Chapter 28

Isaac peered out the window. Beyond the glass lay a pitch-black sky, devoid of stars.

“Tonight, even a new-moon night like this is not so bad.”

He murmured the words, sipping his tea. The infusion warmed his throat and filled the air with its fragrance, offering a sliver of comfort amidst his internal gloom. It struck him then: for this man, every new moon must have been an absolute nightmare.

“Is the pain of the new moon truly that severe?” Isaac hesitated before asking.

The prince offered a light, dismissive nod, as if the topic were inconsequential. This was a man who refused to display pain unless it was truly unbearable. Had he not, only recently at the hunting tournament, slaughtered a magical beast without a change in expression, even as its fangs tore into him to expose raw red flesh and white bone? Amazed that such a man would admit to his own agony, Isaac found himself pressing the point.

“…To what degree does it pain you?”

The prince studied his own fingers, which twitched with a slow, rhythmic agitation, as if he were wandering through a labyrinth of private memories.

Then, he murmured, “There was a time I doused my body in oil and set myself aflame, hoping the searing heat might numb the agony, if only for a heartbeat. It was an exercise in futility. I watched my own flesh blacken and char, yet the intensity of the fire was far too faint to obscure the crushing weight of the new moon.”

Isaac, hearing this admission delivered with such chillingly casual indifference, clamped his jaw shut. A frigid dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. He could not even begin to fathom a pain so absolute.

According to the persistent rumors, the royal curse manifested only after childhood, coinciding precisely with the transition into adulthood. Once those secondary sexual characteristics took hold—granting the bearer the biological capacity to sire a child and propagate that wretched bloodline—the curse took root. Even with a margin of a year or two, it meant the prince had been no more than twelve or thirteen when the torment began. He had lived in the shadow of this agony for his entire youth.

“Why did you never contract with a magician?”

Isaac spoke before his internal filter could intercept the query, his hand instinctively rubbing at the dull, persistent ache in his own chest. But as his eyes locked with the prince’s, he recoiled. Those cold, vacant blue eyes were fixed upon him with an intensity that made the air feel thin.

Ah. I have overstepped.

A flicker of irritation sharpened the prince’s gaze, which drifted momentarily toward the sword mounted on a distant wall. He studied the weapon for a heartbeat, then withdrew his attention, as if the physical effort of reaching for it were too tedious to entertain. Isaac’s spine turned to ice. He realized with terrifying clarity that had that steel been within reach, he might have been executed where he sat.

As Isaac began to inch backward from the tea table, a smile—or something so close to one that it was equally haunting—ghosted across the corners of the prince’s eyes.

“You are rather…”

The low, melodic murmur trailed off, but Isaac instantly grasped the unspoken conclusion: Rather quick-witted.

See? Had the blade been closer, he likely would have ended me without a second thought.

“I do not care for trouble,” the prince continued, his voice devoid of warmth. “Nor do I tolerate useless chatter.”

“…I apologize.”

The prince sipped his tea while he spoke, and Isaac offered a deep, respectful bow. For now, the storm had passed, but he understood there would be no second mercy.

“However, yes. My mood is favorable today. I shall answer your query regarding my refusal to contract with a magician.”

To Isaac’s surprise, the prince seemed genuinely amused. He spoke with a readiness that caught Isaac entirely off guard. Those piercing blue eyes locked with his own.

“In the end, magicians are of the same wretched breed as witches. The only distinction is whether they are born in human skin or the bodies of beasts. I find your kind entirely distasteful.”

His tone remained casual—light, conversational, and utterly stripped of performative malice. If anything, that complete absence of hatred made the words sting even more, for Isaac knew they were the absolute truth.

Isaac froze, his mind unable to assemble a coherent reply. He took three, four steadying breaths before he found his voice again.

“…I see. …I shall arrive earlier next time. If my blood suffices, please, drink as much as your need dictates,” Isaac muttered, his spirit heavy with a crushing sense of resignation.

It was entirely logical that Kaiyan would harbor hatred toward them; he had endured agonizing hours in the past. Even so, the weight of that animosity felt cold against his skin. Isaac let out a gloomy, hollow sigh, only for a flicker of something unfamiliar to catch his peripheral vision. He lifted his head.

The corner of the prince’s mouth—viewed from this sharp angle—seemed to twitch upward for a fleeting moment. Whether he found the situation amusing or utterly absurd, his expression quickly returned to a mask of stoic indifference, but it was a visage Isaac had never witnessed before. Even after the expression vanished, Isaac found himself unable to tear his gaze away.

A sculpture is still a sculpture, he thought. Even when he radiates such terror, I cannot look away.

“Then why do you remain here, witch?” the prince asked.

Isaac snapped his gaze from the prince’s mouth, scratched his head, and answered, “I could not board the boat.”

“The boat?”

“A boat arrives every great new moon. It transports witches to the Land of the New Moon.”

“The great new moon… that occurs once every seven years,” the prince murmured, as if talking to himself. “There should be roughly half a year remaining.”

Isaac stared at him, bewildered. That was not common knowledge for ordinary humans; it was the sort of esoterica reserved for witches or, perhaps, high-ranking magicians. Yet Kaiyan possessed this knowledge with frightening intimacy.

