EP.74 The Book of Tirkanjaka - Old Testament (Part 1)
The underground armory, at its very depths. The final room where sinister fragments worship the darkness.
A sinister aura flows, and the air is dead still. It is so quiet that not even a sound of wind can be heard.
Beneath the pitch-black darkness where one cannot even see an inch ahead, a girl lies using a luxurious sandalwood coffin as a bed. The vampire, her faint silver hair let down, quietly looks at me without a single breath, her hands neatly folded together.
The vampire, lying demurely in the coffin, spoke to me with genuine curiosity.
"Will this really work? Is there no need to expose the heart?"
"You don't need to expose your heart right now. Instead, hold this."
I placed a single card in the vampire's hand. The Ace of Hearts. Having confirmed the card's pattern, the vampire smiled pleasantly.
"It had to be a heart. Why, is it a talisman?"
"No. Say hello. It will be Tirkanjaka trainee's new heart from now on."
"Hmm?"
The vampire looked at the card again but couldn't find anything special about it. I let out a hollow laugh and finished explaining.
"Of course, it's not a real heart. I prepared something of a similar shape for the sake of suggestion. Hold it tightly in both hands and gather them to your chest."
The vampire followed my words without any doubt.
I once thought it would be nice if everyone in the world obeyed my words. But now that such a person is right in front of me, it's incredibly uncomfortable.
As expected, it's better to just live using mind-reading.
"Alright. Tirkanjaka trainee. Close your eyes and exhale comfortably. Relax your body so your blood flows quietly... Though I don't really need to tell you that."
A vampire's blood flows quietly anyway. It's better for me to worry about it.
I took a deep breath. A tension I hadn't felt in a long time gripped my body tightly. It's not welcome at all, but since it's a guest I brought upon myself, I have no choice but to accept it.
I took a seat at the head of the sandalwood coffin, closest to the vampire's head. Our faces are close. Even in the pitch-black darkness, her bright red eyes still shone red.
Meeting those eyes, I explained briefly.
"Tirkanjaka trainee. Your heart does not beat, but you can move your blood. You practically have no need for a heart. Regaining your heart won't make your abilities disappear, either. In a way, you are wishing for something useless. Even so, do you wish to regain your heart?"
"...I do."
"Why?"
"Because I wish for my heart to not move as I please."
Words that might seem contradictory. But within them lay the vampire's pent-up desire.
"Why? When you resent someone, isn't it fine to have the ability to cut them down without any pain? Not only ordinary people, but especially politicians would covet such an ability."
"Even in this state, are you trying to test me?"
The vampire feigned anger as she spoke.
"I, too, was once human. Though I left it in the past, countless days and nights have passed, yet those times still drag me back. That brief time, like a spark, has faded from being too long ago, but ultimately, it was that time that made me who I am now. Because my heart did not go as I willed, I could change... and after I died, no matter how hard I tried, I could not change."
"Is that so."
It was something I had already read, but I answered as if I didn't know.
The vampire's goal is not just to move blood. She can already control blood at her own will, and if she wanted to, she could crush her original heart and create a heart of the exact same shape. She could also make her heart beat simply by squeezing her own heart.
Having reached the pinnacle of Blood Manipulation Art, she was no different from a creator god when it came to her own body....
The progenitor Tirkanjaka hated that.
Because she could not create something that wasn't controlled with a controlling ability, she had no choice but to constantly seek methods from others.
"Alright. Accepted. I will grant your wish."
Winds are originally meant to brush past, but sometimes, there are winds that pool and stagnate like this.
With my mind-reading, I recklessly open the window to people's hearts, and sometimes I get hit squarely in the face by such a wind.
And I fell for it again this time.
I closed my eyes and sank deep into my inner darkness.
A faint candlelight illuminates the darkness.
In the shabby library tightly packed with books of the forgotten, there is a small candle prepared for the librarian. A dim candle that could barely illuminate a page before one's eyes. This is a small light that distinguishes between the books and the one who protects them, and it is what makes the librarian the caretaker.
I lifted the candle. It was frail and dim, as if it could fade away at any moment. A fragile flame that seemed like it would be extinguished with a single gust of wind.
In contrast, the book before my eyes is thick and heavy. Even an encyclopedia wouldn't be this massive. A single volume, yet like a woven epic. To read it all with this tiny candle, dozens more candles like this would be needed....
However, to do what I am about to do now, a librarian is unnecessary.
Looking down at it only allows one to read the letters written in the book. Therefore, it is objective, but...
With only that, one cannot know the chill soaked into the paper, the faint scent, the indentations, and what was meant to be left in the margins.
That is why I decided to quit being a librarian for a while.
I blew a puff of breath at the candle.
Whoosh, the flame vanished in an instant.
And there was darkness in the world.
The night of the dark moon, where even the moon has turned its head away. There is not a single point of light in the world. Those who fear the darkness hide inside their homes, lie in bed, close their eyes, fold their hands together, and pray only for it to retreat.
On such a pitch-black night, a father and daughter are walking down a dark road, pulling a cart.
Those who walk the night road are one of two things.
Either they are in such a hurry that they must risk the threats lurking in the darkness.
Or they hope the darkness will conceal their appearance along with their sins.
They were the latter.
"Tir, I'm sorry. For getting you involved in this..."
The father's low voice could be heard. Then, the girl brushed away the darkness draped over her face and smiled brightly.
"It's okay. Rather, it's nice if I think of it as a night walk. You know I like looking up at the night sky."
However, both the girl and her father knew that the smile was for her father, not for herself. The father pulled the cart in silence, his face clouded with guilt.
The wooden cart moved smoothly and softly. That was because they had covered the wheels with leather and heavily greased the creaking axles, lest they make a sound.
It was an intention to hide even the leaking sounds.
