The Witch of Death Comes Calling
There was no romance in the life of a baron's heir.
Theirs was a remote rural territory so obscure that one might doubt anyone in the capital even knew it existed.
Beneath a cloudless sky, the windmills of the mill turned briskly in the wind, while cows and goats grazed across the wide open pastures.
Thwack. Thwack.
On the far side of the forest, the village men were hard at work felling timber. Gales of laughter carried over whenever the good-natured Robert cracked one of his jokes again.
Life in this little territory was peaceful slow living, plain and simple. And Simon, for his part, was fairly content with it.
"Simon. What do you think is the most important virtue a lord must possess?"
While Simon had been off daydreaming, his father Richard, walking beside him, had thrown out the question. Caught off guard by the suddenness of it, Simon quickly put his mind to work.
"Hmm... magnanimity? Maybe?"
Richard smiled broadly. "Not a bad answer."
"Then what's a good one?"
Richard slowly raised his arm and placed a hand over his heart. "A burning heart."
Simon blinked at the unexpected reply. "...I'm sorry, what?"
"Just as the trees change their coats of leaves with every season, the virtues a lord needs shift with his circumstances." Richard chuckled as he gently ruffled Simon's hair. "A lord must be able to be a friend, a parent—even a villain when the moment demands it. But a lord who meets his people with a burning heart will always have the power to convey his sincerity, whatever situation he faces. That's what the bond between lord and vassal truly is."
"My lord!"
Richard and Simon turned. Several grown men stood with an enormous log slung across their shoulders, and from their expressions, the burden was clearly more than they could comfortably bear.
"Forgive us for interrupting your walk! If it's no trouble, might we ask for 'that'?"
"Gladly. Charles."
Simon watched his father with a flicker of nervousness. Richard Polentia was an ordinary country lord—except for one thing that set him apart.
"Step back, Simon."
With his eyes closed, Richard murmured a few quick, quiet words of incantation and spread his palm. A cluster of black light drifted up into the sky and unfurled into the shape of a magic circle.
Simon swept his gaze around warily as the circle began to spin, and the trees and brush on every side trembled.
Here it comes!
The ground lurched and turned to a black mire, and from its surface, arms burst forth, straining and swaying as if reaching for the sun itself.
Every one of them was made of pure white bone—not a speck of flesh to be seen.
Undead.
Monsters that harbored blind, murderous hostility toward the living.
And yet here in this territory, precisely the opposite of everything that common wisdom claimed was taking place.
Tap.
Tap-tap-tap.
The skeletons that had climbed up out of the earth went scrambling over to the log the men were carrying, and together they heaved it up onto their own bony shoulders.
"Thank you, my lord!"
Far from fearing the skeletons, the tenants were beaming with relief, their faces the very picture of we're saved!
"Keep up the good work."
That's right.
Simon's father was a necromancer.
It had been quite some time since necromancers came to rule half the world.
It all began with the Talhern Empire.
When the Emperor of Talhern, seeking to break free of the necromancers' influence, dispatched an army of fifty thousand to Kizen—the necromancers' stronghold—Kizen sent out exactly ten necromancers in response.
Just ten.
What followed was the historic event known as the Rose Troop Withdrawal. The fifty-thousand-strong army that had marched on Kizen turned around in its entirety and headed straight back to the imperial capital.
All of them, as undead.
The capital of Talhern was reduced to ruins, and the Emperor surrendered to Kizen.
Afterward, the imperial throne was claimed by a rotting, putrefied corpse—the man who had once been emperor. The empire's entire court of officials bowed their heads before a walking carcass, and for thirty years, tens of millions of imperial subjects were toyed with in a puppet show staged by a decaying dead body.
A snapshot of history that displayed the power—and the terror—of necromancers.
The necromancers who rose as the dominant power of the age gradually expanded their influence, until now half the continent lay under their sway. The other half belonged to their one and only opposite: the Priests.
Decades have passed since the 100-Year War, fought so sharply between those two forces, drew to a close.
The continent now enjoyed a fragile, uneasy peace.
...Not that any of that has anything to do with our territory.
To Simon, the history of such wars felt like a tale from some distant land. If he had to name the biggest events that had happened recently in Leshill, the territory he would one day rule, they amounted to: Charles's cow, which had been slow to show, giving healthy birth to two calves; and Callon, the hired hand, slipping on the wet floorboards while mopping and needing three stitches in his forehead.
Simon chuckled at the absurdity of it all as he arrived at the lord's manor.
Ah, of course—manor was another flattering courtesy the tenants used. In truth, it was just an ordinary wooden house. Whereas even impoverished lords would scrape together some small fortress in the name of a lord's dignity, Richard, lord of Leshill, was remarkably modest in his tastes.
Creeeak.
"Mom, I'm home."
