<Episode 4>
“Wow, dust.”
The old castle’s outer walls were wrapped in frozen, snow-white frost.
Inside, it was as quiet and eerie as a place haunted by ghosts. It didn’t look like anyone actually lived here, and it was obvious it hadn’t been cared for in a long time.
‘This castle looks about as messed up as I do…… oops.’
I couldn’t keep walking around like this.
Still, after a short rest, my magic had recovered. I straightened my sleeve cuffs and gathered my mana.
A small burst of red sparkles flashed like tiny fireworks.
My worn-out dress turned into a new one, and from head to toe I became as clean as if I’d just washed.
Nishe, who was leading the way through the dull hallway, turned to look back.
“Why? Never seen a magical girl before?”
“Tsk.”
……With a reaction like that, joking isn’t even worth it.
Feeling awkward, I coughed for no reason and followed him.
After crossing a long corridor and climbing flight after flight of stairs, we finally reached the very top floor of the castle.
Nishe stopped at last and pointed his thumb toward a door that anyone could tell was unusual.
“Go on. Go inside the bedroom and wake up my lord.”
“……?”
“If you do that, he’ll allow your asylum.”
This was worse than lightning on a clear day.
I was pushed into the Grand Duke’s bedroom almost by force.
“You want me to wake up the Grand Duke? All of a sudden?”
“I heard you’re a pretty well-known mage.”
“Well, yeah, but what am I supposed to do? You should at least tell me why he’s asleep!”
“Mana overload. I’m not expecting you to actually wake him…… but try your fancy magic or something.”
With that, Nishe walked off without a shred of kindness.
I mean, seriously—who asks a noble lady from an enemy country she just met to do something like this? Maybe to a saintess, but not me.
If this were a game, this would be the kind where the tutorial is skipped and you’re shoved straight into the final boss fight.
“……Whew. Well, nothing to lose, I guess.”
If it works? Great, problem solved.
If it doesn’t? I’d just make a deal like I’d planned.
Still, I felt oddly nervous. Probably because ever since I stepped in here, the mana had been overwhelmingly suffocating.
‘Okay, let’s think.’
The Grand Duke who fell asleep from too much mana. And according to the original story, in a year he would lose control and destroy the world.
Chances were, he was asleep then too.
If so, maybe—
“If the Grand Duke wakes up, does that stop the destruction?”
Thinking about the world’s fate, I slowly approached the bed—then froze in shock.
“Gasp.”
Correction: I made a strangled sound like I couldn’t breathe.
A man so beautiful it didn’t seem real was lying there like a corpse in a coffin.
Silver hair that glowed pale. Skin like clear marble.
His coloring was so faint it made him look less like a person and more like a statue or a ghost with a body.
His face was breathtaking, like something crafted by a god.
‘What… this mana.’
Mana so thick it felt like it was choking me filled him like his very cells were made of it. A natural wave of discomfort and rejection rose up my spine.
‘……Still, I guess I have to do it.’
I wasn’t a saintess, yet I was suddenly given the mission to wake the Grand Duke. What else could I think of?
Snow White who ate the apple, Sleeping Beauty pricked by a spindle—both were woken the same way.
‘This is a storybook world, after all.’
It sounded silly, but it was worth a try.
To wake the sleeping prince—no, the Grand Duke who was as pretty as a princess—I gently lowered my head. Just in case, I drew up a bit of magic too.
Twitch.
“Don’t tell me…….”
……Wait. A twitch?
His eyelids had quivered. Only a little, barely noticeable.
Our noses were close enough to touch. His long lashes fluttered like a butterfly hatching.
“……You.”
Cold silver-gray eyes pierced straight through me.
My heart dropped like it stopped, and all the blood in my body felt icy. Goosebumps spread down my back.
Like a statue coming to life, he spoke.
“Since when did my castle have a rat in it.”
His voice was cold, flat.
For someone who’d been asleep for months, his low voice was smooth and clear. He didn’t even have sleep crust in his eyes.
‘Northern Grand Duke buff? Terrifying.’
I stared at him, still forgetting to breathe, yet some part of me calmly admired him.
Come to think of it, the Grand Duke’s name was definitely—
“Davior, I think…… ah.”
He frowned slightly.
Only then did I pull back my face, which had been way too close.
