The Crazy Prologue Never Ends

36. The Reason I Couldn’t Escape

I was fortunate not to have thrown the box away.

Looking inside, I thought that their cruelty was already at its peak.

There was something even more horrifying waiting than drawing the portrait of someone about to die.

Inside the box was a pale hand.

The hand was pale, reflecting the moonlight.

How hadn’t it decayed? Was it because the weather was too cold?

Confusion, fear, and various emotions mixed chaotically. My body trembled with a chill. I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t tell if I should pretend not to know and bury it again or if I should examine the cruelty of displaying the hand.

As I blankly peered into the box, I felt something unusual.

I felt strangeness in the adult man’s hand.

I tilted the box slightly. The hand fell weakly. It was too light to be a real hand. And… there was a hook on the severed part.

It was a prosthetic hand.

Yeah. I couldn’t believe that they had put a part of the body inside. It wasn’t even a trophy. They must have had some sense of ethics about that.

As soon as I realized it was fake, I let out an unconscious sigh of relief.

The prosthetic hand was incredibly detailed, down to the blue veins. If it weren’t for the hook, anyone would have mistaken it for a real hand.

Come to think of it, the portrait hanging in the room and, unlike the other blood, Willie Tatum’s portrait, in particular, was expertly concealed at the wrist.

He was wearing clothes that covered his wrist with long sleeves, or his upper body was cleverly cropped.

So… he had been missing one forearm from the beginning.

I hadn’t heard of this before. Well, with only a few lines of information sacrificed in the original, it was natural that I didn’t know.

They were people who had already died, extras in the book, too valuable to be given just a few lines.

Even I didn’t know their names before discovering the tombstone.

It was unsettling to learn this fact just before leaving. It felt like an unspoken warning and didn’t sit well with me.

I made an effort to compose myself and closed the box.

I buried his mementos back in their original place. Then, I covered them with snow.

My nose felt cold. I had been outside for too long.

The lamp was gradually fading as the wick wore out.

I brushed off my knees. I had been kneeling for a long time, so my lower body was damp.

“I’m going to run away,” I whispered quietly, so no one could hear.

“So… please wish me luck. We must have the same feelings, right?”

Even though you can’t hear it.

I have to escape. If I don’t want to be buried here.

I stood in front of the cemetery, organizing my thoughts.

The thought that had always come to mind when I first woke up here, when I bled, when I attended the banquet. It came inevitably.

But this time was different.

Just a little longer. Just a bit more. Let’s stay until the moon rises.

I gazed at the chilly northern landscape. Now that I thought about leaving, I regretted not being able to see the beautiful scenery anymore.

I opened the paper Suren had given me. Inside was finely ground pink powder.

At the right moment, the wind began to blow from the mountain. The pink powder scattered in the wind.

With the winter wind, the powder gently fell to the ground, creating a beautiful display.

My cheeks turned red from the cold.

I couldn’t tell if it was because of the setting sun or the pink powder.

* * *

I tied the snowshoes with twine. I secured the protruding straws onto the shoelaces.

As I pulled it tight, one end came loose. While holding the other end in place, I muttered to myself.

“Nothing seems to be going right.”

There was no one to hear, but I grumbled anyway.

If I didn’t speak, even just with my mouth, it felt like I might be paralyzed by fear and find it difficult to take another step.

The twine was loosely attached to my shoes, with no proper plan for this escape, it was a first.

To rely on no one but myself and to cross the mountain with my own strength.

Even if I didn’t succeed in escaping and was caught, it was okay. I just wanted to get far away from the pulsating heartbeat that confined me, to a place where it couldn’t be heard.

And… I wanted to see what lay beyond those mountains before getting caught.

I climbed over the window. Like a circus performer, I perched on the windowsill and extended my legs.

The ground was covered with the snow that had fallen overnight. It wasn’t a bad drop from the second floor room.

Thud.

I dropped the stick below.

Compared to before, the surveillance network was incredibly lax.

After spending a few days in my room without moving, the watchful eyes that had been observing me seemed to have drifted away.

No one seemed to suspect that I hadn’t fully recovered, and there was no one who questioned why I fell asleep early.

Even before visiting the grave, I sat by the window and watched the sunset.

Not because the sunset was beautiful, but because I needed to confirm where the west was.

The western mountain range.

According to the soldiers, that was the closest shortcut to the village.

I extinguished the candle. It would be too easy to be spotted with a bright light.

As the dim light that had been illuminating the surroundings disappeared, the tree right in front of me also vanished from sight. The darkness was intimidating, but it was nothing. I had familiarized myself with the terrain by wandering around the greenhouse, garden, and training grounds.

Yeah, this is nothing.

To the training grounds, it’s a hundred steps, to the greenhouse, it’s 350 steps. The city walls are further than that.

The northern city walls weren’t strictly guarded. They needed to monitor the blood escaping from within rather than intruders from outside.

I naturally chose the silent route.

In the early dawn, the northern area was filled with stillness.

Crunch, crunch.

