"Upon the crown of a wall of fractured stone,
Beneath a sky where light itself is banned,
I wander still — with wings that once were mine,
Now hollow relics, dragging behind my spine."
It had been a very long time since I had listened to a poem. When I opened my eyes, the sun was just rising. Only when the sun's warmth touched my naked body did I realize how cold a night I had spent. And when I woke up and she wasn't next to me…
Between the stones of the rampart, she dangled her bare legs down the wall. She had a pale, corpse-like complexion. She wasn't thin; her legs were even thick enough to grasp. Her hair was raven black and fell in waves to her shoulders. She wore a black, off-the-shoulder dress. Around her throat, she wore a chain collar that bore her family's crest but resembled a dog leash. That chain added a dark air to the woman's anxious appearance. As she looked toward me with her green eyes, the distant yellow sun caught my eye, and I shielded it with my hand. This dead beauty formed a smile on her face, as if she had returned to life upon seeing me. She continued reciting her poem.
"Cursed flames consume the temples of the old,
While God's faint voice dissolves in fables told.
The Dead Galaxy steals the breath of man;
Now whispers move where thunder once began,
And shadows guard the remnants of the plan."
I didn't want to interrupt the poem. She didn't like being interrupted while reciting poetry. When she spoke poetry, the woman's delicate voice could bring grief to any simple heart, and it saddened even a heartless man like me.
"Mercy, lost, swells with every weeping drop,
A venom drawn from souls that could not stop.
Cold hearts of ice, love's ashes in their chest,
Await to pull us down where night finds rest."
"I do not know if a mother's final tear can halt this fate.
The mourning of broken wings has ended — that futile weight is gone.
With the tightening of the final bolt in my mechanical heart,
My conscience was consigned to eternal silence."
Perhaps I would only understand what the poem truly spoke of centuries later, during the time I became a Resource Collector and saw this moment in a dream.
"Flesh and bone abandoned us, the price of one cursed rite.
So tell me,
In this artificial existence — can I ever taste true death?"
"Perhaps the only cost of a lost conscience is this.
Yet tell me —
Can this frail body of flesh and bone
Ever taste death... without selling its soul to the machine?"
As the woman let her tears fall, I threw off the blanket and sat up. On the other side of the ramparts, my newly awakened noble kinsmen were scattering into the garden for their morning chats. My uncle was gathering his nephews who wished to hunt, rifle in hand. My mischievous cousins were playing with the skirts of the servant girls. I could see one of our mothers kissing one of our aunts. They were touching each other's bodies beneath their skirts. We saw countless other things, but they would never look this way. How did I know that? Because our location was on the castle ramparts above my father's room. Imagine the chaos if anyone looked up at this room and our ancient caught their eyes. The paranoid old man would kill whoever it was. I was the only one who could come up here because I was no threat whatsoever. My mother was insignificant. I was insignificant. My father hadn't even looked at my face once, despite me staring straight at him.
"Are you crying, Isolde?"
The woman tried to speak, but the iron clasp on her throat prevented her from talking. Speaking was mostly forbidden except for reciting poetry. According to her family's rules, she was forbidden even to speak to any man until she was married to a noble. But we… we had broken this rule and many others. Because we… we two fools had made the mistake of falling in love with each other.
Isolde came close and leaned on my lap. As we shifted back slightly into the rampart, Isolde took the notebook and paper we had secured with a stone. She flipped past pages covered in large and small scribbles until she found a blank page. Isolde was genetically forbidden from using any holographic paper. That's why old traditions had been a savior for us. It had taken me a few months to teach her to read and write, and she still couldn't write anything beyond simple phrases. Lying face down on the stone floor, she moved the pen and began to write.
"I am so sad to be leaving you."
"It's alright, Isolde."
"I have been away from the house for too long this time. They might have noticed my absence."
"That's alright too…" I said to Isolde. I lifted the hair that had fallen across her face with the back of my hand and wiped the tears still clinging to her eyes. "…because tomorrow, we are leaving this planet. We will escape both our families and this chain around your neck."
These were the words of a spoiled, bratty noble, who, with the arrogance of being thirty-eight years old, thought he understood this cursed galaxy. The words of a noble who imagined himself to be something, thought he was different from everyone else, believed he saw outside the box, but was actually useless. A pathetic, powerless, and foolish noble. A useless noble! A cowardly noble! A greedy, money-grubbing noble who didn't deserve love!
"Wonderful!" said the semi-mutant man with one mechanical arm. His voice was phlegmy, and smoke emerged from the gaps between his missing teeth as he spoke. He was the type whose lungs constantly produced narcotic smoke, and judging by his hairless head, he had been in such a body for a very long time.
