~Chapter 44~
“Yes…”
“It’s a busy time for us. I just came back from meeting donors for the temple,” Cardem said with a friendly smile, though he looked a little tired.
Shipon smiled awkwardly.
“Don’t wait in line—come with me. If I tell my brother, you’ll get a healing potion right away.”
“…Would that be alright?”
“Of course. My niece is his only daughter.”
Without further hesitation, Shipon bowed. If she could get a better potion right away, there was no need to wait in that long line.
“Then, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it.”
“What’s there to mind? It’s for my niece. Come.”
Cardem led Shipon straight to Kaelos’s office.
He walked up without warning, ignoring the guards’ offer to announce them, and simply swung the door open without hesitation.
“Brother!”
“…Didn’t I tell you to knock before entering my office, Cardem?”
“Haha, what’s the point of that kind of formality between brothers?”
Surrounded by piles of paperwork, Kaelos rubbed the dark circles under his eyes.
“That woman… she’s the girl’s maid.”
“Ah, yes! This is Shipon Agos, my niece’s maid! She was waiting in line to buy a healing potion for my niece, who’s sick. Could we give her a few from the storage?”
Kaelos’s eyes widened.
“…That girl is sick?”
“Yes. She collapsed with a high fever, so I thought a potion would help… I heard temple healing potions are much better…”
“A regular temple healing potion won’t be very effective for her,” Kaelos said, frowning.
Normally, temple healing potions worked better than regular ones. But Esther’s birth was special—temple potions might even harm her.
“So it’s better to use the regular potions from Egbert.”
Shipon’s expression grew uneasy. Laxa had specifically told her to get a healing potion, and there had to be a reason. But explaining would mean talking about demons.
“Ah, Shipon. If someone recommends a regular potion instead of a healing potion, say this…”
She remembered Laxa’s words and frowned. Had he predicted this?
“One of the new servants happens to be from the same hometown as my lady.”
“…What?”
“He said a slightly modified healing potion would be much more effective for her.”
“…From the same hometown?”
“Yes.”
Kaelos put down his pen, his brow furrowed. People from the Surt Kingdom were extremely rare—this was quite a coincidence.
“…I’ll go to her myself.”
“What? Brother! I want to go too!” Cardem quickly raised his hand.
“You’ll be sent on assignment soon.”
“…That’s true. But aren’t you leaving for the front as well?”
“You can go after she recovers.”
Kaelos told the guard to fetch the potion, prepared himself, and left the temple. Shipon hurried to follow.
“You’re so mean… I wanted to see my niece too…” Cardem fake-sobbed, sprawling in Kaelos’s office.
It was a quiet winter.
Heavy snow fell endlessly, and overnight it piled high enough to swallow an ankle, even rolling higher.
The cold bit the skin even if you just reached out your bare hand toward the window.
On that freezing day, “I” was there.
I followed behind a thin woman, wading through snow that reached halfway up my small body, my numb hands parting the way.
“A woman who conspired with demons walks this road! That witch gave birth to a monster! Our village is cursed!”
“Die! Die! Just die already!”
Snowballs and fist-sized rocks cut through the falling snow, striking the slow-moving figure before dropping silently onto the white ground.
The nearly unclothed woman limped forward. Her hair was wild, her body covered in wounds, her face swollen and bruised beyond recognition.
Her path left streaks of frozen red behind her.
Aside from the shouts, there was only silence.
Silence.
And more silence.
With dead eyes, she walked toward the execution block, not resisting the heavy stones thrown at her. Perhaps she’d given up after so many punishments.
A small child followed her.
The child was so thin and starved she looked worse than a street beggar, desperately crawling through the snow to keep up. People clicked their tongues.
“She ate her mother alive, they say. Anyone near her falls ill.”
“That kind of creature should have been thrown out long ago.”
“Didn’t you hear? They tried starving her once, but she was alive the next day. The witch gave birth to a monster.”
It was the height of the witch hunts.
A strange plague had spread, crops had withered, and an early winter had devoured everything. In that winter, famine and disease built mountains of corpses.
And so, the united world began to crack. The temples rose, and hatred for demons grew.
Demons, symbolized by black, became the perfect common enemy.
“I”—or rather, Agreas—was born in that chaos.
Born as a half-demon, only possible through union between human and demon.
“Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!”
The witch’s execution was brutal.
They said some villages impaled witches from bottom to top, others drowned them alive. But most witches were burned at the stake.
Young Agreas watched her mother’s execution up close.
They called it “kindness.”
They whispered it was “a privilege.”
They named it “mercy.”
Terrified humans made her kneel right before the blazing pyre.
A bony, frail child with no baby fat left, she saw her mother’s last moments as a witch.
Some told her the woman was once beautiful, loving, and pure—until she met a demon and fell.
“Was she happy?” someone asked. She gave no answer.
“Was she unhappy?” Still, no answer.
The only thing Agreas remembered from that day was the feeling carved into her bones—
Rage. And vengeance.
When the fire burned out, they threw her onto the hot ashes, next to the charred remains of her mother, into a deep pit outside the village.
It was a dump for anything useless.
She survived there. She piled animal carcasses and scraps into a mound, eating insects when hungry, drinking rainwater when thirsty.
Finally, she climbed over the heap and escaped hell.
She ran. She walked. She kept going until her swollen legs couldn’t bear it, eventually wandering into the demon realm.
The human world had rejected her—too inexperienced at even disguising herself as human.
But the demon realm wasn’t a home either.
Agreas had overlooked one truth—
A half-blood is always a half-blood, no matter where they go.
Her body staggered forward, then collapsed.
“…Ah.”
The moment her face hit the ground, she felt her heart drop—then her eyes flew open.
