The Curse of Aging
The memorial rites were long over. Memorial Day had come and gone.
And Coldon had grown remarkably quiet.
The foreign laborers who had lingered to the very end had all but packed up and left, save for a scattered handful.
But that calm did not last.
Final preparations for wintering began in earnest. While the people of Coldon bustled about their work, folk from the surrounding villages streamed in, and merchants swarmed after them like bees to blossoms. The streets filled with noise and motion once more.
Winterhome itself, however, remained relatively at ease.
Most of the castle's household found the change both welcome and puzzling. If it had been only one person's sense of déjà vu, that would have been one thing. But for so many to feel it at once, and right when they should have been at their busiest?
It did not take long for them to figure out why. One after another, they arrived at the same realization, and every last one of them let out a hollow laugh of pure, exhausted relief.
After all, how frantically busy had they been during Winter-Ascend, Iceland's greatest festival? And after that, Alfred had launched venture after venture in rapid succession. Of course the people under him had been run ragged right alongside him. Now that those enterprises had settled into a measure of stability with the coming of autumn, daily life had simply returned to what it once was.
What they did not yet know was that Catherine was bringing new work with her, along with the banners that marked the end of late autumn.
But that was none of Olivier's concern.
The moment Catherine returned from her expedition, Olivier—who had been grinding his teeth the entire time she was gone—came stomping down the tower with a stride so rough a stranger might have feared for his health.
And with impeccable timing, he collided with the party just as they entered the tower.
"You ill-mannered brat who ought to revere me as if I were the sky itself—should…?"
"…Don't say a word. Old man."
Mary, who had come in with them, discreetly slipped away. Work was more important. Work. Luggage first.
Sensing that things were about to get loud, Gordon quietly extricated himself as well. It did not look like anything entertaining was about to happen. A nap was far more important.
With only Karem left standing blankly at Catherine's side, Olivier raised his eyebrows and looked her up and down. Then he shook his head and formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger, peering at her through it.
"Your mana balance is this badly disrupted?"
Olivier cocked one eye open wider.
"What on earth did you go and do this time?"
"The old man starts slandering me with nonsense the moment he lays eyes on me."
"Slander? When you already have every previous offense on record—"
"Who are you talking about? Who?"
"Who do you think I'm talking about? You. That ill-mannered Catherine. Don't tell me you went and made a chimera out of inorganic materials again—"
"That was because you never properly taught me the disposal method when I was studying under you and just left me to free experiment! What kind of master dumps failed potion byproducts on a disciple without so much as a word of instruction!"
Catherine snapped her fingers in irritation.
"Hm? Ah."
And nothing happened.
Catherine sighed. Her temper had run so hot she had briefly forgotten her condition. She clicked her tongue for anyone to hear.
"I simply overdid it in a contest of power."
"A contest of power? Domain supremacy? Hah. That's rare enough. So how long did the other party last?"
"About ten days or so."
"Ha?"
The playful light drained from Olivier's face like a tide going out. What filled the empty space was pure astonishment.
You've gone and done something absurd again, my disciple.
Olivier exhaled a sigh so deep it seemed ready to sink into the earth.
Karem had never seen the ever-leisurely, ever-mischievous Olivier truly lament like this.
"Lord Olivier. Is it really something that warrants a sigh?"
"It is. The fact that this walking mass of talent is still causing disasters even after I graduated her makes me despair of my own gifts."
"Excuse me? That badly?"
"No—on the contrary, how much that is… ah."
Haaaaaaaah. Helplessness ran down the wrinkled skin and faded beard like rainwater. How was he supposed to explain this to an ordinary cook who was not even a mage?
…
Olivier reached a conclusion.
Yeah. Not doing it. Forget it. Let it be whatever it will be.
He shook his head.
"Hah. The cold air is coming in—let's go inside first."
"Ah. One moment."
Catherine stretched a hand toward the carriage visible beyond the wide-open main doors. Mary, who had been unloading luggage, quietly stepped aside.
"…Hm?"
The staff showed not the slightest intention of flying to her.
"You said you cannot use mana at all right now, did you not?"
"Ah. Right."
Catherine smacked her own forehead. When she started to go fetch it herself, Karem stopped her and went into the carriage, returning with the ornate staff that had been lying beside the seat she had occupied.
"Huh? It's lighter than I expected."
An amber stone the size of an adult's fist, metal fittings shaped like an eagle, gold finishing, adamantium inscriptions—everything from the tip to the shaft should have had real weight, yet it was not as heavy as Karem had imagined.
