Appointment of the Family Head
We left the dungeon after securing the Connector.
The exit leading back to the mortal world was right beside the cave where the Connector had been kept, so we had no trouble finding the door and opening it.
"Welcome. We've been expecting you."
The moment we stepped back into the mortal world, the one known as the Elder greeted us.
Ordinarily, leaving a dungeon would deposit us at Dilmun's gate, but this place was an independent space managed by the Citrine family. Beyond the door lay the Citrine Holy Land, where the Elder resided.
"We are honored to be in your presence, Elder."
Terre bowed her head with proper noble etiquette and went in to speak with her alone.
The rest of us, Yupi included, watched their exchange from a step behind.
"Did you bring the Connector?"
"Here it is."
Terre drew from her coat a jewel brimming with a dazzling radiance.
Almost weightless, the gem floated up from her palm as lightly as a wisp of down caught in the breeze, and soon drifted higher into the air.
"Magnificent. You have restored to the family its two lost treasures—the Divine Relic that stands as its symbol and this artifact. Your qualification is more than sufficient."
"Thank you!"
"There is no need to thank me. This is a fruit you earned entirely through your own efforts."
Shaaa.
A faint shimmer, so subtle you had to strain to catch it.
A sparse scattering of light brushed across her head, as gently as a hand patting her hair.
"Hold your head high and stand tall. That is the first virtue a family head must possess."
The Elder praised Terre.
Given the occasion, Terre was trying her best to keep her composure, but her cheeks had flushed as red as fingernails stained with balsam dye.
She tried to hide her emotions, yet they kept prickling out of her like tiny thorns.
"Now, I believe I can tell you the truth."
"The truth, you say?"
"The origin of the Citrine family—and the shadow hidden beneath its proud glory."
"…"
Shadow. A word steeped in darkness and gloom, and Terre's expression went cold.
She was no doubt recalling the atrocities of the former family head—her father—that she had witnessed through the illusion.
"But first, I have one question. When you found the Connector, there was a guardian watching over the jewel, was there not?"
"I'm sorry—the guardian?"
"Hmm?"
Bewilderment followed hard on confusion, and a long, awkward seam stretched between them.
Neither Terre nor the Elder could piece the conversation back together, both of them stammering.
Ugh, this is painful.
Guess I'd better step in here.
"Um, about the guardian—Terre never actually saw one."
"You… you're the child who stepped forward to help Terre, aren't you?"
"Solis. Though you might be more familiar with me by my holy name, Arlan."
"Arlan…"
The moment I revealed the holy name I'd kept secret, the one called the Elder let out a murmur that was nearly a monologue.
"So that's how it is."
"Arlan—that means you're one of the Hardliners…!"
That was Yuri reacting with an I-knew-it expression.
Yupi jolted and shot me a sharp, wary look, but since I was the target, her expression quickly softened again.
"You'll explain later, won't you?"
"Of course."
Still, because she trusted me, instead of nagging me to spill everything now, she only hinted that I should tell her when this was done, the next time we had a chance.
I winked, squeezing one eye shut, then turned my head back toward the Elder.
"In any case, if you're referring to the dungeon's guardian—the Phantom Herald—he simply wasn't there."
"Not there? I arranged things in advance so that child would meet that monster…"
"Someone sliced him apart before anyone could meet him. Never even got a look at his face."
As I said this, I shifted my gaze toward Yuri.
During the gap while that one had parried the ambush that flew at Terre, Yuri had swept away the horde of monsters with a single stroke of her blade.
The monsters the Elder had prepared had likewise met their end at her hand.
I could say this with certainty because Yuri's Mirror of the Moon required a medium to manifest its illusions: the person at the heart of the story, and the objects entangled with them by cause and effect—the Connector.
The guardian had been parasitizing the Connector.
She wouldn't have wanted anything interfering with the Mirror of the Moon, so the creature had been one of the greatest obstacles she absolutely had to eliminate.
"But don't worry. Whatever message you wished to convey was delivered to Terre just fine."
The Connector was an item invented by Proto in the distant past.
It possessed a forcible binding power that could knot together even parallel lines that could never meet, and it had originally been forged as a link to unite two Divine Relics into one.
However, after being struck down and mortally wounded by Eva's father, Kairos, he had found another use for the Connector.
That was the theft of Origin Cores.
The former head of the Citrine family had done the same—when Tis was still an infant, he cut open her heart in surgery, performing the groundwork needed to steal her Origin Core.
Afterward, once the family head achieved his goal, he split open her body and carried the Core about inside his own.
In the end he was killed by Yupi, and the Connector passed into her hands.
