Heilen was a vast territory.

Because towering mountains and hundreds of lakes of various sizes occupied most of the land, the actual cities where people gathered and lived made up only a small fraction of Heilen. However, in addition to the largest central city commonly referred to as ‘Heilen,’ neighboring Atlan and Kuslo were broadly tied into Heilen’s territory. And nestled within the overlapping mountain ranges between them were countless large and small villages.

Kuslo, considered the third largest city in the vast expanse of Heilen, was built in a concave basin surrounded by overlapping mountain ranges. In Kuslo, home to tens of thousands of households, the encircling mountain peaks could be seen from anywhere on the streets.

“I think it was somewhere around here……”

Isaac muttered, gazing out the window at the distant mountain landscape. Along one side of the long mountain range encircling Kuslo, several peaks overlapped, forming high and low ridges. No matter where he looked, the ridges all looked similar; there was nothing particularly unique about them.

However, the ridge Isaac had seen in the witch’s mirror was undeniably that place. And if that ridge was in a location where it would be seen at that exact angle and distance, the witch’s whereabouts were likely somewhere not too far from the shop where Isaac was currently sitting.

Even within the same room, the angle changes depending on where a mirror is hung, and distance cannot be precisely measured through a reflection, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact location. Furthermore, since the witch rarely stayed in one place for long, she might have already moved her lodgings by now, so it didn’t mean much—but they were definitely in Kuslo.

While tracing the familiar ridge with his eyes, Isaac suddenly felt a gaze on his cheek and lowered his eyes. He made eye contact with a man standing under a gaslamp across the street. 

The man, who had been staring at Isaac, briefly averted his gaze the moment their eyes met, but soon nonchalantly looked right back at him. His brazen attitude showed he didn’t care whether Isaac noticed him or not.

Isaac turned his gaze away from the man, who was now staring back with blatant hostility. Should he consider it fortunate that man’s only watching and hasn’t stormed in to cause a scene? Isaac clicked his tongue, not even bothering to search for the mark of Roberni that would undoubtedly be engraved somewhere on the man’s belongings.

From the moment they had entered the outskirts of Kuslo, those gazes had been relentlessly trailing them. Only the faces of the watchers changed occasionally; that fierce, malicious stare followed them constantly. Sometimes feeling multiple pairs of eyes on them all at once, Isaac realized just how deeply Roberni’s faction was spread throughout all of Heilen.

Even while descending from the mountains to Kuslo through several small villages, Isaac had encountered Roberni’s subordinates multiple times, and those who hadn’t fled had lost their lives without exception. Word must have spread among them that Isaac was traveling with the prince, for by the time they had almost reached Kuslo, Roberni’s gang hardly dared to appear before them directly anymore.

And the same was true now in Kuslo.

To say they ‘didn’t appear’ would be a misnomer. They were constantly hovering around Isaac and the prince. If they saw even the slightest opening, they would undoubtedly thrust a blade at their throats. It would be better to hide from their eyes somehow, but……

“…….”

The person next to him was far too conspicuous for that.

Isaac stared blankly at the prince, who was sitting next to him, scanning the dim interior of the shop. Inside the dusty, messy, and cramped shop, a few men – perhaps the owner’s neighborhood friends – had come to hang out. 3 or 4 middle-aged men sat at a corner table, chatting about how the world was turning, and they too frequently stole glances at the prince. 

Naturally, he drew the eye. Bathed in the sunlight streaming through the glass window, he alone sat there shining brilliantly.

Perhaps sensing Isaac’s gaze, Kyan turned away from his indifferent observation of the shop. Staring into those deep blue eyes that seemed to silently ask ‘What?’, Isaac shook his head.

“No…… I was just thinking that you definitely stand out.”

‘Prince Kyan, you could never travel incognito without at least throwing on a hood.’ Isaac forcefully tore his gaze away from the blonde, blue-eyed beauty. If he didn’t, he felt that even he, despite being used to it, would keep getting his gaze stolen.

“I suppose I could just douse myself in ink later.”

The prince spoke nonchalantly. ‘I wonder what got into him to make a joke like that,’ Isaac thought. More importantly, smearing a little ink on his head wouldn’t be nearly enough to bury that level of beauty.

“Even if you stand out, it’s not like Roberni’s gang could ever harm you, Prince Kyan, but……”

‘I don’t think you should be in a place like this.’ Isaac swallowed the rest of his words.

He had already asked yesterday. Is it really okay for you to be here?