How much time had passed? It felt like I had been walking for a long time. Even though I had snowshoes on, my feet sank deeply.

I kept walking, but the mountain didn’t seem to get any closer.

It must have been about two hours. My legs trembled. I couldn’t feel my frozen soles. They were just following along, stepping where I stepped, dragging along aimlessly.

Thud.

As I looked up slightly, the strap of the snowshoe came undone.

“Just a little longer. Please, just hold on.”

Despite my desperate plea, the snowshoe came loose.

No, this can’t be happening.

As I lifted my two footsteps, the damp moss on my shoes weakly separated.

Soon enough, I felt the fur on my shoes getting wet, and the ground felt damp.

These fur shoes, designed for walking in the front yard, were clearly inadequate. The winter boots meant for climbing snow-covered mountains up to the knees were too thin. These shoes were typically worn by noblewomen in their cottages. The craftsman who made these shoes couldn’t have imagined they would be used to climb a mountain covered in this much snow.

I thought the fur was unnecessary, but surprisingly, once one piece of fur was gone, my feet sank deeply into the snow.

It was a desperate situation.

I gritted my teeth.

The cutting wind whipped my head harshly. I gazed at the distant mountain range. I was exhausted, and my legs were itching, but there was no time to rest. Time was running out.

My earflap felt like it was about to fly off in the biting cold wind. I covered my ears with both hands.

I lifted my feet several times and headed towards the mountain range.

By now, I must have gotten a little closer to the mountains.

I raised my head and swung the stick in front of me.

“Ah!”

At that moment, my hand stung as if it had been burned.

I dropped the stick, but I didn’t even think about picking it up. Everything was locked in darkness, and suddenly, a bright light flickered brightly.

There was a faint blue flame on the back of my hand.

“What’s this?”

It was an unsettling sensation.

Could it be because of this?

The sentence that looked like a tattoo quickly faded as I withdrew my hand.

I waved it in the air.

I saw a faintly unsettling boundary on the wall.

Every time I touched the boundary, the blue wings engraved on the back of my hand shot up.

And a terrible pain surged up through my hand.

Gasp.

I withdrew my hand again.

The wing pattern of a hawk I had seen on the flag of the Marquis was shining blue on the back of my hand.

The tattoo glowed fluorescently. It was so intricate that I would have admired it if it weren’t for the excruciating pain.

“This is…”

A beautiful shackle.

A tattoo on the back of my hand that I didn’t even know was there.

Chills ran from my toes to my head.

When was it engraved there in the first place? When I arrived here? If not that, then…

I groped my memory.

I woke up in Leonie’s body only a few weeks ago.

If that’s the case, there’s only one answer.

Right after I arrived here.

Suddenly, I remembered.

Under the tombstone. The portrait of the man without a wrist buried as a relic.

I thought he had been in an accident or had a disability from the beginning…

But maybe… he cut off his own hand with my hand to avoid being traced…

I rolled up my sleeve and looked at the back of my hand.

There was a thin, red scar.

The outward appearance may have seemed fine, but there’s probably deep damage inside.

When I clenched my fist, the wounds throbbed.

Ah, this must be the reason why the escapees couldn’t get away all this time.

It’s not that they didn’t attempt to escape. It was because it was futile.

There were old, feeble ones, but there were swift-footed children and young men too.

Why did I think they were cooped up inside, waiting for death?

I touched the boundary. The previously unseen boundary shimmered and swayed again.

It was a transparent barrier created by magic.

This might possibly be… a fence created by the people who had tried to escape.

A wall that became more severe and solid with each desperate attempt to flee.

Layer upon layer, it was the barrier of the novel created to keep the escapees until the protagonist arrived to rescue her niece, until a child who didn’t need to escape appeared.

Hmmm…

With the repetitive motion, the magic circle beneath my feet activated.

The Duke probably knows my location by now.

Anyway, trying to tie together escape items would have been useless.

I looked down at the sticks, jerky, and winter gear I made every day. I worked diligently on them, but they were exceedingly rough.

Now I understand why he readily accepted and deluded himself with this feeble deception.

It was all just a game.

Feigning to provide freedom, pretending to offer hope.

Whether the cattle were left free on the farm or locked in the barn and fed grass, the outcome of slaughter and consumption remained the same. Did I really expect anything different by leaving them comfortable all this time?

“So, it was all for naught? Really?”’’

My stomach churned.

I felt like such a fool. Even believing in him a little bit.

Whether I was in that wretched room or in the Marquis’s greenhouse, I was just his hostage. Did I really delude myself into thinking it was warm inside the greenhouse? It was no different from the thinking of a beast.

The reason I allowed myself to believe he had set me free was that there was a corner of trust in me. Because there was the final stronghold, a meticulously crafted magical fence.

I remembered the days of my foolishness.

Deon and me, lying on the grave, gazing at the mountain range together.

Deon. Why did you ask me if I wanted to cross the village?

Were you playing with me all along?

I couldn’t help but curse.