“It is Crono, my King.”
Fuck. My hunch was right.
“As we speak, I’m sure that he was now back in this Kingdom. That was what was written in the scroll which your Father sent for you. Your Mother predicted it about two days ago that’s why she immediately sent us to you while your Father stole the key to open the portal. But with the way things are going, the key is not needed anymore. Madam Soo Mi could have teleported to reach you as soon as she discovered about Crono. The problem was that she did not have enough strength to do it.”
“And how could that happen? That doesn’t make sense. How did my Mother lose her magic at a very important time like this?” My jaw clenched. Arameth was still struggling because of the pandemic and now this? “How about Uncle Jin Woo?”
“He had lost half of his magic, too. The same thing happened to your grandparents who drank the potion. It’s because of a certain spell that they created last night. It’s too much to explain right away, my King. Right now, what your parents wanted was for you to escape as soon as possible because they were certain that you will be the one who will be the most affected by this turmoil. But it seemed too late now. One thing is sure, though. We have been betrayed, my King. Somebody was helping Crono. And we have a hunch that ‘that’ person is from Eliran.” His expression darkened. “Because Crono would not be able to open the portal on his own from outside.
“We had heard about the rumors that he had killed hundreds of supernatural beings that were taken to the human realm as their punishment. Crono used the hearts of those people to create an elixir and drank it to make his magic stronger. You know the rules. The more supernatural beings you kill, the higher black magic you obtain. It was so easy for him to kill because he was once the general of your Father’s army. His father also came from one of the prominent families in this Kingdom that’s why he also inherited a strong magic. It was clear that his anger towards us made him strive to live up to this time. Your family believed that Crono came back to Arameth for one purpose. And that was to have his revenge.”
I had Crono investigated a few days before I became the King because I wanted to find out if he was connected with my mission which the ancestor talked about. I had sent a Knight to the human realm to spy on Crono. But the Knight almost died after his encounter with Crono which was many times stronger than my own Knight at that time. Luckily, my Knight was able to escape.
I found out that Crono had been using sadistic magic to strengthen his abilities for the past seventy-seven years ever since he was thrown out of our kingdom. I was familiar with the kind of magic he was using. I read about that, too. It could strengthen anyone but there was only one person who had tried doing it in the past. As far as my memory was concerned, her name was Laura. She wanted to be more powerful than the Armethian King at that time. Laura wanted to take control of our kingdom. But the moment we use our magic to commit evil deeds, the nature itself will make us pay tenfold.
Because whatever energy or spell they sent out, whether it be positive or negative, will be returned ten times in kind. That’s why magic was also an enormous responsibility. It was like tossing a pebble into a pond knowing that every ripple one send out had the potential to affect many people. That was the main belief in our Kingdom. We needed to be careful in using magic because it could affect other people’s lives.
That was the reason why the first and last Armethian who did the trick had lost every dear person in her life. Laura’s limbs had been ripped off every single day for eleven straight years and her magic had been sealed, making her unable to protect herself from the nature’s punishment. She was only able to enjoy her full power for a year, but her suffering lasted for eleven years until her sanity gave out. She became a mad woman.
Armethians also believe in reincarnation. But for us, the only ones who get reincarnated were the people who had committed grave sins. Laura had been reincarnated exactly a year after she died. And we watched as she got her heart broken several times before she committed suicide in her second lifetime. When she chose to die, that was the only time that her punishment had stopped.
Since we acquire our magic through the help of nature, balance had to be restored otherwise, the nature itself will hunt us to make us pay. The humans called it “karma.” That was the reason why nobody else had tried using black magic before except for Crono. This old man was bold and fearless.
The story about Laura had been told many times to every child to serve as an example and a warning to those who could not be contented with their inborn abilities. It appeared that Crono did not take what happened to Laura seriously. Or maybe he did. But clearly, his revenge weighed more to him than the punishment he would receive.
Because of what I had discovered, I had set up a meeting with my cousins. And together, we sealed the portal using our powers to make sure that no one from the mortals’ realm will be able to pass through. The portal had always been closed, but we fortified its seal. That seal had one key and only I had it. Without the key, the portal would remain locked forever. It was inside the vault in my room.
With the way things were going, Theron’s hunch was proving to be right. Indeed, someone from Eliran, from my very own Castle, stole the original key. Whoever it was, he found out about the spell that my cousins and I put in the portal. The key which my father had was only a duplicate. I felt that when I held the key which Theron gave me.