Chapter 27
“Sylvia! It’s me, Courtney. Don’t you remember?”
The face was unfamiliar. And yet the woman gripping her arm kept shaking it with obvious delight. Sylvia sifted through the foggy recesses of memory, then suddenly fished up a name she hadn’t thought of in years.
“Courtney? Courtney Merino?”
“I knew you’d remember! Goodness, how long has it been?”
Now that Sylvia had gotten the surname right, Courtney broke into a bright smile and shook her arm again. But Sylvia couldn’t smile back the way she did.
That’s rich. Always acting so superior, always sticking her nose in everything, and in the end she couldn’t even pass that simple test. What a miserable sight.
That sharp, mocking little voice still lingered in her ears. So did the memory of herself, soaked to the skin, trembling behind a door while listening to that story.
But the other girl seemed to have kept only the pleasant parts of their history and forgotten everything else forever. Unlike Courtney, whose face remained smooth and pleasant, Sylvia could barely manage to lift the corners of her mouth.
That’s usually how it goes. The people who laughed at me never remember.
Thinking that, Sylvia forced herself to speak.
“It’s been ten years. I think this is the first time we’ve seen each other since the Coming-of-Age Rite.”
“That’s right. It has! Well, I’ve mostly been stuck patrolling the border because my rank’s so low. It’s embarrassing compared to you. I heard you’ve already received four of His Majesty’s medals. And I heard the Knight Order recovered a Holy Relic recently. That’s amazing, really.”
She couldn’t tell whether Courtney’s praise was genuine delight at seeing an old friend after so long, or whether she was fishing for the answer, I’m just a Supporter. You’re the Mage.
She used to measure everyone around her all the time because she was an Appleton, and now look at her. Serves her right!
Isn’t she the only Supporter in that house?
Did they pick her up somewhere? Or is she some child they had with someone else?
All Sylvia could think was that Courtney’s high, cheerful voice sounded too much like the one from ten years ago—the voice that had carried ridicule, the voice that had cruelly pierced her heart.
Her throat tightened. Her stomach turned a little.
“Thank you. I didn’t do anything special.”
It was almost infuriating. Why could a heart broken to pieces never truly heal? Why did she always sink to the bottom over things like this? She was sick to death of herself for it, and disgusted besides.
“You didn’t do anything special? There you go again. Remember back then? You always used to say you hadn’t done anything special, and then you’d end up taking all the teachers’ praise. I was so jealous of you.” Courtney laughed lightly. “Still, I’m really glad to see you after so long. You’ve been well, right?”
“Of course. You look like you’ve been doing well, too.”
“Thanks for saying that. Ah, I should get going. I only came out to say hello to you for a minute. Too bad we ran into each other at a time like this. Once I finish my work, let’s meet again and talk.”
“Sure.”
After patting Sylvia’s shoulder a couple of times, Courtney tossed her bobbed hair and hurried back toward the tent as quickly as she had come, slipping inside. Even after she disappeared, Sylvia stood frozen in place for a long moment, staring blankly after her like an idiot.
The day it had rained so horribly. The old days came rushing back—her younger self huddled on a vast magic circle, drenched through and shivering.
It had been summer, in July, but she had been soaked so badly that her body had turned to ice. The chill that had seeped into her bones then seemed to have remained untouched by time, even after ten years.
No matter how hard she tried.
* * *
Sylvia’s life had not always been like this, not from the very beginning as the youngest daughter of House Appleton.
She had been born a Posmata, a rarity said to appear only once in a hundred years, and so all the mages, including her father, had declared in one voice that Sylvia would become a great magician whose name would be written into history.
At your age, and you already understand this?
So young, and yet her mana is this clean and pure. Do you see? The crystal has turned a brilliant blue. I’ve never seen such a perfect color before.
She had always possessed more mana than her peers, too, and she was clever, quick to understand, and above all, she loved the world of magic more than anyone else.
Magic had stayed with her wherever she went, as though mysterious treasures were hidden all around her.
She still remembered the first time she came to the capital when she was four, and saw the Imperial Palace.
The golden sky that ringed the great castle in a perfect circle.
It had been breathtakingly beautiful, so much so that she had been overwhelmed by the mere fact that such a world existed.