No matter how he thought about it, it shouldn’t be. Being with Isaac, who had fled after receiving a Grand Ducal extradition order and was now officially a grave criminal, was one thing, but there was also the mountain of work piled up for the prince back at the capital. Given his sheer presence, the fact that the prince was here would have surely reached the administrator’s ears the moment they entered Kuslo. The premise of traveling in secret was impossible for this man from the start. Fortunately, there was no one in this country who could carelessly lay a finger on this prince, but this situation wouldn’t help his political standing at all.

However, the prince neither replied to Isaac’s cautious question nor seemed to care in the slightest. So Isaac didn’t push the matter further. How Kyan conducted himself was his own business.

Now, Isaac was merely puzzled. Why has he come all this way?

The prince, as Isaac judged him, was not someone who moved without reason.

In their current situation, it would have been better for the prince to wait for Isaac to contact him separately, and Isaac naturally assumed the prince would think the same. Of course, if Kyan hadn’t come, Isaac would have been in deep trouble facing the Roberni gang camped out in Heilen unexpectedly, but why?

Isaac stared blankly at the prince, who was lazily observing the shop interior. Then, when the prince turned to look at him with a low gaze that seemed to ask: ‘Why he was staring,’ Isaac quickly turned his head away. Just as he let out a short gasp,

“——.”

Sure enough, the prince’s hand mercilessly grabbed Isaac’s chin. He forced Isaac’s face back toward him. Their eyes met dead on.

“What did I say?”

“……I won’t look away.”

“Good.”

The prince, still holding Isaac’s chin, lightly tapped Isaac’s cheek two times with his finger before letting go. For a moment, it seemed the prince’s eyes narrowed. The expressionless face looking right at Isaac felt inexplicably unfamiliar. Even though it was definitely a face he knew well.

If asked how it was unfamiliar, Isaac couldn’t describe it precisely, but there were times when a sudden, inexplicable sense of strangeness would wash over him. Like now—with those narrowed eyes, staring intently as if observing something new and fascinating, unable to look away. Or…… oh yes, come to think of it, it was like that yesterday too.

While descending to Kuslo with the prince, they had passed a small village in the mountains. That tiny village of only a few houses was completely empty, with everything left exactly as it was, as if the witch had already swept through it.

No one, nothing living remained.

As Isaac stood blankly looking down at the discarded clothes that lay like shed skin, he suddenly raised his head and locked eyes with the prince, who was watching him.

The prince was looking at Isaac with a faint frown. That serious gaze—the same prince who had just looked down at those shed-like clothes with icy, emotionless eyes, now staring at Isaac—felt unfamiliar. As if he didn’t like Isaac silently looking down at those clothes——almost as if he were worried.

The prince, gesturing for Isaac to leave and pulling him out of the house, returned to his usual expressionless self, and that fleeting sense of unfamiliarity passed just like that.

But even after that, there were brief, fleeting moments when that feeling would brush past. Whether to call that unfamiliarity ‘good’ or ‘not,’ Isaac couldn’t say.

It felt somewhat embarrassing, and also awkward——.

Just as Isaac was rubbing his inexplicably warming face and tilting his head……

“Thank you for waiting. I brought some things you might want, but……”

The shopkeeper, who had gone into the back storage and hadn’t come out for a long time, returned hugging a large bundle of paper rolls. The owner, who looked to be in his mid-forties, must have been quite strong for his lean and short stature; he set the heavy-looking bundle down on the table without showing any signs of strain.

“If we count the high mounds, there are hundreds of mountains in Heilen, and if we count the streams, there are tens of thousands of branches. There isn’t a single map that draws every one of them. No, even military maps probably don’t mark all of them. I brought out the most detailed maps I could find, but I don’t know if they have what you’re looking for…..?”

The shopkeeper glanced between the prince and Isaac as he unrolled several sheets from the bundle. Several maps were spread wide across the table.

The maps were all similar, without much difference. If you looked closely, there were minute differences. Some focused more on mountain terrain, others detailed the waterways more, but nothing vastly different.

The shop owner unfolded the maps one by one, but the prince’s gaze, looking down at them indifferently with his arms crossed, didn’t stop anywhere in particular. It was a gaze that showed nothing was to his liking. Perhaps sensing that mood, the shopkeeper didn’t look too pleased either.

“Still, among them, this one is the most detailed. It was made twenty or thirty years ago, but it’s drawn the most specifically and accurately.”

The shopkeeper unrolled the final map. True to his word, this map detailed much finer aspects than the ones spread out before. However,

“Twenty or thirty years ago. Then the clustered villages formed since then wouldn’t be marked on here.”

