Swan Grave - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1. The Forbidden Room

Oh, the demon prayed to the moon.

Asking it to grant him a companion as well.

Everyone mocked his wish,

but the moon did not turn away from the demon.

From the red moon, a swan descended,

and the demon took the swan as his mate.

***

Anna, a young maid of the Lohengrin household, quickened her steps. The hem of her black skirt fluttered behind her, leaving a long trail in the corridor.

She had little time. All the servants had gone out to welcome the master of the estate, Marquess Rothbart Lohengrin. Though she too was supposed to greet him, she couldn’t waste this rare moment when the halls were empty. Pretending to have a stomachache, she slipped away in secret.

Her destination was none other than the forbidden area at the center of the mansion. It was the room of the late Marchioness, who had passed away eleven years ago.

As Anna hurried, fragments of information about the Marquess and his wife flashed through her mind.

Born a beast, destined to stand above others, Marquess Lohengrin was so feared that even his own father trembled before him. Since all treated him with nothing but awe, he grew up knowing nothing of love, eccentric and ill-tempered.

Then one day, a foreign woman suddenly appeared in the Marquess’s domain. His father, who was managing the estate at the time, discovered her by chance. Pitying the woman with nowhere to go, he brought her to the mansion. Unsure how to treat the stranger, he entrusted her to Rothbart, who was about her age.

What followed was astonishing. The foreign woman was not afraid of Rothbart as everyone else was. She spoke back to him clearly, and when he acted out in his capricious way, she confronted him in anger. At first, he was flustered by such a reaction, but confusion soon turned into curiosity, and strangeness into uniqueness. It was only natural that Rothbart gradually fell for her. In time, she became the Marchioness at his side.

Yet the more dearly one cherishes something, the quicker it slips away. After bearing a child, she grew weak and eventually passed away. Already ill-tempered and unwilling to keep people close, the Marquess became even more withdrawn after losing his wife, sealing away everything that bore her trace, locking up the Marchioness’s room entirely.

He forbade anyone but himself from entering, even assigning the butler, not a maid, to clean the room.

Not even the head maid, nor his only son and heir, Svanhild, the child of the Marchioness, was permitted inside.

Yet that didn’t mean Svanhild had never entered. Rebellious and troublesome, he once stole the butler’s key and made a duplicate for himself. He would sneak into the room from time to time, later boasting of what he saw inside to Anna like a tale of exploits.

That very key now rested in Anna’s hands. She gripped the hidden key in her apron pocket tightly. The chill of the metal pressed into her palm.

As with the fate of the women who looked into Bluebeard’s chamber, breaking taboos always came with terrible consequences. Yet since what Anna sought lay within that forbidden room, she had no choice.

It was said the room had remained untouched since the day the Marchioness died. Her clothes, her jewelry, her valuables…

And her diary.

Svanhild had once grumbled that the writing was incomprehensible. Anna dared to hope. Perhaps the diary was written in the Marchioness’s native tongue, the language of a foreigner. If so…

Whether she could read it, or whether the diary contained the knowledge she sought, nothing was certain.

But as long as there was even the faintest possibility, Anna had to see the diary for herself.

She had long waited for a chance to steal Svanhild’s key. And today, the opportunity had finally come. She didn’t know when another chance might arise. Without hesitation, Anna acted.

She would return to her original world, no matter what it took. That was why she had risked everything to come to this mansion, the ‘Swan Grave.’

***

The large white mansion built near the blue lakeside exuded an eerily desolate atmosphere. It was not because the paint had peeled away, nor because the surrounding scenery was left in ruin, and yet it did. The mansion’s nickname, something one might find in a horror novel, ‘Swan Grave,’ fit it perfectly.

The nickname came from an ancestor of the Lohengrin family, who loved to hunt swans. The corpses of swans once littered the grounds around the mansion, and so the name stuck. Perhaps living up to its name, in recent years, hundreds of swans had mysteriously died in droves near the estate.

The locals whispered that it was because the owner of the mansion was a demon, and they hushed the matter quickly, insisting that nothing good could come from meddling in a demon’s business.

Into that splendid and grand mansion, clouded by sinister rumors, came a black carriage.

The ebony four-horse carriage draped with black curtains carried the grim aura of a hearse announcing death, and the blindfolded black horses pulling it looked like familiars of a demon.

The iron gates, interwoven with towering iron bars like spears piercing the sky, swung open to welcome their master.

The horses snorted, releasing hot breaths, as the carriage slowly came to a halt. From within the dim interior, cloaked by curtains, a towering figure slowly rose.

A man in his late thirties, with hair black as the night sky, perfectly slicked back without a strand out of place.

The freshness of youth had long passed, yet he was not so old as to be dulled by the ways of the world. From head to toe, he was the picture of a flawless gentleman, his demeanor graceful and composed.

But deep within his red eyes, like crushed pomegranate seeds, lingered a madness that couldn’t be erased.

This was none other than the master of the mansion, the demon born on a cursed day, Marquess Rothbart Lohengrin.

“Master!”

The old butler, Barrett, stepped forward to greet Rothbart. Behind him, led by the head maid, Madame Dova, the servants lined up outside the entrance as if in a parade, awaiting their master. Since Rothbart had arrived earlier than expected, tension was evident, as though they feared their greeting might not meet his standards.

But such hospitality from his servants meant little to him, as long as they did not displease him. Handing his hat and cane to Barrett, Rothbart headed straight for the main building of the mansion.

Perhaps it was the joy of returning home, but his strides were steady and unstoppable. Though he never rushed, his long legs carried him swiftly, making it difficult for the aging butler to keep up.

Barrett, nearly running to catch up, spoke hastily, “A few months ago, I sent a telegram to the capital… did you see it?”

“Telegram? No.”

Rothbart replied without even glancing at his loyal butler, his steps heavy and unrelenting. With every stride, the distance between them widened, making it an ordeal just to follow.

The butler knew well that interrupting his master at such a time could end badly, but the matter he had to report was no less important.

“It’s about…”

“Tell me after I see my wife first.”

Rothbart cut him off sharply. Ever since the Marchioness had passed eleven years ago, his return to the mansion always began with the same ritual: going straight to his wife’s room before anything else.

He had no choice but to be away from the estate often, and whenever he did, he suffered from a kind of withdrawal over his wife. Visiting her room first was, to him, no different from breathing air into lungs on the brink of suffocation, a ritual of survival.

If his state was truly so dire, one might think it would be easier to carry a token, like a ring or a brooch, to remember her by. But he never once did so.