Chapter 286
Chapter 286
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 14
Chapter Title: One Empire, Three Legends (45)
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Flowers fall.
In the sky where even the wind holds its breath. In that frigid air, the frozen petals shatter into pieces.
Along with her star, Maria's dream was plummeting as well.
‘I love you.’
In the end, she had lost to the selfish god of light.
Just as her body, pierced by the spear of light and flame, crumbled to dust. Her star too, her people who formed that star, and every soul that had been with her—they were all scattering.
Maria was counting and bidding farewell to every soul leaking from her chest.
‘I love you.’
The once purely kind soul was now riddled with daggers of curses and malice. Her mind could never fully return to wholeness. All she could whisper to those cursed souls—doomed to wander this world aimlessly after leaving her grasp, until they crumbled back to a handful of dust—were those words she cherished in her heart, from beginning to end.
But even such a broken soul was a fragment of a god, a piece of what was once whole.
Thus, the witch Mea Maria would begin anew. The soul of the former saintess would cross the boundary of death and find another body.
It would be an obsession close to a ghost's haunt, now that she had lost all her power and even the line of beginnings was defiled.
For she was the only one left to embrace those pitiful souls that everyone else had abandoned.
The saintess's soul departed her body, scattering toward the world. Someday, as the goddess of the forsaken, Mea Maria. To give her people one more chance.
Someday, she would raise up the shattered souls once again. Mea Maria would live another life as a witch.
For that day, now it was time to sleep.
Rustle.
‘...’
But just as stars draw each other in. An unknown force tugged at her departing steps.
In her spirit realm, where no one should remain—now that all had left. The haven of the forsaken.
[Give it back.]
Straddling the gulf between life and death, one soul remained to capture her gaze.
"Yes. Neria. At last. At last... you've arrived."
No, there was one more. A girl's soul flickering vividly, and an old man's soul, flickering on the verge of extinction.
‘Ah.’
A reunion so unexpected it drew a short exclamation from her addled mind.
"Mother."
The soul mage who, after entering the witch's tower, had surrounded himself with countless souls. The moment he laid eyes on her true form, he forgot his own safety on the battlefield and prepared a spell just for this instant.
Aldrich. The soul chains bound to his wrist were pulling at the witch's soul.
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Splash. Splash. Splash. Splash.
Aldrich crossed the space of consciousness—be it the spirit realm or the unconscious—toward the faintly flickering soul of the witch.
As a soul mage, he had seen and handled the souls of countless good people, far more wicked souls, and evil spirits.
Yet he had never beheld a soul as grotesque and damaged as the one before him now.
Just like what he had seen in his maddened mother's eyes that day. A horrific monster stitched together from thousands of eyeballs and tens of thousands of arms, made of flesh and blood.
People accumulate many wounds in life. Even without great tragedies like the loss of family—petty quarrels, fleeting anger, casually hurled insults—small wounds leave their mark all the same.
The reason people can carry them and keep living is that time covers them over like a warm blanket.
Aldrich called it ‘the soul heals.’ Every emotion and memory leaves a trace on the soul, no matter the form. Yet the reason a person's soul can remain round and soft, steadfastly enduring, is that new traces layer atop the old, with time bridging scar to scar, covering the wounds. That was how Aldrich, as a soul mage, saw it.
That was why Mea Maria's soul was akin to hell itself.
"Not forgetting a single one. You meant to carry them all in your arms like that."
The saintess's soul endlessly circles the world, but it's hard to call it reincarnation outright. When a saintess dies, her soul seeks a suitable believer's body and merges with the human soul within. The new saintess remembers her life before becoming one—whether farmer or the second daughter of a baker, an ordinary existence—but remembers nothing of her predecessor's life as saintess. It is a small blessing prepared for the saintess, doomed to eternally circle mortal lives.
The world is too harsh a place to bear hundreds of years of emotions, memories, and their traces. So that the saintess does not crumble under time's weight, when she sheds her flesh and returns briefly to divine embrace, those memories are stripped away.
But Mea Maria, strayed from divine guidance, received no such blessing. Nor did she wish to let go of even one of the countless wounds and souls' memories cradled in her arms.
Splash. Splash. Splash.
Fifty-two years. Fifty-two years.
From the moment the noble boy, exiled from the temple and losing everything in an instant, became a black mage—how much had transpired?
Hiding from the temple pursuers' eyes. Beaten near death over a mere crumb of bread he had barely obtained, accused of not paying rent. Crawling, vomiting, dying in streets soaked by winter-pond-cold rain.
Up to the moment he finally killed to steal someone else's place.
As her once-soft hands grew stained with blood and evil, Aldrich recalled his mother's eyes from that stone chamber that day, chewing over the emotions welling within.
What had he chewed on? Rage? Fear? Longing? Even now, as a wrinkled old man, he couldn't quite say what emotion he had swallowed back then.
But one thing was certain. The reunion with his mother that he had yearned for in those days was never meant to look like this.
Had the grotesque witch's soul thrashed with a thousand eyes and a thousand arms spewing malice, it might not have felt so suffocating.
The soul before him—still in the form of that horrific monster stitched from eyeballs and arms, just as in the stone chamber that day—but its fragmented, torn eyes held no such malice as before. For it had shed all its power and souls, leaving only the saintess's soul, twisted beyond repair.
Aldrich released the curse he had prepared for her.
The saintess's soul repeating life after life. If that was the order decreed by the gods.
Then severing it with a curse would likewise be heaven's will.
