A Shattered Past (1)
"It's finally... finally over...!"
"Waaah! I really thought we were gonna die!"
The students were in an absolute state, wailing and sobbing without restraint. Some collapsed flat onto the dirt, while others groaned under the sudden, crushing weight of utter exhaustion. Watching all the tension abruptly drain from their bodies—leaving them a hollowed-out mess—would normally have made me chuckle and think back to the days when I was just like them.
Except right now, I couldn't even manage a smirk.
I had just realized that something had gone terribly wrong with my own body.
I gently rubbed my shoulder, where the fine capillaries had burst beneath the skin, and pieced through the lingering sensations.
I knew it. That feeling wasn't just my imagination.
Bracing against Aris's full-throttle magic had put an immense strain on my shoulder. The Mana Shield didn't shatter; instead, whenever it collided with a force beyond its threshold, it rebounded that kinetic shock directly into the caster's body. The ache deep in my shoulder joint meant only one thing: my shield had failed to absorb the full output of her blast.
Under normal circumstances, that blast shouldn't have fazed me in the slightest.
Failing to block that... Does this mean I'm walking the exact same downward path as before?
In my past life, there had come a point when my Mana Shield began to deteriorate. I never learned the precise cause. But if I had to name a culprit, it was pushing my mana past its absolute breaking point. Ever since I forced that kind of reckless output, the power had begun to fray at the seams.
I had harbored a lingering dread that history might repeat itself, and now the pieces were falling into place. The catalyst this time was almost certainly that spear of concentrated mana I had hurled at Shanberesh during the Scheat Great Subjugation Campaign.
"Whew."
A single heavy sigh dragged a flood of memories in its wake. Far more of them were bitter than sweet. From that fateful turning point onward, my past life had been nothing but a long, agonizing slide into ruin. But I couldn't allow myself to repeat that tragic cycle. Not this time.
'If someone awakens their unique magic, is it possible to ever lose it?'
I had asked that question once before. And the answer I received had been definitive.
'Lose it? As far as my research goes, no such phenomenon exists. Theoretically, it's impossible.'
'However, there are rare cases where the fundamental essence of the power shifts. Such individuals are an extreme minority, largely because they never realize how their own power has evolved.'
That was Professor Denise's confident declaration. Not a loss of power, but an alteration of its fundamental essence. Only now had I collided head-on with that very circumstance, which meant I finally had cause to seek him out and press for answers. The moment this crisis was resolved, finding Professor Denise had to be my top priority.
The blooming of my unique magic... That was something I needed to keep etched into the front of my mind.
Time to head back.
Returning and conducting a thorough assessment of my physical condition came before everything else.
"Hey, wrap it up and get—"
"Why is Instructor acting like this all of a sudden?"
"I don't know. She just suddenly collapsed into herself..."
"She was weaving that ridiculously complex magic formula earlier. Could that be why?"
"If she hit severe mana exhaustion, that would explain it."
Mana exhaustion? Not a chance. The spell Aris had turned against me carried far less juice than what she had unleashed to rescue those kids.
"Move aside for a second."
I hadn't noticed amidst their noisy chattering, but with the entire crowd huddling in a tight circle, I couldn't help but look. Yet what baffled me was why this was even happening.
"Hey, Aris. What's wrong with..."
"...!"
To my bewilderment, the instant my fingers brushed against her, Aris recoiled violently, trembling pale as a corpse as she scrambled backward.
"Instructor...?"
"What's the matter with her?"
My thoughts mirrored the students' exactly.
What on earth is wrong with her?
Her condition was completely off. Collapsing in relief once the danger passed was a normal reaction for greenhorns, but that applied to these coddled students, not Aris. To a veteran who had survived countless blood-soaked battlefields and grown thoroughly numb to the horrors of combat, that excuse didn't hold a drop of water. She wasn't the kind of woman to sit curled up in the dirt, wrapping her arms around herself in sheer terror.
Should I drag her along by force?
That seemed like the sensible option. Even if we had wiped out the Decurion-class swarm, this place remained a wild breeding ground where other demonic beasts could ambush us at any second. It was far from a safe haven—this was Shirakh, of all godforsaken places. Deciding I had no choice, I lowered my posture to haul Aris onto my back, but—
"Over there...! I see people!"
"Everyone! Are you all all right?!"
Michel's clear voice rang out across the clearing. The need for me to step in vanished on the spot.
Well... I can leave the rest to Michel.
After casting a couple of lingering glances in Aris's direction, I turned on my heel and walked away. Yet I still couldn't fathom why she had reacted with such visceral horror. Not until I crossed paths with someone later and was forced to remember that day all over again.