The prince, appearing lost in thought, abruptly added, “Many witches must board that vessel.”

“Yes, of course. … …”

The words suddenly echoed in Isaac’s mind like a desperate craving for painkillers. He trailed off, blinking blankly. When he finally met those piercing blue eyes again, he answered reflexively: “I do not know where it docks.”

“…”

“It is the truth. That is why I could not board it seven years ago, either,” Isaac insisted, his voice hardening.

It was not a lie. The seven years he had spent alone after sending his mother away fourteen years ago had been anything but comfortable. No era offered true kindness to an orphan adrift without roots.

When the great new moon arrived seven years prior, he had harbored a desperate urge to cling to the boatman or latch onto the stern, to do whatever was necessary to board the moon-shard boat, but the opportunity had eluded him. Having severed all connections to his kind, he had lacked the means to locate the departure point. As time marched on, Isaac matured and learned how to navigate the harsh realities of the world. Life ceased to be as excruciating as it had once been. Although he occasionally reminisced about the Land of the New Moon, the burning desire to cross over had gradually cooled into embers.

Now, with half a year left before the moon-shard boat returned for the first time in seven years, he was left to wonder: where would he even go to board it? Perhaps those beasts knew.

Isaac glanced at the tigers perched in a row beside the tea table. They appeared bored; as one yawned and blinked sluggishly, the other two opened their maws wide in synchronicity. If only they were incapable of speech, the small creatures might have been genuinely adorable.

“So you have found life in the human world easy enough to settle down here,” the prince observed.

Isaac shifted his focus toward him and released a hollow laugh. “As if living as the hunted could ever be considered easy.”

He reflected on his past: the seven years spent alone as a child after his mother’s departure, and the subsequent seven years spent carving out a sustainable existence as an adult. Not once had he viewed life as an effortless endeavor.

“It is never easy. Though perhaps Your Highness, who exists perpetually as the hunter, would struggle to grasp that.”

Even as he laughed and bartered with others, blending into the crowd, he often felt as though he were drifting in a void, completely detached. They remained oblivious to the fact that such isolation could, by itself, exhaust the very marrow of one’s heart.

But—

“Living as a human does not look easy, either,” Isaac muttered, wetting his lips with tea.

Everyone lived crushed under the relentless weight of existence, yet his burden was a fraction heavier. All the more reason to endure. Surviving on mere grit was a grueling path, but what other choice remained for him?

「Ho ho, look at him. Sitting there, preaching like an enlightened sage.」

「The boy possesses an old soul. He isn’t even thirty yet, for heaven’s sake.」

「We, with our infinite compassion, must be understanding. He nearly perished not long ago, after all. Children who claw their way back from death’s door always age with tragic haste in their hearts.」

Unable to restrain themselves, the trio had begun whispering again. Their mouths were far larger than their sense of decorum, and they had been born with a catastrophic lack of subtlety. Still, the way they huddled together, moving only their lips while attempting to gauge the room’s atmosphere, was both pitiful and darkly comedic. Isaac thought, Perhaps I can overlook this much.

「Hm? When did he nearly die?」

「You know, just the other day, during the hunt—」

“Hey! Pipe down!” Isaac barked, nearly spraying his tea across the table. His pulse thundered against his ribs. “Beasts do not interrupt when people are speaking! Stay quiet and still!”

Was there no way to seal those cavernous mouths? He scanned the room, searching for a length of rope. As he glanced about, the prince arched one eyebrow in mild curiosity.

“Was there some dangerous incident?”

“Yes, just a minor accident. Nothing serious, really,” Isaac replied, praying for the subject to wither and die.

It wasn’t anything serious, so please, for the love of god, don’t ask for details, Isaac added internally, his mind frantically sketching out potential lies should Lord Kaiyan press further. The prince, however, seemed disinterested in the minutiae. He stared at Isaac, lost in his own reverie, before finally speaking.

“Lately, witches have been elusive, so it would be quite troublesome if you were to perish just yet.”

“Pardon?”

“If you die, the oath sworn by the River of the Moon becomes entirely void, does it not?”

“Well…”

Isaac blinked, his mind struggling to process the sudden weight of the prince’s words before clarity finally struck. Ah. He means that should I perish, the painkiller I rely upon during the new moon will vanish along with me.

“A corpse would hardly fly to you. Besides, blood stops flowing in the dead.”

The prince remained silent, his gaze fixed upon Isaac with a heavy, unreadable intensity. Cold sweat pricked the nape of Isaac’s neck, and primal alarm bells rang in his mind. The intent behind that stare seemed unmistakable: It would be a nuisance if he managed to get himself killed; it would be far safer to lock him in a dungeon.

Yes, exactly that. Isaac flinched, his body reacting before he could suppress the urge. The prince’s eyes drifted sideways, shifting toward the three tigers who sat in a tight row, their heads pressed together in a frantic huddle.

「I told you. That is the exact face he makes.」

「Indeed, I doubt we are far off the mark.」

「But what a rough life he must have endured. He looks so refined, yet his expression remains so faint. Truly hard to decipher.」

“I told you not to analyze people’s faces however you like!”

Isaac panicked, lunging forward to clamp his hands over the lead tiger’s mouth. The creature was immense; he had to wrap both arms around the snout just to keep the jaws clamped shut.