First Chapter: My Little Sister (1)
The crackle of flames dancing in the air tickled my ears one after another. I had never disliked the sound of a bonfire, but this was something else entirely.
Discomfort was inevitable. The burning garden, the crumbling estate, the servants screaming as they fled, the chaos of the city.
It was hardly a pleasant noise.
“Cough… cough.”
And inside this building engulfed in flames, I was dying.
“……”
Blood spurted from my shredded body and soaked the white robe. Even the strange color of the light made it worse.
Ha… I let out a low sigh and looked up at the ceiling with what little strength I had left.
When death comes, a lot of things flash through your mind. Your previous life, that is, the “you” before you were reincarnated into this world, up to the five years you spent here.
It wasn’t that long a time, but it felt denser than the twenty years of my old life.
I adapted to this new body, accepted the situation, endured the gap between my memories, and even dug into the empire’s greatest mage.
In the end, I killed an 8th-circle archmage with my own hands. In other words, my father.
“Hah…”
But I didn’t feel any special satisfaction.
The soul of the original owner of this body had somehow merged with mine, yet I felt no blood ties toward him.
Not me, and not the original owner either.
“……”
While I was thinking of every random thing, my vision started to blur. It felt like a fog was creeping in.
It was time to die. No regrets, but not entirely free of lingering attachments.
After all, I had done all of this because I thought I had to live on in this new world. If I disappeared now, what meaning would it have?
In this suffocating feeling as if a stone was crushing my chest, only one thought rose to the surface.
The girl with light-blue hair. In my mind, her eyes were burning blood-red, but the emotion I felt toward her now was far stronger than mere fear—it was aching, yearning.
“I started all this just to save myself, yet in the end, I ended up saving you instead.”
This is the younger sister of this new body. Charlotte Havertz. The ultimate villainess of this world that I knew… who would become the worst villain in it.
Anyway, whether Charlotte, who had turned black, caused the world’s end or was crushed by an archmage, it was basically the same. So I had bet on the least impossible option even though the situation was already hopeless.
“If I die, none of it matters. I just didn’t realize that.”
Hah… I tried to laugh weakly, but no sound came out. I breathed out one final long breath and closed my eyes.
It really was the end, huh? My body grew colder than ever, and the flames, which didn’t care about my sad heart, swallowed the estate more brilliantly than ever.
Still, I had struggled like death itself for five years just to save one girl. I wished that at least the next life would be assigned to me too…
I don’t want to die yet, God.
Crackle, crackle.
I prayed like that, the sound of flames passing by my ears as background.
Whether I could reach it or not was beyond my control.
“Aaaah…”
Still, it hadn’t been meaningless. Suddenly, the scene before my eyes was bathed in bright light, and someone had appeared.
An angel? A spirit, a fairy, or whatever the god had sent down to answer my prayer.
“……In the next life, please let me live a little more normally…”
“……”
I forced out those words with my last strength, whispering them weakly so I wouldn’t even know if I had said them properly.
Well, whether I did or not, it was probably just a delusion created by my empty hope.
So I didn’t expect an answer.
“……No.”
A voice came.
An unexpected voice.
Was it an angel…?
“You can’t die. Isaac Havertz. I won’t allow it.”
“……”
……No.
It wasn’t an angel. An angel wouldn’t speak with such ruthless sharpness.
Or was there something familiar about it?
“……You’re trying to run away without me. You bastard older brother.”
“Eek.”
My body moved. I shouldn’t have been able to move with the little strength I had left?
Carried? Or magic?
Anyway, the last thing I remembered was being moved somewhere by someone else.
“……Kugh.”
I really lost consciousness.
I fought an archmage. An 8th-circle archmage capable of pushing an entire city’s walls, the strongest being in the current world.
I had lured him into a false sense of security during dinner and launched a surprise attack. The first effective blow had been the deciding factor.
Luck had followed me, but even with such desperate resolve, my body had to have taken a terrible beating.
Of course. An archmage wasn’t some weakling; a surprise kill wasn’t that easy.
We fought for a long time, but the result was the same—Havertz Duke was dead.
I… had killed him.
The grand estate located right in the imperial capital had also been reduced to ashes, and what remained was probably just rubble that couldn’t be restored.
Thinking I would meet death in such a ruined place.
“……”
Why could I open my eyes? My whole body was drenched in pain, and my vision was still hazy, yet I was still alive.
Why? How?
The first question that came to mind. The wounds were so terrible that I probably couldn’t even lift my body on my own, and if I hadn’t been taken to a high priest right away, my life would have ended soon.
What exactly had happened in the time I was unconscious…?
“Ah…”
At that moment, a voice came from the side—not mine, yet filled with fatigue and overflowing with joy.
I turned only my eyes while burying my head deep into the pillow.
“……You’re awake, Isaac.”
There she was, the girl with light-blue hair sitting politely beside the bed I was lying on. She had lifted her face from a disheveled position right next to me.
Was she sleeping? She looked quite tired too, but the relief clearly radiating from her blood-red eyes was unmistakable.