—Aris! What's wrong? What happened? Why can't you stand up?
—Instructor!! Please say something! Please?!
...
—This won't do. She's completely lost her senses. We need to lift her and carry her ourselves. Can you give me a hand?
—Yes, ma'am!!
...
—What's going on? How did Miss Aris end up like this...?
—I'm not sure. The students said she collapsed into this state right after rescuing them...
Everything felt muffled. Even when human voices brushed against her ears, they registered only as dull, vibrating echoes. Everything was blurred. Her eyes were wide open, yet her vision remained a murky smear of gray. Her other senses had suffered the same fate. She couldn't tell whether her nose and mouth were drawing breath, and she doubted whether her skin could register touch at all.
Accompanied by a heavy sensation of sinking into an endless abyss, every organ in her body felt thoroughly paralyzed. As though she had been plunged into the depths of a suffocating sea.
That was likely when she closed her eyes.
...
......
.........
—Must be nice having peace of mind. Don't you think so, Aris McKenhaim?
Suddenly, a voice sliced through the silence.
"Who is that? Who's calling my name?"
—Ahaha, you're hilarious. Seriously. You're beyond comfortable—you're just downright shameless. Is that really what matters right now?
She couldn't place the speaker. Yet for some reason, the words carried a razor-sharp edge, dripping with naked hostility.
—What, are you going to run away like that again?
"Hah, running away? What are you even talking about? Babbling about peace of mind and calling me shameless... What kind of nonsense is this?"
—Pfft. Nonsense, you say? You know damn well what I'm talking about. You know exactly what you did.
Before she could even knit her brows at the sneering tone, a human silhouette stepped right in front of her. Judging by the length of the hair, it was a woman. But shrouded in pitch-black shadow like an inkblot, her identity was impossible to decipher. The silhouette raised a hand and snapped her fingers. In response, a shattered fragment materialized out of thin air, projecting a vivid scene across its surface.
—How's this? Starting to ring a bell now?
"What... what are you doing...?! What is this...!"
Reflected within the shard was another figure smothered in shadow—a man. He rolled across the dirt countlessly, throwing his bare flesh into the meat grinder without hesitation, drenched in his own blood from head to toe. Yet even watching him, Aris couldn't understand what this had to do with having peace of mind, being shameless, or running away.
"You yap away without knowing a single thing, and now you show me this? What for?!"
—Really?
"...What?"
—You really don't know? Even after looking at that?
Up until this moment, nothing had stirred in her memory. But then countless other shards swarmed into view, smothering her entire field of vision. Within those drifting fragments, all the other members of Tembris were clearly visible, save for one person.
...No, to be precise, two people were missing—if one included the perspective of the observer looking on.
—Do you get it now? Every single bit of this is something you saw. Scenes you witnessed with your very own eyes.
"That's impossible..."
—These are your memories. Your emotions. And you thought you could just wipe it all clean and forget?
The swarming shards abruptly shattered into dust, and in their place rose a single, colossal fragment. It was incomparably larger than anything that had come before.
—Kh...! Aris, just listen to me for a second—!
—Shut the hell up, you lunatic!!!!
"What... is that..."
The man reflected in the massive shard didn't have an uninjured inch on his body. Through the shredded tears of his clothing, dark purple contusions, jagged scars, and freshly opened wounds wept blood. His garments were battered into little more than filthy rags. Yet someone was relentlessly bombarding that broken man with offensive magic—unleashing explosive, merciless lotus blossoms that she knew better than anyone else in the world.
"No... wait..."
Every time he tried to part his lips, another deafening blast tore into him. He couldn't even finish a single sentence. Rather than fighting back, he only stumbled backward, desperately trying to yield.
—Senia is... she'll be back soon! Charlotte is treating him right now!
BOOM!
—*Cough!* I told you... I never had any intention of abandoning anyone!
BOOM!
—They're alive! Right now the poison is just being neutralized—
KABOOM!
With a wet, sickening thud, he collapsed flat onto the earth. The thick shroud of shadow began to peel away from his face, laying his features bare.
—Why... won't you... believe me...?
Backed to the very edge of a sheer cliff, leaning his shattered frame against a solitary boulder, Junon gasped out those dying words. The sheer desperation scraped from the depths of his throat—a strangled whisper forced out when he barely had the breath to speak—struck her ears like a physical hammer.
Her head spun sickeningly. A crushing agony tore through her chest, making her want to claw her own heart out. Her hands and feet shook uncontrollably. He had been desperately pleading his innocence. It was a plea far more agonizing, far more desperate than the cries he had made when begging her to save the students trapped within the Jungle Dome.
