Miyuki Miyabe
ICO: Castle in the Mist
Haikasoru
Alexander O. Smith (Translator)
English translation © 2011 VIZ Media, LLC
PREFACE
THE BOOK YOU hold in your hands is a novelization of the story found in the PlayStation 2 game ICO.
Sort of.
My heartfelt thanks to the producers and creators of the game for so willingly giving me permission to write this, my first attempt at novelization. They gave me free reign with the story and world found in the game so that I might find my own path through the tale, for which I am also eternally grateful.
If you picked up this book hoping for a walkthrough of the game, look elsewhere. The order of events, solutions to puzzles, and even the layout of the castle have changed. While it is certainly not “spoiler-free,” someone who reads this book and goes on to play the game will find much there that is not here.
For those of you who have played the game and love it as much as I do, I hope you will enjoy this variation on the world of ICO as much as I have enjoyed revisiting the Castle in the Mist.
Miyuki Miyabe
June 2004
A story of an unknown place,
Told in an unknown age.
CHAPTER 1. AS THE PRIEST SAYS
1
THE LOOM HAD fallen silent. The old man had noticed the absence of its rhythmic clack-clack-clack some time before, and now he waited patiently for it to resume. He sat at an old desk, its surface worn to a golden amber from years of use, on top of which he had laid open several ancient tomes. A faint breeze coming in through the lattice window ruffled the edges of the yellowed paper and made the tips of the old man’s long white whiskers tremble.