At a time when the debate between the Pope and the Reformer had yet to reach its conclusion—when dawn's first light brushed the horizon with a faint golden hue—a small boat quietly slipped away from the port of Rome, gliding toward the distant heart of the Mediterranean.
"I didn't know you could sail, Favia!"
Baobhan Sith's eyes shimmered with curiosity and longing for the endless blue before her. Her hands traced the boat's edge, feeling the faint tremor where wood met water.
"I can do more than sail," Favia replied with a faint smile. "I can build them too. You already know that."
Though he wasn't a stranger to the Mediterranean, this was the first time Favia had taken the helm himself.
On the boundless sea, the small vessel was like a lonely leaf adrift, swaying gently amid the rolling waves.
"Well, that's true," the fairy girl said proudly. "I did make you fix quite a few of them for me."
Favia chuckled softly, not arguing. His fingers moved deftly over the tiller, adjusting the course as the boat creaked under the rhythm of the sea.
Ever since the debate yesterday, when the silver pendant on his chest had begun to emit a faint violet glow pointing toward the Mediterranean, he had made up his mind immediately. After saying goodbye to Leonardo da Vinci, he rented a small boat, took Baobhan Sith along, and set sail in pursuit of whatever destiny awaited them.
After all, this might very well be the reason this era had summoned him—so when a sign appeared, there was no reason to ignore it.
The sea shimmered beneath them, its color a deep, endless blue—one that could swallow the world whole. The boat rose and fell with the waves, the wooden planks creaking with a steady rhythm that blended with the sound of the surf striking the hull. The waves crashed against the distant rocks, dragging pebbles and sand into the abyss of the Mediterranean.
"Favia, look! Those birds are flying so high!"
Baobhan Sith's voice was bright with childlike wonder as she pointed toward the sky.
The silver-haired youth turned slightly, following her gaze upward. From Rome to Tuscany and onward to Corsica, the church bells that had stood for a thousand years still echoed faintly across the sea.
And above that vast, unchanging sky, a single white bird soared.
"That's the messenger of the sky," Favia said teasingly.
"Messenger of the sky?" she echoed, tilting her head. "Why not a messenger of the sea? Or of the land? Or of the gods? Or of death?"
He almost answered because it just came to mind—but when he saw her eyes sparkling with innocent curiosity, Favia decided to make up a story instead.
Leaning a little closer to the tiller, he began,
"Long ago, in the bright blue sky, there was a white bird that flew freely, circling again and again above the world. Even though the age of men had come—an age of endless growth, war, and greed, of bloodshed and ruin—the bird didn't seem to care.
Even across the Mediterranean, on every island large and small where churches stood tall and bells rang to mark the faith of men, the bird kept flying. The old days would sink into time, and new dawns would rise to replace them—but the sky belonged to no one."
He paused, his voice softening.
"The white bird beat its wings with all its strength... until one day, something inside it rang like iron. It lost its balance and began to fall. Yet even as it fell, the bird kept flapping its wings, forcing its eyes open, gazing upward at the unchanging blue—and trying, even in its last moment, to fly toward the eternal sky."
Favia turned to look at Baobhan Sith. Her expression carried the air of someone who almost understood—and was proud of it.
"Oooh…" she murmured thoughtfully. Then, without hesitation, she said, "I don't get it."
Favia sighed, long and heavy, like a teacher whose favorite student could never quite grasp the lesson.
"Even if you sigh like that," she huffed, puffing her cheeks, "I still don't—"
Before she could finish, Favia grinned mischievously.
"Well, to be fair, I just made it up. I don't understand it either."
"Whaaat? Favia! You lied to me again! I'm mad!"
"My apologies, truly."
"Do you really mean that?"
"…Kind of."
The bow of the small boat sliced through the waves, leaving behind a trail of white foam. Overhead, the white bird cried out and vanished into the horizon—where, faintly, the outline of an island began to emerge.
Favia's pendant was pointing directly toward it.
As they drew closer, the island's shape grew clearer: dense forests blanketed its slopes like a sea of green, and the occasional glimpse of animals darting between the trees brought it to life.
When Favia asked a fisherman what the island was called, he paused for a long time.
Montecristo.
A mere ten square kilometers—about the size of a thousand football fields. The name, the man explained, came from Saint Mamilian, a third-century stonemason and one of the Church's early saints, from whom the ancient Republic of San Marino took its name.
In the sixteenth century, it was known by that name. But in the nineteenth—after Alexandre Dumas' immortal novel—the island became world-famous as the Île de Monte Cristo.
According to Greek myth, when Aphrodite's pearl necklace broke, the scattered pearls became the Tuscan Archipelago, floating between the Italian coast and Corsica—among them Elba, "the Jewel of the Mediterranean," and to its southeast, the spectral Monte Cristo.