But the Grand Duke rose like a ghost and stepped toward me. Since I backed up, he simply closed the distance again.
“Answer me, mage of Hilvarcia.”
……He was handsome—so handsome it was scary.
‘Is he actually some kind of god in disguise?’
The fact that he was wearing a tunic didn’t help; it made him look even more like some ancient divine figure. He wore it carelessly, yet it looked elegant.
*Tunic: Ancient Greek clothing
If he didn’t have this endless, dark mana overflowing from him, no one would think he was a demon duke.
“I asked how you entered.”
His presence, like cosmic horror made into a person, dragged me out of my wandering thoughts.
“Nishe…… told me to wake you up……?”
“Not Jizelle?”
“I’m not sure, but it did sound like someone told him to. Some witch or beauty or something…… he didn’t explain anything properly…….”
It felt like I was tattling.
An irritated look crossed the Grand Duke’s delicate, sculpture-like face. I quickly defended myself.
“I didn’t do anything special! I just got close, and your eyes shot open! Pretty amazing, right?”
At this point it was almost scary how easily things were going.
I hadn’t really done anything, but everything kept falling into place like pulling tissue from a roll.
The Grand Duke asked flatly,
“Today’s date.”
“Holy Year 3196, October…… 31st. I think.”
“……Only three months.”
He closed his eyes for a moment as if thinking, then looked at me with an unreadable gaze and said dryly,
“I cannot sleep.”
“……I see.”
What did he want me to do with that?
“It seems you are the reason.”
It sounded like it could be romantic, but it most definitely wasn’t. The back of my neck felt frozen.
I had no idea what he meant, blinking in confusion—when he reached out and tapped my forehead with a graceful finger.
Then he ordered, curt and cold:
“Wait.”
I wasn’t a pet dog, you know.
……is what I thought, but since he was the Grand Duke and someone I needed to stay on good terms with, what came out was obedient.
“Until when?”
“Oh my, he really woke up.”
The top floor of the Grand Duke’s castle, blanketed in snow like a burial shroud.
The red-haired witch, Jizelle, looked at her master with surprise. It had been a long time since he’d appeared in her office.
Nishe got up from the couch he’d been lying on and greeted his master silently, in his own version of being proper.
Their master, Davior Winze Belmire, leaned against the couch his knight had vacated.
“Explain.”
Jizelle jumped in immediately, clearly waiting for that cue.
“I told him to bring the saintess, but he brought a villainess instead. She’s asking for asylum.”
She recalled the villainess she had seen through her ‘Vision.’ Irene Baltres was a celebrity—one she would never fail to recognize.
“Irene Baltres. The future crown princess, daughter of a powerful pro-emperor duke.”
“And a major criminal who stabbed the crown prince and ran away. Thanks to her, we couldn’t bring the saintess.”
Nishe added irritably.
He had gone to the Empire with Jizelle’s familiar, Jupiter, to kidnap the saintess—but returned empty-handed.
Because something unexpected had happened.
“Well, who would’ve thought the saintess would lock herself in the imperial palace just to treat the unconscious crown prince?”
Jizelle’s rhythmic voice sounded cheerful.
She had been shocked first that the villainess—who obsessively loved the crown prince—had actually tried to kill him, and second that even the saintess’s holy power couldn’t fully heal the crown prince’s wounds.
And third—
“Master, you saw it too, right? The color of her soul.”
“……Yes.”
Davior slowly nodded, remembering the delicate doll-like woman who held a soul like the dawn sky before sunrise.
“I’ve never seen such a beautiful summer-sky blue.”
The Belmire main castle—called the Winter Castle.
Its residents, cursed by God after “that day” a hundred years ago, were once human—but now were called demons or monsters.
They could see the essence of a person as a color.
It wasn’t really seeing, but more like feeling—and the color changed depending on the viewer’s idea of beauty or ugliness.
Nishe added quietly,
“……It looked like green leaves to me.”
“Oh my. We both saw colors we never see in winter.”
Jizelle’s bright green eyes curved with amusement. Before her master could urge her, she continued,
“I even saw the future in her.”
Her ‘Vision’ could see everything within its reach, even glimpses of the future.
That was why Jizelle, Belmire’s chancellor and the witch, spoke with certainty.
“Irene will free you from your mana.”
“And……?”
“And she will become Belmire.”
