Swan Grave - Chapter 5

The day Rothbart was born was a cursed day, when the three moons overlapped into one and shone blood red. He was born in a pool of red blood after killing his mother, the former Marchioness Lohengrin.

There is a legend that one born on such a day is an ominous being. People called such a being a ‘demon.’ The villagers firmly believed Rothbart to be a demon as well. They eagerly recounted what they knew of the extraordinary and chilling powers he had shown since childhood.

“From birth, he bewitched people, brainwashed those around him, and controlled them.”

“If you meet those red eyes, you can’t move an inch. Not just humans. Even fierce wild beasts tuck their tails and run away.”

“They say even the black magicians lurking in the shadows revere him. If the Marquess commands it, they’d split open their hearts to offer them. If that’s not a demon, then what is?”

Anna and Sehyun thought people’s evaluations of Rothbart were exaggerated. Demon, black magicians—did such nonsense make sense? But there was no reason to pick a fight and offend people. They nodded along in agreement.

Yet it was obvious that Anna and Sehyun did not truly believe in demons. The villagers shook their heads and added more words.

“Must be because you’re from the eastern continent, you don’t believe easily.”

“Haha…”

“Demons are real.”

A man downed a drink in one gulp and glared as he spoke. In his rough tone, there was a vivid conviction, mixed with fear. Sehyun, who thought the word “demon” was merely an epithet slapped on to anything frightening, gave an awkward laugh and carefully asked.

“Th-then, what did the demon… do? I don’t really understand why everyone is so terrified.”

“They say demons brainwash people. Right. Fine. You don’t believe it at all, do you?”

“Mm…”

When Sehyun gave a vague smile, the man lifted his beard stained with drink and lowered his voice.

“I’ll tell you one example. It’s a story I heard from my grandmother… This one’s different from the Marquess. It’s about a demon born as a commoner. His father despised the demon, who was born after killing his wife, but feared he might be cursed if he abandoned him, so he raised him anyway. Later, he remarried another woman. She was a widow with a child.”

“And then?”

“The demon was excited at having a mother for the first time. But the stepmother was different. Realizing too late that the man’s child was a demon, she tried to break off the marriage. The demon grew furious. Do you know what he did then?”

“…Did he kill her?”

Anna asked uneasily. Had it been part of a novel, she would have listened to even more brutal tales without batting an eye, but stories said to be true, passed down from someone else, always carried an inexplicable discomfort, impossible to prove.

“If he had only killed her, it would have been a simple case of parricide. The demon brainwashed his father to see the stepmother’s child as the stepmother herself, and brainwashed the stepmother to see the demon himself as her real child.”

“My god.”

At first, they didn’t understand, but once they realized the situation that would unfold, the two’s faces twisted in disgust. Seeing them, the villagers chuckled.

“There are countless stories about demons, but all carry the same lesson. Do not get involved with them.”

Anna, still gagging, steadied her breath and asked again, “If they’re such beings, why not just kill them?”

“How? With what power? If you mess up and incur the demon’s wrath, who knows what might happen?”

“……”

“Who would take the risk? Everyone pretends not to know, saying it has nothing to do with them. It’s the same with the Marquess Lohengrin. Whenever he appears, beasts flee and the pressure alone suffocates you, yet outwardly he seems a good lord. He collects taxes reasonably… and it’s not as though he defiles every maiden in the village either.”

The man rambling on seemed, despite his fear, almost to defend the Marquess. So long as he was not personally involved, he believed firmly that it was better to let things be.

At that moment, a gaunt man sitting across from him shook his head as he downed his drink.

“Still, I can’t shake the feeling. The Marquess’s household hires servants often. But no one has ever heard where the former servants went, or why they left.”

“Isn’t it simply because there aren’t many capable workers? Hans, haven’t you been complaining that it’s hard to find decent young men to help you these days? It must be the same with the mansion servants. If they can’t work, they get thrown out. Why would anyone brag about being dismissed and spread it around the village?”

“You think that’s all? In recent years, strange corpses have sometimes been found in the domain.”

“What kind of corpses? I’ve heard stories of swan corpses being found.”

The bearded man tried to silence the gaunt man, Hans, but Sehyun quickly interjected. At Sehyun’s words, Hans snorted.

“Swan corpses? Don’t make me laugh. They were human corpses. Dried up human bodies. As if someone had sucked all the blood out of them… I heard there’s a torture chamber beneath the Marquess’s mansion. Maybe it’s true.”

As Hans finished speaking, an awkward silence fell over the tavern. Even though everyone was heavily drunk, a sudden chill swept through them. In that uncomfortable silence, not the bearded man nor Hans, but another man let out a long sigh and continued.

“Come to think of it, after the former Marquess died, until that demon grew up, nothing much happened. The problem started after he came of age. Wasn’t it then that the Marchioness appeared?”

“It was more than ten years ago.”

“Fifteen years ago, perhaps? Around that time. I remember clearly because my mother died then.”

The men stumbled through their memories. As they exchanged pieces of recollection, fragments of the past gradually pieced together.

“She was a woman from the eastern continent, like you two. No one knew where she came from, whether she had fallen from the sky or risen from the ground.”

“They say none of the demon’s powers worked on her.”

“Right. She wasn’t afraid of him either, and sometimes she even raised her voice and fought with him.”

“Fought? With the demon?”

“A maid who worked in that household said she once slapped the demon across the face in anger.”

“My word. Incredible. The Marchioness was no ordinary woman. Perhaps that very quality is what stirred the Marquess’s curiosity.”

“I heard he pursued her relentlessly for years.”

“Expensive goods poured endlessly from the capital into the mansion, and every flower in the domain was plucked to decorate her room. In the end, he finally had her, but…”

“Who could have guessed that just a few days after giving birth to a son, the Marchioness would die of the plague that spread through the domain. Was it the first year of their marriage… Thinking of it that way, it was such a short-lived time.”

The misfortune of House Lohengrin did not end there. Before the dirt on the Marchioness’s grave had even dried, misfortune struck again. Rothbart’s father also succumbed to the plague.

Thus, the Lohengrin family was reduced to only two: the demon Rothbart and his son, Svanhild.

“They say the Marquess revived a declining family, but in the end, look at the misfortune still hanging over that house! One should never get involved with demons.”

“The Marquess tried to have a child, and heaven punished him for it. It was divine judgment.”

“Maybe the Marchioness didn’t really die. Tom, the man who carried her coffin, said it felt as light as if it were empty.”

“If the Marchioness didn’t die, then where would she have gone? The Marquess would never have let her go.”

“Now that you mention it, there’s an old tale that for a demon to have a child, his partner must be a swan. If the Marchioness was a swan, then perhaps she simply flew back to the heavens.”

“A swan, really? What an old wives’ tale.”

“If demons are born in this age, then surely swans must exist too.”

“If the Marchioness was a swan, then these two here must be swans as well.”

“Um, what is a swan?”