──Everything begins here, traced backward.

50 nations. 50 civilizations. 50 languages.
──Fifty unprecedented works stand in alignment,
all converging toward the very definition of God.

This is the starting point—
the prologue now unveiled before you.

“Fangs of Fate” — Chapter One, Teaser Release.
This tale serves as the prequel to bitBuyer Telling, to be revealed in the years to come.

---

The Holy Vermerde Empire
Frontier District One—Hansa Village.

Officer cadet Sora.
Home for the first time in half a year.

Tucked under his arm was a red box.
Inside it was only one thing.

A proposal of marriage
for El, the girl who lived in the church.

But her answer was the same as always.

“Maybe next time.”

…And yet, on that day,
El was just a little different.

“Become my ‘Companion,’
and maybe I’ll think about it.”

Those words left him unable to measure their meaning.
She turned her back on him with effortless ease.

Her destination was the Imperial Capital, Darmbach.
The purpose of the journey was her secret.

But if he was with her, bound to her by those shackles… then perhaps—

Sora had already made up his mind
before he ever gave his answer.

In the Imperial Capital,
where iron, stone, and prayer rang through the air,
the two of them would face their separate destinies.

A city wrapped in the first stirrings of festival.
Deep within a colossal cathedral.

There, what would be revealed
was the reality of a bloodline bound by blood and fate—

“Succession Genesis.”

At the end of prayer and silence,
the choice El placed before him

struck Sora with a decisive question.

“Will you choose in order to protect me?
Or will you become complicit in the system?”

The blessing was a curse.

A slave’s shackle.
A branded mark.
A talent burned to ash.

What would El, the solitary “witch,” choose—
duty, or love?

“Sora—
even so, do you have the resolve to choose me?”

■Prologue

Night.

The beds in the orphanage were filled with the smell of straw.

I had just closed my eyes, trying to fall asleep, when the world outside grew softly bright.

Beyond the window, one of the younger orphans must have been playing with fire divine arts. Tiny sparks crackled and lit up the night.

The moment I saw that light, something deep in my chest tightened.

—“You really are a genius, El.”

My father’s voice.

The feeling of his hand, laughing as he ruffled my hair.

Before I knew it, a sob had slipped out of me.

I wanted to stop.

I couldn’t.

Then another voice came back to me.

—“It’s all right. El is special.”

Back when my mother was still alive.

The warmth of that moment returned with it.

I curled myself up beneath the straw blanket.

At my ankle, the shackle clinked and rattled.

The symbol of a slave.

The genius I had been back then, the special girl I had been, was nowhere anymore.

All that was left here was an “anklet woman.”

I was sure there was no one in the world who could understand me.

My secret was too heavy.

Even if I wanted to say it, there was too much I wanted to say.

And God would never forgive me, either.

But someday, maybe…

I hoped I would meet someone who could understand without my having to say a word.

＊＊＊

When I was twelve, Sora was ten.

Those two years were not just a number.

They were a deep divide between one child and another.

The age when you could still sleep inside a dream, and the age when you had already been driven out of dreams and forced to keep staring at reality.

The difference between them was cruelly vast.

The village mornings were cold.

The stone pavement at the washing place held the chill of the night, and the water in the bucket was cold enough to cut the skin.

The bell had not yet rung.

Only the church’s shadow stretched long across the ground.

As I wrung out the cloth there, I was aware that I was twelve years old.

Because in this place, that meant the same thing as being alive.

Sora was different.

At ten years old, he was still inside the dream.

The innocent ease with which he could smile and say, “Let’s get married,” was something I no longer had.

His straightforward voice felt so far away.

It hurt.

And I envied it.

The two years between us were surely the distance between worlds.

Even so, the story had already begun back then.

A ten-year-old boy and twelve-year-old me.

With a promise too childish—

and yet, unmistakably sincere.

■Sora, Ten – “Maybe Next Time, I’ll Think About It”

The morning damp still clung to the backs of my hands.

The water in the wash bucket was colder than dawn, and the fingers I used to wring out the cloth were still red and stiff.

The village bell had not yet rung.

In the shadow of the reddish-brown church, I steadied my breathing the way I always did.

“El! Listen!”

A voice came running toward me.

I knew who it was without turning around.

That boy’s voice was always so straight.

And just a little painful.

“…What?”

“I get to go to officer school!”

The words burst out of him.

When I turned around, Sora was standing there, out of breath.

His hair stuck up in odd places, and his feet were dirty with soil.

He was not wearing a military uniform.

Not yet an officer cadet.

Just a child.

I could tell his happiness was spilling out of every part of him.

The face of someone taking one step into a future I did not know.

“…Officer school? The one in the Imperial Capital?”

The Imperial Capital.

Here, those words carried a weight almost like a foreign country.

I asked while wringing out the cloth.

“Yeah! They said I ranked near the very top on the Imperial Capital standard divine power aptitude test!”

Imperial Capital standard.

A village child.

Near the top in the Imperial Capital.

When he said it like that, I could imagine just how much his chest must have been swelling with pride.

“…Near the top, by Imperial Capital standards?”

I kept my voice deliberately flat.

Surprise was not something you were supposed to let show on your face.

“Yeah! Even the village teacher was shocked! He said, ‘It’s rare for a village child to score this high!’”

The way he puffed out his chest was a little dazzling.

But just because something was dazzling did not mean I could carelessly praise it.

“…Hmm. I see.”

I dropped the cloth back into the hand bucket.

It was nothing to make a fuss over.

Good numbers did not change who a person was.

“It’s amazing, right?”

His eyes pierced straight through me.

They told me exactly what he wanted me to say.

“Well, I suppose it isn’t that surprising.”

It might have sounded cold.

But it was what I truly thought.

“Huh?”

His voice faltered.

My words cooled his excitement, just a little.

“When I was eight, people in Grimhafen were already calling me a ‘genius.’”

I stated it plainly.

It was not a proud memory.

Only a fact.

Back in that city, if you showed people the right numbers, they made noise so easily.

“…A genius?”

The child’s voice grew smaller.

He had felt as if he had grasped the Imperial Capital in his hands.

Now he wore the face of someone realizing that was not the whole world.

“Yes. When your numbers are good, people around you make a fuss. But numbers alone don’t change a person’s worth.”

I knew that better than anyone.

Neither numbers nor evaluations had set me free.

That was why I said it.

Because getting carried away over numbers alone changed nothing.

“…That’s kind of cool…”

The boy said it like that.

Cool.

The word only slid across my skin.

It reached nowhere.

Cool?

I almost wanted to laugh.

“Cool? It isn’t anything like that. I just know reality.”

That was my answer.

I was sure he would not understand.

Even so, words like that had to be said.

Because I knew what happened in the end to children who were called things like “genius” in the Imperial Capital, or in Grimhafen.

“But you’re still amazing. El, you really are special.”

Special.

There it was again.

I had heard it so many times.

A sweet chain meant to bind me.

And yet, when it came from this boy’s mouth, it sounded just a little different.

“…Special, huh.”

Even when I repeated it to myself, I felt nothing.

What meaning was there in being special?

It would not free me from slavery.

“Yeah! So… marry me!”

…Marry?

“…What?”

My throat went dry.

The cold of the washing work still lingered in my fingers, and yet, deep inside my body, heat flared all at once.

What had this boy just said?

“Because you’re the kindest, and the cutest, and that’s why I want to marry you!”

Kind.

Cute.

Those were not compliments.

People had consumed me through words like that over and over again.

But this boy surely did not know any of that.

That was exactly why he was so straight.

And so painful.

“Sora, how old are you?”

My voice came out lower than I expected.

To force reality in front of him.

“Ten!”

The number came back without a trace of guile.

Of course.

Still a child.

And yet, he was so terribly direct that my own words dulled.

“Ten-year-olds can’t get married.”

I mixed in just a little thorn.

So I could teach him, even slightly, how this world worked.

“Then when I’m grown up!”

When I’m grown up.

He still did not know how far away that future was.

Or how merciless.

“…Sigh. Well… maybe next time.”

I let it escape along with a breath.

A bitter compromise, made so I would not break a child’s dream.

“Really!?”

His voice, full of expectation, struck my chest.

The answer was simple.

“Next time, I’ll think about it.”

Next time.

Half a year from now.

A year from now.

By then, what would become of us?

■Sora, Ten and a Half — Until the Day I’m Worthy

“El! Do you remember our promise? When we’re grown up, we’re getting married!”

It was the season when the sunlight had begun to grow stronger.

The wheat fields smelled sweet, the wind carried heat, and somewhere in the distance, a rooster was crowing.

Sora had brought it up again.

“…This again?”

I stopped, still holding a bundle of wheat in my arms.

Even after half a year, it seemed the heat inside this boy had not cooled in the slightest.

“Of course! There’s no way I’d forget!”

Those straight eyes.

How could he stay so devoted?

Maybe I wanted to know the reason.

“…Hmm. Well, I’ll admit you’re persistent, Sora… but what about your studies?”

I asked.

Before he started talking about marriage and promises, I had to make him look at reality.

“I’m doing them! My officer school studies and the homework from the village teacher!”

He answered breathlessly, puffing out his chest.

The voice of a child proud of his own effort.

It was the sound of an age that could still believe in the future.

“Hmm. Officer school must be difficult, right?”

I meant to say it lightly.

But something stirred faintly in the depths of my chest.

The officer school in the Imperial Capital—

to me, it belonged to a world far away.

“Yeah! But I’ll do my best!”

Do my best.

I envied the simplicity of those words.

I was already living in a world where simply doing your best was not enough.

“…And your reason for doing your best?”

I asked before I could stop myself.

What could make this boy throw himself so completely into it?

“Well… so I can marry you, El!”

He answered so instantly that I lost my words.

This boy truly meant it.

Without knowing the weight of the future, he intended to take me there with him.

“…When you’re a child, I suppose anything can become a reason.”

The moment I said it, even I thought it was a little cruel.

But I had to say it.

If I accepted too much of this boy’s heat, I felt as if I might be carried away somewhere with him.

“I’m not a child!”

His voice rose in protest.

And I knew at once that the protest itself was proof he still was one.

“Ten years old is very much a child.”

I stated it flatly.

It was an answer meant for him, and a confirmation meant for myself.

Draw the line.

Do not step any deeper.

“But I’ll become a fine adult!”

Adult.

It was strange how lightly that word came out of him.

I knew how heavy and bitter becoming an adult could be.

“…Then once you’ve become one, I’ll think about it.”

My voice was calm.

And yet, deep in my chest, something shifted ever so slightly.

Would the day ever come when this boy’s idea of becoming “fine” turned into something real?

“All right! I’ll become one!”

An immediate answer.

His sheer directness almost made me smile.

“…You really don’t change, do you?”

I murmured it under my breath.

He did not change.

And yet, I had already realized

that there were parts of him I did not want to change.

■Sora, Eleven – Prove It to Me

“El! Marry me!”

Again, that was the very first thing out of his mouth.

The spring wind slipped through the chilly village road.

The church door creaked faintly, and behind me came the soft sound of metal fittings that had never been polished quite clean.

“…Yeah, yeah. I’m tired of hearing about that already.”

My answer was dry.

And yet, deep in my chest, a stirring that was the exact opposite of being tired of it continued.

“Tired of hearing it? But I’m serious!”

Serious.

Serious, huh.

How much was I supposed to believe in that word?

In my world, the seriousness of an eleven-year-old was as light as a feather.

“Sora, listen. You’re still eleven, aren’t you?”

I stopped and asked him.

It was fine if I sounded a little cold.

Numbers like age could become weapons for drawing lines.

“But once I enter officer school, they’ll treat me like an adult!”

His face was full of pride.

I knew that when a child used the word adult as a shield, that was when he looked most like a child.

“Treat you like an adult, huh…”

My voice naturally dropped lower.

Being treated like an adult.

He still did not know how empty that could be.

“I mean, I’m a soldier in training, right? I’m already a proper cadet!”

Maybe he did look proper.

But an egg that had not yet broken its shell was still only an egg.

“Hmm. Then is the junior division a lie?”

I threw the words at him on purpose.

To show him that all that propriety existed only in words.

“…Ugh.”

His reply caught in his throat.

It must have frustrated him, still being treated like a child.

But I knew that frustration itself was proof he was growing.

“Even if it’s officer school, you’re still being treated like a child.”

So I said it.

A little meanly.

A little gently.

To protect the boundary line until the day this boy truly became an adult.

“No! I’m already an adult!”

His voice pitched upward.

The sound of him calling himself an adult still could not hide his childishness.

“Then prove it.”

I challenged him.

Because I knew proving something was not simple at all.

“How?”

Such a childlike question.

The way he looked at me, trying to draw the answer out of me, tickled me just a little.

“Let’s see… Then if you become number one at officer school, I’ll think about it.”

I set down an absurd condition.

My voice was calm, but I gave the words the weight of a touchstone.

“Really!? It’s a promise!”

He leapt at it without hesitation.

This boy truly did not know how to doubt at times like this.

“…You believe things so easily. The world isn’t that simple.”

A small, wry smile escaped me.

Even so, I found myself envying the fact that he lived in a world where believing so easily was still possible.

“It’s fine! I’ll definitely do it!”

He clenched his fist and declared it.

That heat warmed my cold chest by the slightest degree.

“Yeah, yeah. Do your best.”

I answered lightly on purpose.

That way, I was sure he could keep facing forward.

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you!”

He sulked, having hit the mark.

My mouth softened just a little.

“I’m not. I’m just… looking forward to it a little.”

There was no lie in my words.

Only a little.

Truly, only a little.

If this boy actually kept his promise—

I had admitted that somewhere inside me,

I was thinking about it.

■Sora, Eleven and a Half – The Kindness That Stings

The forest was still breathing out the morning mist.

The smell of damp earth and cold metal mingled with every breath I took.

I had my gun raised.

I took aim at the bottom of an old pot I had hung between the trees.

Even if my fingertips were cold, the sensation around the trigger alone felt hot.

“El! Listen! I’ve been studying really hard!”

A voice suddenly came from behind me.

The muzzle shifted ever so slightly.

Why was this boy always so abrupt?

“…Another report?”

I answered while bringing my aim back into line.

This training was part of my daily life.

His reports were still an extension of a child’s games.

“Because! I’m doing it so I can marry you!”

I squeezed the trigger.

A dry crack rang through the forest, and a new bullet hole was carved into the bottom of the pot.

So I can marry you.

That reason was far too light.

And yet it was serious.

So serious that I could not fully reject it.

“…What kind of reason is that to work hard?”

I turned only my eyes toward him.

His forehead was damp with sweat.

His breathing was quick.

He still did not know the weight of my world, and yet he looked at me with eyes that were only, endlessly straight.

“What’s wrong with it? Having a goal makes you more motivated!”

Maybe it did.

But if he could not imagine the reality waiting beyond that goal, then his motivation was fragile.

“Well… maybe that’s how it works.”

I lowered the gun.

It was not that I accepted it.

I simply was not adult enough to pour cold water over a child’s directness.

“And listen, during my divine power measurement… they officially recognized me as a Shifter!”

Finally.

What rose in my chest was not surprise, but a sense of how late it had come.

“Oh. Took long enough.”

I let the words fall coldly.

Just to shave down the pride rising on his face a little.

“What do you mean, ‘took long enough’? That’s amazing!”

His protest came immediately.

That childlike reaction was a little funny.

“I could use it when I was six, you know.”

I spoke lightly of my past.

Even though I knew numbers did not change a person’s worth, there I was, pushing him away with numbers.

I could not stop that slightly mean part of myself.

“…!”

His face colored with frustration.

When I saw that expression, the corners of my mouth softened just a little.

“…Oh, are you mad?”

I said it deliberately lightly as I lowered the muzzle.

His lips pressed tight together, and his eyes grew faintly wet.

A face that could not hide its frustration.

“That’s not fair! Comparing us is cheating!”

A protest straight from the front.

I knew it was unfair.

And I had aimed for that exact spot.

“Heh. I thought you’d make that face.”

The chill of the gun barrel settled comfortably into my hand.

This boy’s reactions were far easier to predict than the result of any shot.

“…El, you’re kind of mean sometimes.”

Mean, huh.

But if I did not say at least this much, this boy would surely let himself be spoiled forever.

“I only said the truth. You don’t know what I was like back when people called me a genius, do you?”

I said it as if I were telling an old story.

