Aya Ran Away - Chapter 18

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 18
“You speak of a Blessing?”
Yesili asked in return.
Her eyes narrowed as though turning something over in her mind.
“……Would you believe me if I said yes? Or perhaps the answer you’re hoping for is that I deny it here and now?”
It was an evasive reply.
Yesili had turned the question back on him, and now she studied Nahal’s face.
Her gaze was searching—watching to see how his expression would shift.
“I didn’t come here to solve riddles with a priestess.”
He didn’t wish to be discourteous to someone who might well be his benefactor, yet impatience gnawed at him.
“I didn’t realize you’d take my words as riddles.”
Yesili laughed softly at the last.
“Don’t test me with obscure speech. I’ve heard that a priestess who tends to the divine cannot speak falsehoods. All I need from you is an honest answer. Did such a thing occur in your past?”
“There is no lie in what I said, but it is the divine who hides truth within mist, is it not? It seems you came seeking the one who performed a Blessing for you in your childhood.”
Yet wasn’t that too ordinary a thing to call a debt of gratitude?
Yesili laughed as though saying precisely that.
“When I was young……I received great kindness from a certain priestess. I owe my very life to her.”
Nahal rose from his seat, his expression turning unexpectedly bitter.
“Then I’ll take my leave.”
Though he had half-expected this—that it would not be her—his strength drained away.
He despised himself for clinging to hope even while knowing disappointment awaited.
As he turned to go, Yesili spoke to his retreating back.
“What if she lost her memory?”
Nahal stopped and turned to face her.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What if the priestess who saved you has lost her memories, and even meeting you face to face, she wouldn’t recognize you?”
Nahal fell silent for a moment at the sudden question.
After a long pause, he opened his mouth.
His voice was low, yet it seemed to carry with it an icy certainty.
“Then I will recognize her.”
And he turned away again.
There was such conviction in him that no lie could ever deceive him—or so it seemed.
Yesili watched the place where he had stood, then lowered her head.
“……It looks good.”
She murmured the words softly.
* * *
The news that Nahal would be sent to a conference with Argarite set the entire kingdom astir.
The people of Revar sought out officials daily to protect their hero.
Even the elders and nobles who had harbored skepticism toward Nahal petitioned the king to reconsider his decision.
But the king remained unmoved.
He did not take back the words he had spoken.
Days later, Nahal set out for Siprot.
The majority of his retainers departed with him.
No amount of protest from Nahal would have stopped them.
To avoid suspicion of bringing armed soldiers, some of them removed their uniforms and returned to their native noble status to join the Diplomatic Delegation.
Others followed under the guise of attendants.
Knowing their loyalty well, Nahal could only surrender.
A month passed after the Diplomatic Delegation, with Nahal at its head, departed for Siprot.
The journey from Revar’s capital to Siprot was a month by land, and then another week or more by sea.
Beyond that, factoring in the unpredictability of the weather and the speed of travel determined by the delegation’s size, the passage could well have taken even longer.
Aya stood on a raised platform and watched the delegation depart, her eyes clouded with anxiety.
The king stood beside her.
Beneath an enormous canopy, dozens of eyes rolled and clattered, making an eerie sound, and the ox’s head worn overhead split its mouth in an grotesque smile.
Aya was seized by dread.
She feared everything wrought by that being who was no longer human—that king.
Her heart ached watching Nahal, who had won an impossible battle and never properly rested, now bear another burden as he departed.
Aya looked down at him and prayed silently in her heart that he would return safe.
In that moment, Nahal turned his body.
He lifted his gaze toward where Aya stood.
His golden eyes, glinting in the sunlight, were exactly like those of a bird of prey.
His gaze held a force that made her heart stir.
For a moment he looked toward where she stood, then turned and departed.
Perhaps he had not seen her at all.
Yet the instant their eyes met, Aya was certain he had looked directly at her.
As she watched him go, an uncanny sense of déjà vu settled over her.
It felt as though this moment had happened before.
Her chest ached in a way she could not explain.
She did not want to let him leave.
* * *
Aya sat leaning against the window frame.
Gazing at the sky, she conjured an image of Nahal in some distant place.
It had been two months since he and the Diplomatic Delegation departed.
The King’s irritability and carping had only grown worse.
Screams echoing from his chambers came with increasing frequency.
Aya dared not venture near where he dwelt.
Even Chipor’s invitations she refused repeatedly, feigning illness.
In truth, her health had begun to fail.
Whether from the weight of her worry for Nahal or some other cause, she could not say—but fever burned through her, and her limbs had grown weak and listless.
Aya’s affliction kept only her Caretaker busy.
Yesili, whose visits to the palace had become sparse, came at intervals to help the Caretaker tend to her.
Yet she no longer came as often as before, nor did she stay as long.
Yesili reported that the priests at the Temple were being instructed to avoid visiting the Royal Palace.
Aya wanted to ask Yesili what had transpired between her and Nahal, but she held her tongue.
Nahal had been forced to risk everything and depart because of the King, and Yesili herself now stood under grave threat. It was not the time to press such questions.
Still, it seemed unwise to broach the matter now.
It was the King who had ordered her dragged from the silence in which she had been keeping herself.
When her Caretaker spoke of the King’s summons, Aya felt the world tilt beneath her.
She could not imagine facing him in his present state.
She could not fathom what venom he might be harboring.
Aya recalled the true form of the King—visible only to her eyes—and shook her head.
Her Caretaker prattled on, saying the King seemed to seek out only this princess among all his children, which suggested perhaps some lingering affection befitting a youngest child.
It was nonsense, and Aya suspected the Caretaker knew it too—yet such hollow words wore on her all the same.
The King she encountered after so long was in a state far from well.
Or perhaps she could not discern his state at all.
The gelatinous black form oozed down from the throne and pooled across the steps below, which suggested that perhaps his mood alone was poor while his energy positively overflowed.
Unable to look directly at this ‘King,’ Aya kept her head bowed, when his voice rang out above her.
He rambled for some time with meaningless, disjointed utterances, then suddenly began to laugh.
A chilling sound followed, like fingernails scraping across stone.
After laughing for a long while, he spoke to her.
“……Without you, I would never have known. All of this is your doing.”
Known what?
Aya still could not comprehend what he was saying.
The bull’s head shifted and trembled.
The sound of countless eyeballs rattling in their sockets echoed through the air.
Every grotesque thing attached to the King seemed to laugh along with him.
Aya sensed that something had gone terribly wrong.
And in that moment, she felt a terrible premonition—that the King was speaking of Nahal.
That horrifying thing seemed poised to engulf not just her but to devour Nahal beyond her as well.
Her head snapped up of its own accord.
Aya had always feared the King.
But today, something else surged up to overcome that fear.
It was rage.
She glared at the King, trembling as she did.
The eyeballs strung together, the reversed bull’s eyes—none of these were the true King’s eyes.
Deeper still, in that dark abyss, she could see something gleaming in the void—the real gaze.
‘That’s the truth of it.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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