“……What?”
Has she ever looked at me with such affectionate eyes before?
I was genuinely startled and parted my lips, but unfortunately, no voice came out.
“……Ah, kugh…”
“Don’t force yourself to talk. The treatment isn’t perfect yet…”
“……”
It was probably more like a rebound after fainting for so long rather than any serious injury. How long had I been lying there unconscious?
My voice would probably return to normal in time anyway.
Anyway, I looked at her with my eyes. Charlotte Havertz, the younger sister of Isaac Havertz—the second life I had been given.
“Havertz family’s mad witch, worst sibling killer, top wanted criminal to eliminate…”
She was the one called by those names in the original story of this world I had read. She was also the villainess who was truly the worst and most monstrous in the story.
But I couldn’t simply see her as a pure villain. After all, she was also a victim.
Charlotte was a mage with special abilities that were rare even on the continent, and many people coveted her power. Her own father was one of them.
Yes, the Havertz Duke who had just died at my hands.
The Havertz Duke, who had performed human experiments to extract her power, had met a horrific end at the hands of the Charlotte who had awakened in the original story.
Anyway, as a result, Charlotte had turned into a villain unit in the story, and ultimately took on the role of destroying the world.
“……I have to stop the world from being destroyed, no matter what.”
Moreover, in the original story, it was this Isaac who had collaborated with the Havertz Duke to torture Charlotte.
If she died, the duke would probably be number one, and I would be second. So I had struggled for five years.
“At this point… is this a success? Then.”
I stared at Charlotte, unable to erase the complicated feeling.
I had blocked the possibility of the human experiments conducted in the Havertz family’s basement, but I couldn’t completely prevent the signs either.
Right after Charlotte was first confined, the next day had been the battle between me and the Havertz Duke that ended in both mages’ destruction.
During the process of burning down the estate, I had released the Charlotte locked in the prison and even prepared an escape route so she could flee far away.
That had been my last memory—closing my eyes while praying she wouldn’t fall to darkness.
But when I opened my eyes, I was in a somewhat comfortable room, and beside me was my younger sister, sleeping as if she were taking care of me.
“……”
“……”
I looked at Charlotte, and Charlotte looked at me.
The affectionate eyes from just before had vanished. Was it my illusion? A hallucination…?
“……Cough…”
Anyway, I was starting to feel clear-headed enough to speak again.
I coughed once, pain mixed in, and turned toward her with difficulty.
“Ro, ti…”
“……!”
Ah, this.
I had messed up my first words. The nickname was stuck to my tongue and I had forgotten it—Charlotte absolutely hated that nickname.
Even the old Isaac who had possessed this body hadn’t treated her kindly, so I had to restrain myself for the sake of our future relationship.
Soon after, Charlotte’s expression stiffened at those words.
I hastily erased the “oops” look from my face and corrected my words.
“……I mean, Charlotte.”
“……”
“Could you please explain the situation? The estate must have been completely destroyed… Why are you here, and how am I still alive?”
“I took you and escaped from that estate.”
Charlotte cut me off in the middle and began speaking in a voice that had lost a lot of emotion compared to before.
“This place isn’t the imperial capital. It’s the Havertz Duchy… the ducal residence. The treatment was temporary from the Pope’s office, but since there wasn’t anywhere else I could go, I had no choice but to come here…”
“……No. Wait, wait.”
I interrupted her with my trembling arm covering my forehead.
Her short explanation only made things harder to understand. This was our territory? How far was it from the imperial capital, and how?
It wasn’t just that I was confused. I asked her while staring at her with trembling eyes.
“Didn’t I tell you, Charlotte? When father dies or gets severely injured in the basement, the emperor would definitely move…”
“……”
“Besides, the ones who were always waiting for father to make a mistake were the same. If you were to run away, you should have gone to a place unrelated to the family or the empire, that’s what I clearly said…”
“I found a compromise with the emperor.”
“What?”
The shout I had been holding back was cut off right away by Charlotte’s nonchalant remark.
I reflexively lowered the head I had been about to raise and looked at Charlotte.
“……What do you mean?”
“More importantly, there’s no need to say useless things.”
But I didn’t get the chance to ask any more questions. Charlotte stood up, speaking in a tone that had cooled a step.
The fine light-blue hair cascaded down her body, and a faint lavender scent made my senses sharper.
“Eh, um…”
Even though she was a small girl, when she stood up, she looked much taller than me lying down, so a sense of pressure came over me.
……No, was the pressure really from the height difference?
My one involuntary swallow sent my gaze upward because of the inexplicable chill.
“Why don’t you call me Lottie?”
“……Eh?”
Charlotte, my younger sister, her.
Her blood-red eyes flashed with a horrific intensity as if she wanted to devour me, and she grabbed my wrist as if she was about to grab something still not fully healed.
“Change that stiff title. Back to normal.”
“……”
I trembled my eyelashes and stayed silent.
That’s the nickname you told me not to use.