He could not understand how empty that title had been.

That was precisely why I said it.

“Ugh… But I’m going to get stronger too!”

His answering voice trembled.

Even so, his directness did not break.

“Then you’ll need to build your stamina too. Studying alone won’t let you make use of being a Shifter.”

I pulled his pride back toward reality, just a little.

Power meant nothing if it existed only as a number.

“Yeah! I’ve been doing push-ups too!”

The answer came instantly.

That desperation was just a little endearing.

“…You sound like a pet giving progress reports.”

My mouth softened on its own.

I had to hide it behind a joke.

Otherwise, he might notice what this feeling really was.

“Hey, that’s mean!”

His protest came exactly as expected.

That simplicity warmed the forest air by the slightest degree.

“But it’s true. Especially the way you come running over, desperately trying to show off—‘Look how hard I’m trying!’”

I kept teasing him.

I did not want to admit that this back-and-forth was far more fun than shooting at the pot.

“Heh. Well, keep working hard. Enough that you can come to me with your head held high ten years from now.”

I slung the gun over my shoulder as I said it.

Ten years from now.

Those words pierced me.

When this boy reached that future,

would I still be standing there?

■Sora, Twelve – Feels a Little Different Somehow

On the edge of the village, the early summer wind passed through the washing place behind the church.

The stone pavement was wet and cool, and though the sunlight was strong, the shade felt somehow chilly against my skin.

I was wringing out the linen I had washed.

“El, marry me!”

A voice came from behind me.

That was how he opened.

My heart gave the smallest jump.

“…Stop proposing to me the instant you see me.”

I wrung the linen tight once more.

I could not let myself be thrown around every time this boy said something absurd.

“But you’re so cute today too!”

His voice was brighter than the sound of water.

Cute, huh.

Every time someone said that to me, my breath caught just a little.

“If you say things like that too lightly, people will hate you.”

I drove the warning in on purpose.

Because the lightness of those words frightened me a little.

“You won’t hate me, El!”

An instant answer.

Was there, somewhere beneath that innocence, a kind of certainty that belonged only to him?

“…Where does that confidence come from?”

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded a little low.

It was not something he should be able to believe so easily.

“Because you actually look at me, El!”

…Actually look at you?

It felt as if a heavy stone had dropped into the depths of my chest.

I did “look” at this boy.

But that was—

“…Sigh.”

A breath escaped me.

I did not know how to put what existed inside me into words.

“Wait, what was that sigh for?”

His voice turned dissatisfied.

Like a child throwing a little fit because he wanted someone to confirm that he was right.

“Sora. Do you really understand what kind of woman I am?”

I asked before I could stop myself.

If he thought he knew, then I had to teach him.

“I think I do!”

He answered without hesitation.

I envied that lack of uncertainty just a little.

“Heh. Then answer me. What kind of woman am I?”

I smiled.

The question was almost a provocation.

If this boy’s answer could change my world, even slightly—

I found myself thinking that.

“Huh… Uh… You’re kind, and pretty…”

Shallow.

His answer was astonishingly shallow.

And yet, I could tell he was searching for the words with everything he had, and it made my breath tighten just a little.

“That’s all?”

I let a deliberate pause fall before answering.

To teach him that with an answer like that, he had seen nothing of me at all.

“Huh? Is there something else?”

He tilted his head in complete sincerity.

He truly did not understand what I was.

“…You really are a child.”

The words slipped from my mouth like a sigh.

This boy was still only looking at the surface.

He had not reached my wounds.

Or the bottom of me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

His voice sounded angry.

But nothing in it pierced my heart.

“Listen, Sora. I already know exactly how people see me. Because of Muka, men come near me, and women pull away. So words like ‘cute’ and ‘pretty’—I’ve heard them thousands of times already.”

As I spoke, my hands stopped.

The cold of the water vanished from my fingertips, and a different kind of cold spread through my chest.

I told myself that this was reality.

“…”

Sora fell silent.

Even so, he did not look away.

That gaze alone hurt me a little.

“But your words, Sora… feel just a little different.”

The moment I said it, I regretted it.

They feel different—

What did?

What was I expecting?

“Huh?”

His voice was innocent.

He understood nothing, and still, he shook me.

“…Nothing. That’s enough. Go study for officer school.”

I cut the conversation off as if fleeing.

So I could lock my feelings away somewhere this boy could not reach.

“Hey, why are you ending it all of a sudden?”

His protest was like a puppy’s.

Cute.

But I could not let myself hear anything more right now.

“Because I’m fickle.”

I said it and smiled.

And even I was surprised

by how fragile that smile felt.

■Sora, Twelve and a Half – Someday, When You’re Grown

The evening bell was ringing in the distance.

The village road had turned a dull color, still holding the dust it had swallowed, and the air carried the scent of night beginning to cool.

I was sitting on an old bench behind the church.

A brief moment of rest.

“El, when we get married, where do you want to live?”

An abrupt question.

The wood grain of the bench creaked faintly.

“…Your questions are getting more specific.”

My voice naturally went flat.

Was this still a child’s dream?

Or the entrance to resolve?

“I mean, if I’m with you, anywhere’s fine! The Imperial Capital, Hansa, wherever!”

The Imperial Capital.

I knew its name.

But I did not know what kind of city it was, or what kind of eyes the people who lived there would turn on someone like me.

“Hmm… Anywhere?”

I asked.

I thought it was a child’s strength, being able to say “anywhere” without knowing how far away anywhere could be.

“Yeah! Oh, but maybe the Imperial Capital would be cooler. It feels more like a soldier’s place!”

Cool, huh.

In his imagination, the Imperial Capital probably shone brilliantly.

“That’s your reason for thinking it’s cool?”

I answered without laughing.

I did not even have the right to speak of that city through imagination.

“Because! I want you to live in a big mansion, El!”

A mansion, huh.

Size and splendor were only decorations.

And yet—

I understood at least that a place like that would not be just a home.

“Hmm… A mansion. Then, Sora, what will you do about money?”

I pushed reality in front of him.

So he would at least draw the outline of his dream with something concrete.

“Huh… W-well, I’ll work hard and earn it!”

His voice wavered.

The word earn was still empty inside him.

“How?”

I stepped in further.

I wanted to make him fill that hollow place with even a little reality.

“…Um, by rising through the ranks in the military!”

Rising through the ranks.

A future made only of words.

He had never seen the Imperial Capital.

He could not even imagine how steep that path might be.

“Zero specifics.”

My voice sounded almost like I was spitting the words out.

It was easy to show someone a dream.

But there was still nothing there to support it.

“S-shut up!”

His voice pitched upward.

Those eyes still thought momentum alone could push a path through the world.

They were dazzling.

And a little enviable.

“…But that’s very you, Sora. At least your momentum is fully grown.”

I shrugged.

A child with nothing but momentum.

Even so, I found myself wanting to see just how far that momentum could reach.

“It’s not momentum! I’m serious!”

His voice was straight.

It was a happy thing, being able to say the word serious without knowing anything.

“Yeah, yeah. Serious.”

I answered lightly.

If I stepped any deeper, I felt as though he might make me serious too.

“What’s with the ‘yeah, yeah’?”

He snapped back at me.

I almost smiled.

“…Maybe next time.”

I tossed the words out.

Maybe next time.

This boy still did not know how far away the other side of that phrase could be.

“When is ‘next time’?”

The voice chasing after me showed every bit of a child’s desperation.

“When you’re grown up.”

I answered immediately.

But the “grown up” I meant was surely different from the “grown up” he imagined.

“That’s all you ever say!”

His voice was full of complaint.

Even so, not giving up was exactly like Sora.

“Things like that are supposed to be said properly once you’re an adult. Probably. I wouldn’t know.”

Even to me, the words sounded vague.

But behind that vagueness, I was buying time.

“…Fine! I’ll absolutely say it!”

An instant answer.

I knew how fragile this boy’s absolutely must be.

And still, I could not deny it.

“I’ll look forward to it.”

My voice softened just a little.

Look forward to it.

Maybe I really was looking forward to it.

But I did not want to admit that,

so I turned my eyes away toward the sky.

■Sora, Thirteen — Not Just a Title, but Resolve

The sound of strikes against earth went on and on.

Deep in the forest.

The morning mist had not yet fully dissolved, and the damp chill clung to my skin.

Dressed in camouflage pants and a black tank top, I was throwing my body against a makeshift log dummy.

The skin of my palms had already hardened.

Even if my breathing was rough, I did not let my movements fall apart.

“El… I seriously want to marry you.”

An abrupt voice.

When I turned around, Sora was standing there.

The color of his eyes looked deeper than usual.

“…Oh. Your wording has gotten more grown-up.”

I mixed in a little sarcasm.

But somewhere inside me, I could feel that this boy’s words had grown just a little heavier.

“I’m tired of being treated like a child. I’m graduating from the junior division soon and moving on to the youth division.”

The youth division.

He was saying the change in his position out loud, trying to make himself look bigger.

I could understand that desperation almost painfully well.

“…I see. So if your position changes, your heart changes too?”

I folded my arms, still warm from striking the log.

I wanted to find out whether this boy truly understood enough weight to say that his heart had changed.

“That’s right. I’m not a ‘child’ anymore. I’m saying this seriously, as an officer cadet.”

Seriously.

His voice did not tremble.

His face, still marked by traces of boyhood, and the word seriously fit together in a strange way.

“Hmm… An officer cadet, huh.”

I murmured while steadying my breathing.

Officer cadet.

It sounded proper.

But this boy still did not know what that title really meant.

“That’s why I want a real answer.”

A straight gaze.

Sharper than the hands I had been using to strike the log.

“…Not just momentum?”

My voice sounded like a test.

Was this boy still living on momentum alone?

Or—

“It’s not momentum. I really mean it.”

His voice was direct.

It cut through the damp chill of the forest.

“…You say that well. But marriage isn’t a matter of ‘position.’ It’s a matter of resolve.”

I opened my fists and slowly brought my breathing under control.

It was not so light that it could be spoken of through position.

To me, it was something almost like a chain.

“I have resolve.”

An immediate answer.

I still did not know what color that resolve truly was.

“I’ve seen plenty of boys say that.”

My voice came out as if I were spitting the words away.

The faces of adults who had repeated expectation and disappointment brushed through the back of my mind.

“I’m different.”

His voice came like a reflex.

Different.

How much weight did that word carry?

“…Maybe next time.”

I cut it short.

He was still too light for me to give an answer here and now.

“Maybe next time…!”

Irritation bled into his voice.

But that irritation itself felt just a little reassuring.

“Don’t rush. If you’re moving on to the youth division, then sooner or later, I’ll know whether your words are real.”

I told him slowly.

I threw it into the time of the future.

That was the greatest kindness I could offer him now.

“…I’ll prove it. Absolutely.”

His determination was so sharp I could almost hear the sound of his clenched fist.

A quiet heat dropped into my heart.

“…I’ll look forward to it.”

My final words were just a little soft.

So he would not notice that softness,

I immediately turned my eyes away.

■Sora, Thirteen and a Half — What It Means to Bear a Life

A tiny life was astonishingly light.

And yet, when I held it in my arms, it felt as if I were carrying the entire weight of the world.

A back room in the church.

In this place that also served as an orphanage, a new crying voice had joined the others.

A baby without a name yet.

I adjusted the blanket and soothed it beside its ear.

The sweet smell of milk mingled with the damp scent of the old wooden room.

“El.”

A voice came from behind me.

At the sound of it, the baby stopped crying for just an instant.

“What?”

I answered without turning around.

I did not want to disturb this child’s breathing rhythm.

“…I want to marry you, El. Truly.”

That again.

But this time, it was a little different.

His voice carried a deeper shadow than before.

“…”

I did not answer.

I only straightened the edge of the blanket.

The sound of his words was too heavy for me to return something right away.

“I’m not a child anymore. Even when I’m grown up, I want to stay by your side forever.”

Even when I’m grown up.

His words were looking toward the future.

But the future could not be protected so easily—

not when it was like this tiny life, crying in my arms.

“…I might be willing to think about it.”

I finally answered.

I made my voice sound light, hiding the tremor inside me.

“…!”

I heard him catch his breath.

That reaction almost made me smile.

“But there’s a condition.”

A condition.

Something meant to teach him the weight that existed outside his imagination.

The life in my arms was the answer itself.

“A condition?”

His voice was uncertain.

I could tell he was looking straight at me.

But I did not take my eyes off the baby.

“Think about what it means to become a father.”

The baby’s body heat slowly seeped into my arms.

It was an answer more eloquent than any explanation in words.

“…A father?”

Sora’s voice trembled a little.

He had probably never imagined it.

“Yes. Marriage means the same thing.”

I lowered my eyes and looked at the baby’s thin fingers gripping my clothes.

They were fragile.

And yet they held a weight I could not let go of.

“…A father…”

His voice was almost a murmur.

I felt as if I could hear the meaning of those words slowly sinking into him.

“That’s what it means to carry a life. …It isn’t something you can say lightly.”

I told him.

They were words I had wanted to hear so many times in the past,

and that no one had ever given me.

“…”

Sora stayed silent.

That silence was not a child’s ignorance.

It was time spent trying to receive a weight he was learning for the first time.

“So think about it. Truly. You don’t have to rush your answer.”

There was no need to make him hurry.

An answer that came back lightly here and now would be worth far less

than one grown deeply over the time ahead.

“…Okay. I’ll think about it properly.”

At that answer, I let the faintest smile rise to my face.

As long as this boy kept thinking,

the future could surely still be changed.

■Uniforms and Habits

The Holy Vermerde Empire, Frontier District One—Hansa Village.

Along a farm road laid as though it stitched together the seam between seasons, a single boy was walking. His military uniform was the color of old pine needles, as if green had been pressed out of them. The disciplined shade looked far too foreign to mingle with the smell of this soil. Only the red-wrapped box tucked under his arm gave off a presence like a blinking signal, oddly out of place in the rural landscape.

Bang.

A dry crack split the air.

What burst out from deep in the forest was either a wild bird—or merely the trees creaking.

An intruder.

He stood out from the scenery of this village so clearly that the word almost seemed enough.

The farmers stopped their hands.

Their eyes said nothing.

Only their gazes stabbed at him, as if to say: Ah. So he’s still doing that.

Once every half year.

Every time he came home from officer school, he did the same thing in this village.

He proposed marriage to a girl.

A sixteen-year-old girl who lived in the church.

Two years older than him, she always wore a finely tailored nun’s habit in a shade of ink-black, and she always looked back at him with eyes like a calm surface of water.

But her status was that of a slave.

And yet, the Sister had said it.

So long as the girl herself said “yes,” there was nothing standing between the two of them.

That was why, by now, this had become something like a village ritual.

A small event that came once every half year, like a spring festival tinted in fresh green—modest, and yet known by everyone.

The villagers already knew what to expect.

It would be the same answer again anyway.

In the end, the words that came back would be something like—

“Huh? Um… Oh, then maybe next time, okay?”

“Ah… I see. For now, maybe next time.”

“Are you going to do this every time you come home? …Maybe next time.”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe next time.”

What meaning was there in that “maybe next time”?

Did she know what she was doing?

Was she only pretending not to know?

Either way, it would surely be “maybe next time” again.

That was what the villagers had decided.

And still, he did not stop walking.

Summer.

The cicadas screamed as if they had gone mad.

This year’s air was different from other years. Its dampness, the smell of the sun—something else was mixed in.

Bang.

A crack echoed through the forest.

A bullet pierced through the trees five hundred mera away.

There was only one place where that line of fire could pass.

The place El had taught him.

So for Sora, finding her was easy.

All he had to do was follow the gunshot.

That was all.

There she was.

Standing in the sunlight filtering through the trees was El.

Outdoor activity mode.

Camouflage combat pants and a black tank top.

Beneath the fabric clinging to her with sweat, her shoulders moved faintly with each breath.

On her left arm was a geometric diamond pattern.

Black, sharp, as if it had been carved into her flesh with a knife.

That it spread across the entire left half of her body was a secret only Sora knew.

The eyes of an officer cadet processed that combat outfit as something familiar.

But here, in this countryside, it stood out strangely.

El did not care.

Because it had been given to her, a slave, by the former-soldier Sister who was her master.

And because it was one of her favorites.

Clothes are not there to protect the body.

They are there to protect the heart.

Somehow, it made him think that.

El seemed to have finished her training for the day.

