Chapter 112: Origin Could Not Be Verified

"Suspicious..."

The officer standing near his table hesitated after hearing him. "Crown Marshal?"

"Not you."

The man closed his mouth.

Ernest returned his attention to the documents scattered across the table. He had originally ordered the investigation because House Walker had already given him more than enough reasons to be curious, especially after finding out that Zishan had been declared dead on the exact same day he was deployed to the Eastern Battlefield.

However, House Walker was beginning to look like only one part of the problem.

The farther Ernest traced Zishan’s life back, the stranger the records became.

According to the Eastern Formation, Zishan had no surviving parents and had been raised by a grandmother who died before he entered military service. House Walker’s civil records also clearly recognized him as an adopted son.

Neither detail bothered Ernest on its own.

What bothered him was that everything before the adoption seemed unusually vague.

He tapped one of the pages. "What did you find about the grandmother?"

"We couldn’t verify her identity, Crown Marshal," the officer replied.

Ernest raised his head. "What do you mean?"

"Her name appears in Walker’s military information, and there was also an address listed in one of the older documents. We found the property, but we couldn’t properly connect the woman to it."

"So the house existed?"

"Yes."

"And the grandmother?"

The officer shook his head. "We couldn’t confirm whether she ever lived there."

Ernest leaned back in his chair.

That alone was not enough to bother him too much. People disappeared from records all the time, especially those who lived far from the capital. Villages were destroyed during wars, local records were lost, and some officials were terrible at keeping proper documents in the first place.

The problem was House Walker.

They were a noble family.

If they had adopted a child into their household, then someone should have known who that child was and where he came from.

"How far back did you trace Zishan himself?"

The officer reached for another folder and pulled out a document. "This is the earliest record we found."

Ernest took it from him.

It was Zishan’s adoption into House Walker.

He read through the page once before turning it over, almost expecting another record to be attached behind it. "Where’s the one before this?"

"There isn’t one."

Ernest looked at him.

"We checked again after noticing it," the officer continued. "There are no earlier records under the name Zishan Walker that we could verify."

"Maybe Walker wasn’t his name yet."

"We thought of that too."

"And?"

"We couldn’t find anyone who could be connected to him with certainty."

Ernest lowered his eyes toward the adoption document again. "So this kid just appeared out of nowhere and became Zishan Walker?"

The officer looked uncomfortable. "According to the records we have... yes."

Ernest rubbed his chin. "Who submitted the adoption?"

"We don’t know."

His hand paused. "You don’t know?"

"The original supporting papers are missing. What we have is only the finalized registration."

Ernest’s eyes narrowed slightly. "And whoever processed it?"

"The person who processed it is reported to be dead."

Ernest went through the other documents again until his attention returned to the supposed grandmother. "Did you at least confirm her death?"

"We tried, but..." The officer hesitated. "But we couldn’t."

Ernest slowly lowered the page. "The military record says she died before Zishan entered service."

"Yes, Crown Marshal."

"So where was she buried?"

"We checked the cemetery listed in one of the older documents. They don’t have anyone under that name."

Now, that caught Ernest’s attention. The woman who supposedly raised Zishan could not be properly traced, while Zishan himself had no verifiable record before House Walker adopted him.

Ernest picked up the adoption document again and started reading it more carefully. There had to be something connecting the kid to someone before House Walker—a village, a previous guardian, another household, anyone.

His eyes eventually stopped near the lower portion of the page. "What’s this?"

The officer leaned closer. "Which part?"

Ernest pointed toward an old notation written near the bottom. The ink had already faded, but the words could still be read.

Origin could not be verified.

Another note beneath it stated that no previous household had been confirmed.

Ernest glanced at the officer. "Who wrote these?"

"We don’t know, Crown Marshal, but they’re part of the original registration."

Ernest returned his attention to the document and continued reading until another entry near the bottom made him pause.

Child reportedly found within the Sumwear Region.

The officer noticed the change in his expression. "Crown Marshal?"

Ernest read the entry again.

Sumwear.

He had not seriously thought about that old mission in years, yet the moment he saw the name of the region, memories he had buried beneath wars, military work and family matters began returning.

There had been a time when Sumwear occupied nearly every day of his life. Four people had been sent here because of a prediction from the Central Continent.

They searched through towns, villages, noble territories and places that barely appeared on maps. Years passed, yet they never found the person they had been looking for.

Eventually, they stopped searching as much. Life moved on.

Or at least Ernest thought it had.

His eyes shifted toward Zishan’s age.

Nineteen years old.

The officer was still waiting for him to say something when Ernest placed the page back on the table.

"Was he born here?"

"We don’t know, Crown Marshal—"

Ernest looked at him. "That’s not what I asked."

The officer thought about the question again before answering. "There is no birth record confirming that he was born in Sumwear."

Ernest’s fingers started tapping against the table. Another detail from the prediction returned to him. It had never said that the child would be born in Sumwear. The wording had been different. It said the child would appear there.

Ernest pushed himself out of the chair. "Seal this room."

The officer blinked. "Sir?"

"Nobody touches these documents. And nobody outside this room hears about what we found."

The officer seemed to understand from his tone that this was no longer an ordinary investigation. "Understood."

He left the room to carry out the order.

Ernest remained beside the table.

A few minutes ago, he had been thinking about House Walker and wondering what kind of family declared an adopted son dead on the same day they sent him to war.

Before that, he had even been thinking about Noxi and the strange amount of interest she had shown toward the kid.

Neither mattered as much anymore.

Zishan was nineteen. His origin could not be verified. There was no confirmed record of him before House Walker. Even the grandmother mentioned in his military file could not be properly traced.

And somewhere in his earliest surviving registration was a single entry saying he had been found within Sumwear.

Ernest picked the document up again. For years, the four of them had searched for someone whose existence had been divined by people capable of seeing things that even the strongest experts in Cyrune could not understand.

They had never found that person. Perhaps the problem was not that the prediction had been wrong. Or maybe they had simply been looking for someone with a past.

His eyes settled on the name written across the page.

Zishan Walker.

Ernest remained there for a while before lowering his eyes toward the entry about Sumwear again. "Don’t tell me..."

The room had become so quiet that he could hear the faint movement of the papers beneath his fingers.

"Was it you?"