To His Hell and Back-Chapter 307: The Ancient King
They slowly pulled the heavy cover aside, revealing a glass box beneath, coated in a thick, undisturbed layer of dust.
Arabella stepped forward first, her fingers trembling slightly as she reached out to touch the glass. She tried to rationalize what they might find, it’s probably not a person, she told herself. Perhaps just an old corpse. Forgotten. Sealed away. Something to scare grave robbers or protect ancient tomes.
But as she wiped away the soot and grime, her breath hitched.
Beneath the cleared patch of glass, a face emerged.
Startled, she paused for a moment, then continued, her hand moving slowly, reverently, over the glass as Karnala stepped in to help clear the rest of it. Renard, who had been scanning the chamber for clues, only turned when he heard Arabella gasp.
"It’s really a person," she whispered.
Inside the coffin lay a man. His eyes were shut tight, and his hands were clasped gently in front of his chest in a prayer-like pose. His features were pale, but not lifeless. The skin, though bloodless, seemed untouched by time, smooth, unwrinkled. Not bloated or sunken. No sign of rot, decay, or withering. He looked...
Sleeping. Not dead. Not quite alive. Suspended.
It was unsettling. The room around him had surrendered to age, crumbling walls, eroded stone, and broken wards whispered of centuries passed. And yet this body had resisted the passage of time as if preserved by something far beyond alchemy or magic.
"Do you think it’s alive?" Renard asked, stepping closer to peer through the fogged glass.
"I can’t tell..." Arabella murmured.
"I don’t think his heart is beating," Karnala said quietly, her hand resting above the glass. "So I think... it is dead."
Arabella’s eyes traced the edges of the coffin. There were no visible locks. No magical seals. Nothing holding it closed but the weight of time and mystery.
"But there’s no lock," she frowned. "How are we supposed to open it?"
Renard ran his fingers across the edges of the glass, inspecting the corners. "Maybe it’s not meant to be opened," he muttered. "Or maybe it’s waiting for something else."
Arabella stared at the man’s face again.
Something about him tugged at her memory, not familiarity, but something deeper. A sense of déjà vu. Of forgotten stories or whispered warnings.
She didn’t know why, but she felt as though the man behind the glass wasn’t a prisoner. He was being protected. Or worse, sealed away.
And the moment they opened this box, they would no longer be the ones in control.
"We could break the glass," offered Renard and when she looked at him apprehensively, he replied, "Of course, without hurting the person inside it! I promise, I can try!"
"It’s better than not trying," Karnala responded and they both looked at each other with a small nod. "If he is really dangerous then we should just kill him. I think the princess is trying to help us by showing this room, maybe even this man, so if we could talk to him, perhaps we could get a clue."
"A clue," Arabella stared at the glass box and reached out her hand slowly, she stared at the face closer and felt that in some way this face looks exactly like someone... someone...
Her breaths slowed and she came to the decision after staring at the lifeless face for a longer time.
"Let’s break it then," she then answered to Renard who had nodded firmly, agreeing with the idea as there was nothing around them that could have given any clues.
He warned them to stay back and so they took four steps backward and watch as Renard held the side of the box, forcing it open. The glass box seemed so fragile yet when it was moved, it could slowly be torn apart even though the glass itself didn’t once crack or break to pieces despite it being made up of glass.
For a moment Arabella wondered if the glass had been enchanted by magic.
Magic?
Could a body be preserved by magic?
A question arose with her wondering if the person inside had been a sorcerer all this time, perhaps buried because he’s a sorcerer? But why such luxurious placed just for a sorcerer who was hated?
As the gears in her head worked, she turned backward slightly and found the door that had the stained glass on it. When she stared at the door earlier, she could tell how beautiful the glass door was but she couldn’t tell what was drawn on it. However from the inside and with enough flames she had gathered on her hand and torches, she could see clearer how the stained glass was meant to be seen from the inside.
