The Golden Veil Breaks
Gawin, of course, did not understand a word she said.
It was in the instant his brow drew tight that Odelli thrust out a bloodstained hand and closed it around a stone lying on the floor. The moment his grip went slack, she twisted her whole body free of his grasp, and before he could reach for her again she brought the stone down over the intricate pattern carved into the floor.
It took only a heartbeat.
The purification formation, handed down through the generations—the very working that had held House Cardel upright for centuries—
"Stop! Stop this instant! I told you to stop!"
—came apart at the sweep of her hand, as if it had never been anything at all.
Madwoman. Absolute lunatic.
Gawin lunged at Odelli in a frenzy, but her fingers had already brushed the heart of the pattern.
"……!"
Odelli turned slowly to face him.
"If a true god were on your side, what could possibly come of erasing this?"
And then—
A flash burst forth, bright enough to blind, and the formation etched into the floor began to ripple and scatter like a mirage.
"Th-this… This can't be!"
As he fell back a step on instinct, a single small light whirled above the place where the formation had been. It was the last remnant the purification formation had left behind.
The moment Gawin saw it, his eyes went wild. He cried out as though he meant to seize, with his bare hands, the touch of a god who had already abandoned him.
"No! It isn't—it isn't over yet!"
He bolted for the entrance of the secret chamber.
"Summon the mages! Restore the formation! Before the barrier collapses—right now—!"
His footsteps had not even faded before the corridor rang with the sound of him berating the servants and driving them on with his boots.
Odelli flung herself the other way at once.
With the formation gone, a side passage had opened: a secret corridor built against the day the house's secrets might be discovered. In her first life, she had been the one to tell Ludville of it.
She stepped into it without hesitation and followed the dark in silence. Gawin's shouts echoed at her back, but she did not so much as turn her head. Past the musty reek of the sewers and the filth slicking underfoot, she followed only the faint light far ahead.
And when at last she reached the end of the passage—
"……Hah."
Odelli drew a deep breath. Clean air filled her lungs. She lifted her face to the sky.
The golden barrier of overwhelming scale, the one that had enclosed the entire empire like a dome, was swaying, precarious.
The ancient barrier. No—more precisely, the purification veil that Cardel had maintained for centuries by deceiving the people.
Now that veil was splitting.
At the first sign of something wrong, the crowds lifted their heads as one. In the heart of the market, beneath the city walls, before the temple—everywhere, people stared up at the sky and murmured.
"What is that?"
"The sky… it's splitting?"
"The barrier? You mean the ancient barrier is cracking?"
"That's impossible. The restoration rite just succeeded! How could this happen on the Day of Guardianship…"
"Th-this is an omen of ruin. Not even the Great War brought anything like this! The god has forsaken us!"
"Has House Cardel lost its power?!"
Fear spread quickly. Some dropped to their knees in prayer; others seized a crying child's hand and fled.
Leaving all that uproar behind her, Odelli gazed at the collapsing barrier and murmured.
"……At last. They're finally starting to see it properly."
It was beautiful.
Odelli looked up at the golden veil breaking apart as brilliantly as a falling star, and smiled, quietly.
It was not a bad beginning.
Snow fell in heavy flakes, with no sign of letting up.
Odelli brushed the snow from her soaked robe and stepped into a shabby inn.
"Welcome! A meal, or a room for the night?"
"……Just a meal, please."
After she had ordered, she sat near the hearth and warmed her hands.
It had been three months now since she fled House Cardel.
On the surface, the empire was at peace. Cardel had restored the purification formation at once, and followed it almost immediately with a public statement.
Be at ease. The barrier stands firm.
It was only a temporary anomaly. The barrier has been safely stabilized.
People believed them. Centuries of faith and trust in House Cardel were that unshakable.
Markets rose in the streets as they always had, and merchants lifted their voices, busy selling their wares.
Odelli had known it would come to this. A purification formation passed down for hundreds of years was never going to vanish merely because she had scored it with a stone.
But what did a successful restoration matter, when the most important piece of all—the Purifier—had run?
Even now, House Cardel was desperate to find her. A missing-person report, search orders, official notices sent out far and wide… Slipping every net of that pursuit had been a headache beyond measure.
They may already be hiring assassins.
If they could not control Odelli, they would rather kill her and make a new Purifier. Better, then, to leave the Imperial Capital as soon as she could and make for some sparsely peopled stretch of countryside.
That would be best. And yet—
"……."
Why am I heading north?
Odelli let out a sigh and dragged a hand down her face.
The truth was that ever since she had regressed, she had thought of him without cease.
He didn't come to save me.
A course unlike her previous life. Perhaps the memories of a regression belonged only to the one who had regressed. Through all the countless times Ludville had turned time back, Odelli herself had never once sensed anything amiss.
If that were so, then it was a mercy. What she wanted now was for him to forget everything and be at ease.
Never meeting me would be better for Ludville.
From the start, Odelli had already been used as a Purifier for far too long. She would die before she turned thirty. In Ludville's memories, it had always been so—more precisely, at twenty-nine, in winter.
Five years left, then…….
She told herself to stop this foolish clinging and settle in Siloen, the small, quiet rural estate where she had lived as a healer in her last life. She would spend what remained of her days there.
She had just settled on that resolve when she caught a voice murmuring nearby.
"Who could have guessed the Archduke of Exepsion would change like that."
……Who changed?
Odelli stopped what she was doing and bent every nerve toward the conversation drifting over. From their dress, they seemed to be travelers and merchants out of the north. Cups in hand, they were trading rumors of Ludville in low voices.
"Another banquet tonight?"
"So they say. Still searching for that one woman, apparently."
"These days the Archducal Castle looks grander than the Imperial Palace. Gold on everything, crystal windows, luminestones……."
A banquet again tonight? Still hunting for a woman? Living more lavishly than the imperial household itself? ……Who in the world were they talking about?
Odelli was still doubting her own ears when one of the travelers asked,
"So who is this Blue-Eyed Woman the archduke is supposedly looking for?"
The moment she heard it, her heart seemed to drop straight to the floor.
Blue eyes?
Ludville was… searching for a woman with blue eyes?
It can't be…….