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Chapter 107
Strangely enough, after meeting Kaiden, the fog gradually began to lift, as if it had done its job and was retreating on its own.
“Are you hurt anywhere? Any pain? Did you run into any monsters?”
When I asked, Kaiden finally lifted his head, looked at me, and smiled faintly.
“It’s nice that Margaret is so worried about me.”
He answered with a digression instead of a direct reply. I didn’t press further and just checked on his condition. Enoch, who had been silently observing with his arms crossed, also asked Kaiden after his well-being.
“The fog was quite thick. I was worried. Were you really okay, Lord?”
Kaiden finally turned to Enoch, scratching the back of his head with an embarrassed expression.
“Shall we sit somewhere and talk first?”
We looked for a place where we could speak safely without drawing the monsters’ attention and sat down. Our plan was to sort out the situation first, then move to a safer location.
“First, Kaiden, you tell us. What happened? I met Enoch not long after the fog appeared. You’ve been alone in that fog all day.”
Kaiden glanced at me and then Enoch, looking bewildered.
“You’re saying a whole day passed? I didn’t even realize that much time had gone by.”
He ran his hands through his messy hair and squeezed his eyes shut, looking exhausted. After briefly frowning as if trying to recall his memory, he calmly began explaining what had happened over the day.
“I kept following the cabin. But at some point, it disappeared from my sight. The place gave off a strange energy, though, so even if I couldn’t see it, I had a rough sense of which direction it was in.”
So he had sensed the cabin’s strange energy.
It seemed similar to how Asdal could sense magical currents intuitively. Kaiden was perceptive and sensitive, after all. The strange energy he felt might even have been from Jenas.
“So I kept trying to move in that direction, but the fog kept blocking my view. Eventually, I even saw hallucinations. It felt like something was deliberately stopping me from finding the cabin.”
I recalled what Jenas had said when he pushed me out of the cabin: he had apologized for shoving me out, explaining that an unwelcome guest had arrived.
“It definitely felt like something was trying to prevent me from coming, but when I came to my senses, I was standing in front of the cabin. I thought you were inside.”
He continued recounting the story: the silver-haired woman encountered in the room of repose and the silver-haired boy met after being pulled out of the cabin. I was too stunned to speak.
The room of repose had been locked. Yet Kaiden said he opened it—and there had really been someone inside.
Kaiden sighed.
“It didn’t feel like much time had passed, but a whole day already? That’s surprising.”
He looked somewhat dazed. Even seeing him react like this was unusual.
I looked at him silently before speaking.
“…Maybe it really was trying to stop us from finding the cabin.”
Kaiden looked at me, puzzled. Enoch, who had been silently observing the conversation with crossed arms, also turned his gaze to me.
I had promised to tell Kaiden about Jenas once we reunited, and now seemed like the right time.
“I also spent a night in that cabin, with a grand mage over a thousand years old. That young boy you met seems to be the same grand mage I was with.”
“A grand mage over a thousand years old? What do you mean?”
Kaiden’s eyes went wide in disbelief. Right, even I would have a hard time believing it.
“You might not believe it, but it’s true. And his name is Jenas Igran.”
“Wait, what? Jenas Igran?!”
Kaiden was even more shocked and sprang up from his seat. Startled, I leaned back, and Enoch reached out to support my back.
“What’s wrong, Lord?”
Enoch frowned and asked.
Kaiden covered his mouth, lost in thought, and stayed silent for a moment before suddenly pulling something from his pocket.
It was a pendant passed down through the magic tower masters’ lineage—the very one that had struck my cheek when we first met.
I looked at him with a puzzled expression.
“Why that?”
“The owner of this pendant made it. A mage named Jenas Igran.”
“…Huh?”
“…And an ancestor of our family. Jenas Igran Lohade. A grand mage and the founder of the Lohade marquisate. Damn, no wonder he looked familiar.”
“What?!”
I gasped in shock at Kaiden’s consecutive revelations.
I finally realized why Jenas had silver hair and red eyes—it was a trait of the Lohade family.
“Jenas is a mage who died a thousand years ago. How is he here?”
This time Kaiden asked me. I shrugged.
“I don’t know. But according to him, he’s been living on this island for a thousand years. He said he can’t escape. Whether I can fully trust his words, I don’t know.”
“He’s been trapped here? That genius mage?”
Kaiden asked in disbelief.
I nodded and told them everything I had experienced in the cabin: being pulled from the river, discovering Jenas, being brought to the cabin and healed, and encountering the strange “door” and “room of repose.”
Now that I thought about it, when I first met Jenas, he was holding a coconut. He had said he could live without eating.
Kaiden, deep in thought, spoke to me.
“But the Jenas you’re talking about seems very different from the Jenas I’ve heard about in our family history.”
“What’s the Jenas you know like?”
“Well, he’s not a child. He’s a full-grown adult and a murderous pervert. He’s severely lacking human emotions—some records even say he might have been a demon.”
“….”
Indeed, the Jenas Kaiden described was very different from the Jenas I had met.
“Could it be someone else with the same name?”
Enoch asked Kaiden, but Kaiden shook his head firmly.
“He lived in the Ingram dynasty era, and he was a mage who could even survive without food, having altered his body’s balance. Only Jenas could have achieved such advanced magic at that time.”
Kaiden drew a hard line. Enoch calmly raised another question.
“So the fog around the cabin… was it made by that mage? But magic can’t be used on this island, right?”
I pondered Jenas’s words carefully.
“Maybe it’s about changing his body. If Kaiden’s right, he has the body of an adult, and while in that form, he might be able to use magic. He said to me, ‘In this body, my magic is being controlled.’”
“Then why is he deliberately appearing as a child now? To protect his body? But if he can’t use magic in that form, how did he create fog?”
Kaiden muttered to himself, clearly perplexed. I asked him again.
“Kaiden, why was the door of the room of repose open when you entered? I couldn’t get in because it was locked. And it clearly said ‘sealed’ on the door.”
“I don’t know why it was open, but it seemed the place really was sealed. The woman was tied up on a magic circle.”
“That was also Jenas the mage’s doing?”
Enoch asked. Kaiden pressed his temples and furrowed his brow, recalling the events.
“I’m not sure. That woman told me to run. I was thrown outside the cabin immediately. Shortly after, I met the short-haired boy. Margaret, it seems that boy was Jenas.”
Run…
From what? From whom was I supposed to run?
“Oh, by the way, Jenas said he had a sister. Her name was Anata…”
“Anata? Anata Shanet Lohade was here too?”
Kaiden asked, astonished.
“Jenas spoke as if she were dead. But if the woman you saw in the room of repose has silver hair and red eyes, she might be Anata. Her appearance matches the Lohade family traits.”
Why was Anata sealed there? Why did Jenas hide that? Could Jenas have been the one who sealed her?
So many questions remained unresolved.
“Margaret.”
Enoch’s call brought me out of my thoughts. I looked at him.
“There was a place called the ‘room of repose.’ And it was marked ‘sealed,’ right?”
I nodded in affirmation.
Enoch touched his chin thoughtfully, frowning slightly, and finally spoke in a low voice.
“…It was a custom in the Ingram dynasty. If a room of repose is made and someone is sealed alive inside, their soul becomes a guardian spirit.”
Even amidst the shocking revelations, Enoch remained calm and composed.
He continued in his steady voice.
“Perhaps the fog surrounding the cabin isn’t caused by Jenas’s magic, but by the magic of the sealed soul.”