I was in a dark corridor. I couldn't get up from the floor because two men were sitting on top of me. They had covered my mouth with their hands, so I couldn't speak. Even if I could, what could I do? Nothing but beg!
I had been beaten; when I tried to resist, they cut my body with a knife. The moment I started losing blood, one of the men who emerged from among them used the laser of a surgical knife to cauterize my wounds while I was still conscious. The burned skin felt like it would tear open with every movement, so I stopped struggling.
"You made a huge score," said the elegantly dressed man who was supposed to be our driver, looking at the amount of money transferred on his hologram.
"It was a good trade," the phlegmy man said, coughing.
Isolde lay unconscious a few steps away. Her accompanying robot, which carried her suitcases, lay shattered a few steps further. The suitcases were scattered, and clothes spilled from the broken luggage. Underwear, shoes, and countless other items lay spread across the mud-covered metal floor while one of the men came and nudged the unconscious Isolde's stomach with his foot.
Isolde had dressed quite elegantly for the day we were to escape. She wore a royal blue dress with a dusty black jacket pulled over it. The small veiled hat on her head was being crushed under the man's foot, and her previously tied hair was soiled with the water puddles on the ground. One of the men took off her high-heeled shoe and sniffed it. "Can we have some fun before we return the woman? Damn, even her foot smells good."
"She smells better than your mother's ass!" said another, and they started laughing.
As the driver we hired to smuggle us off the planet drove away, their leader stood in front of me.
"We scored big against the four greats, boys…" He said and pressed down on my head. "A Weisshafen and a Dragno… Looks like we're going to hit a huge jackpot. First, let's move them to the house! Hurry! The Dawn Police are about to patrol here. Also, I'll burn anyone who touches the woman! A Dragno woman is valuable as long as she remains untouched."
These words somewhat eased my mind for Isolde. They moved us to a house, our eyes blindfolded the whole way, completely unaware of the outside world. When we were brought inside, Isolde and I were chained facing each other in a small room. Initially, I thought we would face countless tortures and was terrified, but these men only cared about money. This… this greatly relieved me. Since both Isolde and I were modified, we could endure hunger for a long time. Therefore, we didn't struggle much even when they didn't give us food for a week. Isolde usually recited poetry. I listened to her poem, and sometimes we would recite the poem together to calm her down.
"My lover, walking across the battleground,
The brave man who will be sacrificed for a small crown,
While their desires are based on immortality,
You will die without being in my embrace."
Whenever Isolde recited poetry, the men outside would be astonished upon hearing the woman's voice. Since it was difficult for a man to hear a Dragno woman's voice, they would enthusiastically sit by the open cameras and listen to her poem. The woman's voice was divine.
"The earth is kneaded with blood, the skies are silent,
Even the wind mourns when your name is spoken
.The echo of swords, amidst the prayers
,I await you, with a broken hymn…"
"The thing they call victory is merely a lonely grave
,As you die beneath the shadow of the crown,
And I carry your last breath in my heart —
Silently, like a lover's curse."
"Ah… Don't recite such poems, Isolde. Don't recite the emotional ones… Don't worry, we'll get out of here."
As far as I learned, they demanded 1 Million YDD from the Weisshafen family for me, and 2.2 Million YDD from the Dragno family for the girl. These amounts were ridiculously small for our families. The Weisshafen family could pay it without batting an eye. If they paid my ransom, I could even pay Isolde's ransom myself, giving up everything I owned. All we waited for now was the day salvation would come, until one day the leader came into the room, drenched in sweat.
"Yes…" The man said as his followers crowded the room. There were six of them in total. While reading the hologram in his hand, he paced between Isolde and me. He even kicked Isolde sharply when she extended her leg, and the girl let out a cry of pain. "…a letter has arrived from your families."
"Great! You're letting us go then!"
Their leader looked at me first, then back at the hologram, and began to read:
"First, I will read the letter from the Weisshafen family. 'Aldoux Weisshafen is an insignificant member of our family. Damon Weisshafen, the head of the family and Aldoux's father, has refused to pay the ransom for the child.' Did you hear that, Weisshafen?"
These words poured over my head like boiling water, and I couldn't understand what was happening.
"What do you mean?" I said.
One of the men behind me kicked my head and shouted: "Your family doesn't want you back, understand, you motherfucker!"
"They don't want to pay 1 Million YDD?" I said in surprise. "Nonsense! Why would my father Damon do such a thing? But… But it's alright! Let me go, and I'll personally bring you that money! It'll only take me selling a few of my spaceships! I'll even bring you 2 Million, even more!"
"Fuck off! Who's gonna trust you? Even your family doesn't trust you, apparently!" said one of the men.
"So catching this motherfucker was for nothing, then?"
"What a waste of effort!" said one of the men, pulling my hair and bringing my face close to his. I could see him grinding his teeth in anger. "Give us back our effort, you son of a bitch!"
