Whether it was the "Beauty" Mahidfran or the "Brave" Ismail...
Iver had no intention of taking either side.
He could see clearly... Although Mahidfran appeared to be protecting Iver, the truth was that neither of them respected anyone at all—not the attendants who had been ordered to touch the petrifying barrier, not Iver, the outsider who was a Good Lord, and not even each other.
Simply because Ismail had refused to obey her words, Mahidfran had become enraged and argued with another Good Lord in the middle of the street without the slightest regard for her image. She had grown completely accustomed to an environment where her word was absolute, and the moment she discovered that things were not so, she immediately lost her elegant composure.
Ismail, meanwhile, had never taken Mahidfran seriously.
He kept sending attendants to touch the obviously dangerous barrier. Perhaps that was precisely because Mahidfran was trying to stop him?
—If Mahidfran spoke up to stop him and he obediently halted, wouldn't that mean Mahidfran's status was higher than his, and that she was more revered than he was?
And if he needed Mahidfran's advice to discover the problem, wouldn't that amount to admitting his own failure?
He had to keep refuting Mahidfran and do everything in his power to prove that she was wrong.
If he could not do that, he would rather let all his attendants be buried here.
That way, at least no one would be able to witness his failure.
On this sinful land, the Good Lords did everything they could to maintain their dazzling, godlike appearances. Once they lost the influence that made their word absolute, death and retribution would follow close behind. To preserve this "absolute correctness," they had already lost their way on this path for far, far too