She had set the rifle aside and was rolling up the mat she had been lying on.

The sound of dry fabric scraping together.

The smell of gunpowder carried on the wind had not yet faded.

A dead branch snapped.

Fallen leaves jumped.

On purpose.

Sora made his footsteps loud as he approached her from behind.

The figure he had longed for, far away, for six months was now right there.

She was down on one knee in the dirt, putting things away with her usual clean, economical movements.

“You’re here. Welcome home.”

El turned around as she rolled up the mat in smooth circles.

Only half her body faced him.

Their eyes met.

He was there in her eyes.

She had not forgotten him.

That was all it was.

And yet El’s “welcome home” felt to Sora as if she had returned some missing part of him.

Like a reunion after ten years.

He had never experienced such a thing, and still, that was the only way he could describe it.

So this must be what reunion feels like.

“I’m home. Are you done for today?”

“Yeah. Just finished. I hit eight and missed two.”

On clear days, El came here almost every day and fired exactly ten long-range shots.

It was a habit for self-defense, and at the same time, one of the few pleasures left to her.

“But I’m going to hunt a duck or some other bird after this. That’s the real objective.”

The barrel of the rifle still held heat.

A crow cried somewhere in the distance.

The damp summer wind brushed through their hair.

Then El’s eyes moved.

To the vivid red box Sora was holding.

“Is that box for a consultation about marriage?”

“Ah, yes. I wanted to ask if you would—”

Marry me.

The voice that would have continued was cut off plainly.

“Wait. Let’s talk about that on the way back. Right now, prey comes first.”

Here.

A wordless signal.

The mat was handed to him.

The hard edge of the holder dug into his shoulder and stole his body heat.

Marriage could wait.

For now, hunting came first.

That was the timeline she lived in.

By the time they left the forest, the sun had tilted slightly.

The mat on Sora’s back creaked, leaving a faint ache in his shoulder.

In the end, they had caught nothing.

El did not seem to care, continuing forward with only the sound of branches cracking underfoot.

The words would not come.

He tried to bring up marriage, and once again, he was left behind.

It was always like that.

Even when he tried to catch up, El’s back stayed a little ahead of him.

The distance never closed.

They reached the edge of the village.

It smelled like summer.

The scent of hemp cloth hung out to dry, and the smell of beans someone was boiling for dinner.

The wind brushed his cheek, and the salt of his sweat dried on his skin.

At that moment, El suddenly stopped.

Without turning around, she dropped the words over her shoulder.

“If you become my ‘Companion,’ I might be willing to think about it.”

Her voice was calm.

But the smallness of it, as if it were sinking down into something, made it feel all the heavier.

“Huh? Companion…?”

The moment he said it aloud, he felt stupid.

But he did not understand.

He truly had no idea what she meant.

“Yes. I want to go to Darmbach soon. Will you take me?”

She was a slave.

She could not board a train on her own.

So she was asking.

That was the kind of voice it was.

“I can, but… that’s all it takes?”

“If you cover the train fare, and listen to one small request.”

Their two shadows stretched long and crossed.

Sora’s heartbeat swelled in the back of his ears, swallowing his words.

Is that really all?

No.

Maybe it was not “all” at all.

Sora was still an officer cadet, but he was already treated as a soldier.

That meant he received pay.

“…Yeah. What’s the request?”

“That’s still a secret. But if you listen to it, I’ll think about the marriage thing.”

That light voice made the past blur into the present.

Sora had originally been raised in this church’s orphanage.

And El, back when she had been sold as a slave in the provincial city of Alberg, had been purchased through the mercy of a villager, brought to Hansa Village, and then donated to the church.

After that, El worked at the orphanage and looked after the children.

Sora had been one of those children she had “looked after.”

That was why her “I’ll think about it” carried weight.

The self he had been when they were not equals.

A feeling almost like admiration.

Past and present overlapped in an instant, and he could not get the words out properly.

Apparently, if he went with her to Darmbach, she would think about marrying him.

It was strange.

Was it a joke?

Was it serious?

He could not even measure that much.

Still, ever since he had heard El’s answer, Sora could not settle down.

Even as he tore bread with the orphans he knew at the church, his gaze chased after El again and again.

When he wrung out the hemp gauze towel in the bath, the cold water running across his palms brought her voice back to him.

Even when he sank into his bed stuffed with hay, the face behind his eyelids was, in the end, her profile.

The day El had said she would go to Darmbach was the final day of Sora’s summer leave.

From Hansa Village to the Imperial Capital, the trip took more than eight hours one way by carriage and train.

He told her that, with that schedule, a round trip would be impossible.

El merely answered, calmly, “I’ll be fine going back alone.”

The word fine felt like proof that she was not fine at all.

His throat closed.

During his leave, Sora lived as if blending back into the village.

He helped the farmers, returned to the church after sunset, and shared dinner with the orphans.

The smell of hay, the sweet scent of boiled beans, the flicker of candles.

He knew he could no longer experience such things in the Imperial Capital.

During that time, El kept working calmly in her usual nun’s habit.

But the amount of time she spent near Sora had clearly increased.

He knew why.

She had certain special circumstances given to her by God.

If Sora was nearby, then at the very least, she would not have to be looked at “that way.”

So Sora stayed beside her as much as he could.

When they played with the orphans.

When they cleaned the church.

And sometimes, when they simply sat side by side on the outside steps at dusk.

They did not speak much to each other.

But that silence had meaning.

Not protecting her, exactly.

Just being here.

That alone seemed to make the world a little more peaceful.

Even when the marriage talk was deflected, Sora did not grow irritated.

He knew that was how it always was.

If anything, because she escaped a little farther ahead like that, this distance between them could be maintained.

El, too, said little.

When evening came, she gathered the laundry from the orphanage backyard.

Sora stood silently beside her, sharing the weight of the damp cloth.

When the wind blew, the smell of hemp that had not yet fully dried filled the space between them.

That was enough.

Being beside each other without words.

For the two of them, that was the safest state.

A vague relationship where it was not even clear who was protecting whom, or who was being protected.

But for the Sora of now, that was enough.

“Then we’ll have to re-register El’s shackle.”

The night before departure.

After finishing the usual dinner with the orphans—and with El—the Sister said this as she rose from her seat.

Her voice was calm, like something spoken after prayer.

The shackle.

More precisely, it was an artifice called a Tethering Device.

It was attached to both ankles of slaves and criminals, draining the divine power of its wearer and tracking them.

It set a permitted range of movement centered on the master and allowed the registered person to exist only under that master’s control.

Allowed, perhaps, was not the right word.

It was a mechanism for binding.

With the divine power it absorbed, it continued repairing itself, biting as deep as the marrow of the bones, impossible to remove or destroy.

In other words, once it was put on, it would never leave the body for the rest of that person’s life.

The fact that this was spoken of as if it were only natural felt unbearably grotesque.

Even if the chain could not be seen, she was bound to one.

Sora lowered his gaze.

El’s ankle.

He did not want to see what lay beneath the fabric.

“Now, Sora. Pour your divine power into it.”

“…We’re only going out. Do we really have to do something like this?”

Sora asked, suspicious.

The chapel was dimly lit.

The candle flames swayed, and the shadows stretched long.

“Yes, we do. We’re registering you as her master.”

“But once I leave, I won’t be back for half a year…”

“That’s fine. You’ll understand the details later. For now, go on.”

The Sister’s voice was quiet and calm, stripping away any reason to resist.

El knelt on the floor and offered him her ankle without saying anything.

That, too, was strange.

It was true that El, as a slave, was the property of the church.

But her permitted range of movement should have been set to a distance so wide it was almost the same as having no restriction at all.

So why did he need to be registered as her “master” now?

No answer was given.

Only the cold air of the chapel swallowed the question and turned it into silence.

It did not sit right with him.

But pressured by the Sister’s gesture, which allowed no argument, Sora did as he was told and reached toward El’s right ankle.

White skin, usually hidden beneath the hem of her nun’s habit.

For an instant, his eyes were caught by the line of her calf curving upward from the ankle.

He almost touched her.

No—

some part of him even thought it would be fine if, by some accident, he did.

Then he placed his fingertips on the shackle made of Gungram steel, faintly warmed by the body heat and divine power it had been drawing from within her.

The Sister poured her divine power into it first, and the pattern began to glow faintly.

The light pulsed like breathing.

Into it, Sora poured his own divine power.

In that instant, gravity shifted.

His consciousness seemed to lag behind and then catch up to his body.

The world moved one step farther away.

His breath came a beat late.

From his feet up into the depths of his body, a torrent ran through him—neither cold nor hot.

“…It’s done.”

His voice came out, but it did not feel like his own.

El quietly drew her foot back and straightened the hem of her nun’s habit.

As if nothing had happened.

And yet, her fingertips were trembling faintly.

She stroked the area around her shin once, then quickly pulled her hand away.

Like a child who had touched something she was not supposed to touch.

“Thanks.”

That was all.

Her usual tone.

But their eyes did not meet.

She seemed to be looking at Sora, and yet at somewhere far beyond him.

She probably does not like this.

He did not know what she thought of it.

But at the very least, she was not enjoying this moment.

Whether it would be only for a single day or for longer, he did not know.

But now the shackle recognized “Sora as El’s master.”

His feelings were complicated.

Every action of the girl he loved was now in his hands.

Something in the depths of his chest floated upward.

A sweet feeling, as if he had finally obtained something he had wanted for so long.

But the instant he noticed that sweetness, some part of his heart began to grow cold.

Maybe I took this from her.

An unfulfilled guilt, like when someone had stolen something precious from another person by unjust means.

And yet.

The fact that it was only temporary felt painful.

That it would end with only now felt unbearably frustrating.

At the bottom of that feeling was a trace of anxiety.

After this journey, would El truly return to this church?

It is all right.

El had said she would think about marriage.

Then she would come back here again.

Believing that, he desperately drove away the shadow wavering in the depths of his chest.

“Well then, hurry up, wash yourself, and go to bed. You’re terrible in the morning.”

Her tone seemed to carry an unspoken “unlike El.”

A faint thorn.

And yet, it was also a kindness in another form, meant to soften the unease until morning came.

The next early morning.

He had barely slept.

Through divine power and the shackle, he was connected to El, however imperfectly.

Every time that fact tightened around his chest, his heartbeat quickened.

El’s words: I’ll think about marriage.

Her future.

And his own future with her.

Expectation and anxiety mixed together, circling through his head again and again.

Even so, the air before dawn was colder and clearer than he had expected, and it calmed his heated heart just a little.

He did not oversleep.

With his eyes closed, he steadied his breathing.

Through the shackle, he could tell where El was.

She was already awake, moving around inside the church.

So I can even know things like this.

Something crawled through the depths of his body.

His own divine power was coiling around her through that shackle.

Even though she was not yet in sight, her presence was alive beneath his skin.

Unable to get up, he simply passed time on the bed.

The early morning chill brushed his cheeks, but the back of his head was hot, and he could not settle down.

Maybe it is still too early.

He thought that, but staying in bed any longer would not calm him.

The inside of his chest was restless, and his bedding had turned into nothing but a weight.

Sora breathed out deeply and peeled his body away from the bed.

The hallway.

The dining room.

The kitchen.

No one was there.

A taut, silent stillness.

Only the voices of insects told him that the curtain of night had not yet fully lifted.

He washed his face, cooling his heated cheeks with cold water.

Then he stepped out through the back door—

and El was there.

Of course.

Still, she was earlier than he had expected.

Her usual nun’s habit.

With her back against the ivy-covered brick wall, her hands folded in front of her body, she turned her thumbs around and around while gazing off toward the place where the grass warblers were crying.

A thin, delicate chirping, as if reluctant to let dawn arrive.

Seen against that sound, the nape of El’s neck seemed to carry a faintly sorrowful air.

Then Sora noticed.

Her hair was about ten centimeters shorter.

A clean short cut.

She was a little different from the El of yesterday.

Something small creaked in the depths of his chest.

Maybe it was not only her hair that was changing.

For an instant, he hesitated to call out.

From behind, he could see El’s hair, faintly translucent in the light before dawn, and the hem of her nun’s habit stirring slightly in the wind.

The grass warblers were still crying.

A rooster crowed in the distance, and the village morning was beginning to wake.

He drew in a breath.

The inside of his chest creaked.

If he spoke now, he felt as if this quiet picture would break.

Even so—

he forced the words out.

“…You’re early.”

El turned around.

Her face carried a shadow of sleeplessness, and that made her seem even farther away.

“I couldn’t sleep much. …Go get changed. The carriage is already here.”

Her voice trembled through the cold morning air.

Something stirred deep inside him, and a small pain spread through his chest.

“…How diligent.”

What lay ahead of his gaze was a single carriage sunken in the dawn mist.

Though calling it a carriage was generous.

It had no proper canopy and no proper seats.

It was nothing more than a simple wagon bed fitted with plain handrails.

The bare wood was splintered in places, dark and wet from absorbing the night dew.

Two horses stood there, snorting and breathing out white mist.

The wheels were rough, almost handmade, sinking into the damp ground and creaking faintly.

It was the thing he had asked one of the village servants to arrange yesterday.

To his credit, the man had not even frowned when asked to come before dawn.

A thin layer of hay had been spread across the wagon bed, and in one corner sat a small bundle wrapped in cloth.

The smells of old wood, horse sweat, and damp grass tickled his nose.

It was not the smell of setting out on a grand journey.

Only of leaving the village for a little while.

A smell grounded in reality.

“Let’s eat breakfast in the carriage. I prepared it.”

El’s voice softened the chilly morning air.

The village was still asleep.

The fields enclosed by low stone walls were wet with night dew, their thin stalks trembling in the cold wind.

The thatched-roof houses breathed faint white smoke from their chimneys, leaving behind the smell of last night’s fire.

On the dirt road, the small tracks of a horse or dog that had passed through during the night were still fresh.

A rooster crowed in the distance.

Somewhere, a door creaked.

Those were the only signs that the village was waking.

A poor village.

And yet, this place was where El returned to.

And where Sora had begun.

He hurried back to his room and awkwardly pulled out the old-pine-green military uniform he had left stuffed in his club bag while staying in the village.

Because it had been packed carelessly, strange creases had formed, and the whole thing was wrinkled.

He felt deflated.

At the very least, he tried desperately to smooth out the wrinkles with his palms so he would not damage El’s dignity.

But the fabric was stubborn, and he realized his effort was useless.

Even so, once he fastened the shank buttons one by one, it looked a little more like a military uniform.

He wrapped the belt, still carrying the smell of leather, around his waist.

The scratches on it stood out, and he tightened it a little too firmly.

His breathing grew shallow.

This is fine.

No.

This is the only way.

With a distorted uniform, today began.

Come to think of it, the clothes El wore were limited.

During the day, a finely tailored ink-black nun’s habit.

At night, a thin nightgown.

And on days when she went into the forest, camouflage combat pants and a black tank top—

the outfit she called “outdoor activity mode.”

He had never seen her in anything outside those three.

The only exception was the memory of the day she was first brought to the church.

The girl who had been sold as a slave was wearing something like a faded sackcloth torn apart into scraps.

The seams were frayed, the hem was heavy with mud, and the shoulder straps looked as if they might snap at any moment.

Even so, the El of that time had said nothing.

She had simply stood there, wearing it.

That scene still would not leave his mind.

The neat nun’s habit, the purely practical combat clothes, even those painful scraps of cloth from back then—

all of them wrapped the same person.

When he thought that, a dull ache throbbed in his chest.

When he stepped outside, El was already sitting on the wagon bed.

It was only the kind of wagon one found in an outlying village.

A simple thing made of roughly cut boards nailed together, carrying the smell of wood that had drunk in the night dew.

The two horses breathed out white mist and flicked their ears slightly.

Sora climbed onto the wagon bed as well and sat down beside El.

The boards creaked, and the small sound spread through the morning haze.

“Are those clothes really fine for going all the way to Darmbach, El?”

He asked it only as casual conversation.

“…Bit late to ask that now.”

She said it without meeting his eyes.

It was neither rejection nor teasing.

Her nun’s habit, her nightgown, and the combat clothes for outdoor activity—

those were all the clothes she owned.

Her tone said there was no need to put into words the reality that she had no other choices.

Sora swallowed his words and could only look at her profile.

“No, I know, but… I just thought it looked hard to move in.”

When he said it before he could stop himself, El glanced sideways at him and smiled only with her mouth.