A bond that could never be severed eternally. To the black mage's eye, it resembled a curse in form. Yet no one calls such a priceless bondage a curse; it is something carried.
A thread that never breaks.
"Uncurse, Heavenly Bond."
The soul thread released from Aldrich's fingertips gathered, forming a shape: small and sturdy. A dagger thin enough for a child to grip—though even that was just a hilt, bladeless.
Its target: whoever the thread's end touched.
The incantation: fifty-two years of anguish and conflict. Every curse and longing that flashed in Aldrich's mind upon touching that day's memory. All the opposing recollections.
The catalyst...
[Give it back]
For fifty-two years. The evil spirit Neria, born with soul magic talent, yet bloated her body into a monstrous force instead of honing that gift. Another blade of heavenly bond, forged by stripping away all the talent innate to her soul.
From girl to monster. In a form reborn with dress and fangs, the horrific evil spirit's hand now gripped the cursed blade born of two blood kin's yearnings.
A blade forged of unbreakable heavenly bond, to sever inescapable fate.
.
.
.
.
Stab.
The warped girl's blade pierced the hideous saintess's soul.
[Give it back]
Stab.
[Give it back]
Stab. Stab, shunk—
[Give it back][Give it back][Give it back][Give it back]
.
.
.
.
[Giv...e it... back...]
The daughter's eyes stabbing her mother's heart—those beast-like, hideous evil spirit eyes—filled with tears.
Evil spirits cannot think much. They are but fragments bloated from the emotion and memory shard at the moment their soul twisted.
An unfulfillable desire. Escaping not to the truth before them, but into childish imaginings.
Before the crumbling evil spirit girl, clinging to her blade like a shed skin, the hideous mother's soul crumbled.
[Give it back]
‘I love you’
[Give it back]
‘I love you’
[Giv... Give... it... back...]
‘Ah...’
Like a sand tower collapsing. The twisted souls swollen with misaligned desires began to crumble.
The girl's soul knew it could never be returned, yet could not stop voicing it.
At the end, after sending away all her loved ones, the mother's soul crumbled atop the one she held dear in her arms.
Even the soul mage's eyes, who had raced through life solely to bring that end, knowing no one would reach a happy conclusion.
Tears carrying unresolved emotions fell endlessly.
[I... love... you...]
Rustle.
In the end, the saintess's soul vanished as if nothing had happened.
Crumble—
And before it, the girl's evil spirit crumbled too, meeting her brother's dazed eyes before turning to ash and fading.
Aldrich knelt, scattering fragments of the soul jar he had shattered himself toward where they had vanished.
Mother, Neria too—cursed, corrupted souls—they would find no rest as they so longed, nor journey to their star.
Ah, my mother. Ahhh, my little sister. So unfortunate, achieving nothing—this end I can only wish happiness upon for my family.
"Rest in peace. Now... freed from eternal torment... rest... rest... peacefully..."
Even so, Aldrich hoped a small peace might settle upon their lives, which should have ended only in tragedy.
At the very least, for himself preparing his end. He had ensured enough peace to recall those who would stand sadly before his corpse.
"You were right not to tell me."
Shunk.
The moment the traces of the two warped evil spirits vanished, a long gash appeared across Aldrich's abdomen, and his body crumbled.
Thud.
Even after half a century, the scar remained vivid. Fifty-two years ago, that day in the stone chamber—the wound pierced by his father's blade.
A black mage lives by contracting evil spirits to fill soul cracks. Though twisted, with Neria—who had fulfilled her wish—gone now, there was no means to stem the life force leaking from Aldrich's broken soul.
That was all it was. He had barely survived binding two souls; now, with half gone, he returned to where he should have been. That day he should have died, the life eked out through loopholes simply finding its place again.
Lucilla, so emotional, would cry a lot. Every time she saw that child, she'd think of Neria and want to treat her well.
Idrasil. What had that elf learned from a human life tangled in life and death? She learns fast, which only makes me worry more.
Otman. My friend with a soul clear as rippling water. Never thought I'd gain a friend at this age. He had the knack for seeping into anyone like water. Being older, we might meet again soon if all goes well.
Borca. Has that werewolf finally found peace at last? If he ascends to the heavens as a spirit, as the light ones say, will he see his family's peaceful nest?
Notum. You're not collecting my soul, are you?
Professor. Ah, the one I thought I'd never reach in my lifetime. The tale of House TelDMAyer, you led me to its end—my grateful friend. He'll probably rage and fume. "If you'd only told me, I'd have found a way!" Because he's so exceptionally capable, he can't bear leaving anything beyond his reach untouched. If only he'd take it a bit easier.
As his drooping eyelids grew heavy with sleep, his past life replayed from the beginning, like walking the road he'd come. The lantern show people call it.
Any regrets? Indignant? Afraid? Or... was it enjoyable?
"Heh, heh heh heh heh... Even at this age, I still don't know...."
Aldrich slowly closed his eyes, gazing at his blood spreading across the surface of his consciousness.
Strangely, no thoughts came to him.
Just one.
"...I wonder if that friend can brew it on his own...."
His companions, never able to let their guard down, and the friend left in this world—the one who'd shared his final years. A trivial worry if he'd left enough of the tawny potion for him.
His final thought: from the moment he met the Professor, the colors of his memories seemed unusually vivid.
With that, Aldrich's wrinkled eyes closed.
...Twinkle.
Two small entangled specks of light floated down like fluff, settling upon the wound that had lingered unhealed for fifty-two years. And with that,
Another long tale reached its end.
Peace had come.
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