“That’s for sure.” The prince said, in a tone suggesting this last map wasn’t particularly to his liking either.

The moment his words fell, the gazes of the 3 or 4 men sitting at the corner table all shifted this way at once. Although they were only glancing sideways, Isaac noticed that their conversation, which they had been having half-heartedly, ceased for a moment. At the same time, a subtle, hostile wariness wafted over.

Isaac quietly gauged the position of his sword hilt without showing it. Getting into a scuffle with strangers might be no big deal usually, but in this unfamiliar place, especially in their current situation where an attack could come from anywhere at any time, being cautious was an absolute necessity.

Moreover, above all, those men had been paying close attention to them from the very beginning—the moment the prince and Isaac entered this shop and asked for maps. With more than just simple curiosity toward outsiders.

Surely they aren’t part of Roberni’s gang too…… It doesn’t seem like it. What is this wariness?

“It seems you’re looking for a map that marks the cluster villages in detail. Villages are scattered all over the mountains here in Heilen. The ones with dozens of households are mostly all marked, but it’s hard to count the tiny settlements where only a few families gather, so there isn’t a map that perfectly marks every place people live. But let’s see, the one that shows them relatively well is……”

The shopkeeper opened a closet right behind him and began to slowly rummage through it. As he did, he asked:

“But what do you need such a map for…..?”

“We have a use for it.”

“A use…… By the looks of it, you seem to be outsiders. Does an outsider really need to know the remote mountain villages of Heilen in such detail…..?”

“Exactly. There have been a lot of weird things happening in the mountain villages lately, and I’m just curious why outsiders would come looking for such a thing in the midst of it all.”

Isaac, who had given a vague answer, closed his mouth. One of the men sitting at the table had stood up and approached behind Isaac. The gaze blatantly sweeping over Isaac and the prince from head to toe gleamed with suspicion.

“Weird things? What kind of things?”

Isaac turned to face them. The men sitting at the table, now openly looking this way, scrutinized Isaac with disapproving eyes. Isaac waited calmly until those wary eyes finished sweeping over him. But it was strange; he had never heard of Kuslo being a place so guarded against outsiders. Generally, the people of Heilen and its surrounding regions were known for being gentle and mild.

“But where did you young folks come from? You don’t look like you came here just for sightseeing…..?”

One of the men, an older man who looked to be the senior among them, asked. After a brief thought, Isaac pulled his identification tag from his chest and handed it over.

“I am a guard belonging to the Royal Guard of the Capital. Actually, I am pursuing a criminal suspect, and they vanished around this area in Heilen.”

The older man glanced at Isaac and took the identification tag. The other men also leaned in to look at it. Stamped with the royal seal, the men exchanged glances between the object and Isaac. One of the men, who had been staring intently at the tag, gave a slight nod—apparently confirming it was genuine.

“A criminal suspect? ……Someone from Heilen?”

“No. They came from the capital, but they were last seen in Heilen before disappearing. It seems likely they fled into the nearby mountains, but they couldn’t survive out there alone, so I’m guessing they might have hidden in one of the mountain villages.”

At the words that the suspect was not from Heilen, the suspicious light in the eyes of the men, who nodded as if somewhat relieved, slowly began to fade. A sliver of wariness wasn’t completely washed away, but one of them frowned and asked again with a concerned expression.

“It’s a big problem if a criminal suspect hid in a mountain village. What if they harm the innocent people? But what kind of crime is it?”

“……He is a man wanted for harming a child of the Grand Duke.”

After a very brief silence, Isaac answered nonchalantly. He felt the prince’s gaze subtly turn toward him from the side, but Isaac absolutely did not look that way.

“The Grand Duke’s child! Good heavens, isn’t that a massive disaster?”

“Yes, though he is still only a suspect. He ran away near Heilen, so we have to find him, but there are more than just one or two settlements in these mountains. That’s why we need a detailed map, but since there isn’t one……”

“Right, then it makes sense you’d need a map. But there are so many small settlements that aren’t even marked on the map; you won’t be able to search them all one by one every day.”

“But the higher-ups are throwing a fit demanding we find him; what can a subordinate like me do? I’ll just have to comb through every corner of the mountains.”

“You have it rough,” the men agreed with Isaac, their faint trail of doubt almost gone, when one of them suddenly exclaimed as if remembering something.

“Ah, come to think of it.”

“Homen mentioned it earlier. He heard from his cousin who works at the detached palace that there was an uproar there just a little while ago. Someone who committed a crime was caught and ran away, and for some reason there hasn’t been an official order to catch him yet, but there will be soon.”