At last, the giant fragment fractured into countless slivers and sank into the darkness.
"Did... did I... do that...?"
—Do you understand now?
Every single shard broke apart. Then, coalescing into a single point within her mind, they branded themselves onto her soul. These were all the memories of one person: the past of a girl whose body always moved before her brain, who had so ruthlessly turned her back on her comrade's trust. Even though they had shattered right before her eyes, those memories were now driven deep into Aris McKenhaim's mind, never to be erased again.
—Don't try to forget ever again. You must never run away. Never.
And that voice... The shadowed figure finally stepped into the light, revealing her face. It was unmistakably her own.
Slowly, the figure began to recede into the distance. Aris tried to shout, to ask what this meant, but no sound escaped her throat. As the sensation of sinking beneath deep water swallowed her whole, the final sound echoing in her ears was a dry, hollow snap.
—Tick.
The sound of a clock hand moving forward.
"Haaah, haaaah!"
Her heart thumped against her ribs so violently it felt ready to burst. Panting raggedly, she dragged air in and out through her nose and mouth, over and over, while hot tears spilled down her cheeks without end. This wasn't the sensation of being dragged into the crushing depths of the ocean. It was a visceral, raw sensation that only the living could experience.
Reality.
Then had that nightmare just now merely been a dream? No. She would deny that with every fiber of her being. The memory that replayed without a single filter the moment she turned her thoughts toward it could never be called a dream.
"What... what am I supposed to do...?"
"I've finished filing the reports..."
"Good work, Adele. You've all had a rough time."
"Ugh, this year is shaping up to be an utter nightmare."
"Tell me about it. I'm right on the verge of graduation, for heaven's sake. I came out here hoping to earn a little pocket money, and look at the absolute mess we walked into."
To the audit inspectors dispatched to Shirakh, this entire catastrophe had been a natural disaster in human form. Students who refused to apply themselves, two hostile factions that fractured during the midterm evaluation, and the absurd, reckless stunt pulled after suffering defeat. Looking back on the whole debacle, it was more than enough to cement the conviction that Shirakh was a cursed posting nobody in their right mind should ever visit.
"Well, at least nobody was killed. That's a mercy in itself."
The most senior inspector among them stretched his arms overhead, adopting an optimistic tone. The others nodded in fervent agreement, relieved that the worst had been averted.
"Enough about that. Michel, how is your party member doing?"
"Now that you mention it, Miss Aris's condition is far more concerning. Even the students who were right beside her have no idea what happened to her."
"...For now, she's asleep in the infirmary. Once she wakes up, I'll ask her myself."
Strangely enough, what weighed most heavily on everyone's minds wasn't the students or the cleanup—it was Aris. The last image anyone had of her was right after the rescue, suddenly collapsing to the ground, clutching her own body and weeping as if her soul had been ripped away. The academy physician had confirmed there was nothing physically wrong with her, which only amplified their anxiety.
"Michel. It's not like you can hold your lectures today anyway, so why don't you just go check in on her?"
"Pardon? But what about my remaining reports...?"
"Isn't this why you have seniors around to lean on?"
"Having an underclassman who's too competent makes us look bad, you know."
Dragging out senior pride this late in the game was a transparent excuse, and there was no way someone as sharp as Michel could miss it. The senior inspectors were simply looking out for her, guessing that as a fellow member of Team Tembris, her mind had to be in utter turmoil right now.
"Go on, hurry. And you too, Adele."
"Me? As well?"
"Your classmate was right in the thick of it with you, wasn't he? He went through hell during this mess, so go check on his condition."
In truth, Junon's physical state wasn't nearly that dire. The upperclassmen were simply using it as an excuse to drive the point home. You didn't reach your senior year without picking up a little tact. Giving Adele a knowing wink, the seniors piled on plausible justifications to usher both underclassmen out for some well-deserved rest.
Bowing their heads, the two young women murmured their thanks and excused themselves. Adele was perceptive enough to read the room, quietly slipping away down the corridor so Michel could visit Aris without unnecessary baggage.
"Aris, are you awake?"
No response came from within the private room.
"I need to check on your condition, so I'm coming in."
Yet just as Michel reached out to turn the doorknob, something caught her eye.
"Why are the slippers out here...?"
The soft indoor slippers meant strictly for use inside the infirmary were lying discarded out in the hallway.
Don't tell me.
An ominous dread crept up her spine. She threw the door wide open, and her worst fears were instantly confirmed.
The bed was completely empty.
"Aris!!"
There was no doubt about it. Aris had slipped out of bed and vanished into the Shirakh wilderness.