Do Flowers Bloom in the Fallen Land?

How long has it been? Seira woke up and looked around blankly. She couldn’t find the man who took her.

Instantly, Seira found it an opportunity, as her opponent who had formidable skills and was completely unpredictable was away.

She lithely approached the door. Now that she regained her powers, she could use basic magic to unlock the door. However, there was no magic surrounding the door when she looked into it. It seemed to have been locked manually.

‘But there’s nothing I can’t open,’ she thought.

Seira could pierce through not only locks but also stone walls if she put her mind to it. She only worried that if she did so, the man would come back from hearing the ruckus afterward.

‘Maybe if I just keep the intensity in check…’

She pushed the door lightly, and Seira’s eyes widened with surprise.

‘What? It just opens…?’

Seira opened the door and peered outside. She could see a narrow corridor which two adult men could barely walk side by side without touching their shoulders.

‘I’m sure we are underground.’

The room she was in was decent, but outside smelled humid and musty.

Seira crept along stealthily with her senses on high alert. The was at the end of the corridor, and she caught a glimpse of the stairs leading up at the opposite end. She noted there were several other doors in between, but for now, Seira opted to pass by without opening them out of curiosity.

She succeeded in climbing the stairs safely without encountering anyone, but then her first obstacle appeared and took away a moment of joy she felt. The door that she had to pass through was locked, and she couldn’t go upstairs.

‘There are magic circles carved on the sides…’ she noticed.

Two different shapes of magic circles were engraved inside and outside the door so that it was impossible to go in and out vice versa, but she was confident she could release it. The only problem was that it would take too long to solve it with the magic circles closely intertwined, not to mention avoiding traps.

‘In the meantime, if he did come back, it would be a disaster. I’m still not fully recovered.’

After memorizing the forms of the two magic circles, Seira climbed down the stairs.

‘Let’s check the other rooms first.’

Seira opened the doors one by one from those nearest her.

Each room was equipped with spaces necessary for living, such as bathrooms and toilets. Other than that, there were also storage rooms. One room had hundreds of beddings similar to what she used piled up, and also a room full of wooden boxes with empty bottles.

After looking around every room but one that was chain-locked, Seira returned to the last room where she was first brought into.

Then she began to rummage through everything in the room.

There were clothes in the closet the size of her captor. The material of the clothes wasn’t great. Overall, it was rough and crude, which felt worse than what most commoners wore.

After putting the clothes back in, Seira searched the desk. There was no paper or any writing instrument at all, and there was nothing that could lead to her captor’s identity or origin.

The doctrines of the Priya temple, which served the goddess of abundance and fertility, looked untouched collecting dust on the shelf. Seira perused through the book thoroughly, but there were no writings nor a name of the owner as well.

Finally, Seira checked the bed. She looked everywhere at the blankets and bedsheets, and even peeled off the pillowcase and turned it inside out.

After trying everything, Seira sat on the bed and began to combine the clues she obtained so far.

For now, it was clear that she was in the temple’s basement. The items she saw at the storage room were familiar. It was easy to spot since she joined the subjugation expeditions and rode in priests’ carriages when they moved.

‘This is not something Calrad had planned.’

Calrad, who had a strong desire to control her, wouldn’t have thought of leaving her to another Alpha. He’d definitely take her straight to the palace and force her to imprint or something.

Seira pondered, ‘But it doesn’t seem like the temple is using him…’

If the temple was behind her kidnapping, she wouldn’t have been left alone unattended where she could be identified easily by anyone who’d come across her.

Besides, her captor was unlikely a priest. Had he been one, the doctrines wouldn’t have been left behind to accumulate dust.

‘He lives underground in the temple, but he isn’t a priest,’ she finally came to a conclusion.

Also, he was an Alpha who was powerful enough to travel from the Askan’s mansion to this place at once. Who the hell was he?

Seira was so lost in her thought, but then suddenly raised her head at another person’s presence in the room. Her captor, which she believed owned the room she was in, was back before she knew it.

She flinched at the sight of a man looking around the room slowly.

“You’re here,” Seira said, “Let’s talk today, okay?”

There was no way he didn’t recognize the culprit of the messy closets and scattered blankets. After visually scanning through her clutter, the man’s eyes finally turned to Seira.