After their stop at the cafe, Flann and Clarette continued on their way, wandering amidst the bustling streets. At the end of one such road, in a corner of the village a slight ways away from the lively center, they came upon a cemetery. Clarette didn’t want to dampen the mood by going somewhere so solemn, but Flann stopped in front of the cemetery, staring at a group of closely placed tombstones. 

Although the area was silent, he seemed to hear voices coming from the direction of the stones, and it sent a shiver down his spine. 

“Curse you!” “Traitor!”

A cold sweat began forming on his palms and forehead, and his eyes shook, unable to look away from the area.

“You should be dead.”

Flann clenched his fists tightly, his nails slightly digging into his clammy skin. His feet felt planted into the ground, and the pressure from the voices was overwhelming. He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. Then, voice shaking, he asked, “...Clarette, what… is there?”

Confused about Flann’s sudden reaction, Clarette looked in the direction where his gaze was aimed, and spotted the particular group of tombstones that he seemed to be hearing voices from. 

“Ah, that..,” she replied, “is where the lost youth of this town are buried.” 

When Clarette spoke, her voice cut through the others in Flann’s mind, and he began to feel a little more at ease. What overcame him now was a curiosity about what Clarette mentioned, and the meaning behind the curses that he had heard. 

“What… do you mean?”

Clarette hesitated for a moment before saying, “It’s a long story… and quite depressing too. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

Flann, who was not yet able to control his curiosity, nodded in return. 

“Well,” Clarette began, “it started several years ago when there was news that the neighboring kingdom was building up their army. Our king at that time was young, having lost his parents, and he was worried about an upcoming war. So he made an order for all commoner families with capable children to send at least one child to the capital, under the pretense of building a strong military force.”

“Even after a couple of years, the neighboring kingdom never launched an offense, and many amongst the nobles figured it was common tension. However, the children who were taken by the king were not returned, and in fact they were kept hidden from the entire council. When family members were unable to even seek out their children, both the commoners as well as nobles began to feel suspicious about the king’s intentions. Ultimately, a group of council members, led by the duke, dug into the king’s information and found where they were kept.”

She paused, finding it a bit difficult to continue. Flann gazed at her with eyes brimming with questions, and she took a deep breath before resuming. 

“When they broke into the facilities where the children were held, they found not a training ground nor living spaces, but an experiment room.”

Clarette’s voice started to waver a little, but she continued on as if it hadn’t. 

“The king had not taken the children to train as knights, but rather had been performing countless brutal experiments on them to create chimeras with increased physical and magical strength. His experiments were inhumane and torturous, and most of the chimeras died simply from the pain and malfunction it caused. However, among some that did survive, they grew mad and broke out of their restrictions, wildly attacking the nobles who had come to free them.” 

Her eyes watering, Clarette said softly, “...They had no choice but to kill them.” She closed her eyes for a brief moment to try to keep tears from falling, and then wiped them away.

Flann stared at her blankly, and then asked, “...Then what happened to the king?”

“Finding his experiments had been exposed,” Clarette replied, “he tried to run away with his younger brother, but the duke and his forces captured him in the castle before he could. When they found him, he was sitting in a pool of blood, extremely distraught and crazed. People say that he lost his mind and killed his brother, but his body was never found, so they couldn’t prove it. In the end, the king was imprisoned and shortly after executed, during which he never spoke a word about what happened.”

“After all that, the duke took over the kingship, and worked with the council to restore order and return the bodies of the chimera children to their villages to be properly buried. Of the ones that could be recovered, the children from this village were buried together in that soil, and tombstones were made for all of the lost children, even the ones that could not be found.”

At this, Clarette stopped speaking, and the two of them sat in silence for a while. Clarette dried her eyes with her sleeves, and then glanced at Flann, whose eyes remained perfectly dry. His face appeared a bit emotionless, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. 

At last, he spoke, revealing a fragment of the thoughts that ran through his head. “...That is indeed… a tragic story. So those are the children who couldn’t rest in peace…”

Hearing these words come from his mouth, Clarette felt odd, as if the person in front of her was no longer the innocent, child-like Flann she thought she knew. She wondered if this was perhaps the Flann that she didn’t know, prompted by the long story that she had told. Perhaps, if he was a citizen of this kingdom, he had known this tale somewhere deep down, and it was triggering the memories of his past. Staring at his face that seemed to hold some deep, unfathomable emotion, she couldn’t determine the answer to her thoughts. 

After hearing the story of the previous king’s fall and the sacrifice of the kingdom’s children, Flann stared at the collection of tombstones for a while longer, motionless. Clarette didn’t know what thoughts ran through his mind as he gazed at them, and she wondered if she shouldn’t have told such a sorrowful tale about the kingdom while Flann was still getting to learn about it. 

Haelika Kingdom, the land of the setting sun. 

The bloodline that had reigned for centuries had been praised as high as the sun, and yet the former king, named for the honor of the kingdom, betrayed the very people that lived in its protection.

The man who was called the sun and glory of the kingdom, Aelius Deimantas Thyresia. With the revolution and its aftermath, the kingdom had indeed become the land of a setting sun. 

This history, which remained fresh on people’s minds, was a reminder that any prosperity, built too high, could come crashing down. 

Clarette didn’t want to think about the pain from this incident any longer, and grabbed Flann’s hand. “We’ve been out for a long time now. Let’s head back.” 

Flann, brought out of his trance, nodded, and followed her guidance as they made their way back to the Ruzena estate.