Yet within the Type-Moon cosmology, Monte Cristo is literally the "Mountain of Christ"—a sacred ground concealing Christ's secret treasure, one of the forbidden relics pursued by the Eighth Sacrament.
In the legend of the Count of Monte Cristo's spirit form, three conspirators—an Executor of the Eighth Sacrament, Roa, and a certain Cardinal—framed Father Faria to steal that treasure.
From Faria, the imprisoned Edmond Dantès received three gifts: knowledge, wealth, and the final secret treasure—a relic known as the Stone of Fourteen, one of the ultimate mysteries that could transform a man into the King of Fire, burning all that exists—a forbidden "fantasy organ" humans were never meant to possess.
With these, Dantès became the Count of Monte Cristo.
But by the end of the drama, after defeating Roa, the Stone of Fourteen vanished.
Dantès had said:
"If I have not, like Roa, transcended into something beyond human, then perhaps I can no longer summon the black flame."
Yet even in Subspecies II, Cagliostro would later remark that the Count's flames remained as terrifying as ever. (Perhaps a bit of retcon magic at work.)
As for what followed—
In 1838, in the French region of Gévaudan, there was an unrecorded incident: a secret battle against demonic beasts, hidden from human history. The Second Beast Incident.
The one who destroyed the great king and the monsters that walked the earth was none other than the vengeful specter who haunted Paris—
The King of the Cavern, the Count of Monte Cristo.
And why, in 1838, a being on par with Siegfried's nemesis Dietrich, a "Divine Machine-class" commander of fae spirits, appeared at all?
Don't ask. It's "one of those untold stories."
As for Haidee—she does not truly exist in the Moonlit World. She is Dantès' heart, his memory, his lingering love—his compassion abandoned and sealed away. She is his yearning made manifest, the light seen beyond hate and devotion. In short: the goodness he discarded.
Favia pondered all this in silence. He didn't know why the pendant had led him here—but since he had come this far, there was no reason not to look.
With that thought, he and Baobhan Sith climbed the mountain toward a hidden cave.
Along the way, they passed a small, weathered monastery. The locals said it had been built long ago by the Church to care for islanders, but it had long since fallen into ruin—only a single child remained there now.
The island was ringed with Aleppo pines, palms, date and fig trees, citrus and ailanthus. Among them bloomed magnolias, oleanders, rock roses, and catnip—wild and vibrant. Lizards and vipers slithered through the cracks of the cliffs, sea snakes glided through the water, and the wind and waves whispered the only sounds the island had known for centuries.
Legend said that Saint Mamilian had come to this island and slain a dragon that dwelled atop the cliffs, bringing peace to its shores. In his honor, the hermits who later settled here dedicated a cavern to him—the Sanctified Bishop's Grotto.
Just as in Dumas' tale, the locals dismissed it as legend. No one had ever found such a cave—until Edmond Dantès blasted through the rock himself.
In this sixteenth-century world, though, the island was still inhabited—and soon enough, following the Count's imagined route, Favia and Baobhan Sith found that very cave.
"...Favia, what's that?"
The fairy girl pointed to something half-buried in the soil near the cave's entrance—a silver fragment, glowing faintly violet, shaped like the middle of a key.
Oddly, she didn't feel afraid of this strange place.
Even here, in the stillness and dim blue light filtering through cracks in the rock, she felt safe beside him—as if nothing could touch them.
Perhaps, she thought, if she stayed here with him forever, that wouldn't be so bad.
"I think that's it," Favia said quietly.
According to his memory, the Count's treasure should have been in the second cave's deepest point, not the first. But that didn't matter. Whether it was here or not, he had no reason to disturb what Father Faria had once left for Edmond Dantès.
He removed the silver pendant from his chest and stepped closer. But before he could reach for the fragment—
It moved.
The silver piece tore free of the soil, flying straight toward him, merging seamlessly with the pendant in his hand.
Only then did Favia truly understand what he had been carrying all this time.
The Silver Key.
A key said to open the gates of time and space themselves—to traverse distant ages and worlds. The last known bearer was Randolph Carter, who used it to cross the Ultimate Gate.
But in the Moonlit World, according to grimoires like The Book of Ivory and The Necromantic Codex, the Silver Key was forged by ancient magi during the forgotten Ice Age—artifacts so old they were mistaken for Roman relics.
The one who should rightfully possess it now was Bricisan, head of the Department of Mystical Heritage at the Clock Tower—a monarch who studied materials not of this world, remnants of forbidden myths never told by gods or men.
How, then, had the Key been broken—and how had one fragment ended up in his hands?
Before Favia could dwell on it, Baobhan Sith's trembling voice cut through his thoughts.
"Favia… wh-what's happening? Why is everything turning purple…?"
The light seeping through the cracks of the cave was no longer blue.
All across Monte Cristo Island, the air itself had begun to glow—
a thick, violet mist rising from the ground, beautiful and terrible, like the malignant radiance of the planet's own heartbeat.