Curse the Purple Rose
The woman had short hair the same warm brown as Isabelle’s. Yet unlike Isabelle, her eyes drooped slightly at the corners and a single teardrop mole rested beneath her left eye. Her body was lithe and more mature than Isabelle’s, but the effect made her seem sinister rather than graceful. Her irises were close to Isabelle’s hue yet not quite the same. Where Isabelle’s leaned toward a cool, bluish violet, the woman’s burned with a reddish, wine-purple intensity.
“Why did you do it?”
“Ahhh, you finally asked meee. I was so disappointed that no one bothered to inquire. They all just begged for their lives…”
Rood’s legs refused to obey him. He needed to buy time.
“The first victim—your little sibling. Was that child not your real brother after all?”
“Oh, that? I simply altered their perception bit by bit with my curse. Every single person in the village.”
Altering perception through a curse? Rood had never imagined such a thing was possible.
“Even so, the parents and child moved as one body in the end. Doesn’t that make it all right?”
The woman pointed a slender finger at the monster standing rigid beside Rood. When he turned his head, dozens of mismatched eyes stared back at him.
“As for why I did all this… I suppose you could call it revenge.”
“Revenge against whom? Why slaughter innocent villagers? What could possibly justify this?”
Rood could not understand. If she had a single target, she needed only to kill that one person. Instead she had murdered far more than three villagers and warped the survivors’ very minds. Had she killed for pleasure or without reason, her actions might have made a twisted kind of sense. But she had spoken the word revenge.
‘Wait. No—’
“Is this revenge against Isabelle?”
“Correct~ As a reward, I’ll let you choose which limb I break first.”
The way she had spoken to Isabelle at the laundry yard, the indiscriminate slaughter of an entire Voenac village—everything pointed toward Isabelle, the one responsible for the territory and the one Mael hated. It all fit.
The woman stepped so close that Rood could feel her breath, then leaned down until her face hovered inches from his.
“Now then… which part shall I break firrrst?”
“This… this one…”
“Yeees? Which one?”
Swish!
Rood summoned every last ounce of strength and swung his arm down like an axe, intending to cleave her in two. Yet he felt no resistance. No one stood before him.
“Aha, so this side?”
Crack!
“Graaagh!”
His right shoulder crumpled and snapped in an instant.
“Didn’t I warn you? Dig any deeper and you die.”
Rood whipped his head around, but the space was empty.
He understood instinctively. This is not reality.
A curse could not physically crush a body through direct interaction. Changing perception was one thing; deceiving all five senses at once should have been impossible. Which meant he had lost consciousness and was now trapped inside a dream.
“All you can do is torment the mind. Break whatever you like.”
“Oh? You thought this was merely a dream? How unfortunate.”
The woman materialized again directly in front of him.
“I happen to be a mage as well, you see?”
Dual Ability User. Those known as “Duters” were individuals capable of wielding two or more of the four major supernatural powers. A duter who commanded both curses and illusion magic was an especially poor matchup for Rood. Against an opponent who could interfere with mind and perception, his only recourse was to flail his blade blindly through the air and pray for a lucky hit.
Unable to tell whether he stood in reality, a dream, or an illusion, Rood focused solely on steadying his ragged breathing. Had he possessed aura, he might have been able to break free. But he had never once wielded it.
“So tell me—how is that murderous bitch these days?”
“Who the hell are you to orchestrate all of this?”
Crack!
His left shoulder twisted with the same sickening sound.
“Do not answer a question with another question.”
“I asked how she’s doing.”
“Asking me is pointless. I’ve only been at the Voenac estate a short while.”
“Hmm. A newly hired guard, then?”
“Not a guard… I’m still just a guest, actually.”
Rood dropped to both knees and forced his head up, but his eyelids grew heavier by the second. Enduring the agony of two shattered shoulders with a clear mind after the earlier battle was nearly impossible.
“You sent a mere guest into the village? I’d like to call that a lie, yet the fact that he truly wears no family crest cloak makes it seem plausible.”
The woman tilted Rood’s chin upward with two fingers.
“It doesn’t feel as though she brought you along simply as a bodyguard.”
Her flushed cheeks and the way she scrutinized his face inch by inch filled Rood with sharp disgust.
“Well, what does it matter? I’ll kill you anyway.”
She spread her palm directly before his eyes. A crimson circle etched with intricate formulas and runes bloomed in the air.
"Burn him to ash."
⟨ Crimson incineration ⟩
I’m going to die like this.
“I’ll burn that pretty face until no one can recognize it.”
Rood fought desperately to keep his eyes open, but they slid shut despite his will.
If only I could rewind.
If he could return to the moment just before both shoulders shattered, he might at least have put up a decent fight. With his eyes closed, memories drifted past: the days scraping by in back alleys, the brutal military training, the endless hell of war. All of it had grown hazy.
Yet the brief time he had spent at the Voenac estate remained vivid. The illusions he had seen through the Mueject. The moment Isabelle had pressed her lips to his cheek just to tease him.
I only wanted to protect her.
“Die.”