Just what horrific crime had they committed that they moved so cautiously?
The answer lay inside the cart.
Inside the swaying cart, covered by a single blanket.
Lay a corpse they had buried last week.
A lifeless corpse finds rest in the embrace of the Earth Mother.
Therefore, disturbing that rest was considered a highly wicked act.
If even that is so, then how much more so was mutilating an exhumed corpse? It was unforgivable. Only a death that would serve as an example for all, like stoning or burning at the stake, awaited them.
But there are always those who commit sins.
"Tir. Look. The path where blood flows is laid out like this."
The father skinned the corpse with a knife. In a way different from handling meat, and therefore all the more horrific and gruesome.
He peeled it back layer by layer, from the skin to the muscles. When the leather tightly wrapping the body is removed, a sticky membrane follows. Cutting and tearing the membrane with a knife is only the real beginning.
Forcibly tearing off the bones attached to the fascia, the internal organs pooled with dead blood greet them. Since these were either rotting or damaged, they shouldn't be touched carelessly. Carefully cutting them out and removing them or pushing them to one side, he goes deeper and deeper into the body.
And what emerged were the heart and the blood vessels.
The father lifted the blood vessels with a long stick and spoke.
"This is the heart. The root of our body, and the place that purifies blood. All blood begins here. When the heart beats, the blood departs and circulates throughout the entire body. The blood leaving the heart is on the inside, and the blood that returns after making a round through the body is on the outside. Like that, the body circulates in a large loop."
It was a lecture she had already heard dozens of times, but the father always emphasized it whenever rummaging through a new corpse.
The girl could have recited his words by heart right then, but instead of pointing that out, she simply nodded.
"But I still don't quite understand that middle process... It seems like the incoming blood temporarily pools in the organs and then drains out, but it's hard to confirm in an already dead body. I need your help, Tir."
"Okay."
The girl reached out her hand without a hint of distaste. Then, an amazing thing happened.
Fresh red blood started to well up from the inside.
The blood that had hidden deep within the body in the face of the unprecedented disaster of death. The coagulated blood, summoned by the girl, woke from its sleep and slowly began to move.
The girl pulled up the blood and asked her father.
"Should I push it this way?"
"Please. Thank you as always, Tir."
Unlike other children her age who played in the dirt, the girl, who had dug up graves and corpses with her healer father, gained a bizarre power.
The ability to control blood.
At most, it was only enough to stop the bleeding of a shallow wound, but it was exactly what her father had wished for.
The father, who had been reluctant to let his daughter participate in his crimes, never refused the girl's help after that day. He couldn't. Her ability was that special and helpful.
Of course, the girl helped her father without a single sign of displeasure.
"If I follow this path and let the blood flow like this, right?"
"Yes. You push the blood in, and I'll see if it pools in the organs."
The father, who had been quite a capable healer, became an increasingly advanced healer starting from a certain day. His skills were so renowned that people even came from the neighboring village by word of mouth.
He instantly became the pride of the village, and the villagers secretly took pride in him.
"...Your mother died because her lungs were filled with pooled blood. To be exact, the passage through which the blood should have drained was damaged. This shell had holes in it like coarse linen..."
Whenever the villagers introduced the father, they never failed to mention that his skills had advanced by leaps and bounds after losing his wife to an unfortunate disease.
The pitiful death of a wife with a chronic illness and the healer who awakened afterwards. What an easy and beautiful story to understand.
"Tir, if we gain the ability to find and heal damaged blood passages... we can conquer disease."
However, the girl, who had continuously watched her father from the closest distance, knew.
That awakening was built on a mountain of corpses.
"The disease that killed your mother... we can eradicate it from the world."
In the eyes of the father speaking thus, a bizarre madness and desire were mixed.
The father was a healer.
It's a bit much to call him a doctor. In those days, when people lived adapting to the work given to them rather than deciding their work based on their occupation, a village was bound to have one or two people in very complex positions.
Tir's father was such a person. Born a noble, but as the seventh son of a not-so-wealthy family, all he inherited from his family was a passable appearance, elegant eloquence, and a few books' worth of knowledge. And in this rough world, they were useful in exactly the order listed.
Wandering about, he caught the eye of a woman from a certain village, grew affectionate, married right away, and settled down.
He was the children's teacher, a healer, and when something happened in the village, he volunteered to negotiate. It didn't take long for him to blend into the village.
However, the woman had a long-standing illness. After giving birth to a child, her illness only worsened. The knowledge gained from a few books was also insufficient to save her. The time of sorrow only approached and never receded.
One night, when cold snow was falling. The girl's mother scattered red blood on the snow piled up in white. The fierce wind covered the father's sorrowful cry.
It was from then on. That the father started laying his hands on corpses.
At first, the father acted without the girl's knowledge. However, after the mother, who had tenaciously managed the household, passed away, the girl naturally took over the chores and quickly noticed her father's transgressions.
Naturally, at first, the girl was also afraid of her father. The sight of dissecting and dismantling a corpse was hard to accept, even for family.
But she couldn't abandon her father, who was her only family, so the girl endured it and stayed by his side. And at some point, she started to help her father.
Was it because she was still young, or was it because she learned under such a father? It was from then on.
That the girl's thoughts began to change little by little.
Other than committing the atrocious act of dissecting corpses, the father was a very outstanding adult. He cared for and healed the injured, and was respected by many.
He touched more corpses than anyone else, but the father had never actually killed anyone. If anything, he saved his patients.
Digging up corpses is a major crime. Even if branded as a devil's spawn, there would be nothing to say.
But if that could save people...
An already dead body, something that would just be eaten by beasts, insects, or mold anyway. If her father used that to save people who were dying...
Who could fault him?
Around that time, the girl became able to handle blood.
And surpassing being her father's collaborator, she became his equal partner.