“If you put it that way, that outfit of yours looks hard to move in too, Sora. A military uniform… Isn’t it a little too stiff?”

He could not argue with that.

The old-pine-green military uniform for officer cadets.

It was supposed to be proper attire, but when she said it with that hint of laughter, it began to feel like nothing more than uncomfortable clothing.

Trying to hide his awkwardness, he tugged at the hem of his jacket.

The cloth pulled tight with a stiff sound, making him feel even more uncomfortable.

And this is still only the simple version for cadets.

A real officer’s uniform is much more pompous.

Thinking that, the tightness in his chest sank deeper.

El remained in her nun’s habit, fingers folded on her lap, gaze directed forward.

It felt as if he alone had come here wearing an unnecessary shell.

“It’s fine. This is the only thing I have for going out anyway. Once we get back to Darmbach, I have other—”

He paused for a moment, then continued as if trying to hide his embarrassment.

“You should be careful too, El. Don’t go stepping into puddles with all those frills.”

Her nun’s habit was tailored like a one-piece dress, and the hem reached below her ankles.

The ink-black fabric was thick, plain yet carefully woven, making a quiet rustle whenever she moved.

It completely hid the shackles around her ankles.

That was why she could wear it outside.

And yet, it was poorly suited for moving around outdoors.

The long hem easily brushed against damp soil and grass, and even a small step could slow her footwork.

Even so, El wore it as if it were only natural.

To her, it was her everyday clothing, not because she had chosen it, but because she had no other choice.

As Sora spoke, he became aware of the silver shackles hidden beneath her hem.

They should have been invisible.

And yet they were always there.

“Please.”

El spoke briefly to the driver, and the horses snorted.

The wagon bed sank slightly, and Sora and El’s bodies swayed.

With a creak, the carriage slowly began moving forward.

The road could hardly be called the village’s main street.

It was only a dirt road.

The wheels pressed into wet mud, and the sound of muck rose from below their feet.

The morning haze had not yet fully cleared, blurring the outlines of the thatched-roof houses.

The lingering scent of a fire mixed with the smell of wet wood, creating an air far too humble to be called the scent of departure.

El said nothing, facing forward.

The hem of her nun’s habit lay across the wood of the wagon bed, and only the rustle of fabric sounded like a whisper.

Beside her, Sora could not settle his hands on his knees and kept toying with the hem of his military uniform.

A dog stood at the side of the road, staring at them.

Was it seeing them off, or merely curious?

No villagers were there to see them off.

The only ones who knew this early morning road were dogs, chickens, and the two of them.

From the driver’s seat, the driver cleared his throat lightly.

The sound rang strangely loud, and Sora straightened his back a little.

As they approached the edge of the village, the road grew even rougher.

Whenever a wheel struck a stone and the wagon bed bounced, Sora’s body was jolted slightly.

El, beside him, leaned a little as well, but her posture never broke.

This person never wavers, even at times like this.

Thinking that, Sora looked down at his own feet and stirred the mud with the toe of his leather shoe.

The smell of the village still remained.

The smell of damp earth.

The smell drifting from the cowshed, like the body heat of animals.

Little by little, the wind carried it away.

When he glanced back, the church tower looked small.

Morning sunlight shone faintly against its reddish-brown brick walls.

At the edge of the roof stood the cross-shaped wooden frame used only for crucifixion.

Not a shape for prayer.

A shape for punishment.

Its shadow stretched long across the ground.

Would she return there?

Or would she never come back?

No answer came, no matter how much he thought.

The carriage simply continued on, calmly making its way out of the village.

The road leading out of the village was longer than he had expected.

The fields broke off, and the smell of soil thinned.

In its place came the scent of damp grass and the green smell of trees still holding night dew.

The wagon bed rattled, and every now and then, it struck a stone and shook hard.

Sora braced his legs against the unfamiliar impact.

Beside him, El sat as if letting the shaking pass through her, barely moving her upper body at all.

Her profile, staring calmly straight ahead, looked like a mask that showed not the slightest tremor of emotion.

The village houses were no longer visible.

When he looked back, only the tower of the reddish-brown brick church still floated small in the morning haze.

The crucifixion frame standing at the edge of its roof looked down at them in silence.

It seemed less like a symbol of the village than a proof of belonging—

a silent mark carved into them, telling them where they had come from.

El still faced forward.

Sora suppressed the urge to turn back again and again, lowered his gaze, and clenched his fist.

The sound of the horses’ hooves.

The sound of wheels parting the soil.

The driver’s occasional cough.

There was nothing else.

Time stretched.

For the first time, he learned that leaving the village could be this quiet and this heavy.

The village houses were no longer visible.

The fields, the stone walls, the low trails of smoke—

all of it had melted beyond the haze.

He looked back again.

The reddish-brown church tower stood alone in the morning mist.

At the edge of its roof, the cross-shaped wooden frame for crucifixion.

It was not merely part of the building.

Before, looking back at that place had meant something.

Because El had been there.

Because it had been the place he returned to.

But now it was different.

El was beside him, and the carriage was moving forward.

This was not a journey premised on returning.

It was a movement that carried something still unseen.

Not a journey that made him conscious of the road back, but a feeling as if he were being taken toward the far side of an emotion that did not exist on any map.

What would happen from here?

How far would they go, and what would be decided?

There was also the possibility that they would return with nothing decided at all.

Still turned around, Sora looked at the tower once more.

El was not there.

And there, the same meaning as before no longer remained.

Though it had not even begun yet, something had already started to change.

The road entered a gentle downhill slope, and the carriage wheels occasionally struck pebbles with a sharp sound.

The sky had grown fully bright.

The morning haze had pulled away into the distance, and the line of windbreak trees beyond the grassland now stood out clearly.

Sora had traveled the road to Darmbach many times.

Every long break from officer school, he had returned along this road from the opposite direction.

But now, where his feet were headed was not “the way back.”

This time, something was different.

Perhaps that was why.

Suddenly, he wanted to speak.

When silence went on too long, he wanted to throw even a single word into the air.

“So, your business in Darmbach… what are we going there for again?”

El did not hurry to answer.

She looked beyond the grassland, her back swaying faintly with the rocking of the carriage.

At last, she opened her mouth.

“Just something. I’m going to meet someone.”

“Oh…”

It was a simpler answer than he had expected.

She did not say who she was meeting.

Or why she was meeting them.

Sora stopped pressing.

Because it felt as if that answer had already been prepared.

It was not so much evasion as a reply meant from the beginning to keep him from touching the heart of it.

Yes.

It was the quiet defense of someone who had decided not to show something.

The hem of her nun’s habit swayed faintly in the wind.

Remembering the shackles beneath it, he looked away.

The words going to meet someone felt unusually far away.

The horses’ pace gradually quickened, and the driver’s figure dissolved into the sunlight.

Only the silence left in the wagon bed made the weight of their conversation stand out more clearly.

“Do you want breakfast now?”

El’s voice melted into the rocking of the wagon bed and sounded a little softer.

“Yeah.”

Sora nodded and took the sandwich she handed him.

The carriage’s vibration reached his body in a steady rhythm, and when he bit into the bread amid that instability, the taste of salty ham and slightly sharp leafy greens spread across his tongue.

Such an ordinary meal made the morning of the journey feel real.

“Come to think of it, you’re traveling light, El.”

When he looked, there was only one basket at her feet.

It felt almost as if she were going on a picnic.

But from here to Darmbach was more than eight hours one way.

If she had business to finish, it would likely require an overnight stay, and yet she had no change of clothes, nothing.

El lifted the corner of her mouth slightly and answered as though stating the obvious.

“…Same as the clothes. I’m a slave. I don’t own anything worth bringing.”

That was the wrong thing to say, Sora thought.

But in that instant, a small sense of unease remained inside him.

El’s tone sounded like a mere listing of facts.

No sadness.

No self-deprecation.

No resignation.

That made it all the more unnatural.

She is hiding something.

That thought remained as a stir in the depths of his chest.

The carriage continued on calmly.

Beyond the swaying view, the grassland’s green shone in the sunlight.

Even while chewing the bread, Sora could not swallow the echo of El’s words.

Couldn’t she borrow something from the Sister?

The words rose to his throat, but Sora swallowed them.

Instead, El opened her mouth first, as if giving the answer before he could ask.

“And if I end up needing something, you’ll buy it for me, won’t you? You’re my master, after all.”

She laughed lightly and bit the edge of her sandwich.

If the words alone were taken out, they sounded like a joke.

But at the bottom of her voice was a flat resonance like a cold water surface, and that made it sound somehow serious too.

So that’s what this is, Sora thought.

But in the depths of his chest, another emotion stirred.

Master.

The position formally registered to him through the shackle.

Only when she called him that did its weight become reality, not merely form.

Even knowing it was only for the duration of the journey, something inside his body grew hot.

Too fragile to call possession.

And yet, an unequal relationship of power existed there.

The sound of chewing bread.

The sound of wheels parting the dirt.

The horses’ breathing.

Amid the sounds of travel mixing together, Sora gripped the hem of his jacket tightly with his fingers, forcing down the stir inside him.

“You’re my master, after all.”

Saying that, El brushed off some bread crumbs and turned her gaze forward again, as if to say the topic was over.

Sora searched for words.

What could he say to fill this silence?

But he could not find anything.

“…So, what are you really going there for?”

In the end, all he could do was throw out a direct question.

El tilted her head slightly, rested her cheek on one hand, and smiled thinly.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know…”

“Then keep thinking. The answer is something to look forward to once we meet them.”

She had sidestepped him.

Not because she chose not to answer.

From the beginning, she had no intention of handing that answer to Sora.

That was the tone of her voice.

He started to say something more, then stopped.

Once he knew that a door would not open no matter how hard he pushed, he no longer felt like wasting strength on it.

Only the horses’ hooves and the creaking of the wheels returned between them.

That silence was much heavier than before.

After a while, fences began appearing along the roadside.

A dry wind blew, and the smell of grass thinned.

Farmers were no longer in sight.

In the distance, a flock of birds circled.

Mixed with the smell of damp earth, a scent like burned oil brushed his nose.

Smoke drifting from the factory district near the outskirts.

The ground changed into a hard gravel road, and the wheels clattered over it.

The horses’ breathing grew a little rougher.

Human voices began to appear here and there.

It was scenery he should have known well, and yet today it looked different.

Not returning to the city.

Stepping into the city.

That feeling spread through his chest.

El shifted herself to the edge of the wagon bed and straightened the hem of her skirt, almost as if preparing to receive it.

Ahead, a large roof came into view.

A small station where trains bound for Darmbach arrived and departed.

White walls and a red tile roof.

In front of the station building, travelers and merchants carrying luggage had gathered, and lines of carriages came and went without pause.

The smell of oil overlapped with the heat of human bodies.

The clear air of the country road was gone.

The driver pulled the reins briefly.

The carriage slowed, and the creaking of wood grew louder.

To Sora, that sound felt heavier than a train whistle.

“…We’re here.”

El murmured softly.

Sora could only nod.

What would happen from here?

No answer came, no matter how much he thought.

The moment the carriage stopped, noise surged in around them.

The breathing of horses, the driver’s short calls, and beyond them, the sound of cargo being unloaded.

In the square before the station, travelers and merchants formed clusters, and sales cries and bargaining voices crossed over one another.

The smell of burned oil, the dampness of yesterday’s rain soaked into the heat of the stone pavement, and the sweet scent of a stall stacked with dried fruit all layered together and reached his nose.

Sora straightened the hem of his military uniform and breathed out deeply.

The station building, which should have been familiar, felt strangely large and far away today.

Under the red tile roof, a metal clock announced the time with no tact at all.

El stepped down from the wagon bed first.

Lifting her hem so she would not step on it, she headed toward the station building without hesitation.

The ink-black of her nun’s habit carried a strange quietness amid the disorderly crowd.

Sora was caught by the sight of her back, then hurried after her.

A long line had formed in front of the ticket window.

The clothing of those waiting varied widely, from the rough hemp garments of farmers to cloaks embroidered with gold thread.

The smell of oiled hair, animal hide, and sweat-thick human heat filled the air.

“…Sora, buy them.”

El said it softly.

It was neither an order nor a request, but spoken simply as a matter of course.

Sora nodded and took out his wallet.

Coins rang dryly inside his pocket.

When his turn came, the small station clerk handed over the tickets without even raising his face.

The stiff paper touching his palm had a strangely realistic weight.

More than eight hours one way.

It was not merely paper.

It was a pass that guaranteed their separation from the everyday.

When they stepped onto the platform, a downbound train stood before them.

A carriage on this side, bound toward Hansa Village.

The soot-dark iron body exhaled white steam, and the smell of metal drifted on the wind.

A few people were boarding, and the sound of carriage cargo being loaded echoed somewhere in the distance.

But the upbound train they would take had not yet arrived.

Sora saw a station attendant changing the signboard and understood it would take about ten more minutes.

“…It isn’t here yet.”

El murmured, placing the small basket that served as her luggage at her feet.

Sora nodded silently and put his hand into the pocket of his military uniform.

Why was waiting time so restless?

He was only standing there, and yet the core of his body felt itchy.

There were so many things he wanted to ask.

Who she would meet in Darmbach.

Why she was taking him along.

But even if he asked here, he doubted El would answer.

On the far side of the platform, passengers who had gotten off the downbound train left while chatting.

People with the faces of those whose journeys had ended, and the two of them, about to begin one.

That alone made this place feel like a boundary line.

El silently watched the rails.

Sora became conscious of the sensation of the shackles around her slim ankles and quickly looked away.

To fill the time, he tried starting a conversation.

“So, what are you going to Darmbach for?”

El turned her face toward him just a little, but her answer was simple.

“To meet someone.”

“Who?”

“Secret.”

The conversation stopped there.

Sora changed the topic.

“How was the village while I was gone?”

“Nothing in particular.”

A calm answer.

Nothing continued beyond that.

Whether she did not want to talk, or he was simply poor at drawing things out, he did not know.

Either way, the words dissolved into the air and disappeared.

He lowered his eyes to the stone pavement at his feet and felt the silence grow heavy.

The cloying smell of fried sweets being sold nearby drifted through the air, making him even more uncomfortable.

The hands of the clock on the platform crawled forward.

Before they reached the ten, a low rumble approached from the distance.

Vibration from the rails trembled through the soles of his shoes, and a faint wind pushed the platform air.

“It’s here.”

El said softly.

At the end of her gaze, a black body was approaching.

White steam spread like haze, and the smell of metal and heat surged toward them all at once.

Sora drew in a deep breath.

As if pressing down, deep in his lungs, the roughness left behind by the embers of their conversation.

A low, undulating ground roar approached from the far end of the tracks.

The rails cried out, and the platform floor trembled faintly.

The huge black-iron body appeared, breathing up steam.

Its soot-blackened frame gleamed darkly, covering the platform with creaking metallic sounds.

It was a sight he should have been used to.

To Sora, a train was only a means of transportation he used to go back and forth every half year.

A tool to fill the time between the Imperial Capital, Darmbach, and Hansa Village.

But today, it looked different.

It silently thrust at him the fact that this journey did not mean a simple visit home or return.

That difference made the mass of iron feel strangely enormous.

El held down the hem of her nun’s habit and walked to the edge of the platform with the caution of someone approaching something for the first time.

The slight awkwardness in her movements told him that she rarely rode trains.

Sora stepped ahead and climbed the steps as if guiding her.

The cold of the iron handrail clung to his palm, and the heavy vibration rising from beneath his feet sank into his body.

A sensation he should have known well.

For some reason, today, it would not settle him.

El followed and passed through the door.

Inside, the air was filled with the smell of oil, iron, and human heat.

The leather seats creaked, and conversations crossed with the sound of luggage bumping against things.

El stopped for an instant and looked around.

The small tension that appeared in her profile pricked Sora’s chest.

The door closed heavily, and the train continued groaning as it breathed out its inner heat.

The dull light inside ruled over reality, and the outside world was already far away.

The leather seats were worn from use, with small tears in the seams of the backs.

The wheels began turning heavily, and the regular vibration of iron biting into rails came up through the floor.

For Sora, it was a sensation he had experienced many times.

But today was different.

It was not part of the ordinary return route he had repeated every half year.

It carried the omen that something irreversible was beginning.

Because of that, even the familiar smell of iron stirred unease in the depths of his chest.

