Swan Grave - Chapter 6

Sehyun laughed awkwardly as he asked again. At his question, the villagers looked at one another, then burst out laughing.

“You don’t know demons, and you don’t know swans either? Well, since you’re from the eastern continent, I suppose that makes sense. It’s nothing complicated. Around here, we call people who descend from the sky swans.”

“Like angels?”

“Not quite. Swans don’t have wings.”

Anna’s heart thumped loudly. She and Sehyun instinctively realized that swan referred to dimensional travelers like themselves. When they had first come to this world, they were lucky to fall into a forest where no one was watching.

“Isn’t it like a fallen angel who lost its wings after committing a sin and was cast down from the heavens? That’s why they can be paired with demons.”

“If we’re swans, then that means three angels have already fallen from the heavens.”

“Oh my, the end of times!”

At Anna’s calm joke, the carpenter burst out laughing and slapped his thigh.

Though Anna and Sehyun played it off lightly, they were shaken to the core at the thought of other dimensional travelers. They were also disturbed that the Marchioness had the face of someone from the eastern continent, just like them.

If what the villagers said was true, and the Marchioness had returned to the heavens—their original world—then perhaps the truth was hidden within the Lohengrin estate.

Clinging to that hope, the two set out for the Lohengrin estate at dawn the very next day. They didn’t know whether what awaited them was the beacon of hope or the lanternfish’s lure.

***

Though her body was limp and heavy as soaked cotton, Anna’s eyes suddenly shot open. Darkness still greeted her, but the deathly silence told her it was the deep of night.

She blinked slowly. Fatigue washed over her in waves. Unlike the hard, narrow straw bed meant for maids, here soft feathers and cotton cradled her exhausted body with infinite gentleness. The comfort of it made her want to slip back into sleep.

But she could not. Memories flickered back one by one like a sputtering light, until even her last memory before blacking out returned in full.

As soon as she recalled everything, Anna hurriedly sat up. She was naked, and beside her lay a massive man, also bare, with his arm draped over her waist.

Beneath her was stained with the traces of his climax, and her pale skin was covered in bite marks and bruises, so marked up it was painful to look at. It was impossible to imagine how much had been done to her while she was unconscious.

Her face flushed hot with both shame and fear. Unable to bring herself to look at the Marquess’s face, she slipped carefully out of bed. Standing on tiptoe, every step she took made her pale heels lift nervously into the air.

She found her clothes scattered on the floor and hastily pulled them on. Her undergarments and drawers were torn and ragged. Thankfully, her maid uniform was intact.

Her waist ached and her legs trembled, but she hurried. She had to get out of this room quickly. She wanted to escape the place where she had spread her legs beneath the Marquess and cried out in ecstasy.

“Mmm…”

Just then, Rothbart stirred in his sleep. Terrified of facing him, Anna frantically gathered her belongings from the floor and fled the room.

As she rushed out in panic, her gaze brushed the Marchioness’s portrait above the fireplace. In the pitch blackness, she couldn’t make out the smooth features of the painting, but for some reason, it seemed as though the woman in the portrait was smiling strangely.

As if mocking the husband and maid who had coupled beneath her image.

It’s just an illusion. Anna shook her head roughly. It hadn’t been her will, and she was a victim too, yet she still felt an odd guilt toward the Marchioness pressing down on her.

What greeted her outside the room were the three moons shining brilliantly through the window. Their light poured down like an interrogation lamp. In that bright moonlight, which seemed to thrust her sins before her, she bit her swollen lips hard and ran down the corridor bathed in the glow of three moons. She wanted nothing more than to wake from this nightmare.

***

If someone were to see her in this ruined state, how could she possibly explain? Fortunately, the corridor was empty. Thanks to that, Anna managed to return safely to her quarters. It must have been very late, as the other maids were already asleep.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Anna crawled into her bed and pulled the blanket up over her head. The sweet scent of the incense still clung to her nose, her head dazed. Perhaps it had seeped deep into the corners of her brain and had not yet faded.

That had been her first experience. She had not harbored any particular fantasies about it, but she had never imagined she would be drugged and forced by a man whose face she had not even seen properly.

Yet she had no time to despair. A more pressing problem remained.

‘What if someone finds out I entered the forbidden room?’

The Marquess had been drugged. He had overlaid the Marchioness’s face upon hers, so he shouldn’t be able to recall her real appearance…

But as long as she remained in the Swan Grave, she was within the Marquess’s grasp. Even if he did not question the maid who had conveniently slipped away at that time, just a single strand of her long black hair, left behind in that room, would be enough to identify her. Not to mention, the traces of their coupling still remained. To deduce her from the clues she had carelessly left behind would be easier than the Marquess counting the lines of his palm.

‘If the Marquess realizes everything… he will never let me live.’

Recalling his blind devotion before the Marchioness’s portrait, and the ferocity he had shown when he discovered an intruder, she was certain he would never forgive the one who had defiled that room.

‘Would it be better to just flee the mansion…?’

Anna quickly shook her head. Why had she come into this mansion in the first place? It was to find a way back to her original world.

Even if no one was waiting for her…

Her father had died in an accident when she was in high school, and after entering university, her mother had collapsed from illness. And only a few months ago, her mother finally lost the battle against her sickness and passed away.

Anna was an only child, long estranged from her other relatives. Because of her mother’s illness, she had spent her days shuttling between part-time jobs and the hospital, leaving no time for friends. The only one she had any connection with was her boyfriend Sehyun, and even he had fallen into this world with her.

Unlike Sehyun, the precious eldest son of his family, there was no one to search for Anna if she went missing. In truth, she could have lived on in this world, and it wouldn’t have mattered.

Even so, she wanted to return to her original world.

Because all her memories were there.

Because her grave was there.

It had been Anna who had chosen the resting place for her parents. Then who would choose Anna’s grave? In the end, only Anna herself could decide. She had chosen the columbarium beside her parents’ resting place in her original world as her own grave.

Anna loved her parents. That was why she always suppressed herself for their sake. Even her choice of university had been a compromise made for them.

The first thing in her life she had ever chosen for herself was her own grave. She refused to let even a dimensional transfer steal that right from her.

That was why Anna had risked everything to come to the Swan Grave. Even knowing the grim rumors of the lake turning red with blood each year, and of corpses being carried out, she had not hesitated.

‘Rather than live out my life in this strange place, I would rather die trying to return to my original world. It’s not as though I ever wanted to live so badly anyway…’

Anna’s eyes grew cold with resolve. Still, because death terrified her, she repeated the thought over and over like a mantra, as if to brainwash herself.