The man’s words roughly aligned with Isaac’s. Only then did the men seem to fully believe him. The faint lingering doubt immediately dissipated. “Right, right, you’ve got it tough,” the men said, patting Isaac’s shoulder. In front of them, Isaac could only manage an awkward smile. He didn’t know why the prince’s gaze staring from the side felt so stinging.

“Then is this person…..? Is he also a guard?”

One of the men pointed at the prince with his chin and asked Isaac. It seemed he was hesitant to ask the man directly. Indeed, the prince had an aura that made it difficult to carelessly speak to him from the start.

“This person is….. an acquaintance of the deceased. He is assisting me in pursuing the suspect.”

At Isaac’s words, spoken without ever looking at the prince, the men widened their eyes. “Then isn’t he a very high-ranking noble? No wonder he didn’t look ordinary,” they whispered among themselves before hesitantly standing up from their seats. Beyond that, they didn’t quite know how to show proper etiquette, so they stood there awkwardly. The prince, however, didn’t seem to care at all.

The prince, who had been staring intensely at Isaac, turned his gaze to the men and asked briefly.

“What did you mean by strange things happening in the mountain villages?”

The men briefly looked at each other. Perhaps feeling uneasy, one of them, who had been frowning for a moment, spoke as if tossing the words out.

“That’s because recently there have been villages whose entire populations suddenly vanished without a trace……”

Saying that seemed to make them feel even more uneasy, and the men closed their mouths. Isaac also closed his mouth. The chilling sensation cooling his chest was because the memory of that village, leaving only empty houses behind, resurfaced in his mind. Next came the image of the young man dying in terror. That many people. Entire families at once. A child right before its mother’s eyes. Or a father right before his child’s—.

Just then, right in front of Isaac’s eyes, a finger snapped. When Isaac lifted his gaze, the prince was withdrawing his hand after looking at him. Don’t think about it. The words the prince had spoken to him once suddenly came to mind. Don’t think more about those beasts. As that voice came to mind, his heart unexpectedly calmed down a bit.

“Villages where the entire populations disappeared……?”

When Isaac asked back, this time the silence wasn’t long. Though still bearing an uneasy expression, the men answered readily.

“Living in the mountains, they usually come down to cities here or in Atlan or Heilen every few days or weeks to buy necessary supplies. But the footsteps of the people from one village just completely stopped. Wondering what was going on, someone who had to cross the mountain path near that village dropped by for a moment, and the village was completely empty. Not a single person…… Stories like this started circulating a few months ago.”

“Since there are countless small clustered villages, we can’t check on all of them, but it seems there are quite a few such villages; I’ve already heard stories from four or five places,” the men said with grim faces. Then one person suddenly spoke up.

“It’s the work of a witch.”

The work of a witch. Isaac closed his mouth and looked at the man who said that. The other men next to him nodded in agreement.

“There’s no other way to explain something like that but the work of a witch.”

“Only a witch could do such a thing.”

“A witch……?”

When Isaac muttered lowly as if to himself, the men shook their heads, perhaps taking it to mean he didn’t believe it.

“It’s not that common for outsiders, right? In the old days, many witches lived in Heilen. So stories of witches eating people have always been passed down. Even though it became hard to find witches after the witch hunts, such things still happened.”

“But there hasn’t been a case where entire villages disappeared like this.”

“It’s the witch eating people. The wicked witch.”

“We have to catch the witch. We have to catch and kill her.”

The men nodded to each other and spoke indignantly. Then, looking at Isaac and the prince who stood silently, they spoke in a feigned apologetic tone.

“In this situation, a lot of outsiders have suddenly been coming in recently, so we were just talking among ourselves about how strange it is. Moreover, most of those guys looked like rough characters just by glancing at them. Even now, there are a few of them loitering around nearby, so we thought it was even stranger when you two came in looking for a map. So, are the guys outside all guards too?”

“……No, probably not……”

Isaac smiled ambiguously and trailed off. Kuslo wasn’t a small enough place to recognize every outsider, but a sudden influx of rough-looking men would certainly catch the eye.

However, even if Roberni kept subordinates all over the country, he wouldn’t have gathered them all in this one place, yet they were numerous enough to stand out like this. Isaac clicked his tongue, glancing at the man who was still openly loitering outside the shop.

The fact that public authorities hadn’t taken action despite them blatantly swarming a single city showed just how broad Roberni’s political reach was.

