Chapter 51
For it to be that earnest a feeling, she wasn’t even surprised when she heard that I possessed divine power. On the contrary, it seemed to give her a different kind of joy.
Because it meant that I might be able to help them.
If you have divine power, you no longer have to live a hard life. Even if the Grand Duke drives you out, you wouldn’t have to go to an orphanage, and the temple would treat you with the utmost respect.
But strangely, none of those thoughts crossed my mind at all.
“Is that friend very precious to you?”
“Yes. A truly precious friend. But to make that friend better… there’s no way. If we just leave things as they are, I think she’ll fall asleep forever.”
Even if she doesn’t fall asleep forever, she’ll never have a single good memory of her childhood. She’ll be controlled by someone else. I don’t want things like that to happen under the pretext of her health.
“She must be a friend you really care about. To go this far.”
“Yes. I care about her very much.”
“You’re talking about the Grand Duke’s daughter, aren’t you?”
“How did you…?”
“Everything is visible, you see.”
Is she really seeing something? Standing before the High Priestess, it feels as though everything inside me is being seen through.
‘But I have to use some method.’
No matter what, I’ll find evidence. Whether through the High Priestess or through some other means. I’ll receive help from someone the Grand Duchess can never touch, and I’ll reveal that the reason Lari is sick is not a simple one.
For that, recovering her health comes first. Once Lari recovers, she will surely create something to shake Lari again. Even if it’s clumsy. And then evidence will definitely appear.
‘I’ll use that to shake her.’
That is a separate issue from Lari’s recovery.
In the novel, Lari was severely ill. This time… I don’t know what will happen.
While we weren’t around, Lari trusted the Grand Duchess too much, and she might have ingested an even larger amount of poison than in the novel.
‘This could be bad.’
Back then, she survived anyway—but this time, who knows. In the novel, even though Lari was born of the Grand Ducal bloodline, carrying the blood of a beast, her body was frail.
Even after she grew up, she often coughed up blood or collapsed. Her unusually pale face was so weak that people called her a vampire of ruin from hell.
‘In the end, what happened to Lari because of that?’
Strange. I couldn’t clearly remember the novel’s ending anymore.
‘Is it because I’ve been assimilated into the novel? There definitely was an ending for Lari… did she die…?’
Before she was ultimately killed by the Crown Prince in the novel… before the two of them met such a horrific end, I couldn’t clearly recall how sick she was or what exactly happened.
I shook my head.
No. Lari definitely died because of the Crown Prince.
“Ah…”
“What’s wrong, Aisha?”
From the High Priestess’s hand as she brushed my cheek, it felt like some strange power was flowing into me. Maybe because of that, my head suddenly went light, and my vision went dark.
“I suddenly… feel dizzy…”
“It’s all right. Lean on me a little.”
Without the slightest sign of surprise, the High Priestess pulled me toward her.
“You can sleep for a bit.”
“High Priestess… I… why all of a sudden…”
“Accept a little help from God. To recall the things you’ve tightly bound and hidden yourself. After that, the world will look a little different.”
What does that mean? What am I hiding?
But I couldn’t ask any more questions.
Because I thought I could faintly hear Rohen’s voice.
And just like that, I was drawn into a time that felt like a dream, yet not quite a dream.
The world went dark, and when I opened my eyes again, an unexpected scene unfolded.
A vast hall. A place where the air trembled whenever someone spoke. Inside it were three people.
I knew them, and yet I didn’t.
I had seen their faces drawn in illustrations, but this was the first time I’d seen them moving.
They were the Crown Prince—the protagonist of the novel I was living in—and the so-called hidden villain, Larize, and Rohen. Not as children, but fully grown.
Even though I had only seen them on the novel’s cover and illustrations, I recognized them instantly, no matter how much I tried not to.
‘Ah… no…’
And the sight before me was enough to make me lose my mind.
Jet-black hair spread out like flowers in full bloom, a deathly pale face, red blood trickling down her cheek, a sword stabbed into her chest. A woman who could no longer even open her eyes, as though the flame of life was already fading.
