Ciel Midford

White smoke rose from the fallen body of Ciel Midford and tore apart on the night wind. Whenever that wind touched skin scorched black and peeling, it woke a pain that was anything but slight—yet Ciel Midford did not let even the smallest groan pass his lips.

"..."

He knew the duel was over. Only moments ago he had heard Prince Inas declare defeat. Even so, he did not lower the sword in his hand.

Far off, Perzen was walking toward them with exhaustion on his face, his mana all but spent, wholly unguarded. A perfect chance to kill him. How many times would a chance like that come again?

Veins stood out along his hand as his grip tightened. If he killed the man now, in a duel that had already ended, his own fate hardly mattered. The Kingdom of Robelium would be the one thrown into crisis. It would mean repaying with disloyalty the grace that had taken a worthless man like him for a knight. And yet, if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a black mage in the service of the Ernes Empire's imperial house drew Feedback from his corpse, the truth would come to light on its own—that he had acted alone.

"You've done well."

Prince Inas came up beside him, patted Ciel Midford on the back, and praised him for what he had endured. Then he turned his head, just slightly, toward the empress—Gremory—standing at Princess Elizabeth's side, and clenched his fist hard.

This much... Surely, with this, he could win the protection of the Elmark Empire.

"I'm sorry."

"What are you saying, all of a sudden? You've nothing at all to apologize for! You are an honorable knight who has given more than enough of himself for the Kingdom of Robelium. Straighten your back, and stand proud—"

Thinking the man might be like this because the defeat had been so helpless, Prince Inas, out of pity, tried to lift Ciel Midford's spirits. Before the words were even finished, Ciel kicked off the ground and shot forward. At that sudden movement Inas turned his head, blank-faced.

"Ah..."

Inas den Preussen Robelium. That single sentence spread in a quiet ripple and announced the end of the duel, and the tension left Euphemia all at once. Her body swayed.

Watching Perzen walk slowly toward her, she unclasped the hands she had held together as if in prayer and went carefully out to meet him.

He really... kept the promise.

If it had been Perzen, she had never quite been able to shake the ominous thought that a vow like that would mean nothing to him—that he would simply kill Ciel. But Perzen had truly not trampled the past that was hers.

Ciel...

Quietly, Euphemia turned her head and looked at the man who had once been her steady pillar. It hurt to see him standing there, burned and wounded across the face his armor had not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠covered. Even so, she believed this was the right path.

A man of his firmness would not swallow his defeat all at once. Little by little he would come to feel the towering wall of Perzen, and of House Brutein standing behind him, and he would bend to reality. Too many things had already set hard, and too much time had already passed, for them to return to those days in Ruerug when they had leaned on each other and lived in quiet warmth. For a mere knight of a kingdom, reality was far too cruel to turn everything back to the beginning. And so Euphemia hoped that this day would be the day Ciel cast off his regret and his lingering attachment—the attachment that was her—and lived a life of his own.

She drew back the gaze that had rested on him for a long while, and turned her head toward Perzen again.

In that instant a shock and a horror no words could hold seeped into her golden eyes. For as if moving in pursuit of her turning gaze, Ciel, who had been standing at a distance, crossed a mere blink of time and ran Perzen through with his sword.

It was only the shifting of a glance. It had happened inside that brief a span, and Euphemia, stripped of any sense of the real, wondered whether she was seeing a hallucination. Then the copper reek of Perzen's blood stole into her nose, and she understood that it was no hallucination at all.

What Ciel had aimed for was Perzen's back, somewhere near the heart. But Perzen had deliberately kept back a last thread of mana. Enslaving Isabel's corpse, he interfered with the air, drove its resistance to the extreme, and twisted the blade's path.

"Kh—gahk—!"

Ciel's sword ran through Perzen's side. However high that resistance had been raised, some of the inertia of the charge remained, and Perzen skidded across the ground as if shoved, together with Ciel, who had rammed into him like a wild bull. As the inertia slowly died, the two of them rolled wretchedly over the floor.

Unlike Perzen, a black mage, Ciel—an Aura Knight—planted his right foot as a brace, forced to a stop the body that still wanted to roll, seized Perzen's throat in his left hand, and wrenched free the sword buried in his side. At once the bleeding the blade had been holding back poured without end, like water, soaking suit and shirt until it spread into a dark, thickening pool.

Ciel lifted the sword straight, meaning to drive it down in a single stroke near the heart. A great mass of air compressed and burst right before his eyes. He never brought the blade down. In an instant he was flung some ten feet back.

"Kingdom of Robelium—what in the world do you think you're doing?!"

Theore, elder of the Rosewell ducal house and commander of the Ernes Empire's imperial magic corps, came striding out in a fury. Around Ciel, still reeling from the shock, he raised fire given the properties of a solid and made a prison of it. Prince Inas was subdued by the imperial knights, forced to his knees where he stood, a blade pressed to the nape of his neck.

Ciel Midford...

There was no high cliff here, the sort that would surely turn a protagonist aside from death, and no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fierce river running beneath it to carry him toward survival. This world had shed the frame of a novel and become a reality.

You will never escape this snare. Every circumstance in it points to death.

"Stop the bleeding before you take him to a physician! And find, quickly, everyone who shares the Count of Ruerug's blood!"

"Cough—!"

Watching the people press in around him to give emergency treatment, Perzen turned his head with difficulty and looked at Euphemia, standing alone.

