Magister Insanity

"What do you mean you don't know how she died? You were supposed to be keeping watch!"

The expected screaming from Minho arrived on time.

After the revelation of Margaret's passing, I quickly warned the others. Thankfully, she was the only one who had died, and apparently, it had happened in her sleep.

Still, the situation was far from simple. How exactly had she died?

Kneeling beside her cold, lifeless body, Ezra began a careful examination, searching for any clue that might explain her sudden passing.

After a minute or so, he frowned.

"I'm not seeing any concealed wounds. So she couldn't have died from blood loss and there's no indication of an attack either. Most likely, she died from the cold or food poisoning."

Minho turned, his eyes widened.

"Food poisoning? Are you saying she was... murdered?"

Then he looked at me. Hesitation flickered in his eyes, but the suspicion was unmistakable. It made sense, in a grim way. I had been keeping watch during the night. In that advantagous position, I could have poisoned her without anyone noticing while she was vulnerable.

But the white boy, surprisingly, did not point fingers. Instead, he shook his head slowly.

"Not necessarily."

Both Minho and I stared at him, caught off guard. Noticing this, he continued:

"Sometimes, you can be allergic to something without realizing it. There's a high chance that everything here is poisonous, but we don't feel the effects because of our higher resistance. That probably wasn't the case for her."

He paused, then shifted his gaze toward me.

"If that wasn't the case, I still don't think he killed her. Think about it — why would he do it while he was in the perfect position to be the primary suspect? Wouldn't that be the fastest and easiest way for him to expose himself as the killer?"

After a moment of thought, Minho seemed to come to the same conclusion. Then he bowed his head.

"T-That's true… I'm sorry for suspecting you could do something so vile."

"I understand. You don't have to bow your head."

Not that I would hold a grudge for being blamed for something I didn't do. That said, his apology didn't feel entirely sincere. There was a silent understanding in his calculating eyes, something I couldn't quite read.

And that unsettled me.

Turning his head back, Minho looked with a complicated expression.

"What should we do now? We can't just leave her like this."

Silence hung heavy for a moment. The cave, which had felt like a temporary refuge just hours ago, now seemed suffocatingly small. After a brief pause, Ezra finally spoke again with a sad face.

"Let's bury her. It's the least we can do for her."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Bury her? Where exactly?"

He looked at me as if the answer were self-evident.

"Where else? Outside."

Following that, he lifted Margaret's lifeless body, placing her carefully across his shoulders. He handled her with surprising delicacy, as if she were the most fragile thing in the world, and carried her out of the cave, with us behind.

Outside, the mountain cold welcomed us like an old friend. Ezra knelt beside Margaret, carefully arranging her body in the snow before beginning to cover her.

Minho hovered nearby, his hands shoved into his coat pockets. I could see his jaw tighten with every shovelful, though he said nothing.

The silence stretched on for what felt like an eternity, broken only by the occasional whisper of wind and the crunch of snow. Finally, Ezra straightened, brushing the snow from his hands.

"She's as safe as she can be."

Then, almost immediately, Minho added:

"We should mark this spot. So we remember."

He crouched down, using a nearby rock to create a crude marker, and muttered a short, quiet prayer.

It was a makeshift burial ritual, to say the least. Naturally, it was good to properly send off the dead. But what was the urgency in doing so, especially right now? The desire to "send her off" felt questionable. More than that, if such a desire were genuine, why hadn't they buried the others when they had the chance?

A body wasn't strictly necessary for a burial. After all, the concept of a symbolic burial wasn't new. If the victim's remains were absent, something closely connected to them, or even a random item, could be placed in the ground to serve as a stand-in. Yet none of these people had ever shown the slightest concern for creating burial sites for the others who had fallen.

So where was the so-called urgency back then?

The entire display felt like one enormous facade: it was hypocrisy.

Ezra finally spoke again, his voice low, almost drowned by the wind.

"We don't have all day. Let's not linger any further."

"We don't have all day. Let's not linger any longer."

He then turned and stepped back into the cave, presumably to gather his belongings. I followed shortly after, moving to do the same, but Minho remained behind for some time.

Moments later, everyone was back on the road, resuming the atrocious journey to the structure at the mountain pass.

† †

A solitary mountain loomed against the roaring gales.