El sat by the window and did not move, her gaze fixed outside.

As soon as they left the village station, the sky changed to a red-tinged gray, and the boundary between night and morning retreated behind them.

She continued following that light without blinking, as if refusing to miss it.

The gaze of someone unaccustomed to trains, mixed with tension and curiosity.

Sora stole glances at her profile and tried to say something, but his words scattered into the air.

After they had been away from the village for about an hour, the scenery outside the window became rolling hills as far as the eye could see.

Blue-green wheat heads streamed in the wind, and from the woods along the tracks came the constant voices of birds.

The season was high summer.

The air inside the car had already begun to gather dampness, making every breath heavy.

Sora opened his mouth again.

“Who are you meeting in Darmbach?”

El tilted her head just a little, but her answer was one word.

“Someone.”

“…Who?”

“Secret.”

Nothing followed after that.

Unable to find an opening for conversation, silence took root between them.

The rocking of the train seemed to emphasize that silence all the more.

At the intermediate stations, passengers came and went.

A farmer-looking man boarded with a large basket, followed by a middle-aged soldier wearing a military cap.

Each of them talked, set down their luggage, and filled the car with smell and noise.

The scent of dry straw mingled with the smell of metal oil, overlapping with the sweat of a long journey and the iron stench of the train, making the air inside even thicker.

Even in that bustle, El kept looking outside alone, burning into her eyes the scenery that still seemed like an extension of the village.

Her gaze was distant.

It was hard to tell whether she was watching the fields and woods passing before her, or something farther ahead.

Eventually, the time came when the sun lit the inside of the car white.

If one were looking at a clock, it would be around eleven.

Their bodies, seated since morning, had slowly grown heavy, and a dull ache had gathered in his hips and back from being pressed against the hard seat.

Sora stretched lightly, letting his back crack, then took out the sandwiches he had brought and offered one to El.

“Want some?”

El had taken off her shoes and placed her feet on the seat across from her—Sora’s side—hugging her knees.

She gave a small nod and accepted it without hesitation.

The floor beneath her bare soles was cold, and the train’s fine vibrations traveled straight through it.

It was too modest a meal to be called lunch.

And yet, it meant more than simply filling their stomachs.

Even without words, just eating together made Sora feel as if they had drawn a little closer.

After they were full, drowsiness took over the car.

The rhythm of the wheels went on like a lullaby, and several passengers had fallen asleep in their seats.

Sora closed his eyes as well, but he could not fully sink into sleep.

The sense of El beside him—occasionally shifting her posture, then looking out the window—remained unbroken at the bottom of his awareness.

As the train moved into the afternoon, the scenery changed.

The grasslands disappeared, and rugged stone huts and factories vomiting soot from their chimneys began to appear.

The smell of burned oil and coal smoke slipped in through the gaps around the window, making his lungs feel heavy.

The smell of the city.

A sign that the Imperial Capital was near.

For the first time, El pulled her gaze away from the window and breathed out.

“…It’s changing.”

Her voice belonged both to someone who knew the journey was ending

and to someone preparing herself for something.

Sora did not know how to receive that voice, so he only nodded.

He still did not know the true purpose of this journey, or what El really intended.

All he knew was that the enormous mouth called the Imperial Capital was about to swallow them.

The train slowed, and the creak of the couplings trailed on for a long time.

Outside the window were rows of orderly buildings, broad stone-paved roads, carriages and people moving in lines.

The rural scenery had vanished completely, and the outline of the Imperial Capital, Darmbach, pressed close before them.

Sora drew in a deep breath.

The city he should have visited every half year now looked as if it carried an alien weight.

El sat silently at the edge of her seat, hands folded, strength gathered in her fingertips.

Sora could not ask what that gesture meant.

And so began the long journey

of a boy in military uniform

and a girl in a nun’s habit.

■A Day Out with El

The Holy Vermerde Empire, the Imperial Capital of Darmbach.

A great metropolis of two million people, territory under the direct control of the Emperor.

A colossal vessel where the smells of iron, stone, and power mingled, its breath reaching even from far away.

Viewed from the hills, rows of scarlet roofs rolled like waves, countless houses surging all the way to the edge of the horizon.

Threading between them were white stone sidewalks spread like blood vessels, and along roads deeply scored by wheel-worn ruts, carriages and people passed without end.

It was like looking into the body of some enormous living creature.

The scenery that had overwhelmed Sora every time he left the village was now part of his “living sphere.”

But today was a little different.

El was beside him.

The first thing to greet those who visited the Imperial Capital by train was the imposing train shed.

A canopy of soot-stained iron frames and cloudy glass covered dozens of terminals.

Layer upon layer of arched skeletons supported the sky, and the countless glass panes set into them, dimmed by soot, caught the white sunlight and gleamed dully.

Near the ceiling, enormous ventilation pipes breathed out steam like exhalations, and a thin white mist drifted through the air.

The sound of compressed air burst everywhere, and locomotive cylinders groaned.

The whistle of a train just now departing filled the station, shaking the steel beams and resonating deep in the gut.

On the track opposite, a car that had just arrived screamed with an earsplitting brake noise, iron shrieking against iron in a high-pitched cry.

From farther in came the cries of livestock packed thickly into a freight train, echoing as if crawling along the walls.

The neighing of horses, the short bleats of sheep, the beating of wings—

all of it dissolved and mingled high beneath the ceiling, scattering the vitality of an urban animal trail.

In the passageways, merchants carrying leather bags shouted at one another, while laborers pushing carts dragged creaking wheels through the crowd.

The smell of oil-wet iron, coal smoke, and the sweat of humans after long journeys blended together, filling the nose as one heavy atmosphere.

Children’s shrill laughter, an old woman’s scolding, short whistle signals, the distant burst of steam valves—

countless sounds tangled together, and yet rang out as the rhythm of the city.

A giant mechanism with the majesty of a temple and the breathing of a living thing.

The symbol of civilization called the railway creaked with its whole body, exhaled steam, and swallowed travelers only to spit them out again.

Beneath that formidable roof, El stopped and looked up.

Her reddish black hair, bathed in pale light, swayed shortly.

Surprise dwelled deep in her eyes, and she pressed her lips together as if trying to hide it.

Fresh from the train journey, she looked almost like a pilgrim from a foreign land who had just passed through the gate.

Seeing that gaze, Sora felt a strange pride.

He had not built this place.

He did not own it.

Even so, this was his city.

The place where half of him lived.

He felt as though the scenery of the Imperial Capital were unfolding as a stage meant for El to see.

A misplaced pride filled his chest, like he was showing someone around his own home.

Once they passed through the arrival platform, the heartbeat of the Imperial Capital surged in all at once.

Under the great canopy of iron and glass, countless people continued moving.

Soldiers in uniform, merchants in traveling clothes, pilgrims in nun’s habits, laborers carrying luggage.

The dry strike of leather heels on stone floors, the calls of hawkers, and the remnants of train whistles mixed together, and the terminal murmured like an enormous organ.

Steam drifted through the air, and the smell of oil mingled with incense filled the nose.

Overhead, iron frames spread like a spiderweb, and summer’s white light poured down through the gaps.

El, her small body buried in the waves of people, stopped for a while.

Her gaze stretched deep into the canopy, quiet enough to make even the murmur of the crowd feel distant.

The hem of her nun’s habit swayed faintly with the presence of people flowing past, and her short reddish-black hair softly reflected the light above.

She looked like a pilgrim standing still, unable to fully receive the outside world.

Sora stood beside her and followed her gaze.

Above the Imperial Capital, a colossal holy sigil glowed faintly.

A figure of light, as if carved into the sky itself, floated like a canopy covering the entire city, and at its center hung a halo.

A symbol of faith.

Proof that the power of God looked down upon this city.

Sora narrowed his eyes.

It was a sight he saw once every half year, and yet something in the depths of his chest stung.

That light seemed to thrust before them the enormous order that existed beyond their small everyday lives.

El lowered her gaze and breathed out deeply.

In that gesture was a shadow that could have been awe or resignation, and Sora lost his words.

The two of them pushed open the terminal’s heavy doors and stepped out into the city.

Under dazzling white light, a broad stone-paved avenue stretched straight ahead, lined with scarlet roofs and spires rising like a forest.

Carriage wheels carved into ruts, bells rang in the distance, and human voices swirled.

The Imperial Capital, Darmbach—

it was not merely a city, but a giant mechanism breathing together with the symbol of God.

Anti-Demon Victory Day was approaching.

Along the passage leading toward the station front, people already hurried back and forth, busy with preparations.

Instruments polished for the parade gleamed, merchants laid out commemorative goods and flags, and small children’s flags and imitation medals were already being sold.

In the square, temporary viewing stands were being assembled, and a platform for the commemorative address was covered in cloth.

Citizens buzzed in anticipation of a festival that had not yet arrived, and posters praising the victory were hung from every streetlamp.

The real day was still several days away.

But the Imperial Capital was already being wrapped in the first stirrings of celebration.

Sora led her to the Central Church, which towered at the heart of the Imperial Capital.

Or rather, he had no choice but to take her there.

“I have to go to the largest church in Darmbach.”

That was what El had said.

Her voice had carried a strength that refused any room for explanation.

Along the way, Darmbach was filled with the pulse of the approaching Anti-Demon Victory Day.

Stalls for the commemorative market already lined the streets, and the sweet smell of baked confections and the scent of food fried in oil drifted through the steam-mixed air.

Merchants held up souvenirs and small flags bearing the Imperial Capital crest, while children ran about with imitation medals pinned to their chests.

“Look over there. There are more stalls than last year.”

Sora sometimes stopped and spoke to her as if guiding her around.

“Oh.”

“…Hmm.”

El did look when prompted, but showed no further interest.

The sweet smells, the heat of the passing citizens—

to her, they seemed to be nothing more than scenery from the outside world.

On her profile was the shadow of a thought cut off from the festival before her eyes.

They passed through the streets, advanced along the main avenue, and stood before a building whose spires pierced the heavens.

The church seated at the heart of the Imperial Capital had solemn holy sigils carved into its stone walls, and cast the shadow of the halo that pierced the canopy above.

Standing before the enormous doors, El erased her expression as if determined not to let anyone see anything, even in the face of its overwhelming majesty.

She was restless the entire time.

Even as they walked, she kept her hands clasped before her chest, turning her thumbs around and around.

That small motion was a sign of anxiety being released without words.

Seeing that gesture at the edge of his vision, Sora could no longer bear the silence and spoke.

“…What business do you have in Darmbach?”

“…”

“Did something happen in the village?”

Her answers were vague and short.

Each question bounced off her outer shell and never reached deeply inside.

Topics did not connect, and bridges made of words collapsed almost immediately.

Sora did not know whether he was poor at asking, or whether she was refusing to speak.

Only the church bells rang out high as if to fill that gap, making the silence between them stand out all the more.

On the way, Sora briefly thought about telling her something about his school life in Darmbach.

Things that had happened in the dormitory.

Mistakes he had made in class.

His daily life as an officer cadet.

But he was not confident that El would listen with any interest.

Besides, she was looking somewhere far away.

Even as they walked, her gaze seemed aimed not at the stones of the street, but at some other invisible place.

In the end, Sora could not say anything.

The excitement he had felt when he learned he would be able to go out with El had vanished somewhere.

They were walking side by side, and yet there was a distance between them that could not be filled.

No words came to him that might catch her attention.

They only sank into the depths of his chest.

The bustle of the Imperial Capital was something that should normally have stirred his heart.

The noise of street stalls, the sound of carriage wheels scraping stone pavement, the shadow of the white holy sigil falling across the street.

All of it had become scenery that merely passed through his chest.

The murmur of people did not sound like noise, but like a film, only separating Sora from the outside world.

El slipped past Sora and caught a nearby Sister before speaking.

“I am Kivanagran. I have come regarding a successor child. I have a Companion.”

Her voice had no inflection.

It was calm, and yet strained to an abnormal degree.

Sora could not understand.

Companion.

And the fact that she had deliberately given the ugly name, Kivanagran.

Was it for some official procedure?

Or some other reason?

The one thing he knew for certain was that he had almost never seen her speak that name herself.

El’s full name was Elhianos Kivanagran Protagoras.

Protagoras was her father’s surname, with a safer and more ordinary sound.

But Kivanagran was different.

An ancient surname passed down through the maternal line for thousands of years, inherited like blood.

That name was always whispered together with a certain scandal and fate.

The instant it was spoken, Sora felt the surrounding air sink by one degree,

as if cold air were rising from the bottom of a dark well.

Sora stood there in silence.

Unable even to measure the weight of those words, he could only stand in place and watch her back.

El’s reddish-black hair reflected the pale light, and her shadow wavered against the white stone wall.

The Sister El had spoken to nodded with a businesslike smile and immediately called over another Sister.

Following her guidance, the two of them proceeded deeper inside.

Their footsteps beat a rhythm across the polished stone floor, and with each sound, the stillness around them seemed to deepen.

In a beautiful inner room, they were met by another Sister.

She cast them a gaze that seemed to see all the way into the backs of their eyes, then passed them on once again.

“Ah—the prayer for a successor child. Very well. Come with me.”

Her words were gentle, but there was something irresistible in them.

As if everything had already been decided, they carried a resonance that allowed no room for refusal.

Sora had no choice but to follow.

He should have been used to life in the Imperial Capital.

And yet, ever since setting foot in this place, something had been pressing against his chest.

A nobility so intense it felt suffocating.

Though he normally never thought about God, for some reason he could not help becoming conscious of that name.

The farther they went inside, the denser that feeling became.

It was a space too vast for the word large to be enough.

Overhead, a white dome rose so high it seemed to pierce the heavens, spreading like the canopy of the world itself.

The exposed concrete surface was almost raw in its smoothness, and as if breaking the uniform whiteness, rows of spindle-shaped windows like the ribs of an umbrella let in several shafts of bluish-white sunlight.

The light was cold and clear, yet so strong it seemed it might burn if touched.

Its brilliance brought each enormous stone pillar supporting the dome into sharp relief and cast long shadows across the floor.

The stone pillars stood there silently like ancient giants, and along with the walls, they were completely covered in countless patterns and relief sculptures.

Curves like tangled plant vines.

Groups of soldiers raising weapons.

Mystic beasts he had never seen before.

Bathed in sunlight, they alternated between chalk-white radiance and deep shadow, making the space itself seem to breathe as if alive.

“Whoa… The Imperial Capital still had a place like this…?”

The words slipped out of Sora before he could stop them.

The sight was enough to make even him, someone who should have been accustomed to the Imperial Capital, stare in awe.

Only now was he forced to realize how many layers of history this city held.

But El was different.

She paid no attention to its overwhelming grandeur and simply stared straight ahead at one point.

Following her gaze, he saw a stone monument standing prominently at the center of the hall, directly beneath the dome.

The letters carved into it were deep enough to read even without drawing close.

“Eli and Yurm rest here.”

There was no need to think about what those names meant.

Eli and Yurm.

The names of the Creator Gods said to have made this world and first walked upon the stars.

Eli was the Earth Mother Goddess.

Yurm was the God of Sexual Love.

They were the foundation of myth that every orphan was taught at the orphanage, known to everyone.

Before those letters, Sora felt the air beyond El’s shoulder tighten faintly.

In this space filled with light, she alone seemed to stand still like a shadow stitched into place.

Ah.

I see.

Sora finally realized.

El was looking at Yurm’s name.

As if each carved letter were calling her closer like a wound that remained raw even after a thousand years.

The Kivanagran surname had become an ugly name because of an event in the past.

A history soaked in blood, violence, and betrayal, surrounding Yurm, the God of Sexual Love.

Because of that incident, the name Kivanagran had become infamous throughout the Empire, earning cold gazes in the Imperial Capital and in remote frozen villages alike.

What El was staring at now was not merely the name of a god.

That name was like a curse that had bound her family and dragged them down to the status of slaves.

And Sora finally understood how much pain it must have taken for her to name herself by that name.

El did not move.

She did not pray.

She did not kneel.

She only stood there.

Like a statue that had been standing in that place for hundreds of years, silent, fragile, and seeming as though she would collapse if touched.

As he looked at her profile, something heavy settled in Sora’s chest as well.

He tried to speak to her, but he did not know what to say.

Calling out to her felt as though it might break her as she was now, so he could only stand there in place.

“El… are you okay?”

His voice reached her.

But the motion that was supposed to follow stopped in midair.