In any case, she had reported all of it to the Elder and sealed the Connector away in the deepest depths of the dungeon—that was the broad outline of the affair.
"Then Terre already knows of her father's vile deeds."
"…Yes. I know."
The Elder had set as the first domino of her plan having the Phantom Herald that haunted the Connector take the shapes of the wronged spirits sacrificed by the Citrine family, planting seeds of doubt in Terre.
She meant to ask the girl, upon her return from her mission, what she had seen, and then—tailoring the revelations to her answers—unveil the family's ugly secrets one by one. But there was no longer any need.
"I see."
Beginning with the Elder's bitterly chiding voice, all the words she had held back for so long came pouring out like water through a broken dam.
"Terre, the people of the family revere me as their Elder, but beyond offering a few words like these, there is nothing I can do."
"…"
"I told your father to stop, but he knew no such thing as stopping. Even when I sought help elsewhere, I—and the children bound to this land, left with nothing but lingering regrets—had no power to hold him back."
"Lingering regrets, you say…?"
"Those of us you call the Elders are the very beginning of the Citrine family—the regrets they left behind upon this earth."
At those words, the light drifting through the air of the Holy Land gathered together and intertwined.
Soon a woman appeared, fine golden hair like a spider's freshly spun silk falling to her shoulders, and approached Terre.
"I am the one at the heart of it—Aspa Citrine. Of the Celestial Clan, twin sister of Daon, and once known as the wielder of the Wrathful Heavenly Thunder."
Her newly formed hand gently caressed Terre's cheek.
A touch from a lingering spirit that could never truly be felt—it was the same as a hologram brushing against skin, yet through it, a tender sincerity came flowing whole.
"My child, my poor descendant. Through your father's greed, the family has walked the road of decay. Innocent blood, our own children treated as tools—and in the end, he met a wretched demise at the hands of one of them."
"…I know. My father was a wretched man."
"And that is precisely what matters—that you did not turn away from it. You can tell right from wrong, and you know what must be done going forward."
Shaaa.
Aspa's form grew blurred.
These spirits struggled merely to carry their voices on regret alone; to painstakingly sculpt a body and reveal themselves had drained every last scrap of their strength, and they had reached their limit.
"Keep watching over us from beside us, always. I pray you will raise the Citrine family up once more. Should you ever lose your way, come here whenever you wish and ask."
With those final words, Aspa's form faded away, and a deep stillness settled over the Holy Land.
No voice or presence could be felt any longer, but Terre clenched her fists and steeled her resolve.
"Yes. I swear I will."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
With the matter of the Holy Land settled, Terre held a brief succession ceremony and became the family head.
The leadership seat had sat vacant, and the backlog of work that had piled up like a mountain during the interregnum meant there was plenty to do.
Terre, of course, paid it no mind and simply declared:
"Party! We're throwing a banquet right now, and everyone's invited."
"You're in quite the mood."
"I'm the family head now. What can't I do?"
In the head's office, Terre let out a shout of exertion and sank into a chair wrapped in fine leather.
With the look of someone who'd shed a long-carried burden, she had finally seized the power she'd wanted for so long.
"I'll do my duty as family head, so don't worry. As for the banquet, it's to hammer home to everyone who supported me that my position is now rock solid."
"Fair enough. After all, we all shouldered the burden together to get you that seat—if you shut your mouths and got nothing in return, more than a few of them would clutch the backs of their necks in outrage."
Even in the original ending, Terre had gone down in family history as a capable head whose name would endure.
Even without my meddling, she would undoubtedly restore the family's former glory.
"Well, since we're at it, I'd better get myself a seat at that party too. No complaints, right?"
"Of course not. Our Solis was the MVP in securing the Connector—an invitation is obviously coming your way, so relax."
Amid the warm, cheerful atmosphere, Terre's blooming smile was as beautiful as a red rose unfolding in a garden.
The exact opposite of the venomous girl she'd once been, mad with revenge.
Before I knew it, the laughter had infected me too.
There we were, laughing and enjoying ourselves together, when—
"Lady Terre, it's an emergency!"
A servant burst through the door.
She must have been in a tremendous hurry, for she'd forgotten even the courtesy of knocking and asking permission, her face gone white as a sheet.
"We're under attack! You must take cover at once!"
"Attacked? By whom? Explain yourself, properly."
"Well… there's a single person smashing through the mansion's front gate and pushing straight in—"
Attacking the Citrine family?
Who on earth?
Just as Terre and I both tilted our heads, unable to think of a single candidate—
"Solis!"
"Ahh—Arlan! Somebody stop her!"
"I can't! She's too much for me—"
"Ah."
At the familiar voice drifting in from the distance, Terre and I both wore expressions of dawning understanding.