Chapter Fifteen

~ Virgula ~

“Ahra Shin,” Ahra answered honestly in front of what they call the Council.

She had finally waken up with a clear head last night. After that misunderstanding with Ren, she couldn’t go back to sleep. So she was up and about when a council member named Munhee came to fetch her from Healer Bien’s house. Now, here she was, sitting on the middle while the members sat in a circle surrounding her. They had given her a desk like theirs, but it was empty.

“Which is your given name?” an old member asked.

“Ahra,” she replied. “My family name is Shin.”

A few council members wrote that down.

“Why is that your family name comes after your given name?” another questioned.

She frowned, confused. Isn’t it supposed to be that way? “The family name comes last in our continent. Is it the other way here?”

“Yes, yes,” Munhee smiled at her. “Family name comes first. It’s like that here and in the Three Kingdoms.”

“Speaking of which,” the old member spoke again. “If you’re not from the Three Kingdoms, then where did you come from?”

“I came from the Kingdom of Virgula.” She told them.

There was a pause, and then the members looked at each other. Ahra could see the befuddlement on their faces. Did they not know of Virgula? How could that be when Virgulians know the existence of the Three Kingdoms?

“Is there a problem?” she asked them.

Suho, the one one that was there when she first woke up, was the one to tell her. “Virgula is a nonexistent land. Surely you must be mistaken.”

Nonexistent? What the hell is he saying? “I’m not mistaken.” She said firmly. “I was born in Virgula and was raised in Virgula.”

“If you can kindly point to us where in the map Virgula could be found,” one of the members, Seon, quietly stated. He stood up and walked to her, a roll of paper in his hand.

“What -” she murmured when the paper was spread in front of her.

There was no Virgula on the map of Serce he had. Not even a trace of Cruor was on it. It’s as if it didn’t exist, just like what Suho had told her. A pen was handed to her.

“You want me to draw Virgula?” she pursed her lips.

“Yes,” Seon said. “If your Kingdom really exists, we must know where it is.”

She nodded and complied. Her hand gripped the pen lightly, beginning to draw the continent of Virgula by memory. It wasn’t perfect but due to the Sentinel training, in which memorizing the geography of Virgula was a basic, it was passable. She even drew broken lines around the land to indicate Cruor.

“What’s that?” Seon asked, pertaining to the lines.

“Cruor