Only a few centimeters.

The hand he had meant to place on her shoulder ended with nothing more than stroking the air.

It was a gesture so timid that even he was surprised by it.

Deep in his chest, another voice spoke.

That would not be a hand meant to care for her.

It would become a hand that wanted to touch her.

The raw emotion dwelling in his fingertips would stain what should have been a simple gesture of comfort.

So he stopped.

He had no choice but to stop.

As a result, nothing reached El.

Her shoulder remained there, defenseless.

He had wanted to stand close to her, and yet that instant of hesitation had ruined everything.

Shame slowly heated his cheeks.

Surely, she did not know about his hesitation.

But even if she did, she would probably say nothing.

The slight distance between them felt like an eternal divide.

“I’m fine.”

El’s voice was calm, like a blade stripped of any useless rise and fall of emotion.

Yet beneath that cool tone, he could sense that she had sealed her inner self tightly shut and set herself within this place of prayer as something immovable.

Her short reddish-black hair swayed faintly with the movement of her neck.

No fear or relief appeared on her face.

Only a resolve resembling resignation seemed carved into it, as if saying: I am doing this because it is necessary.

As Sora looked at her profile, the hand stopped in midair lost its place, and in the end, all he could do was lower it.

“Now, kneel behind me, please. For the time being, you too.”

The Sister’s words merely announced the steps of the ritual in a solemn, orderly way, but to Sora’s ears, they sounded almost like a kind of salvation.

It was not that he was being asked to share the tension of the place.

Rather, he had been given the position of a mere observer, and that brought relief to the depths of his heart.

The phrase “for the time being” showed how light a role Sora, an outsider, was expected to play here.

At the same time, it was a boundary line clearly marking a realm he could not enter.

“Now I will offer the prayer. Repeat it in your mind, and then recite only the closing phrase after me.”

Having said that, the Sister let her hem sway and knelt quietly beside El.

The white fabric of her habit scraped against the stone floor with a dry sound.

Light poured in from the high windows, drawing a pale outline along her back.

It was the figure of one who bore the presence of God.

Sora followed her example and bent his knees, receiving the cold of the stone floor through both legs.

But more than that cold, he understood through a wordless intuition that what he was now about to touch was the deep abyss of El’s past and fate.

The air here was different from the bustle of the city or the training grounds of the academy.

There was a tension that made even a single breath feel as though it had to be taken carefully, or the scene before him might break.

El’s back moved slightly.

The moment he saw the outline of her slender shoulder blades beneath the fabric, Sora became intensely aware once again of the warmth of the shoulder he had failed to touch, and he felt sharply that he could not cross that distance.

The Sister’s words of prayer began to echo through the vast space.

Each word and phrase was drawn up into the high ceiling, passed through the spaces between the stone pillars, and eventually mingled with the silence.

All Sora could do was follow the words in his mind.

He shaped them inside his mouth, but did not give them voice.

El’s back leaned forward slightly, and so much strength filled her clasped fingers that they turned white.

“Almighty Lord, our ancestor and origin.

Our Lords who dwell here, Eli and Yurm.

And among them, Lord Yurm.

Please lend your ear to the petition of Kivanagran,

one who stands here bearing your punishment.

She who stands here is one who, from this day onward,

will live out her life according to your command.

For this, we ask one thing of you.

She who stands here is one who bears your punishment

and has lived until now for atonement.

And throughout her life, she shall remain one who bears your punishment.

Yet we ask you,

please forgive that this punishment not be given to the child to come.

By your mercy, please forgive this.

We shall keep your holy commandments

and continue striving to accord with your will.

Please show the child to come your path.

By blessing, act in proxy.

Nortis.”

“By blessing, act in proxy. Nortis.”

El and Sora’s voices spoke only the closing phrase, and the sound echoed back.

Then, at last, complete silence arrived.

It was a prayer he had never heard before.

Even he, an orphan born and raised in the church, had never once heard those words.

A prayer for a family line kept at a distance in theological teachings, whose name people had even avoided speaking aloud.

The first thing that startled him was that such a thing existed at all.

But before his ears could memorize its sound, his chest understood it first.

Ah.

I see.

This is a prayer for El.

And a prayer for El’s child.

No wonder El had hesitated to say the purpose of this trip in the street.

To put it into words would be to declare the curse carried by her own blood.

What it meant to be born as one who inherited Kivanagran blood—

explaining that to him must have been a pain like having her throat torn open.

The pain of naming again, in front of another person, a fate forced on her from birth.

A weight he could not fully imagine had always rested on El’s shoulders.

Was that why she had brought him here?

Sora suddenly thought so.

Even after witnessing this prayer, he was certain he would not think badly of El.

No.

Perhaps she had known that too.

Companion.

Not merely an escort.

Someone who could touch her wound and neither reject nor deny her.

Someone present here as that kind of existence.

Had she chosen him for that?

He did not know whether that was right.

But as he looked at El’s small back, he could not help thinking it.

El trusts me.

When that thought pierced into his chest, something warm slowly spread from within.

It was as if her heart, which should have been far away all this time, had suddenly been placed right beside his palm.

No.

Even if that was only an illusion, it was enough.

The fact that El had needed him this much was valuable enough on its own.

I might be willing to think about marriage.

Those words replayed again and again in the back of his ears.

Think about it.

Did that mean acceptance?

Or merely a reprieve?

Between hope and anxiety, the outline of the words blurred.

What if that single phrase had only been a fishing line meant to test him?

What if she still had not reached a conclusion?

When he thought that, the part of himself that desperately tried to find meaning in those words seemed terribly shallow.

Even so, he was happy.

Happy that El had spoken the word marriage between the two of them.

Too soon.

He knew that.

And yet the hope deep in his chest was impossible to suppress, spreading outward like a pulse.

El remained kneeling, staring at the stone monument with only her eyes as if piercing it.

Her hands were clasped, but her fingertips trembled faintly, pressed so hard against one another that her nails bit white into the skin.

Her lips were closed, yet her throat moved slightly up and down, and he could see her suppressed breathing ripple deep in her chest.

Her hard profile said that from the beginning of the journey to this moment, she had known everything.

But precisely because she knew, resignation clung to every edge of her posture: she still had to stand here.

She did not look away.

Yet her eyelids had lowered halfway, and shadows that blocked the light gathered beneath her lashes.

The hem of her nun’s habit stirred faintly, reminding him of the shackles hidden there.

A girl stitched in place by a merciless system with no escape had, as the smallest fragment of her will, chosen who she would be with.

The trace of that choice dwelled in her trembling fingertips and her taut nape.

“The prayer is now finished. Next—please follow the Sister over there.”

“If you give me a child,” El said, her eyes lowered toward the corner of the room, “then maybe I’ll marry you.”

The words were quiet.

Too quiet.

They did not sound like a joke, or a bargain, or a confession. They sounded like something that had been sealed inside her for far too long and had finally slipped out on its own.

She walked to the bed.

Her steps should have seemed hesitant, but they were strangely steady—the steps of someone who had been afraid for a long time, and had learned that fear did not excuse her from moving forward.

She sat down.

Her hands folded tightly in her lap. Not gently. Not like prayer. Her fingers pressed into one another until the tips flushed pale pink, as if she were holding herself together by force.

Sora could not move.

The documents lay heavy in his hands.

The national seal.

The words Succession Genesis.

Immediate response. Postponement. Refusal.

Every line on the page had turned her future into an instruction.

And every instruction pointed toward the same cruel truth.

El had not brought him here because this was what she wanted.

She had brought him here because this was the one part of the cage she was still allowed to choose.

“Tell me what to do,” Sora almost said.

But the words died before they reached his mouth.

He had already failed her once by saying something close to that. He had spent years asking her to marry him, years offering the same bright, reckless promise, and now that the promise had been placed before him in its most brutal form, he had frozen.

That shame burned worse than fear.

El looked away from him.

Her small shoulders were tense beneath the ink-black fabric of her habit. Her face was calm, almost too calm, but the stillness did not fool him anymore. He could see it in the way she held her breath. In the way her thumbs pressed together. In the way she sat on the edge of that bed as if it were not a bed at all, but the last step before a sentence was carried out.

Then, softly, she said,

“Quickly.”

The word struck him harder than any command could have.

Sora took one step toward her.

Then stopped.

Because the moment he saw her eyes, he understood.

She was not asking him to love her.

She was asking him to help her survive.

And if he mistook that for permission to take what he wanted, then he would be no different from the system that had placed her in this room.

“El.”

His voice came out rough.

She lifted her gaze.

Her deep green eyes were steady, but beneath that steadiness something trembled. Resolve, fear, resignation, prayer—he could not separate them. They were all there at once.

Sora sat beside her, leaving a careful space between them.

The bed shifted under his weight.

For a moment neither of them spoke. Through the open window came the faint sound of leaves moving in the garden, and somewhere far beyond the walls, a bell rang once.

He reached for her hand.

Slowly.

Not because he was afraid of touching her.

Because he was afraid of touching her for the wrong reason.

El’s fingers twitched when his touched them, but she did not pull away.

Her hand was cold.

Too cold.

Sora wrapped both of his hands around it.

Not to claim it.

To warm it.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

El went still.

The silence that followed was so sharp it felt like the room itself had stopped breathing.

Sora forced himself to continue before that silence could become another wound.

“Not like this.”

Her fingers tightened once inside his.

“Then you’re refusing?”

“No.”

The answer came faster than thought.

“No. I’m not refusing you.”

He turned toward the side table, toward the documents waiting there like a second set of witnesses.

“I’m refusing this room. This hour. The idea that your life can be reduced to five hours and a seal.”

El stared at him.

For the first time since they had entered the room, something in her expression broke—not into tears, not into relief, but into confusion so fragile it was almost pain.

“But if you refuse…”

“I’m not refusing.”

Sora reached for the papers.

His eyes found the line again.

Postponement.

A duty of effort before the end of her heavenly mandate.

His chest tightened around the words.

They were still a chain.

Still a threat.

Still the Empire pretending that a cage was mercy because it had more than one lock.

But among the choices laid before them, it was the only one that did not ask him to become another hand pushing her down.

“I’ll sign the pledge,” he said.

El’s breath caught.

Sora looked back at her.

“I’ll take responsibility. I’ll stand beside you. I’ll fight this with you, if there’s any way to fight it. And if there isn’t—then I’ll still be there. But I won’t make this decision by using your fear as permission.”

For a long moment, El said nothing.

Her lips parted slightly, then closed again.

The hand in his trembled.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“No. You don’t.”

Her voice was thin now. Not cold. Thin.

“If we leave this room with only a postponement, nothing goes away. The deadline stays. The blood stays. Kivanagran stays. I still have to—”

“I know.”

“You don’t.”

This time, the words shook.

Sora lowered his eyes.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe he did not understand. Not fully. Not the way she did. He had not carried that name. He had not lived beneath that mark. He had not been told, since childhood, that his body belonged first to bloodline, law, and punishment, and only afterward to himself.

But he understood one thing.

If he answered her fear with his desire, he would never forgive himself.

And maybe, someday, she would not forgive him either.

“El,” he said, “look at me.”

She did not.

So he waited.

He waited until the silence stopped feeling like pressure and became, somehow, an offering.

At last, El turned her face toward him.

Her eyes were wet, though no tears had fallen.

“I’ve wanted to marry you for years,” Sora said. “You know that.”

A faint, broken breath escaped her. Almost a laugh. Almost not.

“I know.”

“But I don’t want the Empire to be the one that gives you to me.”

The words landed between them.

Heavy.

Irrevocable.

El’s face changed.

Only slightly. But enough.

The mask she had worn since morning, since the train, since the prayer, since perhaps long before this day, loosened by a fraction.

Sora held her hand more carefully.

“If you choose me someday, I want it to be because you chose me. Not because the Divine Proxy Division was waiting outside the door. Not because a document said I was better than the next option. Not because you had five hours and nowhere else to go.”

El lowered her head.

Her short reddish-black hair fell forward, hiding part of her face.

For a moment, Sora thought she might pull her hand away.

Instead, she leaned—barely, almost imperceptibly—toward him.

Not enough to become an embrace.

Only enough for her shoulder to touch his sleeve.

The contact was small.

But it felt more intimate than anything the room had tried to demand of them.

“You’re stupid,” she said.

Her voice was quiet.

Sora swallowed.

“Probably.”

“You came all this way, and now you’re choosing the most troublesome answer.”

“Yeah.”

“You know this doesn’t save me.”

“I know.”

“You know it might make things harder.”

“I know.”

El’s fingers tightened around his.

“Then why?”

Sora looked at the documents.

Then at the door.

Then back at her.

“Because if I say I’m protecting you, but I ignore what your face looks like right now, then I’m lying.”

El closed her eyes.

For a second, all the strength seemed to leave her.

Not in surrender.

In exhaustion.

Sora stayed still. He did not pull her closer. He did not turn the contact into something larger than she had given.

He simply sat beside her, holding her hand in both of his while the five-hour room remained around them, useless now in all the ways it had been designed to matter.

Outside, leaves moved in the garden.

Somewhere far away, the city prepared for a festival of victory.

Inside the room, no victory came.

Only postponement.

Only breath.

Only the first fragile shape of a promise that did not yet know whether it could survive the Empire.

At last, El whispered,

“Then sign it.”

Sora nodded.

He let go of her hand only after she loosened her fingers first.

The absence of her touch felt cold.

He stood, crossed to the table, and took up the pledge.

The words blurred once before his eyes, then sharpened.

Pledge for Succession Genesis.

He hated the title.

He hated every line.

But he wrote his name.

Sora.

Then he pressed his divine seal beneath it.

The mark flared faintly, pale light spreading across the page before sinking into the paper as if swallowed.

The document accepted him.

Not as her savior.

Not as her husband.

As someone who had chosen delay over surrender.

When he turned back, El was still sitting on the bed, looking at him with an expression he could not name.

It was not happiness.

It was not relief.

But the terrible stillness in her face had cracked.

Just a little.

And through that crack, something living remained.

“Sora,” she said.

“Yeah?”

Her voice was barely there.

“Don’t make me regret choosing you.”

The words struck him more deeply than any vow.

Sora lowered his head.

“I won’t.”

He knew that answer was too simple.

Too small.

Too young.

But it was the only one he had.

And for now, in that room built for obedience, it was the first thing that sounded even remotely like freedom.

■Journey with Sora

Please show the child to come your path.

By blessing, act in proxy. Nortis.

“By blessing, act in proxy. Nortis.”

My lips moved on their own, and my voice trembled through the air.

That was what the closing phrase of a prayer was.

El hated that closing phrase.

It was a language of duty.

By blessing, act in proxy.

Words that told you to live someone else’s will in their place.

So every time, deep in my heart, I added something small.

Though I can no longer use divine power.

Just thinking that made my chest feel a little lighter.

But only for an instant.

The stone silence of the church immediately dragged me, now finished with prayer, back into reality.

When I looked up, the light pouring into the height of the dome fell coldly, and my shadow stretched long across the floor.

No matter how much I prayed, there were things that would not change.

The length of that shadow felt like my fate itself.

Blessing.

That was the power God had given to humanity—the divine power bestowed by Eli and Yurm.

People used it as sustenance to wield divine arts, and those called Lilies went even further, wielding the supernatural abilities known as Shifter powers.

In the homeland of the Holy Vermerde Empire, the existence of Lilies was synonymous with privilege. In the Imperial Capital, those unable to use Shifter powers were the rare ones.

And yet, though I was a Lily, I could use neither Shifter powers nor even divine arts.

Because the double silver shackles fastened around my ankles drained away all my divine power.

Those cold metal rings had been around my ankles ever since that day.

They had been engraved and fitted in a workshop in the Imperial Capital as proof that I had been reduced to slavery.

They tightened around my skin, and whenever I moved even slightly, they made a faint scraping sound, insisting on their own existence.

They were the symbol of humiliation, and at the same time, restraints that drained every last drop of divine power.

Born as a Lily, and yet stripped of all the power of blessing, unable to wield either divine arts or Shifter powers—

that is what I am now.

The light of divine arts and the torrent of Shifter power had once been part of me.

With a single fingertip, I could tear open the sky, shake the ley lines, and freely manipulate blessing in realms no one else could reach.

That is what I once was.

But now, everything is taken from me before I can touch it.

The cold metal shackles drink up the blessing, turning both light and torrent into nothing more than memory.