Craggy and imposing, like the crown of a dragon king, it towered over the surrounding peaks, slicing the gray sky with its sharp ridges. A blood-red glow spilled across its slopes, casting a ghostly and otherworldly light.

Shrouded in that radiance, three lone wanderers reached the peak of the mountain. However, they stood out in a pitiful and pathetic manner; ruining the perfect magnificent picture. The hands of nature that thoroughly crafted that image would surely be filled with displeased. In fact, they weren't supposed to be in this world.

Outcasts.

Infront was a young man with dyed white hair and piercing green eyes. His skin, once fair, had long since lost its origin whiteness, now deathly pale and streaked with grime. Certainly, the white boy looked wild and unhinged.

Walking a few steps behind him was another young man. His shoulder-length hair was a deep blue that seemed almost black in the shadows of the mountain. His eyes were darker still, like twin voids, giving him a quiet, brooding intensity. His clothes fared no better: one sleeve of his layered shirt hung completely torn, while his jeans bore a few rips and worn patches.

And lastly, the older man walking behind the two continued lagging further and further back as they went. If not for his ragged breathing, he was no different from a walking corpse.

Their tattered clothes mirrored their mental state — worn, neglected, and fractured — while simultaneously standing as a testament to all their hardships along the way.

By this point, they had remained on the island for a total of: one week and five days, approximately fifteen days.

And during that time, the strange trio had somehow managed to survive all the horrors the mountain had thrown their way but not without a cost.

Tap! Tap! Tap! Their steps was messy, disorganized but persistent enough.

Pausing at a cautious distance, the trio slowly lifted their heads.

At the mountain's highest point stretched a vast expanse of flat rock, blanketed in snow. In the center, bathed in the crimson light of the sinking sun, stood a glorious temple. Its colossal columns and walls were hewn from black marble, adorned with exquisite reliefs that ran across the stygian pediment and broad frieze.

Contemporaneously, the black marble, though still grand in scale, bore the unmistakable scars of time. Cracks spiderwebbed across the columns, some deep enough to cast tiny shadows within their crevices. The once-polished surfaces were dulled by centuries of wind, snow, and the relentless chill of the mountain, with their edges chipped and worn. Streaks of frost clung stubbornly to the carvings, softening the sharp details of the reliefs, while moss and lichen had begun to claim the lower walls, creeping upward in hesitant, persistent tendrils.

The broad frieze was now partially eroded: the figures' faces and gestures faded into vague impressions, leaving more to imagination. Even the pediment seemed to sag under the weight of its years, the stygian figures carved there appearing almost mournful, as if lamenting the passage of countless seasons. Small piles of snow had gathered in corners and crevices, whispering faintly as the wind swept through the temple. Despite its ruin, the palace still radiated a dark majesty, leading back to an ancient era.

Gorgeous and haunting, it looked like the domain of a malevolent deity. Each step closer to the temple felt like trespassing in a place long abandoned by the living.

No matter how one viewed it, this was undeniably a hostile and unwelcoming ground for any intruders.

However, the trio was too exhausted and battered to care anymore. They had finally made it. But...

"Ah… so this is it?"

Minho narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the temple from top to bottom.

"This… this is what we risked our lives for?"

Something in his eyes fractured. Seconds later, his legs gave out, and he sank to his knees in the snow.

"I thought… I thought something worthwhile would be here, but it's just a damn ruined temple."

It seemed he was on the verge of tears... and then he let them fall, plunging himself into despair all at once.

For nearly two weeks, they had been stranded on this forsaken island with no way to call for help or escape. In that time, they had watched their comrades waste away, forced to stay alert against prowling monsters and hidden traps. More than once, the cold hand of death had almost dragged them into its embrace.

Truly, it was just too much.

What was the point of enduring all those hardships, surviving that torturous ordeal, only to reach a dead end? How could a ruined temple possibly solve their grim situation?

These thoughts gnawed at his mind, consuming his very soul.

The other two didn't bother to look back at him. Multiple thoughts seemed to flash behind their eyes. Ezra was surprisingly less calmer than usual.

For the first time, the white boy showed uncertainty.

How much time had passed? The trio stood frozen for a very long time, not a word escaping their lips, as if the world itself had paused.

After what felt like an eternity, Sonny finally broke the silence.