Euphemia... As I promised, I did not make you grieve. But the precious bond of the past you wanted so badly to protect will be what sinks you, instead, into a deep sorrow.

Look.

Ciel Midford had walked forward of his own will, climbed onto the scaffold, and offered up his own neck. His life would close in a tragic shape that would not even possess an epilogue. The end of a long, long stage. It was time for the curtain to fall.

"Don't touch it, boy. You'll turn to ash."

Theore warned him in a voice thick with anger.

"..."

Despite the warning, Ciel reached out and seized the bars of flame that held him. In an instant the skin of his palm melted, and the foul smell of burning human flesh poured thick into the air. The flame climbed from his palm over his whole body and swallowed him in a moment. The armor he wore melted and stuck, viscous, to the burning skin, mingling with it into something hideous to see.

Death by fire is the most agonizing form death can take. And so Ciel thrashed, feeling pain—the most primitive of human feelings.

The same as then... If my whole body is wounded, won't the mana clotted inside me melt, and move?

On the strength of that single thought, he gripped the bars even more roughly. Once this moment passed, he could not know when he might be able to kill the man. He could not know when he might take Euphemia out of the cage she was shut in. No—the very supposition that this moment might pass was meaningless. For him, there would be no next time promised.

Heaven...

Like melting wax, the whole of Ciel Midford's body warped. Flame into which an Apollyon-rank Elemental Magician had transmuted his own mana was powerful to that degree. A body reconstituted only halfway could not withstand it.

I have suffered... a great deal of misfortune.

His father, a fallen noble, had married a woman of the village with nothing left to him but the family name, and fathered Ciel and a younger sibling. Growing up, the two of them had always had to watch their mother's sacrifice and her pain—she who never lost her smile, even as she suffered their father's violence. In a life studded with suffering, the first moment he felt the thing called happiness was when his father died. But before long he watched his mother die as well, and it was then he understood the saying that happiness and misfortune arrive together.

The two of them, become orphans with no one in the world in the space of an instant, drifted through back alleys and threw themselves into the mercenaries' ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠world. But in the middle of a commission, when he fell into danger, his sibling died in his place. Everyone he had held precious, everyone he had loved—he had not been able to take them into his arms and protect them.

And so, as if he had lost his soul and were searching for a gravestone on which to die, he carried out commission after commission without rest, until the place he reached was Ruerug. There, Ciel met Euphemia. A woman who carried a pain similar to his own, and yet had not yielded, running her domain with a stubborn, grinding will. At first he felt a kinship with her. So even after the commission was done, Ciel remained in Ruerug and lived.

There were almost no young men of adult age, and so, naturally, he came to settle the domain's affairs alongside Euphemia more and more often. In the course of that he felt a ticklish sensation, as though new flesh were budding over the worn, torn-open wounds in his heart. But he tried hard not to recognize it. He knew what kind of end had come, at his side, to everyone he had loved and cherished.

And yet, if feeling could obey the reins of reason, people would not think it felt like magic in the moment they fell in love. So Ciel suffered a quiet, grown man's lovesickness, and carefully nurtured the heart he held toward Euphemia. Perhaps that had been the problem. In the end, misfortune—which closed like a curse around the people precious to him—had her stolen away before his eyes. Ciel fled, buried himself in the snow mountains of Ruerug, and waited for a death as white as the snow, resenting the world.

But his cursed life refused death. At the end of that refusal he awakened to mana, and entered the royal capital. Afterward, as if the misfortune until now were being repaid all at once, a chain of good fortune unfolded, and he became a knight of the kingdom. He could not rejoice. If he lowered his head even a little, the misfortunes of those who had been precious to him were piled beneath his feet like a mound of corpses, screaming.

If this body is cursed, and cannot be happy while it lives... then let death, at least, take the shape of happiness.

Wishing it with everything in him, Ciel raised his left arm.

"..."

A shabby copper bracelet, with the name Ciel Midford engraved upon it. The gift Euphemia El Lorraine Ruerug had shyly pressed into his hands the first time, telling him he had worked hard. To that bracelet, which he had not taken off for a single moment, Ciel bowed his head and set his lips, pouring into the kiss a love that was pure and devoted.

At that slight touch the bracelet crumbled away into dust. With a distant, yearning look he followed what remained of it, and then he took up his sword. The flame that had swallowed his whole body burned higher, more brilliantly.

Did they not say that in every life there is one moment that shines the brightest? Then please, let it be now. Let it shine, radiant, upon the life of a man offering that life up for the woman he loves. Ciel prayed with all his heart, and took a step.

The prison an Apollyon-rank Elemental Magician had raised—his mana transmuted into fire—shuddered. The explosive mana spilling out around Ciel Midford was interfering with it, warping its shape. Because that mana could not take form, and was literally spilling away as if wasted, its anti-magic was deeply incomplete. Even so, incomplete as it was, the mana wavering around him like smoke pierced the flames and opened a path.

Yes. This was the ability given to Ciel Midford.

A moment later, countless fireflies spread in beauty around Ciel Midford and gathered into the form of a woman with green hair. With a tender, gentle gaze, she embraced from behind his wretchedly ruined body.

May I... be the key to the cage that confines you.

Please... let me spread once more the wings of yours that were broken.

What followed, he did not worry over. The Euphemia that Ciel Midford knew was a woman whose spirit held firm. The way to fly—she would remember it again soon enough. And so he would not worry.

Ciel Midford swung his sword.