At that moment, the leader raised his hand and silenced everyone. "As for Isolde Dragno. Her family gave the following answer in the letter. 'We would especially like to inform you that every member of the Dragno family is very valuable, and should any harm come to Isolde, you could face the destruction of your entire city in retaliation.'" These sentences were much better than my family's. A shiver ran through me when I thought Isolde would leave me. "But it's alright, we will pay your money down to the last coin. But first, we would like to state this… A Dragno woman is forbidden from coupling with any man before marriage. In such a situation, she must marry that person. However, Aldoux Weisshafen, the young noble our daughter ran away with, is below the Dragno family's status expectations. In short, if our daughter has had relations with the young noble named Aldoux in any way, we prefer to disown her rather than marry her to Aldoux.'"
"What the hell does that mean!" I shouted.
Isolde looked at me with frightened eyes. Her breathing had quickened.
"Let me finish reading, Weisshafen!" The leader shouted and continued reading. "In the Dragno family, there is an encryption in our women's genetics. If a Dragno woman has intercourse with a man, it is imprinted in her genetic encryption. We have sent you a genetic reader device. First, take a blood sample from Weisshafen, and then from Isolde… If the device lights up red, it means they have had intercourse. In that case, as we stated before, we would rather not rescue Isolde than have her marry Aldoux Weisshafen. Therefore, please test the genetic encryption and send us the results. If the results are green, we will send the money wherever you want. If it is red, the girl is yours.'"
The man called the leader reached behind him and pulled out a pistol with a needle at the end. As the two men on top of me restrained me, he first took a blood sample from me with the needle. Then, as he went to take blood from Isolde, she was thrashing madly. One of the men was wrapped around Isolde's leg, licking it at the same time.
"Stop! Please stop!" I shouted. Isolde was struggling and screaming so the needle wouldn't hit her, but the man finally managed to take blood from the girl's neck. Then, a light shone on the handheld device. "Red!"
"Damn it!" their leader shouted angrily. "Damn it! Damn it!"
His men flinched at the man's anger, but the leader restrained himself from breaking the device. Handing the device to one of his men and walking out of the room, his men asked:
"So, what do we do now?"
"They're both useless!"
"In that case…" asked one of the men wrapped around Isolde's leg.
"You can do whatever you want to the girl! Then, take out her organs so we can sell them. Also, remove her augments… they will fetch money too."
"What about the boy?"
"I will personally deal with the boy."
At that moment, the men lunged at Isolde like hungry bears. As Isolde screamed in agony, the sight of her being beaten and having her clothes ripped off did not leave my mind for a long time. I was ready to sell my soul to forget her being brutally raped by those barbaric men right before my eyes, but I saw all of it even though I had closed my eyes. Because those damned men even forced my eyes open just to mock me. Isolde's pained face, her screams… Damn it! I had seen hell while still living in this world.
Then, Isolde's organs were ripped out in front of me while she was still alive; as blood poured from her abdomen, she looked at me with the corner of her eye. Nightmare! All of this was a real-life nightmare!
"Damn it!" I woke up, drenched in sweat and shouting.
Goma, hearing my voice, opened her eyes and stretched upright. "What's wrong? Did something happen, Aldo?" she asked. I placed my trembling hand on Goma's hair and said:
"It's nothing, Goma… You go back to sleep." Goma yawned, lay back down, and buried her head in the pillow.
When I stepped out of the tent to breathe, I realized how cold it was outside without the tent's thermal stabilizers. But the cold felt good. At least, it helped with the way my heart was pounding, threatening to jump out of my chest.
I walked toward the edge of the cliff and looked down. At that moment, I wanted to throw myself down. I knew that if I fell, everything would end, and these ridiculous memories in my mind would vanish too. Being a nothing was better than living in heaven with this memory.
"Are you alright, Weisshafen?" Ilya asked, connecting to our communication hologram.
I rubbed my temples to calm down and said, "I'm fine… But what happened at this hour?"
"There was a fluctuation in your vital signs."
"How do you know that?"
"I was monitoring the screen and…"
"At this hour?"
"You must be forgetting that I am half-bat, I suppose…"
"Ah… Yes…" I said, taking a deep breath. "You were."
"So… Aren't you going to tell me?"
"Tell you what?"
"What you saw in your dream…"
"I'm not really eager to tell."
"Ah… Is that so?"
"I left my room after a very long time, that's why I had a nightmare, that's all."
"Is it something related to your past? We don't know anything about your past except the jokes you tell when you're drunk."
"Because there's nothing that needs to be known." I said and got up from the edge of the cliff, starting to walk back toward the tent.
"Where are you going?" Ilya asked.
"To sleep…" I replied.