When the Violets Wither - 1
I never wanted to attach grand meaning to something like revenge.
It was never about venting my fury for everything I had suffered; I simply wanted to put an end to this ill-fated bond.
That was why I had let her live. Though betrayed time and time again, I hadn't truly wished for Theresia to die. Because she was once someone I genuinely loved. When she first approached me back then, I had embraced it as salvation. I had only intended to excise her from my life and leave it at that.
Yet looking back now, does it not look like a pathetic excuse?
Right next to the room where Adrian was staying, I sat doing nothing, merely staring blankly at the desk. My reflection in that stupor was nothing short of pathetic.
I had encountered Theresia. To be precise, it was a one-sided sighting on my part, but it was now a certainty that she was here in the South.
...I had already braced myself for the inevitability of meeting her. Yet what occupied my thoughts right now were memories of Theresia. The first time we met, the second time we met.
The fact that the final stop of the journey with this woman—who had never failed to exist as my fiancée across all my lifetimes—was drawing near evoked a strange, complicated swell of emotions.
“Salvation.”
If I were to recall our first meeting, perhaps that was the only word for it. When we met again, it was much the same. To me, despised by everyone, she was the first woman to ever approach me with warmth.
Because I hadn't known it was a mask, I had thought of it as such. Had I known, I would never have been hurt.
A heavy sigh scattered into the passing wind.
Theresia was different from Mirazen or Adele. The first impression had been wonderful, but as time flowed on, those feelings had twisted and warped. Now, I consider it a tie that holds no meaning. She is nothing more than a woman who reminds me of my own foolish past—a past when I tried to walk a path without the faintest glimmer of hope, attempting to embrace everyone.
“Why are you crying here? What's your name?”
The lingering attachment I thought I had long discarded flared up once more. As I've said time and again, this regression prevents a person from gazing solely at reality. Whatever I see connects to the past, and whatever I do conjures an old memory. No matter what action I take, to me it is no different from repeating something I have already done before.
Living in memories. Existing within the lingering resonance those memories create.
I don't know if anyone besides myself repeats regression, but such a life is sheer torment. To be unable to see reality alone—what could be crueler than this?
When I was with Adrian, I could briefly forget such things, but no longer. From the moment I set foot in this South, I had no choice but to face my past. Having seen Theresia, there was nothing left for me to do but put an end to this relationship.
“Call me Theresia. I've heard a lot of rumors about you... May I call you Robert?”
I shook my head against the rushing tide of memories. The memory of meeting Theresia for the first time had already been extensively romanticized. Back when I didn't even know of the Moonstone's existence, didn't I live believing, even briefly, that she was a salvation granted to me?
Rising from the desk, I walked toward the window. Along with the Moon Tower, this was the place where one could see the moon from the closest vantage. Though it was not a soaring spire, it was a place where an oddly tilted moon hung close to the earth. Branches reaching for the sky were woven like a net, and upon that canopy of lush verdure, the moon rested precariously.
Cold.
As if ready to shatter at any moment, the precariously frozen moon gently emanated its pale luminescence. Was it an exaggeration to think that the moon resembled me? Amidst these repeated deaths, I wondered if the one on the verge of breaking might actually be myself. Because if I failed to endure just a little longer, I might end this life without even realizing it.
Clasping my trembling hand with the other, I gazed at the pale moon. A frigid moon met my eyes. I beheld moonlight so bleak it felt as though it might shatter and plunge the very heavens into pitch darkness.
Revenge is a murky, clinging emotion. No matter how many times it was repeated, one could never justify it under the righteous banner of goodness. God was a villain. Never benevolent—had she not been born with the name of a villainess in the first place?
“...Haha.”
The corners of Theresia's mouth twisted. House Violet had collapsed long ago. Even that had barely clung to a thread of existence, yet from the moment her elder brother died, hadn't everything shattered to pieces?
Stroking her cheek, Theresia murmured under her breath.
“Robert.”
He was a man she had approached from the start simply to exploit the Taylor family. Without an ounce of affection for him, her sole aim had been to use his family's wealth and prestige to restore House Violet. She had never expected to fall genuinely in love with him in the process, yet now she felt even that heart might have been an illusion.
If he had truly loved her, would he have been the first to bring up breaking the engagement? He had known everything from the beginning. Both the reason she had approached him and everything she did afterward—he had merely acquiesced to all of it, waiting only to tear House Violet down.
He was a Taylor, after all. A family swarming with lunatics capable of anything for the sake of their house, so she should never have let her guard down around someone called naive among them. It was her own mistake. If only she hadn't approached him, if only she had never thought to use the name of Taylor... everyone wouldn't have died like this.
She had killed the butler who had served her since childhood. She had killed her parents when they doubted her, and by the time she finally clawed her way out of that madness, everything was already ruined.
