Chapter 21
“Ah……”
Beatrice couldn’t move for a long while as she stared down at the note.
Only after the numbness in her crouched legs had started to ache did she finally stand up and quietly open the drawer.
Just as the note had said, there was a cloth doll dressed in a one-piece dress inside.
“So if something strange happens, I’m supposed to leave the doll and run? What kind of horror story is this?”
She felt like she could understand why that survivor had been trembling and babbling incoherently before collapsing.
‘No idea whether the village that survivor went to was the same as this one, but there weren’t even any people there.’
She imagined it for a moment.
In the middle of a dim, moonlit night, with no wind at all, the curtains by the window suddenly beginning to sway.
A chilling air wrapping around her body, and then, after leaving the doll behind and running to the lobby—what if the person at the front desk wasn’t a human, but a doll?
‘Damn, that’s terrifying.’
Beatrice felt like she could scream right there on the spot.
Then—
Knock, knock.
“Um, are you perhaps asleep?”
“Eek!”
A thin female voice came from beyond the door.
Beatrice, who had instinctively pressed herself against the wall, suddenly realized that the voice she had just heard sounded familiar.
Gathering her courage, she approached the door and, with her hand on the doorknob, asked the person outside,
“Uh, who—”
“You’re still awake. That’s a relief. This is Astrid Sharon. If it’s all right, may I come into your room for a moment?”
“Oh. Y-yes!”
Phew, she really had startled me.
Beatrice opened the door while patting her chest, and Assistant Sharon, now dressed in somewhat more comfortable clothes, offered a light greeting.
“Hello, Lady Ria. This is actually my first time greeting you like this. I’m sorry to visit so suddenly.”
“Oh, no. It’s fine! Please come in!”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like some tea?”
“I’m very grateful for the thought, but there’s something I’d like to discuss rather urgently.”
Politely declining Beatrice’s offer, Astrid straightforwardly held out a sheet of paper.
Beatrice immediately recognized what it was.
“This is the paper with the warning instructions, right? The one that came through the crack in the door.”
“That’s right. It seems… Lady Ria received one as well.”
Staring briefly at the paper still lying on the floor, Astrid spoke with a troubled expression.
“First, let me say that I don’t fully understand the situation either, but…”
Just as Beatrice had told Clyde, this kind of doll business was not some custom of the Downer Marquessate.
“First of all, the marquessate has never restricted entry like this before. Not once.”
The terrain and soil of the marquessate were not suitable for producing enough food on their own.
So if entry and exit were restricted, the marquessate itself would be the one in trouble.
“The marquessate entrusted the Sharon County with trade affairs, and our first rule is to make sure supplies never run out…”
As she said that, Astrid handed over another letter.
“This was the last letter I received from my father.”
“May I read it?”
“Of course. I brought it to show you. We all already know what it says.”
Carefully opening the letter, Beatrice found a warning telling them not to return to the marquessate for the time being.
It said that, perhaps because it was compounded by famine, an unknown plague had spread, and that it would be better to remain safely in the capital.
“I was worried about the marquessate’s situation and thought of ignoring my father’s words, but just then Sir Dalton suggested to His Highness that it might be good to support the western borderlands centered around the marquessate together with Grand Duke Alec.”
“Oh, so then…”
“Yes. He agreed, saying that the matter seemed serious, especially with this letter as well. He made preparations of his own, too.”
So that’s why there were healers in the rear!
‘So it wasn’t Her Majesty the Empress preparing things after hearing about me—it was Assistant Sharon’s idea.’
As Beatrice thought that much, Clyde’s face briefly came to mind.
She suddenly became curious about how much of this had been Clyde’s plan, and where the variables began.
‘Was going into the county with such a small group part of his expectations too?’
But if that was the case, why did he drag in Grand Duke Alec and His Highness the Crown Prince?
The more she thought about it, the more nauseating it felt, like looking at a chessboard with too many tangled pieces.
Giving up on making sense of it, Beatrice decided to focus on Astrid instead.
“Um, then, Assistant Sharon…”
“Oh, please just call me Astrid.”
“Oh—yes. Astrid. Then putting the doll matter aside, were those strange phenomena mentioned here also completely unheard of in the past?”
“Hmm…”
What? Why isn’t she denying it right away?
Beatrice’s pupils trembled slightly at Astrid’s expression, as if she were thinking something over.
“Could it be… a, a ghost…?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Seeing Beatrice grow frightened, Astrid gave an awkward smile and continued.
“Actually, I was hesitating because the explanation is the exact opposite of that—well, a rather childish story. All the children of the marquessate grow up hearing fairy lore.”
“Fairy lore?”
“Yes. Stories like how, if the wind isn’t blowing and a window opens on its own, or if you hear whistling sounds while you’re sleeping, it means a fairy has come to visit. Some children even said they saw tiny shapes pass through the crack under the door.”
“……”
“You look like you think that sounds like a haunting, but there’s one crucial difference between the two. Whether the phenomenon causes harm or fear.”
In other words, when similar things happened in the marquessate in the past, no one had considered them a threat.
‘Hmm…’
The note, the doll, and the fairy tale Astrid had just told her.
She laid the various pieces of information out in her mind, trying to find a connection that seemed almost within reach but still slipped away.
Then the candle burning brightly between them suddenly went out with a sharp whoosh.
“Ah!”
“Lady Ria, just in case, I’m going to take your hand.”
For a moment they both froze at the sudden darkness, and then Astrid reached out and pulled Beatrice closer.
If any threat were to appear, it was to protect her.
For a brief moment, the warmth of their joined hands was reassuring.
But then the cold, damp sensation she had felt earlier began creeping up over her body again.
Astrid seemed to feel it too, because she tightened her grip slightly.
“Lady Ria, this is also…”
“Yes. I think so too.”
As the foul air grew heavier and heavier, making it feel as though her body was being squeezed, Beatrice made up her mind.
She immediately took the doll from the drawer and the two dolls she had received at the gate, and placed them on the floor.
Then she and Astrid quickly left the room.
Everything was exactly as the note had instructed. Only one thing was different.
“Lady Ria?”
“Shh. Let’s wait a little.”
Instead of heading to the lobby as the note had said, she chose to wait in the hallway.
—Screeech! Snap!
—Thud!
Holding the doorknob, Beatrice listened carefully to the sounds coming from inside.
And the moment she confirmed that the faint vibration she had felt through the knob had completely vanished, she opened the door again.
“What in the world…”
“……”
Leaving the stunned Astrid aside, Beatrice took in the scene inside the room in fine detail.
More precisely, she looked at the dolls, twisted out of shape, crushed and torn apart, and the wooden furniture shattered in several places as if it had been struck by some tremendous force.
Seeing the small heart-shaped stone found inside one of the torn dolls, and the room looking as though it had been swept through by merciless power, Beatrice blinked.
‘I think I know this.’
Very, very rarely, Beatrice had seen a scene like this before in her father Jedarik’s workshop.
And even once in her own workshop.
‘This… isn’t it a mana collision?’
It felt exactly like that.