Look closely at this sky, Sylvia. The sky that will be yours. Though the Emperor calls himself its master, no one—not even the Emperor—can see what you see. Only you can see it, and only you can fix it. In other words, you can carve your magic into this sky. Do you understand?
Her father had said that after lifting the little girl, who could not stop staring with her mouth open, onto his shoulders.
You are the creature God loves most.
It was an arrogant thing to say, but it had sounded almost true to her. No—she had been certain of it. The things she could do as naturally as breathing were things no one else could manage, as though everyone else stumbled at some invisible obstacle.
But not her. For her alone, the world had been kind.
When she thought back on those days, it felt as though she had always been surrounded by glory, with the glow of an unseen god spread across her back.
As she learned and mastered magic, climbing smoothly upward as if ascending a gentle slope, she felt herself growing closer and closer to God’s world. If only she could turn fifteen soon. Then she would finally be able to unleash magic with her own hands.
The Coming-of-Age Rite held after one’s fifteenth birthday was an object of reverence for every child born with magical blood, and at the same time a source of terror. In a single moment, it determined the whole of one’s future—how great a mage one would become, or whether one would amount to nothing at all.
But Sylvia had never once feared standing before the Rite.
God is with me.
To her, it was only a stage on which everyone’s claims would be proven: that Sylvia Appleton would become a great mage.
But that never happened.
The day of the Rite was blisteringly hot. Sylvia was twelfth in line, and while everyone else trembled—opening and closing their fists, shaking their knees, springing up and stomping in place—she remained composed.
She merely watched, with interested eyes, as the boys and girls ahead of her faced the moment their destinies were decided.
She watched the huge magic circle slowly tint itself with the unique mana they poured into it, then suddenly erupt with pale smoke and fire.
Some could barely manage a wisp of smoke. Some kindled a flame no bigger than a fingernail. Some produced a fire the size of a fist.
Sylvia remembered the tales of the great mages whose names were written into history, and imagined what size of flame she would summon.
Maybe it’ll burn the whole Rite down like Kuala’s did? Hahaha.
The night before, Duke Appleton had dined with her and carefully sliced a thick cut of meat into small pieces, setting them one by one onto his daughter’s plate.
Erhart walked out of a house-sized blaze, so mine will be bigger than that, right?
Like a childish little girl, Sylvia had giggled to herself, saying that all she needed was to surpass her obnoxious older brother.
And then, at last, when it was her turn, as she stood upon the great magic circle, Sylvia felt a pleasant shiver run from her palms all the way down her back.
But looking back now, she wondered if that had not been the shiver of the god’s banner that had rested on her shoulders from birth to her fifteenth birthday, fluttering away on the wind.
With Sylvia, she’ll surely create a flame at once.
Will she really surpass Erhart Appleton?
Swallowing the murmurs around her, Sylvia slowly released her mana. It was just as she bit her lip at the sight of the magic circle beginning to stain itself with a deeper pink than her hair.
……
But nothing changed.
The magic circle remained silent until the people’s expectation turned to doubt.
Confused, Sylvia lifted a hand over the circle that still produced not even smoke, then let it fall. Her eyes trembled as she looked around as though begging someone to explain what was happening, and her heart shook pathetically, like something tumbling over a cliff, while her vision darkened to black.
Is something wrong?
She tried again, then a second time, then a third, then a fourth, and finally, when the mage told her to step back and try one last time, Sylvia could only nod and retreat.
With empty eyes, she had no choice but to watch the people standing before her summon their flames.
Those flames felt as though they were burning her heart—her damned heart—to a blackened husk.
This time it’ll be different.
It has to be different.
Muttering such things, she clenched and unclenched her fists, slapped her own cheeks to force herself back from the edge of numbness, and tried to gather the scattering pieces of her mind. She couldn’t hear the people whispering about her. Everything whirled together into a single point, leaving only black emptiness behind as it was swallowed whole. It felt as though every scrap of light she possessed had vanished. Her spine trembled violently with the desperate urge to seize even a handful of it and cling to it.
But no flame, not even something resembling one, ever rose from her hands.
Not ever.
All day long, Sylvia stood there and kept pouring out mana again and again, until the spectators finally left, until the mages who had tried to stop her gave up and went away, until the clouds rolled in and rain began to fall, until the sun set and night crept over the world and dawn rose again.
Until her mana, which had once been greater than that of her peers, was completely exhausted.
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