That woman was Lari. The grown Lari, the one who was called a villainess.
Rohen was holding Lari in his arms, glaring resentfully at the man standing before him. That man was the male lead who had taken the female lead away from the two of them.
‘It’s all over. I did everything to protect my family. I ended it all. But why didn’t you end it? Why did you have to plunge a sword into my sister’s heart when she can’t even get up anymore?’
‘If I didn’t do this, who knows when you’d change. Putting down a beast that might bite someone’s throat at any moment in advance—there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
The Crown Prince’s domineering attitude made it obvious. He was the one who stabbed the sword into Lari’s chest, and before this happened, Rohen had already given everything up.
That was why Rohen looked up at him with sorrow and resentment.
‘You said you wouldn’t. But… but… to stab my sister… to stab a sword into my sister’s heart!! I… I hate you. I curse you.’
‘That’s why I killed her. You two are far too dangerous.’
Rohen screamed. He howled as he looked at his sister. His eyes burned red, and the tears that streamed from them were so sorrowful they looked like tears of blood.
As if he had already become a demon, an overwhelmingly sharp and terrifying emotion burst out from Rohen’s body.
‘How… how can you kill us when we did nothing? Just because we’re dangerous…?’
‘I’ll do it again and again. Even now, I regret only stabbing that demon woman’s chest once. I might regret it if she somehow lives.’
The Crown Prince spoke emotionlessly to Lari’s cold body.
‘Ha… ha…’
‘Brother…’
That was when Lari’s voice was heard. As if it were her final breath, she raised her hand, searching for Rohen.
‘Here… I’m here… here…’
At that plaintive voice, Rohen took his sister’s hand.
‘Yes… I’m here.’
‘Yes… I’m scared… don’t go anywhere…’
‘I won’t go anywhere. Lari. Lari… If only I could let you live again, I… I would do anything. I couldn’t give you a proper life… but I won’t let your final path be lonely. So, so… in your next life, don’t be sick, don’t suffer… I’ll make it so. My only family.’
From the eyes of Rohen—who was called a demon, said not to be human, who had seemed to lose all emotion after becoming Grand Duke—tears poured down.
He pulled the sword out of his sister’s chest, then stabbed it into his own heart.
If there truly was a god—or a devil—he wished for them to grant these people a proper death. He and his sister had committed no crime other than loving each other. They simply didn’t know how to love, yet those people had killed them for it—so he wished death upon them.
Watching that, the Crown Prince turned away.
‘At last, everything returns to its proper order. I’m grateful you killed yourself. I don’t even have to stain my hands with filthy blood.’
Clicking his tongue, the Crown Prince left the hall.
Rohen’s body collapsed to the side. Even then, he didn’t let go of his sister’s hand.
They had been together since birth.
She was the first person he saw when he began to see the world.
When he was sick, when he was struggling, when he collapsed from hunger—she was the only one on his side through all of it.
‘I’m sorry… Lari. At least you… at least you…’
That was when it happened.
Someone ran into the place where only the two of them lay.
‘Ah, no… miss… young master…!’
At the sight of that person, I couldn’t help but be shocked. Someone never mentioned in the novel. This situation wasn’t written either, and the one who rushed in doesn’t appear in the novel at all.
If they had, there’s no way I wouldn’t have known.
If I had known… if I had known…
‘Aisha.’
Black hair, pink eyes. The figure that looked just like me—the one I’d seen countless times in my dreams—was right there.
By their side. And as if he already knew of my existence, Rohen slowly turned his head.
‘…Run away. If you stay here, you’ll be caught up too. Everyone will die. You… live.’
In the meantime, Aisha—adult me—looked back and forth between Rohen and Lari.
‘It’s my fault… I… I told everything, that’s why this happened…’
‘You’re the only one. The only person who stayed with us until the end… And I knew. That you were by our side because you were being threatened and had no choice. Lari liked you, so I couldn’t push you away, and I just kept you close…’
Rohen gave a faint smile and looked at his sister.
‘You’re the only one who cries for us.’