Rood gathered the last of his strength in his ruined shoulder for one final strike.
Slash!
“Kyaaaaaah!”
The scream that rang out like shattering glass snapped Rood’s eyes open.
“H-how?! I shattered both your shoulders!”
When his senses returned, his sword had already sliced a shallow line across the woman’s arm. The pain in both shoulders had vanished as though it had never existed.
What just happened?
“Die, die, die!”
The woman began preparing another spell from a distance, but although Rood’s shoulders had healed, his legs still refused to support him.
Heavy footsteps pounded closer. A large man stepped between Rood and the woman.
“You look like hell, Sir Rood.”
The man with the thick, door-handle mustache flicked blood from his rapier and strode toward him.
“I’ve appeared, have I? Isabelle’s little watchdog?”
“It has been some time, Lady Mael.”
“Cough… you know her?” Rood asked.
Moneck hesitated only a moment.
“She is Lady Mael, youngest daughter of the current lord’s second wife.”
Rood understood enough of the Voenac family’s history. He had heard that the second wife had been executed for treason and embezzlement. With that context, everything clicked into place. Revenge against Isabelle supplied more than enough motive.
Moneck spoke again, voice calm yet firm.
“Lady Mael. It is over. Surrender.”
“Over? Oooover?”
Mael’s eyes widened maniacally.
“It ended long ago. That bitch already killed them all!”
“They deserved death,” Moneck replied.
“Well, I can’t deny that. Still… they were my family.”
Soon Pete, Isabelle, and the royal guards arrived on the scene.
“So this is where you were. And that guard—or guest, whatever he is—seems rather precious to you, doesn’t he?”
“Mael, stop this at once.”
“You? I even sent you a letter telling you to stop! So why?!”
Isabelle’s voice trembled as she faced her half-sister.
“It was unavoidable. You know that as well as I.”
“For me as well… it is unavoidable. Now.”
Mael glared at Isabelle with pure hatred.
“Curse it—the purple rose!”
Mael charged straight at Isabelle. Pete’s fist lashed out to intercept her, but she passed through his body like a ghost and kept rushing forward.
“What?! My lady!”
Mael’s charging form burst apart with a dull bang, dissolving into black powder that scattered on the wind.
"La Ul Verit."
⟨ Sanctuary of White Light ⟩
When the black dust cleared, Isabelle stood at the center of a pure white dome-shaped barrier, blood trickling from her nose.
“That form…”
Even as consciousness began to slip away, the sight jolted Rood fully awake. The woman he had seen inside the Mueject now stood tall and proud before him. She was taller than the Isabelle he knew; the change had torn several seams of her clothing. His gaze traced the elegant curve of her long legs before he could stop himself.
“Cough!”
Isabelle frowned and pressed a hand to her mouth, but she could not hide the fresh blood.
“My lady!”
A voice suddenly echoed inside Rood’s mind.
Remember. I will definitely return.
Only the half-dead Rood, Moneck, Pete, Isabelle, the soldiers who had come to clean up the scene, and the grotesque skeleton of the monster—its pink flesh completely gone—remained among the hospital ruins.
The once-chaotic village was brought to order in moments by a few quiet words from Isabelle. Rood was laid on a stretcher inside the three-headed carriage while the monster’s prosthetic body—now reduced to nothing but a skeleton—was carefully dismantled and collected.
When he regained full awareness and looked at Isabelle, she had returned to her usual small, delicate appearance.
Throughout the journey back, Rood asked her nothing. Not about her relationship with Mael, not why she had killed members of another family, not how she had transformed into an adult figure the moment Mael charged.
In the end, I solved nothing.
If Mael was still alive, she could easily slip into another village and repeat the atrocity. That was why he had left a large contingent of troops behind, yet even that was only a temporary measure. Since the enemy could alter perception itself, Rood considered the mission a grave failure.
“So both shoulders were broken, you say, Sir Rood?”
Having shown only a pathetic sight to the opponent he most wanted to surpass left a bitter taste in his mouth. Rood dragged a hand down his face.
“Yes. Is there any issue?”
“Contrary to your report, there wasn’t the slightest problem with your shoulders.”
Rood let out a frustrated sigh at Moneck’s words.
Did she plant another hallucination?
If it had been illusion magic or a curse, he could not understand why it had dissipated at such a convenient moment.
I really don’t understand any of this.
Someone crouched beside the sullen-looking Rood and poked his cheek.
“What’s the matter?”
“Are you all right?”
When Isabelle persistently prodded the same spot, Rood barely held back a laugh.
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Only then did he realize she was poking the exact place she had kissed to tease him earlier. He jerked his head away.
“P-please stop that. I’m a patient, you know.”
“Ahem. Yes. It seems I’ve caused you pain once again. I’m sorry.”
“If you say you’re sorry and then order me to write another report, I must decline. I have no idea what might jump out at me next.”
At Rood’s exaggerated grimace, Isabelle gave a bright, mischievous smile.
“All right, we’ll be departing now.”
Pete shot Rood a sharp glare before announcing their departure.