It was a stained picture of a king holding a crown with both hands over to the sky with stars gathering around him. Then there was a hand from above, a long finger that touched the crown as if to bless it and the king’s eyes that were bright blue seemingly beam with a smile while the crowd of humans underneath him rejoiced.
But one thing caught her eyes and it was the handprints that covered the door... it was red... with blood.
This startled her and she turned around, shocked to find that Renard who had succeeded in opening the door and the person inside it slowly was stirred awake.
She saw it first, the twitch of a finger. Then the slightest flutter beneath his closed eyelids.
Arabella’s breath caught, "He’s waking up..."
Renard and Karnala stepped closer, their eyes wide with disbelief. None of them had expected this, not truly. They had assumed the man inside the coffin was a relic of the past, a body preserved by unnatural means, not someone who could stir back to life.
And yet... he was moving.
As if the shattering of the glass had undone a seal, the centuries old stillness began to fade. A slow breath expanded his chest, and Arabella felt a strange certainty settle over her:
He hadn’t been imprisoned, he had been protected!
The coffin hadn’t been a prison, it was a safeguard. A place to keep him untouched. Unwoken. Until now.
The man’s movements were sluggish, like someone swimming through the thick fog of sleep. His eyelids lifted with effort, revealing a dazed stare that fixed on the crumbling stone ceiling above him, as though it was unfamiliar, like a dreamscape that made no sense anymore.
His pale blue eyes drifted, searching... then landed on the three faces hovering near the broken glass.
Arabella. Renard. Karnala.
Each frozen in shock.
His gaze lingered on them, not with fear or aggression, but confusion. As if he couldn’t quite place who they were... or where he was.
Like a dreamer, freshly pulled from centuries of sleep, unsure if he was still dreaming.
He slowly sat up from the cushioned glass box that now resemble a coffin with the person inside. He stared at her, his blue eyes staring at them as he tried to speak only to frown as if realizing that he couldn’t speak.
"It’s a human," Arabella frowned, "Not a sorcerer..."
"But a human who has been asleep for so long and is still alive? He feels like the sleeping princess! The princess that’s awake even after sleeping for decades," Renard moved closer, "Who are you?"
But the confused man seemed to still have a trouble in trying to voice his own words. He touched his throat a few times and Karnala realized that the man’s throat could be parched, "Maybe I should fetch water."
"Come quickly," Renard advised as for now this man didn’t seem any dangerous. He’s a human, weak and slow compared to vampires, added by the fact he had just woke up and couldn’t even speak, it’s difficult for them to see him as an enemy worth to be wary of.
Then Arabella saw how the man’s bright blue eyes stopped at her. He seemed to suddenly felt a large wave of relief washing over him as he smiled wide, joy on his face as though he had just seen someone he had known for a long time, finally understanding why he was awake.
But she stared at him back, confused and at a loss which slowly made the man realized how something was greatly off.
"Wh... How long?"
He asked them.
His voice was extremely weak, parched and gruff.
He stared at them with such confusion that it felt miserable ignoring his question.
Arabella couldn’t answer him, nor could Renard. After all, how could they answer him? They couldn’t tell when was it that he fell asleep, so it was hard for them to measure the amount of years it had been since the man was asleep.
"Who are you?" she asked him softly, "We came here because we noticed that someone had been kept here but... we don’t know anything about this place or how long has it been since you were kept in the glass coffin."
Hearing that the man’s face turned to horror. But after a while he seemed to ease his nerves and his expression loosened, like a man who knew of this fate but still deep down fear it.
"I don’t know.. how long," he answered them, schooling his expression. He felt like a royal and perhaps it was also due to the luxurious red cloak that covered him or the gold that was placed all around the coffin as a sign or some sort. "But I was the King of Versailles," he stated.
"The first King of Versailles, the one who protected this land. My witch told me to sleep for a long, long time, as a way to find a cure to heal me of my illness. Such is the reason why I was lulled to sleep but I don’t know anything afterward."
