"Are you insane?!"
Morse's voice held fear for the first time. He drifted before his descendant, the empty sockets of his skull filled with startled, orange-red light.
He had already warned Kas that when facing the cold and merciless Lady of Death, their only option was to pray that she would be moved by her Blackheart daughter's resolve.
But this... Was it a prayer or a threat?
Kas said nothing. He merely raised the bunch of grapes in his hand higher. He had to get an explanation from the Lady of Death.
Had Tina plunged the dagger into her throat without hesitation because of the pain in her heart, or because it was the gods' will?
The raven let out a piercing cry and beat its wings, warning the irreverent mortal that anyone who dared offend the Lady of Death would end up as a head hanging from the cliff.
Time passed, but nothing unusual happened. Kas seemed to give up and lowered his hand, making Morse breathe a sigh of relief. He prepared to urge his descendant to leave before the Lady of Death grew angry.
But Kas was always doing the unexpected. He took the battle-axe from his back and walked to the towering cliff face.
He drove the axe blade into the rock like a climbing pick. Holding the sacrificial grapes in his left hand, he climbed toward the raven, using both hands and feet.
With his first step, he saw a girl crying in a sandstorm. Her despair was nothing like that of someone who wanted to give up on life.
With his second step, the girl was running for her life. The rose that symbolized life was swept away by the sandstorm and vanished into eternal silence and darkness.
With his third step, the girl walked beneath a dim sky, a wineskin and bread in her hands. She knelt before Iron Peak Mountain and whispered a prayer to the Lady of Death.
He saw the dream...
With his fourth step, he reached the summit, seized the raven with its hoarse, hornlike cry, and stared into its eyes, cold and eerily beautiful in the darkness.
Illusions gradually overtook him, just like after eating a Hallucinogenic Mushroom of the Gods.
Death clung to his throat like mud. Thorny brambles blossomed into purple-black roses, giving off a silent fragrance. A woman wrapped head to toe in black gauze laughed beneath her veil, her laughter merciful yet cold.
The Lady of Death...
Poisonous brambles burst from the mountainside, coiling around Kas like pythons and piercing his skin. They injected a toxin called death into his body, but he still spoke with resolve:
"Did their actions come from your will, or..."
"You know the answer, Kas, son of Malik Axe-Breaker."
The voice of Lagrey, the Lady of Death, sounded like an illusion, yet felt utterly real—like death itself, seemingly distant but forever closest to life.
She strolled toward him and gently brushed a gauze-covered hand against Kas's face, turned purple-black by the poison.
"Whether she heard my will or merely imagined it doesn't matter... To the Rishiman People, honor, dreams, and divine revelations are all the same."
"No. They're absolutely not the same," Kas replied firmly.
From the perspective of postmodern deconstructionism, a sense of honor was a load of nonsense invented by governments to get armies to fight for free. People deconstructed and criticized everything traditionalism held dear.
But in the Sorrow Mountains, the elements that made up honor were exceedingly complex. They included cultural traditions and social norms that affirmed one's actions, the attention of spirits and souls, and whether one went to the Hall of Vagha or Lagrey's Underworld after death—or, in the worst case, wandered the mortal world in eternal torment. All of these were part of honor.
Their idea of dreams was even stranger. The Rishiman People believed that dreams showed what was happening in another world. They often said they had "seen" a dream the night before, rather than "had" one, even when they themselves were the protagonist.
But what baffled Kas most about Tina's suicide was the religious concept behind honor killings, framed as an act of reciprocal vengeance. He hadn't seen the slightest hint of struggle or hesitation in Tina's eyes.
A struggle in her eyes would have meant she was weighing her life against her honor.
Hesitation would have meant that although she had seen the dream, she still knew she was in reality.
There had been none of that. She had seemed so utterly resolved, as though she knew the outcome of an honor killing: suicide.
Everyone in the Black Ember Tribe knew she was going to carry out an honor killing, while he knew nothing about it. Some force had to be manipulating the collective consciousness of the people.
Kas could reach only one conclusion: the Lady of Death had controlled Tina's mind and orchestrated an honor killing to please herself. Only strange gods like these could take pleasure in toying with mortals' fates.
"Do you doubt Tina's honor, or the dream she saw?" The Lady of Death stood calmly before Kas, her face hidden by a black veil, yet somehow possessing the allure of someone who could see into people's hearts.
She swept her slender arm forward. The vision revealed the struggle, hesitation, and pain in Tina's eyes as she thrust the butcher's knife into Kas's back... Only the resolve he had expected was absent.
The Lady of Death lifted her chin slightly and met his gaze with her lifeless stare and cold, deep eyes.
"Or... was what you saw also a dream?"
"How can I be sure that none of this was your..." Kas began to argue that it was only an illusion, but the instant the thought surfaced, his pupils contracted like they had been struck by an earthquake.
Honor gave rise to fantasies, fantasies gave rise to dreams, and everything seen in dreams was a prophecy that revealed the truth. In the madness brought on by prophecy, people seemed able to touch the edge of the gods—and, in doing so, felt a sublime kinship with them.
"It seems you understand now, Kas, son of Malik Axe-Breaker. Tina's death was not what I wished for. She believed she would die and suffer eternal torment alongside her father, Xipel Blackheart.
"That was because of the honor she believed in, the dream she believed in, and the divine revelation she believed in..."
Damn, these Barbarians were way more irrational than even me, the king of ideas. I at least needed an inspiration that formed a logical loop before I could carry out a plan.
They could just get an idea and kill themselves without hesitation?
He found a flaw in the Lady of Death's explanation.
"Suppose this had nothing to do with you and was entirely Tina's own wish. Why, in the Black Ember Tribe, were only Seneya, Isidore, and I unaware that Tina was going to carry out an honor killing?"
"Because you don't believe an honor killing can bring honor." The Lady of Death lifted Kas's chin. Her icy presence spread across his cheek.
"I appeared before you, and you firmly believed that my messenger had made contact with you, allowing you to speak directly with a god.
"But understand: to us, dreams and divine revelations are the same thing...
"How, then, can you tell whether this conversation is a dream or a divine revelation?"
Kas's icy blue eyes widened as though he had been struck by a hammer.
He jolted awake to find himself lying in his familiar bed in the White House. The heavy warmth of burning charcoal hung beneath the ceiling, and a pair of big, bright eyes curiously studied him as he woke.
He rubbed his eyes hard and suddenly realized how little he understood about the eighteen years he had lived in the Sorrow Mountains.
Had his conversation with the Lady of Death been an illusion caused by bringing an offering to Iron Peak Mountain to question the Raven Messenger, or had it been a dream born of guilt over the Blackheart daughter's death and his conscience playing tricks on him?
These damn Rishiman traditions were getting harder and harder for someone with a modern mindset like his to understand.
Was this something logic and common sense could explain?
He watched Senete fiddling with the battle-axe "Luna" beside his bed and suddenly said, "Miss Seneya, slap me."
Seneya raised her head in confusion and held out her hand, puzzled. "Mm~"
"Yeah, yeah. Give me a good hard one across the face."
"X﹏X"
Seneya aimed at Kas, looked into his determined eyes, and hesitated several times.
Her chubby palm blurred before his eyes, then smacked him hard.
With his face swollen and the impact feeling like a sledgehammer blow, Kas gave Seneya a thumbs-up. He endured the ringing in his head and forced a few words out of his throat.
"Strong and powerful."
Before you continue