The room was filled with laughter and music. Some of the youth dancing with each other. Yet her table felt silent after the question.

  Fenric exhaled as he looked at Vierna. She could feel the chill in his gaze—it was the kind of look that warned a topic best left untouched.

  “Vierna, have you ever heard of House Runat’hir from the Tirnalthir Princedom?”

  “I’ve heard of it, but not in detail.”

  Fenric’s face darkened as he began. “They are an evil house. Not only the abolish the Pact of One, they also did some shady things in my home back then.”

  Vierna tilted his head. “The Pact of One?”

  “You know that beastkin resembles carnivore and herbivore right? Like me, I got a feature of a deer, and you could see Yvlaine clearly is a lion right?”

  Vierna studied Fenric’s features again, looking at him from different angles. Then she turned toward Ylvaine at the edge of the room, who was still talking with some elf youths. She noticed Ylvaine looking at her and smiling, which Vierna returned while waving back.

  “There are two schools of thought about the origin of beastkin. One says we share a common ancestor with ordinary animals, so a deer-kin like me would have the same ancestor as normal deer, and so on. The other argues that we have no relation to animals at all. People are divided between the two theories, and it seems we can’t fully trace our origins.

  We can all eat meat, even those of us who look herbivorous, but for half-herbivores, eating something that supposedly shares a common ancestor with us feels uncomfortable even outright disgusting.

  The Pact of One is a promise born from mutual respect. Carnivore-looking beastkin agreed not to eat meat out of consideration for herbivore-looking beastkin.”

  Fenric’s voice faltered. His fingers clenched around the cup until his knuckles blanched, the tremor running through his hand betraying the agony he tried to swallow. A pulse flickered in his neck, sharp and uneven, each beat fighting against the poison coursing through him. His breathing grew shallow; the tips of his ears twitched uncontrollably as if to shake off invisible pain.

  When he blinked, his pupils shrank to pinpoints. Sweat gathered at his temples, tracing down the fur along his jaw. For a moment, his composure cracked—the corners of his mouth tightened, and his jawline trembled. Then he forced a faint smile, as if he could convince the world that everything was fine.

  “House Runat’hir make sure that the pact was destroyed.”

  Fenric lifted his cup. His hand began to shiver around it. The tremor wasn’t from cold but from something buried deeper. His jaw tightened, the muscles in his neck pulled taut as if holding back a scream. His ears flattened, and his gaze went distant, fixed on nothing yet seeing everything he wished he could forget.

  “Fenric… are you okay?” Vierna set a hand between his shoulder blades. “It was because of the Hairon Root Tea right? We should get you out.”

  “No, Vierna, don’t. I don’t want to rouse suspicion. My head’s been spinning since earlier, but if I leave now they’ll ask questions and blame the tea. If that happens, everything I endured will be for nothing.”

  He panted, eyes scanning the room. Luckily, no one seemed to be watching him. “Good thing Aline is dancing with that elf, huh?”

  She looked toward the middle. Lina and an elf drew every eye, light on their feet, worryless for a song’s length. Vierna’s chest eased.

  It’s been a while since I saw Lina this carefree.

  ‘You’re not jealous?’ Moony asked.

  Lina loves us. Don’t worry about something so small, Moony.

  Moony didn’t reply anymore.

  Vierna looked back at Fenric. “Should we stop talking about it?”

  Fenric tried to regain his composure. He grabbed another mug of beer and drank as if he hadn’t had a drop in months, hoping to numb the pain with alcohol. “It’s okay, I’ve got this.”

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  He drank another one. Vierna joined him, not wanting her friend to drink alone. She downed an entire mug in one go, surprising even Fenric.

  “You drink often?” he asked.

  Vierna smiled. “No… hehe. But I want to be a winemaker one day, you know? High tolerance is a must.”

  Fenric smiled too. The beer seemed to ease his pain. It surprised Vierna how much he could withstand. From what she had experienced before, Moony had suffered terribly, and even then, when the pain bled into her, it made her head feel like it was being split apart. And that was with Moony’s help. Fenric endured it alone and held on by himself. His pain tolerance genuinely surprised her.

  “Anyway, Vierna,” Fenric continued, “what I said back then was only the cusp of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At first, the herbivore folk could stomach the new rule. We thought, well, the carnivores held themselves back for our sake for generations, didn’t they? They avoided meat out of respect for us, so maybe it was our turn to tolerate them eating it in public. Fair enough.”