Gems one usually handled were small, but they were still stones. Make them large and they grew heavy all the same. Metal needed no further comment, and wood was no different.
"The balance of weight is well distributed, I suppose."
Catherine took the staff Karem offered and snapped her fingers again, this time with an entirely different meaning.
"Old man. Given the situation, examine the kid in my place."
"Setting aside the fact that you don't even know how to ask a favor properly—examine? Is the boy under some kind of curse?"
"Possibly."
Hmm? At Olivier's raised-brow gesture, Karem walked over without thinking. Olivier looked the boy over carefully, stroking his beard as he asked,
"I sense neither the scent nor the presence of any curse. And yet?"
"He blocked the black magic the enemy cast at the end in my place. The force was enough to shatter a shield, and given the formula and the malicious will that had been deployed, it could only have been a curse."
Skill on Catherine's level.
Aftermath powerful enough to break a shield.
A curse—and black magic at that.
When those three factors combined, even Olivier could no longer afford to take it lightly. An ordinary curse might have been one thing, but the insidious subtlety of black magic was something not even he could ignore.
"The formula base? Even with your balance in that state, you confirmed it, yes?"
"It seemed to apply principles of necromancy, but it was unmistakably black magic. The enemy left not even a trace of soul behind after using it."
"And the tools the enemy was using?"
"I brought them."
Karem, for his part, could not make heads or tails of what the two archmages were saying. More precisely, he understood each individual word, yet could not grasp at all why their answers locked together so seamlessly.
And at this point, an uneasy thought inevitably took root.
Even if he felt nothing at all, two people who could be called experts among experts in the field of magic were clearly declaring that something was wrong with his condition.
Unless one possessed an exceptionally stout heart—or was simply dense—there was no one who could brush that off with a casual shrug.
Throb—
"Mm."
For an instant, a sensation of something clamping down on his heart. As always, it faded just as quickly.
At first he had wondered if it was simply overwork unsuited to his age, but listening to this atmosphere and this talk only made the anxiety worse.
"Hmph. This is…"
Olivier's eyes sharpened in an instant.
It had lasted only a fraction of a second, but he had seen it.
A secretive thread of black magic spreading from the heart.
The thoroughly insidious mana of a curse.
Fortunately, it was a formula Olivier had seen before.
And unfortunately, time was short.
"I was going to dump the work I'd been putting off back onto someone else, and my damned disciple has gone and brought me more work again."
"Hm? You've identified it?"
"To the greenhouse—now! I'll explain on the way!"
"What—"
Olivier did not wait for Catherine. He seized Karem and bolted out of the tower.
Catherine, stunned by the sudden turn, followed a beat later.
The sight of the usually reclusive Vice Tower Master forcibly dragging the famous personal chef, with the highest magic adviser—a pillar of power—racing after them, naturally drew every eye in the vicinity.
But Olivier had no time for such trivialities.
"Old man!"
"A girl who has nearly reached the rank of Sage failed to sense even this? No—with your balance that ruined, I wouldn't have sensed it either."
"Is it that serious? Stop shouting to yourself and just explain—"
"The Curse of Aging."
At those words, Catherine's mouth snapped shut.
She understood Olivier's urgency.
From ages past to the present, countless curses had been devised, some passed down and others forgotten—and among the most widely known from ancient times, the Curse of Aging stood near the top.
It activated the instant it struck its target. Its effect could age even a small child through youth, middle age, and old age in a single breath, and it continued until the victim died of senescence and crumbled into dust.
Of course, the Curse of Aging was still a curse. It could be purified and lifted. With the right materials, one could even resist it.
The problem was the double bind: the progress manifested far too quickly, and if not treated in the earliest stage, neither purification nor lifting was possible.
And even if one somehow escaped the curse, the years it had stolen during its operation never returned.
It was one of the most representative reasons black magic was forbidden, while even necromancy, though taboo, was not outright banned.
"Then shouldn't I have died a long time ago?"
"That's what I keep wondering."
"Hey, you old—!"
"No, I genuinely have no idea how this is possible."
Olivier turned a complex expression—somewhere between seriousness, absurdity, and confusion—toward Karem. It was the same look he often directed at Catherine.
This time the target was Karem.
Incredibly enough.
"You should have aged into dust the moment the curse struck you, long before you returned to Coldon. How are you still alive?"
"…If it's a foul curse, I do have a guess."
