Prologue: The 13th Regression
In the blazing Eisenmarck Mansion, I clutched my dying father’s body and stared straight ahead.
Five women glared at me.
Every one of them looked at me as though I were a monster.
I swallowed the laughter rising in my throat and spoke with a mocking curl of my lips.
One of the women, tears spilling down her cheeks, leveled her sword at me.
Another screamed at me through her sobs.
I looked down.
Father was bleeding again, slipping away once more.
This was the fourteenth time I had watched him die.
The first of those deaths, of course, had been by my own hand.
I smiled bitterly.
It was all right.
I had prepared everything for this very day.
Forbidden alchemy, black magic—every forbidden art I could seize.
I felt blood leaking from my mouth.
Through my blurring vision I looked at the five women.
From my body, something like tangled threads of memory surged outward and flew straight toward the five women.
They clutched their heads and began to shriek.
At the same moment, blood exploded violently from my own mouth.
My memories grew hazy.
Huh… why was I even here?
I couldn’t recall.
It seemed I had lost some important memories.
In any case, that was how my thirteenth regression ended.
And in the fourteenth regression that followed, I forgot every regression that had come before.