The Witch’s Heart and the Price of Heroism
"From now on, your name isn't Number 10. It’s Scarlet Evande."
That was what the man said. Once my name changed, my life shifted in a way that was undeniably different from before. In this life outside, the daily agony I had been forced to endure was gone. It was something I never could have imagined. But I couldn't just be happy about it, because there was something even harder to bear than the pain.
"Aren't you resentful of the pain you've suffered?"
"Aren't you angry? Don't you want to burn it all away?"
"The people who hurt you, the people, the world—all of it."
Ever since that day I desperately resisted the voices and extinguished the flames erupting from my body, those whispers would suddenly return, and violent emotions would surge up on their own. I knew, somehow, that if I lost my mind and surrendered to those feelings, I would end up burning everything around me, just like before. And I knew that this time, it wouldn't end until my own body was completely incinerated.
So, I desperately fought the voices and suppressed the flames. It left me so exhausted that I had to spend most of my waking hours just lying still. It wasn't just because I didn't want to experience that agony of my whole body burning again. I could only do it because I wanted to grant the man's request. Every time I was in pain, he made it stop; he gave me a name; he was the only person who treated me with warmth in that cold room. So, just as I had promised, I wanted to become someone who could protect people.
He told me that if I enrolled in the Aegis Academy, I could become a hero. A hero is someone whose job is to protect people. So, I wanted to be a hero. I thought that if I became a hero, I would be able to see him look at me with joy. That was why I endured, even when it was hard. Whenever I felt the urge to follow the voices and burn everything to ash, I would think of how sad he would be, and I would hold on. I held on, and held on, until finally, the morning of the day I was to enter the academy arrived.
And then, I realized. My mind, not my body, could no longer withstand the voices constantly whispering in my ears to burn it all down. I wanted to be a hero. I wanted to see him smile. But no matter how desperately I tried to stay conscious, my vision began to blur.
If I lost the control I had kept over the flames, the fire erupting from my body would surely consume everything around me. The only silver lining was that, fearing something like this might happen, I had chosen a place where no one lived when he asked me to pick a spot I liked. If I lost consciousness, I wouldn't be able to move my body, so at least others wouldn't get hurt. One person burning was enough.
In a room within a quiet, abandoned building, I lay on the bed, thinking about how I wanted to see him happy, and closed my eyes.
On the first day of school, I recalled why Yoon Siwoo was late in the original novel. He had told Sylvia Astra that he was late because he saw a fire on his way to school and helped put it out. Until now, I had just thought, "Oh, that's how it happened," but I had been following Yoon Siwoo and I hadn't seen any fire. Then where exactly was the fire in the original story?
Perhaps that was the reason why Class 1-A had 29 students in the original, and why a character named Scarlet Evande never appeared. It seems Scarlet Evande was fated to burn to death on that first day.
I felt a sickening dizziness and a suffocating sensation, as if I were bound by something. I tried to get up, but my body wouldn't move. When I opened my eyes to see what was wrong, I saw the man—my guardian—slumped over in a chair, bound and unconscious. Panicked, I tried to move to help him, but I only heard the clanking of metal; I couldn't budge. My situation was even more dire: my hands and feet were chained and suspended in mid-air, and I was trapped inside a cage like a prison cell.
I had been sleeping in my bed. What on earth was happening? It looked like both he and I had been kidnapped. I tried to conjure flames to melt the chains binding my limbs, but every spark that bloomed from my body was sucked away through the chains into somewhere else.
At that moment, a voice spoke.
"It's useless to try, Number 10. That is a special restraint tool made of Absorption Stone, just like the one on your prosthetic arm."
I looked toward the voice. Sator, the silver-haired elf, was looking at me and the man with a nasty grin. We hadn't met many times, but I had seen this man who called me "Number 10" in my dreams over and over again. Was this a memory so deeply embedded it had become a trauma? My body trembled, and flames erupted from me, fueled by a natural surge of terror and, even more so, rage.
I had been vaguely guessing for a while now. That perhaps the dreams I’d been having were the past memories of Scarlet Evande. The fragments I remembered were serious enough to be unsettling, but they were things that had already happened. I had been complacent, thinking that since I couldn't change the past, I would only focus on the future. But how could I have imagined I’d be kidnapped by some lunatic while I slept?
I was terrified of what might happen, but more than that, I was furious. I glared at Sator, who clearly seemed to be the one who had kidnapped us. He frowned, pushed a long rod through the bars, and pressed it against my body.
"Gah... Argh...!"
With a stinging jolt of pain—as if electricity were flowing through me—a flash of light exploded in my head.
"I heard you lost your memory, but it seems you've forgotten your place, too. Giving me that rebellious look with those filthy eyes... it's absolutely disgusting..."
I heard him click his tongue in disdain. Sator stared at me with sinister, gleaming eyes. Then, he suddenly smiled.
"Since you've rebelled, I suppose I have to punish you, don't I?"
I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting more pain, but to my surprise, the rod wasn't aimed at me.
"Ughhh!!!"
The man's scream echoed through the room. I opened my eyes wide to see Sator grabbing the man by his hair; he must have just regained consciousness from the pain. The man, looking confused and clearly unaware of how this had happened, opened his mouth.
"Sa... Sator... What on earth is this..."
"Didn't you say you wanted to meet Number 10? So, I personally prepared this front-row seat for you. Well, if I have to explain, I suppose I had to bring you here by force because I couldn't abandon the plan. Failure is not a word in my dictionary."
As Sator laughed, the man shouted threateningly.
"...The plan was started to save people. But what is this? You've completely lost your mind. Do you have any idea what a grave crime it is to commit a felony against a hero?"
Sator began to scratch his throat and laugh.
"If you hadn't run away with that thing, I wouldn't have had to do this. And a hero, you say? That thing? Something made from the heart fragment of a witch, the enemy of humanity?"
Hearing that, I finally understood the nature of this body I was inhabiting. My curiosity was satisfied, but it only made me feel even more horrified. Damn it, of all things...
Sator continued to scratch his throat as he spoke. "Just so you know, the Witch Weaponization Project was never a plan created to save people. It was planned from the start to use the witch's power to clear out the monsters in the north and reclaim the great territory of Astra. What I said back then was just because I needed your abilities. I may have deceived you, but you deceived me too, so it doesn't matter, right?"
The man's face hardened, as if the words were a massive shock. Sator laughed continuously, as if the man's expression were amusing. Blood flowed from his scratched throat, staining his gloves crimson. He looked completely unhinged. And we were in a situation where our lives were in the hands of someone like that.
The man spoke with a rigid face. "...What are you trying to do?"
Sator grinned. "What am I doing? I'm continuing the experiment to see if I can do something with that failure. Don't worry. Astra never forgets a debt. Even though you deceived me, you have done things for me in the past."
Sator pressed the rod against the man's body.
"I'll give you the chance to make a noble sacrifice to draw out its rage. So, try to endure as best you can."
A scream tore through the air.