The moment he opened the door and stepped inside, the comforting scent of wood washed over him. Firewood crackled and burned away in the hearth against the wall.
"Simon! There you are!"
A woman with ash-gray hair, wearing an apron, popped her head out from the kitchen. Simon's mother, Anna Polentia.
"Yes—on my way back from helping with the logging in the village."
"Have you eaten?"
"...I had lunch just a while ago, remember?"
"I baked some bread with the leftover dough. Have it with jam."
She had to be haunted by the ghost of a mother who starved her child to death. Anna was the sort of woman who simply could not rest unless she was feeding everyone around her at every possible opportunity.
Pretending not to hear, Simon pointed at a tray sitting on the table. "Mom, what's this?"
"Water steeped with rehark mushrooms."
The rehark mushroom was a poisonous fungus commonly found in the southern mountains. Merely soaking it in water was enough to make a green, oil-like substance float on the surface, just like this. Eat it as-is, and he'd spend a week suffering cramps and diarrhea—but through Anna's hands, it was another story entirely.
Rolling up her sleeves, she approached the tray and placed her hand over the rehark mushroom water.
Vuuuuuum!
"Whoa!"
Simon, watching, let out a small gasp of awe.
White light rippled from her hand, and at the same moment the poison began to neutralize. The green impurities floating on the surface vanished as if wiped away by an artist's brush, leaving behind only the mushroom's pure nourishment.
A white aura emanated from her body whenever she purified toxins. This power, commonly called Holy Power, was the symbol of a Priest.
That's right.
Simon had been born between a necromancer and a Priest.
He'd never gotten the full story of how his parents had come to be together. All he knew was that the two of them had shared a forbidden love out of a fairy tale—and that he himself was the result.
"Simon!"
Anna's voice called out; she had already slipped back into the kitchen at some point.
"I baked an apple pie! Come eat it!"
"...O-okay."
The day passed just as any other did. Simon dragged his weary body to bed.
Leshill was quiet today, and it would be quiet tomorrow too. Believing, without a shadow of doubt, that this peaceful routine would go on unchanged forever, Simon drifted off to sleep.
But—
Flap!
The change had already begun. A letter came flying in through the window and smacked Simon squarely in the face.
"Gah—!"
Raising his arm, Simon peeled it off and opened his eyes.
"Hello there?"
At the unfamiliar voice, Simon blinked.
Someone was sitting at the windowsill, where the moonlight streamed in forlorn and pale. A girl with beautiful silver hair that spilled down to her legs, radiating an aura so otherworldly it bordered on the mystical. It was like gazing at a forest fairy freshly sprung from the pages of a storybook.
"The time has come."
A voice sweet as honey rang out, waking him fully.
Simon, who had been sitting there with a dazed, slack-jawed expression for a moment, quietly pulled the blanket up over his head.
"Don't you dare pretend you didn't see me!"
The girl hopped down from the windowsill with an affronted look. "I know you saw me! Up, up, hurry!"
Under the pressure of her shrill insistence, Simon reluctantly threw off the blanket and sat up, hair a mess. "...How did you even get here? Are you lost? Where's your mother?"
The girl gave a small sigh, then recovered her composure and flashed a smile. Moonlight spilled in through the window, making her silver hair gleam all the more radiantly. "I found exactly who I was looking for. I came to see you, Simon Polentia."
Simon's eyes went wide.
She knows my name.
"...Me? Why?"
"Read that letter."
Her voice was grave beyond her years. Simon cautiously broke the seal and opened the envelope. There was a soft rustle as a stiff sheet of paper, folded in half, came into view.
The door burst open.
"Simon!"
"Simon! What was that noise just now?"
The door swung open and Richard and Anna rushed in—then froze as their eyes met those of the silver-haired girl.
"Ah...!"
"Lady Nephthys!"
They were clearly no strangers to one another; both faces lit up at once. The girl gave a bright smile and waved. "It's been so long! Richard! Anna!"
The three of them fell into animated conversation, and Simon could only watch, suddenly feeling like a stranger in his own room. His father Richard wore the flushed, excited expression of a schoolboy, while his mother Anna was in a full flap, insisting she had to prepare a meal this very instant.
"Simon. Pay your respects properly."
Richard said. "This is Lady Nephthys Archbold."
Wait. Hold on.
Why does that name sound so familiar?
Nephthys Archbold.
Nephthys Archbold.
No. Don't tell me—!
Nephthys Archbold of Kizen!
The ruler of Kizen, the apex of all necromancers.
The mastermind behind the Talhern Incident, which turned an emperor into a corpse puppet.
The Witch of Death, alive for three hundred years.
That girl?
Then what is THIS?
Trembling, Simon pulled out the letter.
"I offer this to you formally, Simon Polentia."
The girl's voice rang like a song at his ear as he read.
Simon Polentia
"Come to Kizen."