  He shifted slightly, his ears angling back.

  “But then they started forcing the herbivore kind to eat meat too. And I reckon they knew full well how uncomfortable it is for us. It’s not just dislike. It turns the stomach.” Fenric rubbed his thumb along his mug. “And the thing is… as far as I’ve read in the old books about the Pact of One, we never asked them to do it. They chose that restraint themselves.”

  His jaw tightened.

  “So why force us now? Why make us do something they know feels disgusting? I can’t think of any reason except that they enjoy looking down on us.”

  He took another drink before continuing.

  “And then it got worse.” He lowered the mug. “They brought in the caste system.”

  “The caste system?”

  “At first they didn’t call it that, not officially. But my parents told me that ever since the Runat’hir took power, it’s been almost impossible for a herbivore to advance in the military or government. Even my mother got fired from her job for supposedly not being fit anymore. She’d held that job for twenty years without a single complaint.”

  “What was her job?”

  “Royal teacher.”

  “Doesn’t that mean she taught the heir to the Princedom?”

  “No, no. In Tirnalthir, there are teachers, royal teachers, and court tutors. Teachers work in basic schools. Royal teachers are the ones who take higher education and are approved to teach in universities or high academies. The one who teaches the heir is the court tutor.”

  “So royal teacher is like a lecturer?”

  “In other Princedoms, yeah.”

  Vierna rubbed her chin, trying to process it.

  “And it wasn’t just her. All her colleagues were fired too. The only ones who stayed were either carnivores or herbivores who supported the Runat’hir. That’s what my mother said.”

  “Didn’t all herbivores hate the new rulers?”

  “Life’s never that simple, Vierna. Some people will gladly sell out their own kind for the right price.”

  “It must be a living hell.”

  “It was. I was eleven, but I felt it. Bullying was everywhere after they took power, and it was always the same slur. Weed-eater.” Fenric’s voice tightened. “And the worst part? It happened just two years after the Runa’thir took over. It never happened before. The ones who said it were my friends—my carnivore friends. It was as if they changed during those two short years. I still don’t understand how that happened.”

  Vierna could understand prejudice and slurs—she had lived with those too. But Fenric’s pain cut deeper. She never had friends to lose. Fenric did, and they had turned on him the moment the world shifted.

  “Then after three years after they are in charge, they made it official. They declared that herbivores could no longer advance to higher positions. At least in the education path, they said herbivores could only be basic teachers and couldn’t become royal teachers or court tutor anymore. My father also said it was even worse in politics and military.”

  “Three years? But you are now nineteen, how long have you been in Rolbart?”

  “I have been here for three years, not too long after the career ban, my family ran away from Tirnaltir. We drifted off for around two year before finally entered Rolbart. Yvlaine has been here for probably five years that’s probably why they welcomed us easily.”

  “You had an eventful teen didn’t you Fenric? At that age I was just a student. Then, what about the herbivores still in power? Or the carnivores who supported coexistence with herbivore?”

  “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they stayed quiet. When the Runat’hir came to power, several moderate nobles vanished. People still don’t know if they’re dead or alive. They just disappeared. The rest of them changes their allegiance to the Runat’hir”

  “Shouldn’t they stand for their own kind?”

  “They should have. But maybe they were not only scared, but tempted as well. The Runat’hir are clever, you see. They didn’t just make nobles vanish. They rewarded the ones who pushed their agenda. Heavily. They’re probably the richest family in the Reich.”

  “What?”

  “Ever heard the saying ‘so rich your skin turns golden’?”

  “I think I’ve heard it once,” Vierna said, recalling some of the children at the orphanage whispering it.

  “That’s because the Runat’hir always have golden fur.”

  The party around them continued normally, undisturbed by them.

  “There are more things they did, including the ‘special’ school. But to answer your question… that’s why people here are terrified of carnivores. Not all of them are bad, of course, but lately everyone only sees the worst of them. And to me, it’s ridiculous. From a simple issue of meat eating, everything spiralled into racial discrimination and a caste system. I reckon the Runat’hir realised the easiest way to stay in power was to divide the common folk, turning them against each other over something as simple as what they eat.”

  “I see. But how could Runat’hir so easily sway carnivores who were neutral or sympathetic to the herbivores to their side?”

  Fenric looked distant at the remark, his gaze drifting past her as if he were seeing a memory instead of the room around them.