The days when I was called a genius are over.

What remains is only a vessel that can create nothing.

To possess the power of blessing and yet be forbidden even to let it bloom—

surely, they will never understand how miserable that is.

But I accept this too as punishment.

This brand has continued since long before my mother’s generation.

I, too, bear what the name Kivanagran has carried.

That is my role.

I never forget the coldness of the shackles.

But I can tell myself that, like the words of prayer, they are part of the fate imposed on me.

Until I was eight.

Before the name slave clung to me, back when I was still only a child, and yet was called a genius.

Shifter power was the same as breathing.

I never needed a reason to wrap myself in the light of blessing.

Every time I released my power, the adults around me stared in amazement, and my father would laugh, ruffling my hair with his large hand.

You have talent.

Every time someone said that, my chest filled with pride.

But I used that “talent” for something else.

The ones who killed my father were at fault.

An eye for an eye.

Blood for blood.

The world of eight-year-old me was made of nothing more than that.

Tears and rage were my only fuel.

There was no reason.

No judgment.

And then I committed a sin.

The front entrance was no longer a door.

It was broken timber, and the wind pressure born the instant compressed air was released rushed through the hall, making the pillars groan.

The mansion of the corrupt noble sank into silence, as if holding its breath.

Tearing through that silence, my footsteps left dry sounds against the floorboards.

A guard lifted his head at the far end of the corridor.

The vacuum I created with my Shifter power stole their breath in an instant, and light and wind crossed.

The sound of flesh tearing, and the dull sound of armor falling to the floor, both echoed somewhere far away in the back of my ears.

The air carried the smell of iron.

That smell, sharp enough to burn my nose, soaked all the way into the depths of my chest, which had grown hot with hatred.

The corridor was long.

But if I controlled the pressure of the wind and sent my body forward like an arrow, I could cross all the way to the depths of the mansion in a single breath.

The floor and walls could not endure my existence.

They groaned.

They cried.

They cracked.

Found you.

The face of the one who killed my father.

Those eyes turning toward me, surprise and terror pasted onto them.

No breath.

No words.

Only light ran.

The compressed air became a roar like a scream, and split the world.

When it was over, only silence remained.

The aftertaste of destruction still clung to my fingertips, but the inside of my chest was hollow.

Only one reality remained.

My father would never come back.

And that fact was too heavy, too helplessly real.

And yet, fortunately—

if that is what it should be called.

Or perhaps it should be called another misfortune.

I was not judged.

There was no formal procedure.

No Imperial court.

The mastermind behind my father’s murder buried the incident in darkness.

To protect his own position, perhaps.

Or because he disliked staining his own hands with blood.

Probably both.

As a result, all that happened was that I was locked inside a cage called slavery.

No execution platform.

No prison.

Only metal rings fastened around my ankles, while my name and future were turned into price tags.

The iron shackles were cold, sometimes creaking faintly as they dug into my skin.

I had tried to remove them before, but it came with a fear almost like pain, as if I were trying to peel away an organ that had been there since birth.

Whether that was mercy or mockery, I still do not know.

If it was mercy, then it was a cruel kind.

Because from that point onward, I had my divine power taken away, could use neither Shifter powers nor divine arts, and even if my father’s killers stood before me, I could never again wield a blade the way I had that day.

If it was mockery, then that, too, struck the mark.

Because it completely stripped away the part of me that was my father’s daughter, leaving only a life as a “tool.”

The one thing I can say is this.

In that moment, something inside me broke beyond repair.

The anger was still there.

But there was no firewood left to burn.

No means to set it alight.

Emotion sank into ash.

And as it settled, it began to rot.

From that day on, I was neither someone’s daughter nor someone’s avenger.

I was only a “slave” carrying an emptiness inside me.

Even so, at eight years old, I did not understand why shackles had been put on me, why I had been dressed in rags, and why I was being sold as merchandise in a drafty place without heating.

The iron shackles were cold, digging into the skin of my ankles with a stinging heat, and whenever I moved even slightly, they made a faint scraping sound, declaring their presence.

The cries of other children tied to wooden frames dissolved into the wind, and the smell of straw, mud, and human sweat stabbed my nose.

It was a vague season, neither winter nor summer, and the wind blowing through the place chilled me all the way to the bone.

The thin scrap of cloth I wore meant nothing.

The slave traders did not change their expressions when they looked at me.

Their eyes said I was only one more item with a price tag attached.

A year and a half before that, when my mother died at twenty-five, my father had held me and said, “It cannot be helped. It is the fate of Kivanagran.”

At the time, his hands had been large enough to wrap easily around me after I had cried myself exhausted.

Then why did Father die?

Did he have to be killed?

That night, the shouting and screaming that came from my father’s room, the smell of iron that drifted all the way into the corridor—

I had been too young to realize it was the smell of blood, but I had understood that something had broken.

Why was I left alone?

Because I was Kivanagran?

At eight years old, I could not understand the meaning forced onto that name.

But I did understand the reality that made no sense.

My mother died by fate.

My father was killed by someone’s hand.

And I was put in a cage.

Without reason.

Without explanation.

Simply as something that happened.

At a time like that, an old man appeared.

The hands of the elderly farmer were cracked, and thick mud clung beneath his nails.

He stared at me for a long time, then exchanged whispered words with the slave trader and took out several silver coins.

I did not know how much money it was, or what it meant.

I only remember the men’s faces loosening in satisfaction.

“This child…”

The old man spoke softly, as if not to me, but to himself.

“Should be returned before God.”

Without understanding anything, I was taken away and shaken along the road on a rough cart.

I did not know the old man’s name.

I did not know where he had come from.

But from his back as he drove the cart, there came a warmth the slave traders had not had.

The place we arrived was a small village at the edge of the Imperial Capital—

Hansa.

There, I was taken to the church.

“I return her before God.”

Saying that, the old man entrusted me to the nuns.

The people in white habits touched my shackles and asked my name.

But I could not answer.

Being called by a name, or speaking one myself, already felt meaningless.

That was the first time I learned that I was not a “thing,” but appeared in someone’s eyes as a “person.”

But deep in my heart, I thought this:

Is this salvation?

Or have I only been moved to another cage?

Soon after that, right after I was handed over as a slave to the church in Hansa Village, the Sister who did not yet know what had happened said this to me.

She gripped both my shoulders.

Hard.

So hard.

Her fingers were knotted and firm, and beneath the skin I could feel the lines of trained muscle.

A body heat like steel, as if she were a woman who had forgotten she was a woman.

The strength digging into my shoulders was not comfort.

It was an order.

“Listen carefully. I will not treat you as a slave.”

Her words were sharp, and yet carried an unwavering weight.

“And as Kivanagran, and as one who wears those shackles, you must learn the means to protect yourself. Even if you cannot use Shifter powers or divine arts, you can still protect your own body. If you train.”

Her tone had the rise and fall possessed only by someone who had once given orders in the military.

Its sound seemed to correct my spine, and before I knew it, I had straightened my posture.

“I will teach you those skills. With them, you will recover your pride. I will not allow you to remain defeated.”

At eight years old, I did not understand even half the meaning of those words.

Pride.

That abstract sound was not yet part of my vocabulary.

I understood only the hardness of the hands on my shoulders, and the weight of her gaze, heavy as military boots.

So I nodded.

Without understanding what it meant.

Thinking back now, I want to say: of course an eight-year-old child could not possibly understand something like pride.

And yet, in that moment—

maybe I felt, for the first time, that someone was trying to hammer into me the skills I needed to live.

Thanks to the Sister, I learned enough hand-to-hand combat to earn the respect of the orphans at the church orphanage.

Even though I was Kivanagran.

Even though I was a slave.

Before I learned the rhythm of daily prayer, I learned the sound of my feet striking the dirt in the backyard.

Before dawn, my shoes cracked the frost underfoot, and at the Sister’s command, my body was thrown to the ground again and again.

Do not protect your arm first. Go for the enemy’s throat.

What she taught me was the reality a defeated person needed in order to survive.

And the Sister had once been a military instructor.

From her trained shoulders and back came the scent of the cold air of the training grounds.

Her teaching was severe. Even when my body screamed, she showed no mercy.

But that severity was the one thing that taught me I was still alive.

What she gave me was not play meant for orphans.

It was military close-quarters combat that could be used on a battlefield.

Techniques that could take a life with one arm, one leg.

Without that, I might never have been able to accept my enslavement as “the result of avenging my father.”

The pretext of revenge made the weight of the shackles just a little lighter.

The pain of training washed away the smell of blood from the past.

Well.

I never did bring down the mastermind behind my father’s death.

That reality alone still aches deep in my chest like a dull thorn.

But the Kivanagran body, blessed by Yurm, the God of Sexual Love, carried an extreme beauty that was both blessing and curse.

That grace gave me soft curves and skin so pale it seemed almost translucent.

In exchange, even after I entered adolescence, I would never develop muscles like a soldier.

So I thoroughly learned techniques that could subdue a person without relying on strength.

Throws that broke an opponent’s balance with a single shift of body weight.

Strikes aimed at bones and nerves.

Holds that cut off every path of escape.

To give even slender arms and legs the power to injure or kill, the Sister made me repeat the same motions with relentless precision.

“Strength is decoration. Win with technique.”

Saying that, she drove every close-combat skill she had cultivated in the military into me, a child, without mercy.

Why am I remembering this now?

At a time when I am about to invite Sora into my body.

Memories awaken without warning.

The weight of a wooden training sword.

The feeling of blood blisters bursting.

The strikes I repeated until my breath ran out and my lungs burned.

The Sister’s voice drives me forward again, together with her scolding.

Pride.

Do not remain defeated.

The words take shape again from the distant past and tighten around who I am now.

I see.

I am trying to encourage myself.

Trying to believe that this act is not an extension of defeat.

That it is not merely obedience laid upon a stolen life.

That it is something I will seize by my own choice.

Trying to gather the shame, fear, resignation, and the tiny pride still left at the bottom of them all.

I never imagined the words she taught me then—stand and face it—would return in a moment like this.

A young Sister handed me several documents and guided us forward with a quiet, “This way, please.”

Our footsteps echoed strangely loudly as we walked down the polished white corridor.

The young Sister’s back moved without waste, her stride steady, never once waiting for my hesitation.

The bundle of papers felt heavy in my hands.

Against my fingertips was the rough texture peculiar to parchment, and the slight unevenness where the seals had been stamped.

I checked the contents of the documents, at least formally.

I had known in advance what they said.

Even so, they were documents meant to require Sora to do “that” with me.

I could not avoid looking.

Every time the printed words pierced my vision, my heart beat faster, completely apart from my will.

Though vulgar in status, she belongs to one pillar of the Imperial Family through the bloodline of House Kivanagran—

Vulgar.

Vulgar, is it?

Those two words were cold, dragging the past out by force.

The night I lost my father.

The heaviness of the air in that mansion.

The iron smell of the cage at the slave market.

It felt as if everything converged into that one word.

My breathing grew shallow.

The reason I am here, living like this, has been contained inside the brand called “vulgar.”

Staring at the document felt like having my own innermost self thrust in front of me, with nowhere to escape.

Even the coldness of the shackles returned to my ankles.

A secret only I and two people from the darkness should have known.

My secret, which those people have surely forgotten by now—

that even if they were my father’s enemies, I had killed human beings.

The printed letters on the page made me feel as though they could see through to that fact.

If I looked away, it would have become easier.

But I could not.

The weight drifting from the paper filled my nose like the smell of blood.

Of course, that was impossible.

Paper was paper.

Cold parchment could not know my sin.

And yet, the sensation of that night, settled deep inside me—the light that split the air, the screams, the heat of bodies collapsing—rose again.

I have become this kind of person.

Is that, after all, because of this blood?

Kivanagran blood.

The blood of women called witches for four thousand years.

Arrogant.

Greedy.

A bloodline born carrying fate, marked by both pride and contempt.

Blood that still binds me after I sinned and fell.

Blood that carries the contradiction of forcing me to be special while remaining unforgiven.

That thing flowing through my body.

That thing, both cold and hot, stitches me in place with every heartbeat even today.

I will never forget the day my first period came.

It was not something that could be dismissed as simply “my body had begun to change.”

It felt as if my body had not continued from what it had been before, but had been remade into another living thing.

The blood pulsing beneath my skin did not feel like my own.

It felt as if the insides of my bones were slowly deforming.

Deep inside my body, places I had never known grew hot, ached, and each breath insisted on the shape of a new body.

Even ordinary girls are confused by the changes that come with their first period, barely able to keep up with them.

Mine awakened something extra.

The girl in the mirror wore the face of a woman I did not know.

Her lashes were long.

Her lips were glossy, as if touched with rouge.

Her skin was so white it seemed to emit light.

Her hair was reddish black, as if it had melted light into itself.

Her eyes held the color of an abyss.

It was what the blood of Kivanagran brought.

Something called both blessing and curse.

Beauty.

A quality that bewitched those around it, ruled them, was sometimes worshiped, sometimes resented, sometimes made into an object to be adored.

A nature that drew both fear and desire.

The Sister taught me what it was.

Even then, she took hold of my shoulders.

“You are Kivanagran. This is the power of your blood. A strength, and at the same time, a chain that locks you inside a cage.”

Her low, strong voice burned itself into the back of my ears.

It was a pronouncement meant to make me aware of myself as Kivanagran.

From that moment on, I understood that my existence was no longer simply mine.

“El. You may not be aware of it yet, but you are already beautiful. Even to my eyes, it is extraordinary.”

The Sister’s voice was low and hard.

It was neither comfort nor praise.

Only a tone that thrust a fact before me.

“But you are not merely beautiful. By simply being there, you confuse every man around you. You are different from other beautiful girls. Your blood makes it so.”

She paused, then gripped my shoulders again more firmly.

“Now that your first period has come, it may already be appearing. From your body. A special fragrance called Muka. Your extraordinary beauty and this fragrance—these two are the blessing of Kivanagran, granted by Yurm, the God of Sexual Love. But while they are blessings, they are also curses. They are dangerous things, terribly difficult to handle.”

“A scent changes the world even though it cannot be seen.”

The Sister looked far away and continued calmly.

“For example, you can imagine what happens when oil is poured onto fire, can’t you? Even a single drop makes the flames spread at once. Muka is the same. It ignites the impulses inside people and blows away reason. Saying it is like throwing meat to wolves may not be enough. It is deeper than that. More irresistible. Your very presence can become the spark that throws their world itself into madness.”

She shook her head with a bitter smile.

“It may be my failure that I can only explain it with frightening examples. But this is the best way to explain it, so you can understand your own body and prepare yourself. All girls are like this to one degree or another, but you are the extreme.”

Those words pierced my chest.

It was as if she had told me I was a spark thrown into a powder magazine simply by being beautiful.

Why did something that was supposed to be a blessing sound so cold?

“Even so, the danger brought by your Muka is beyond comparison with that of women outside Kivanagran.”

The Sister’s voice was low, sinking into the stone walls of the church.

“It is said that when a Kivanagran is nearby, men need an extraordinary strength of mind to maintain their reason. You understand what that means now, don’t you?”

She did not let my gaze escape, and continued.

“Just as you will continue to grow taller, your beauty and your Muka will grow stronger and stronger from now on. So from this point forward, be careful of men. Assume that every man who approaches you is after your body. If you do that, you will protect not only your body, but your heart as well.”

The weight of those words felt, to my ten-year-old self, like talk from a world impossibly far away.

But the light in the Sister’s eyes told me it was not merely a threat.

“If you feel that a man has lost his reason, use your combat skills without mercy. As you are now, facing a grown man will be barely possible, so use everything you have.”

She said it as if it were a commandment equal to prayer.

“I am sorry for the men. But if you are to protect yourself, that is the only way.”

That was the first time I understood that the Sister carried the scent of the battlefield.

The pressure her strong fingertips left on my shoulders was not that of an ordinary nun.

It was the weight possessed only by someone who had taken lives, protected lives, and borne them.

“Just in case, I will teach you how to handle firearms from now on as well.”

The Sister’s tone was no longer persuasion.

It was closer to an order.

A voice that had not forgotten the memory of military boots.

“Hand-to-hand combat alone is not enough. To protect your own life, you must become someone who can pull the trigger without hesitation.”

She paused briefly, and her gaze fell to my left shoulder—

to the black pattern hidden beneath my nun’s habit.

