroded letters, it might be interpreted as completely different meanings.”
Lisbel tried to persuade Hendrick with desperation close to survival instinct. His complexion was stiff, but oddly, no displeasure or anger was read.
It was as if he was enduring something.
“This sentence is the most intact. ‘The children who inherited his blood promised eternal submission before the great breath.’”
The moment she finished the sentence, Hendrick’s dark red eyes darkened even more extremely. It looked more like a face of someone recalling buried memories rather than a reaction of someone shocked.
It was too dark; maybe she had misseen.
But before she could confirm the change, he had already turned his body.
“Is that the end?”
“I think it’s better to record separately the parts that are hard to judge or cut off, and study them.”
“Alright.”
Hendrick stood leaning against the entrance, completely turning his back on the inscription. As if he no longer wanted to look at the inscription.
Lisbel watched his back, then hurriedly rummaged through her bag. She had realized he had given her time to copy the inscription.
Soon, she took out her notebook and pen and started transcribing the content of the inscription.
“Hoo…”
Was it due to the overload left by the first decoding? Lisbel fanned her increasingly hot cheeks with her hand and exhaled short breaths.
The content of the inscription was shocking, and the phenomenon of unfamiliar characters being read by themselves made her mind chaotic. Even so, the relief of successfully taking the first step to clear her name all at once made her breath come out.
“Ugh…”
But it was hard to dismiss it as just fatigue.
A strange sensation flowed along her spine.
Her inner thighs and fingertips began to tingle strangely, and a boiling heat rose from the depths of her bones, sharply piercing her lower abdomen and spreading.
The tip of the pen that had been moving quickly on the notebook began to shake dangerously and slow down. The pretty handwriting that had been filling the white paper began to distort horribly from then on.
“Hey, are you okay?”
A low voice came from behind. Hendrick, who had noticed Lisbel’s change belatedly, spoke up.
The moment he heard his voice, Lisbel’s mind suddenly clouded over, and the body’s heat she had been desperately trying to contain began to rampage violently.
“Hah!”
In the end, overwhelmed by the sudden explosion of intense excitement and heat, Lisbel dropped the notebook and pen she was holding. Her knees, which had finally given up, bent, and Lisbel’s upper body collapsed to the floor.
“Lisbel Belloc!”
Amid the unfamiliar excitement surging from her lower abdomen, her mind gradually blurred. The last thing she saw in the hazy vision from the heat was Hendrick rushing over urgently.