Fumbling, Karem reached into his chest even while being dragged along by Olivier. With a soft pop, he produced Skadi's relic, which radiated a sacred presence.
"Ah. With a holy relic of that caliber, it could certainly hold a curse—"
"No, wait."
Catherine tilted her head, her brows knitting.
"Then if he had simply kept the relic on him from the start—"
"He never would have been cursed in the first place. Wait."
Olivier frowned in turn, following Catherine's thought.
He hated to admit it, but except for the times Robin had borrowed it to practice power control, Karem had carried Skadi's relic with him at all times, wherever he went.
Which meant that when he took a direct hit from that curse, he had not been wearing the relic?
As if the memory had only just resurfaced, Catherine sighed.
"…Come to think of it, this kid threw the relic into the well."
"What."
This brat?
The worry that had colored Catherine's and Olivier's faces twisted halfway into the exasperated look of people thinking, Well, you brought this on yourself.
"I had no idea a special assault team was even being formed! And if the team had failed, wouldn't holy water have been the more urgent need?! I'll admit my thinking was shortsighted, blasphemous, and completely ignorant!"
"With three Sword Masters present?"
"…Three?"
"Yes. The mercenary, the captain of the Royal Guard, and His Lordship the Margrave. Three in total."
"…Lord Baston is a Sword Master as well?"
Catherine nodded, still looking thoroughly incredulous.
When one also factored in the carefully selected elite forces of Afterglow Fortress, the saying that ignorance was a sin applied quite thoroughly to Karem in that moment.
Even if he had done it as a precaution against the worst-case scenario.
Karem felt wronged. Hadn't that been because of that butler grandfather, Wallace Hartman, who had said the situation was dangerous?
"Keep that relic on you for now. The fact that you're still in one piece is almost certainly thanks to it."
"Can't Lady Skadi's relic lift the curse?"
"I told you earlier. The initial stage is long past; under normal circumstances it cannot be undone. Thankfully the relic seems to open a possibility, but I cannot be certain."
"Uh—"
"Pray for your soul's repose to the god you trust most."
And when a person of power appeared with no prior notice whatsoever, the soldiers and knights guarding the greenhouse nearly jumped out of their skins—but Olivier paid them no mind at all.
"Vice—no, wait. Lord Atanitas? Lord Olivier? Ka—"
"The situation is urgent; we're going in!"
"Ah—of course!"
"Consider yourselves put upon!"
Ignoring every procedure (sadly, they were used to it), Olivier dragged Karem inside. The greenhouse was as it always had been. Karem breathed in the refreshing scent of phytoncides thick with life force.
A soft, life-filled fragrance, cool and clean, that pushed the smell of winter out of his lungs and filled them instead.
Throb—Saaaaah—
His heart seized.
"Ugh—khh—"
"Kid?"
People scream by reflex when they are in pain.
But Karem could not even manage a scream.
The agony of every joint in his body being wrenched out by force.
The razor-sharp pain of blades skimming every inch of his skin.
The irregular pounding of a heart crushed as if in a press.
Pain of an intensity and scale he had never once experienced, raging both inside and out.
Sparks seemed to burst before his eyes of their own accord.
If he could at least scream, it might have brought some relief.
In the face of pain he had never known in either his previous life or this one, only a death-rattle of a moan escaped his lips.
"Ghk—khuh… uh—"
Who had ever claimed that someone under torture made no sound beyond a moan? The thought that such talk was pure nonsense rose unbidden. Pain like this did not leave room to suppress screams or moans—it simply made them impossible to form.
"Kid! Hey, kid! Damn it, Olivier!"
"The curse is accelerating in reaction to the abundant life force! The relic is suppressing it, but move faster!"
"The curse was stable until now!"
"To the center first! There's another factor suppressing the curse!"
"Not the holy power of the relic?"
"The relic is here, and the curse suppression is at the center of the greenhouse—long before—"
Throb—
A ringing like the world itself shattering shook his mind.
His pupils dilated; his vision swam; the world bleached white.
"Kid! No—Karem! This damn curse that was sitting quiet all of a sudden—hm? Life force of this magnitude?"
"Get some sleep for now, Karem."
In the pain that tore through him from crown to sole, Karem could not make out what the two people beside him were saying.
He did feel one thing, though.
A wrinkled hand settled on the back of his neck.
Crackle-crackle-crackle—!
A sharp, stinging sensation.
Karem felt something supporting him.
As his eyes slowly closed, the last thing he saw was Corvus's startled form, clinging like a cicada to—