“And about Muka…”

Her tone softened slightly.

“If you ever use it intentionally, keep that to the moment when you have found a boy you love. When you wish to tempt him. Never use it for a wicked purpose.”

Her words wore the shape of kindness, but at their core they were hard as steel.

“The Brand of Yurm carved into the left half of your body is not decoration. Four thousand years ago, the first Kivanagran to receive this blessing—your ancestor—strayed from the path and abused the blessing. That brand was the punishment. And that punishment has traveled down the bloodline all the way to you.”

In that moment, I was forced to realize I was not merely a girl.

I was an existence standing on the extension of history and punishment.

The Sister’s voice echoed far away like a bell, and deep inside my body, there remained the feeling of a cold nail being driven in.

When the Sister handed me a thick picture book titled Kivanagran, I was already prepared.

Deep in my chest, I understood that the time had come to learn the answer I had always wanted to know.

If I opened the cover, I would become Kivanagran—

No.

I would face, through words, the fact that I had already become it long ago.

My fingers trembled as I turned the pages.

The rough paper scraped against my skin, and the scent of old ink tickled my nose.

Heavy sentences alternated with illustrations that carried a strange, unsettling beauty.

There, it was written why Kivanagran was considered an infamous name in the Empire.

Why people looked at me with cold eyes.

Why, even so, I was not simply oppressed, and sometimes even treated as something special.

Why we were called arrogant, greedy, and sometimes even witches.

Until then, I had never understood.

At the orphanage, when the children laughed and called me witch, I could not say anything back.

The Brand of Yurm carved black across the left half of my body—

that geometric pattern told me, against my will, that it was true.

The words of protest dried up in my throat, and tears spilled out instead.

Whenever I cried, the Sister always held me.

Her strong arms, once those of a soldier.

A warm smell mixed faintly with sweat and leather.

When combat training alone could not put me back on my feet, the Sister was always there.

She would pat my back, stroke my hair, and rebuild my small world again and again.

“One day, you will understand.”

She had kept telling me that.

But those words did not deny that I was a witch.

That was why I was afraid.

To know meant to accept.

With every page I turned, the feeling of a cold chain tightening around my ankles grew stronger.

Once I finish this book, I can never go back.

That alone was clearer than anything.

But once I knew, the story was simple.

Our esteemed ancestor fell in love, received Muka, and used that power to try to captivate even the Emperor of her time.

Maybe that is cutting away too much.

But that was the essence of the picture book.

In the colored illustrations, a bewitching woman whispered beside the Emperor’s ear.

Drawn in lines that shimmered like incense smoke, she looked less beautiful than uncanny.

And in the end, divine punishment fell upon her for her immorality.

Unto the last generation, as an unforgiven sinner.

An easy-to-understand fable.

A reality impossible to laugh at.

Thanks to that, the “black thing” crawls across the left half of my body, and the Brand of Yurm is carved into my skin.

Like a curse mark pressed into me by someone else’s hand.

Thanks to that, my life will last only until I am twenty-five.

That is the fate of a descendant of Kivanagran.

A bloodline where blessing and curse were mixed into one.

And so, my body was made this way.

But this could not be dismissed with a vague compliment like “too beautiful.”

Even if I simply stood there, without smiling, without speaking, a scent seeped from my body against my will—

a scent that heated men’s eyes and slowly scraped away the reason inside them.

The so-called “blessing” of Yurm, the God of Sexual Love.

But I have no memory of ever asking for such a thing.

To possess a scent that stirs desire in anyone nearby is not a weapon.

It is a curse.

Wherever I go, I feel people looking at me.

The hidden motives in the edges of conversation.

The hostility that drifts even in silence.

So I always have to be on guard.

Men are wary of me.

Like beasts fearing fangs.

Women envy me.

Even when I do not come near them, they avoid me with faces as if I already had.

Because I am Kivanagran.

That reason is enough.

I am tired.

I do not want to live long.

My life will end at twenty-five anyway, and more than anything, I have always been alone.

I heard people say that if I used Muka, men would come to me as much as I wanted.

But I understood long ago that the hollow place in my heart could not be filled that way.

This scent does not save me from loneliness.

It only sinks me into a deeper loneliness.

The Sister was kind.

She was stronger than anyone, tougher than anyone, and yet her arms were shockingly warm when they wrapped around me.

But I never knew whether that warmth was directed toward me myself, or poured over me because I was “a poor child.”

I hated myself for thinking that.

And yet I could not deny the voice in the depths of my chest that whispered, surely, that must be it.

From the moment I learned the word love, the outline of the world changed.

Inside the noise of that orphanage, I suddenly realized I had been left behind.

Was I loved, or not?

The more I searched for that boundary, the lonelier I became.

Now that I think about it, Sora once called me a witch too.

My blood, my brand, my scent—

he probably used the word for the same reason everyone else did.

And yet now, he says he wants to marry me.

A woman who will die in nine years.

If I tried to blame Muka, his attitude was far too calm, far too gentle.

Without showing hesitation or wicked intent, he tried to treat me as a single human being.

And because I cannot understand why, I become even more confused.

But today, I do not know.

Until now, I had never told anyone they could decide something so important about my life with me.

I had never even imagined saying such words aloud.

And yet now—

I was about to bring Sora closer than anyone had ever been.

Into a situation where the effect of Muka might appear most clearly.

Into the place where my existence, as Kivanagran, would manifest most strongly as something I could not separate from my body, my blood, or my fate.

I did not know what would happen.

What would happen to Sora?

What would happen to me?

I was afraid.

But at the same time, there was a strange relief.

A quiet illusion had begun to sprout at the bottom of my heart—

that perhaps my life, which had nowhere to go, might finally connect with someone and gain even the smallest meaning.

Once, I tested the effect of Muka.

It happened in Alberg, the town closest to the village.

The Sister had taken me shopping, and I had grown bored between carrying loads.

In the noise of merchants and pilgrims passing along the stone-paved street, I saw it.

A black four-horse carriage.

A town coach, its polished brass ornaments giving off a dull gleam.

Three shabby children approached the horse stop beside it.

Beggars.

Their small hands reached out.

The gentleman inside the carriage did not even glance at them.

Instead, the footman silently drove them away with a light motion of his whip.

The children’s shadows slipped into the crowd and quickly vanished.

When I saw that, something stirred in the depths of my chest.

It was not sadness.

Not anger.

It was something else.

Curiosity.

What would happen if I did the same thing?

Would I be chased away with a whip like those children?

Or—

I took one step toward the carriage.

I breathed deeply and tried, only slightly and consciously, to open the Muka sleeping inside me.

I could feel that my lips were dry.

When I crossed the street, my footsteps echoed softly against the stone.

The moment the footman standing before the carriage noticed me, his eyes wavered faintly.

I could clearly tell that his gaze had been drawn to my face.

Because I was wearing my nun’s habit, most of my skin was hidden.

The Brand of Yurm could not be seen.

In other words, without anyone becoming wary because I was Kivanagran, the power of Muka would appear purely.

And so would the power of my appearance.

My heart beat so loudly it felt noisy.

Curiosity drowned it out.

I crossed the stone-paved street and approached the side of the black four-horse carriage.

The polished brass ornaments on the carriage glowed dully, and the smell of horses’ breath and leather stung my nose.

I knocked lightly on the window.

The sound of my knuckles against metal rang softly, and I felt the presence inside turn toward me.

He was probably a noble.

While showing the shackle as proof that I was a slave, I let him see just enough to understand what I was.

I remembered something I had once overheard at the orphanage—

that when a girl asks a man for help, even a small gesture can change the answer.

“My master does not give me much food, and I am hungry. Could you please help me?”

I think that is what I said.

I do not remember very well.

The footman’s eyes widened, and he stood there without a word.

Instead, the carriage window opened soundlessly.

From inside, an elderly gentleman looked at me.

His gaze was nothing like the one he had turned on the begging children.

It held heat and interest mixed together.

His eyes seemed to pass through my skin, carrying such force that I felt trapped in place.

I stood still and received the weight of it.

That was the first time I truly felt the “power” I possessed.

Fear and a strange sense of superiority crawled up my spine.

And I understood.

This was the Muka of Kivanagran.

The door opened, and along with the smell of leather, a banknote and a card were offered to me.

It was the gentleman’s hand, covered in a white glove.

“If that is not enough, come to the address on this card.”

His low voice sounded strangely kind, and yet somehow distant.

When the woman who had returned from behind took the gentleman’s arm, the carriage kicked up gravel and began to move, soon melting into the wave of people.

The banknote in my hand was thick, with an unfamiliar design, and when I pressed it with my fingertips, it creaked faintly.

First, I was surprised by how easily it had been handed over.

Then, when I saw the amount, I was even more surprised.

It was the first time I had ever held money, but I knew by instinct.

It was enough for three children to eat for a month.

And far too large an amount to be given for a single act of begging.

The heaviness did not come from the banknote itself.

Something stirred inside me.

That gaze and this piece of paper were surely connected.

Muka.

My appearance.

The “power” of Kivanagran that I had used out of curiosity.

This was not charity.

It was something else.

The moment I thought that, I felt my back go cold.

Clearly, the power of Muka had worked.

It was not simply a matter of being pretty or not.

The heat in that gentleman’s eyes had not been drawn out by me as a person, but by the power granted by Yurm.

The moment I understood that, the inside of my chest tightened coldly.

Never use it for a wicked purpose.

Arrogant and greedy.

Witch.

Divine punishment.

The Sister’s words and the tale of my esteemed ancestor that I had read in the picture book tightened around my consciousness like a heavy chain.

It felt as though Lord Yurm were peering down at me from beyond the clouds, seeing through everything.

I felt a gaze.

God’s gaze.

I became afraid.

The banknote in my hand was not merely money.

It was something I should not possess.

Something I must not touch.

Unable to bear the sensation running up my spine, I immediately forced the banknote into the hands of the three children who had been watching everything nearby.

Without even looking at their surprised faces, I fled back to the Sister.

As I ran, with every beat of my heart, the Brand of Yurm throbbed as if burning.

Because of that, I understood, in the truest sense, why I was called a witch.

Muka was not merely a scent of temptation.

It stole men’s gazes, invaded their awareness, and quietly broke down reason, their final fortress.

Combined with beauty, it could sometimes make people obey without needing even a single word.

Of course, if one wanted to, one could probably even overthrow a country with it.

All one would have to do was make the Emperor listen to one’s wish.

Now I felt I understood, just a little, why the ancestor in that picture book had tried to toy with the center of the Empire.

It was not temptation.

It was a deeper impulse.

The loneliness of having obtained power, and the thirst to fill something with it.

Only a little, I felt sympathy for that immoral woman.

Men affected by Muka usually changed first in their eyes.

A cloudy film of heat covered them.

Their breathing grew uneven, and in the sound of their footsteps coming closer, I could no longer feel any remnant of reason.

But I soon noticed something.

If I said, “Stop,” they drew back as if the strings had been cut on a puppet.

My words while I wore Muka carried a strong compulsion.

Without even realizing it, a single word of refusal ruled their awareness like an order.

Because of that, I was not exposed to danger as much as the Sister had feared.

Of course, some were still as persistent as drunken beasts.

In those moments, just as the Sister had taught me, I used the techniques my body had memorized and struck them down.

A grip at the neck.

A joint turned the wrong way.

A few quiet words meant to carve fear into them.

All of it took only an instant.

But strangely, even then, they did not fight back or resist.

Caught by the power of Muka, they collapsed easily under one small hand of mine.

That made overpowering them simple.

And that very ease forced me, unwillingly, to face how far I had become from an ordinary human being.

But Sora was different.

He should have belonged to the same category as the men affected by Muka.

And yet he stood outside that framework.

To begin with, Sora had never once touched me with that kind of intention.

The way he kept distance was different from anyone else.

In the past, like all the other children, he had called me witch, witch, as if it were amusing.

But at some point, that stopped.

And before I knew it, he began watching me from a distance.

While I was still confused by that ambiguous distance, unable to understand what he was thinking, he entered officer school.

Still wearing the face of a boy stretching himself taller than he was, his military uniform not yet settled on his body, he suddenly asked me to marry him.

It was abrupt.

I thought, if you want to marry me, aren’t you still a little young?

And for the time being, what came out of my mouth was the absurdly vague answer:

“Maybe next time.”

Next time?

What will I do next time?

Even I was frightened by that vague reply.

I thought that—

well, I only thought it for a few hours.

Because, just as expected, every time Sora came home, he began asking me to marry him.

Again and again, almost like a ritual.

Not because he had been struck by Muka.

Not out of pity.

Simply because there was will in it.

And that is exactly why, even now, I still do not know how I am supposed to receive those words.

As an effect of Muka, it was strange.

It should have acted more strongly, more clearly.

But with Sora, it did not.

He always seemed to take one step back when he looked at me.

And yet he did not look away.

As if he were looking at something that would break if touched.

But since it caused no particular harm, answering “maybe next time” became a habit for me.

Then, at some point, after the Sister told me about successor children and Companions, I began to think Sora might be the right choice.

In her strong voice, the Sister told me, “You have the right to choose for yourself.”

But in reality, there was no one I could choose.

Sora alone was different.

Unlike other men, Sora was cute.

Muka affected him differently, so I did not need to be wary of him.

Even when he was close, he was not annoying.

When I spoke to him, he became flustered and awkward, but that clumsiness gave me a sense of safety instead.

Aside from the Sister, he was the only person I could speak to calmly.

When Sora was home, I was at least not lonely.

The nights when I sank into solitude softened just a little.

There were moments when I could feel, even faintly, that I was connected to another person.

That fact alone made me happy.

After he told me he wanted to marry me, I began spending almost all my time with him whenever he was there.

I accepted it as something natural, so natural that even I found it strange.

Sora was safe.

And if I was beside Sora, I was safe too.

As if he functioned like a ward, the men around me did not approach.

Because I knew that my existence while wrapped in Muka constantly drew men in, that strange quiet stood out all the more.

Was the fact that Sora did not discriminate against me also, in the end, an effect of Muka?

When I thought that, something in the depths of my chest creaked in a complicated way.

But what would denying it accomplish?

Being approached by men was frightening.

Being hated by women was also because of Muka.

Then I decided that this strange peace was something I ought to be grateful for.

Only when I was beside Sora could I forget my shadow a little.

Even if I absolutely had to bear a child, if the other person was Sora, I would have no complaint.

How many nights had I spent alone before reaching that thought?

Being with Sora in that way was not fear.

It had taken shape in my mind as something I could imagine without breaking.

A scene of hands overlapping under pale light.

Words exchanged at a distance close enough for our breaths to touch.

I had come far enough that even such images no longer felt impossible.

I thought I could bring a child into the world too.

Not as a pregnancy of duty, but as one end of a faint line stretching into the future.

It was a conclusion I had reached over a long time.

Not resignation.

Not defiance.

I had needed time in order to choose.

I was glad Sora had told me he wanted to marry me.

Whether those words were the influence of Muka or Sora’s own will, I did not know.

But I no longer had time to search for a first love.

The deadline of twenty-five had made my world far too small.

If I could only find him, I could use Muka to close the distance all at once.

That should have been the original meaning and role of this scent.

And now, at last, I was about to direct that power toward someone I had chosen.

At most, I would be able to stay with my child until they were eight.

That was about the age when I parted from my mother.

I remembered the sudden spread of emptiness from that time.

If the Sister was there, I was sure the years after that would be all right.

Even if I was gone, those strong arms and sharp eyes would protect the child.

That was why I had to think about it now.

Whether Sora could become a father.

Not merely someone who gave a child life, but a person who could truly hold that child.

That was what I would have to judge from here on.

Behind that resolve, reality suddenly came close.

A heavy door creaked open, and we were shown into a private room with a double bed.

The air of travel still clinging to us mixed with the scent of white linen, making everything strangely real.

The room was clean.

And yet everything this place had been built to demand seemed already to be reaching me through my skin.

---

El lay on her back, waiting.

Sora leaned over her, staring into her deep green eyes.

What swirled in the depths of their chests was too complicated to put into words.

Resolve and fear.

Forgiveness and punishment.

And feelings with no name at all.

All of it mingled with the air of the dim room.

They were close enough that one movement would be enough to reach each other.

And yet that single step felt heavy enough to last forever.

They simply looked at each other,

as if time itself had stopped.

The fate of Sora and El will be revealed years later

in bitBuyer Telling.