~Chapter 114~
Beril kicked Malkov. Malkov rolled across the floor, groaning, “Ow!”
“Don’t worry too much. Our lord said to spare your life, at least.”
“Really?”
“Are you doubting the Grand Duke right now?”
“N–no, of course not!”
Nobles were fickle and treated commoners like pebbles on the road. And Malkov had crimes on top of that. Groveling was only natural.
“Get up. One reason your life’s been extended is because there are plenty of people begging to see your face at least once.”
People wanted to see him, who had done nothing but evil all his life? Malkov was curious, but before he could ask, a blindfold covered his eyes.
The knights bound him and took him somewhere.
Hours later—
Thud.
They threw him onto bare stone.
Indoors, he realized. The musty smell and the chill in the air told him it was underground.
As he hunched his shoulders against the unpleasant feeling—
“Well, well. A familiar face.”
His blindfold came off, and someone yanked him up by the hair.
The instant their eyes met—
“N–no, it can’t be! We’ve never—”
“Don’t lie.”
“Gah!”
A kick to the solar plexus sent Malkov tumbling again.
“You know me.”
The man had features pretty enough to be called feminine, even a beauty mark by his eye. Malkov had only seen him briefly a decade ago, but that face stuck with him.
How could it not? He’d been the first noble Malkov had ever sold as a slave.
His father had always seen his illegitimate son as a stain. He’d even ordered Malkov to sell the boy—who wasn’t yet ten—far away in a foreign land.
But the bastard son had won in the end. He returned to the empire, killed his father, and inherited everything.
Ten years ago, Malkov hadn’t known that would happen. Because the boy was “only half a noble,” Malkov had looked down on him and treated him brutally.
“Since it’s been so long, how about we play again? …Yes, like back then—‘the box game.’ You go inside the box, and no matter if I kick it or drop lit matches on it, you don’t make a sound.”
“Sp–spare me. I was wrong back then! But listen—I only did what I was ordered to do. How could someone like me resist?”
Malkov writhed in his bonds, begging.
The man smiled.
“Relax. I won’t kill you.”
Armians had allowed Beril to take revenge first—but on one condition: there were many who wanted payback on Malkov, so leave enough of him for their share too.
He had become a noble by stepping through blood; of course he knew countless ways to torment someone without killing them.
Beril, having delivered the cargo, quietly left.
“Don’t—no—aaagh!”
From beyond the closed door, a long scream echoed.
Armians sat in his office. As he always did when troubled, he didn’t work—he just stared blankly into empty air.
He didn’t rage or vent at his subordinates.
He was like a dying plant—gazing at the sun all day, withering in silence.
Halter clicked his tongue.
“Are you really going to let her go like this?”
The subject was unspoken, but both men knew who he meant.
“You won’t regret it?”
“Don’t make me answer twice.”
“Right, right.”
Halter pouted—though only for three seconds.
“Still… isn’t it strange?”
Armians glared at him.
“If Lady Rohiltern is losing memories as the price of using magic, why hasn’t she forgotten language?”
“…What?”
“And why hasn’t she forgotten etiquette and common sense? Those are learned—meaning they’re memories, too.”
Halter’s eyes narrowed.
“So what I’m saying is, the person currently in this mansion…”
And then the words:
“Is she really her?”
Armians shot to his feet.
He left the office—at some point, he started running.
He had assumed Bella treated him like a stranger because she’d lost her core—her time, her memories.
But if Halter was right—
“Bella didn’t lose her memories, but…”
He couldn’t know the answer before meeting her, so he hurried to his destination.
“Bella!”
But the room was empty.
“Where is she?”
The servants looked away awkwardly.
“Um…”
“S–she already left!”
Next thing he saw was the wide-open front gate.
Armians bit his lower lip and ran again.
Few knew how long Abelron’s history truly was—or that the empire stood at its beginning.
That was because the first head of the house had made a pact with the crack.
The price: erasing from history the greatest of her achievements—
—in exchange, her descendants would awaken magical power generation after generation.
Because they were forcing power into vessels not meant to hold mana, each individual was fitted with a personal “brake,” so they wouldn’t push too far and die.
A thousand years passed.
Even the greatest heroes fade with time. The first head of house, now reincarnated after her legend had worn thin, walked slowly through a cave.
The straight, narrow path ended only at its deepest point.
There, she had opened the first crack.
—You’ve come, ■■■■?
Darkness coiled beyond the crack, smiling at the mage.
Because of their pact a thousand years ago, the mage had been erased from the world’s memory. Even the darkness that remembered her could no longer say her name.
It was the price she’d chosen, yet the bitterness still stung.
“Have you waited long?”
—Quite. But I wasn’t bored. I have watched you since the moment you were born.
“I see.”
The mark of a contract is etched upon the soul. So the darkness was telling the truth.
She looked down at her hands.
They were smooth and unscarred, as if time had flowed backward. Strange, and yet not unfamiliar—these were the hands Bella had seen whenever she used magic.
Bella had thought she’d lost her memories, but she had lost nothing.
With each use of magic, memories from her previous life had surfaced; to keep her from collapsing under the confusion, her current memories were temporarily bound.
Human brains can only hold so much.
But the persistence of her past-life self would be brief.
Once she finished what she had to do, she would disappear, and Bella would live on as Bella.
That was fine. She hadn’t awakened to resume her first life—only to resolve “that matter.”
—Mage, you proposed a bargain for the sake of your descendants.
“I did.”
—You have seen well enough what your descendants gained in return.
“I have.”
Her own name had been erased, but the descendants she had left with her beloved had flourished without end—just as she’d wished a thousand years ago.
—And yet you want to end the contract?
“Of course my descendants, once they lose their power, won’t thrive as before. Having enjoyed so much, they might even fall faster.”
However—
“All things rise and fall. I cannot allow my bloodline alone to remain special.”
It didn’t matter if they ceased to be heroes.
It was fine if they were no longer special.
If they had strength to endure the present, they could live into tomorrow.
“As an ancestor, my role isn’t to make them special—but to help them gain the strength to overcome ordinary life.”
■■■■ looked into the darkness lurking beyond the crack.
“Therefore, I will end the contract.”
The darkness had watched the mage’s first life come to a close, and had observed her second from the very beginning.
She had endured prejudice and scorn, fighting to prove her existence in that first life.
Then, after a life where she did nothing but exist and was granted a second chance, she finally understood the meaning of life.
—You have grown, mage.
The darkness smiled.