‘……But to think three black, sinister stray cats are roaming the streets and they just watch without lifting a finger, maybe security in Kuslo is just poor……’ Isaac turned his gaze away from the black cats playing with a rat they had caught at the end of the alley. In the mountains, they easily caught snakes, birds, and mice, giving him daily tasks to bury them. He just hoped they wouldn’t bring that thing to him. And it would be even better if they didn’t say nonsense like 『It’s a gift.』 or 『So offer us goat meat.』

“Then I’ll take this map, this one…… and this one. Three maps should do.”

Isaac rummaged through the additional maps the owner brought from the storage and picked out three. One with the most detailed geography and a couple that showed the locations of the clustered villages relatively well. If a perfect map didn’t exist, taking these and combining the information was the next best option.

When Isaac looked back at the prince, the prince nodded. A gold coin pulled from his chest fell onto the table. *Clink,* the royal gold coin chimed. The moment it fell, the men, who seemed intent on holding them back to chat more, immediately shut their mouths. Leaving behind the men who were rolling their eyes and looking at each other, the prince turned right around, and Isaac……

Isaac, too, thought: ‘Huh, he should get the change, he should get a lot of change,’ scratching his head in embarrassment before quickly grabbing the maps and following after him.

The afternoon streets, with the sun beginning to tilt, were quite bustling. The prince’s steps, walking ahead, were heading toward the inn they had booked as soon as they entered Kuslo.

“We’ll have to go and put the maps together.”

Isaac spoke, thinking it would take all afternoon.

Adding mountain village markers on top of the detailed geography would do, but there were countless red dots indicating inhabited locations; transferring them to another map would be quite a task.

Even while heading toward the inn slightly away from the center, Isaac constantly felt the gazes. They were undoubtedly Roberni’s men. ‘They’ll probably pounce the moment I’m separated from the prince……’ Isaac sighed inwardly. Finding the witch was one thing, but this was another problem. They would have to resolve it somehow, but the method to resolve it seemed bleak.

“……Should I really just cross over to the Land of the Dark Moon?”

It was when Isaac clicked his tongue and muttered. The prince, walking a couple of steps ahead, abruptly stopped. Feeling that cold gaze silently looking back at him, Isaac looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Was there something going on?’ He looked ahead in the direction the prince was going, but there seemed to be nothing special……. just as he was thinking that.

An older man sitting at a table outside a quiet teahouse at the end of the alley caught his eye. Behind him stood two men as if standing guard.

The older man lifted his teacup, smelling the aroma, and was looking at Isaac and the prince. Turning his wrinkled eyes away from them to the two men standing behind him, he said, “It’s a good tea,” and took a sip.

Even though he was sitting in a relaxed, leisurely manner with a languid air, Isaac knew who that flawless man was. He had seen him briefly from a distance once before.

Roberni.

The syndicate leader himself had come all this way. And the fact that he was sitting right there implied that the reason he came here was because of them—Isaac and the prince. Now that it was clear who the unidentified assailant was, he was going to see the end of it this time.

“Roberni is here.”

Isaac muttered. However, the prince didn’t even turn his gaze toward the direction Isaac was looking.

“Where are you going?”

At the sudden question from the prince, who was looking at him coldly, Isaac stared at him blankly. Did he mishear?

“I said Roberni is here.”

“Where are you going?”

“Pardon? Me? ……I’m not going anywhere.”

‘More importantly, Roberni is here.’ Isaac wondered if this person had suddenly gone deaf, but he couldn’t just point it out when Roberni’s gaze was clearly reaching them, so he simply reminded him of the important fact.

The prince looked at Isaac with a somewhat displeased expression before turning his head. For a very brief moment, the prince seemed to look toward the table where Roberni was sitting, but when their eyes met, he indifferently turned his gaze away from Roberni, who slightly bowed his head respectfully, and began walking again just like that. Isaac had no choice but to silently hug the maps and follow behind him.

Until they turned the corner, he could feel Roberni’s gaze on the back of his head. He could feel it in his bones that Roberni truly intended to see the end of this.

“Roberni aiming for me directly…… I’m moving up in the world.”

Isaac let out a hollow laugh.

「Of course, you’ve hit the big time, big time.」

「Who’s he only aiming at? Even that guy called the Grand Duke was trying to lock Manbang-ie up.」

「Oh my, such a huge success! He’ll be a great man soon!」

“……”

‘How can those guys prattle on so well even with mice in their mouths……’ Isaac glanced back at the three cats trotting closely at his heels. Then, he quickly followed behind the prince who was entering the inn, and slammed the building door shut before the guys could follow inside. He didn’t even look back at the commotion outside.