When the world turned upside down and the crumbling rifts became visible to her eyes, what she finally realized was... the name Robert Taylor.
Why had she thought it was her fault? When in truth, it was all his doing. She wasn't the one who killed the butler. What was his name again? She couldn't even remember now. He was probably one of Robert's pawns.
Ahaha.
...Right. It wasn't her fault. If someone was at fault, it had to be Robert Taylor. Why was she thinking it was her fault all over again? Because everyone was watching her, spying on her—hadn't she merely made a resolute decision herself?
Thwack! Theresia struck her own head, which for a fleeting second had considered itself possessed by madness.
Her heavily tangled hair was matted with blood, but it was not her own. It was the blood of those offered as sacrifices, spilled as she labored to gain power through their offerings. She required so many people.
When she sacrificed her mother and father, she had wept profusely. They were people who had loved her so dearly, so how had they been deceived by Robert into trying to murder their own daughter? Their voices, denying it and asking what on earth she was talking about, remained vivid in her mind.
Theresia despised liars. Robert, whispering that he had done nothing, was the liar she loathed and feared the most.
Splish. Splash.
Lightly stepping across puddles formed of blood, she ascended a mountain of piled corpses. Her feet slipped and sank deep, severing someone's entrails as she trampled them, yet it no longer stirred anything inside her. All of this was for revenge.
“Lady Theresia, have you come to perform the ritual today as well?”
At the sudden voice, she turned her head to see a masked man bowing toward her. Was his name Cain? Introducing himself as a mage, he was the first to approach her. A mage who claimed to understand her plight and asked if she wished to seek revenge.
Naturally, she had suspected him, but that suspicion had been dispelled surprisingly easily. He had even provided her with intelligence that the Imperial Princess was in the northwest—how could such a man mean her harm?
Imperial Princess Mirazen was truly in the northwest. Thanks to Robert stepping up in person to rescue her, Theresia had been able to let him know without delay that she was still alive and well. She had leaked her name to the outlanders and scattered her distinctive sigils here and there. Anyone who saw those clues and still failed to come to the South would have to be an utter fool.
Yet she believed Robert would come. Since he had arranged everything to bring about her ruin, wouldn't he come all the way to the South to finally destroy Theresia Violet once and for all?
“Robert has arrived in the South. You will likely cross paths soon.”
“He arrived sooner than expected. I thought he would take a little longer.”
“I heard he is accompanied by the Church, but targeting the Saintess would be dangerous.”
Targeting the Saintess was next to impossible. How could one hope to bring down Paladin Berod? While Temuchin, the chieftain of the outlanders last time, had also been formidable, Berod was on an entirely different level. He was a man capable of matching the combat power of dozens of knights all on his own. Therefore, she had abandoned the Saintess and intended solely to draw in Robert.
“Let us begin the ritual first. How much time did you say was left?”
“Three days will suffice. In addition, with our forces deployed, wouldn't they be more than enough to subdue Robert Taylor alone?”
“...I've always wondered, but why do you help me to this extent?”
“Everything is for the Sun. The Moon is far too feeble an existence, after all.”
The masked man bore the Sun Sigil. The Sun in an empire that worshipped the Moon—letting out a scoff, Theresia sat atop the peak of the mountain of corpses. None of that mattered anymore. If it was for her vengeance, if it was to repay Robert Taylor who had torn down everything she had—even if it meant joining hands with the Evil Dragon itself, she would do it.
As the flowing human blood soaked her body, the raw power coursing in through that blood caused Theresia's waist to arch violently back.
“Khhk...!”
Blood surged from her throat, spewing outward, and her eyes rolled back into her head as she drank in the agony. Her consciousness refused to fade. This ritual was the crucible of shedding her mortal flesh to attain new power—a fragment of the power that the Moon God had once dreaded.
Watching Theresia embrace it, Cain curled his lips into a faint smile.
“It proceeds exceptionally well. Smoothly, all will come to fruition.”
At his words, Theresia let out a faint laugh. Even upon a face contorted by agony, the smile that struggled to bloom was enough to send chills running down any observer's spine.
A violet darkness seeped out from her bloodstained face. Her pale, emaciated frame twisted further, and strands of tangled hair tore free, fluttering down below. By the time this ritual reached its conclusion, the 'woman' known as Theresia would likely cease to exist in this world. Theresia herself desired this; she wanted nothing more than to exact vengeance upon Robert.
Upon the mountain of corpses, a tiny flower blossomed. A flower so minuscule that none among those watching the ritual took note of its presence. Carried off by the wind, the blossom shed its petals one by one into the air. Petals of violet, occasionally white, occasionally tinged with yellow, fluttered through the void before plunging into the pool of blood, dyed in scarlet.
Soaking through. Vanishing.
The existence of a flower that could no longer remember its own color was snuffed out in such futile insignificance. The woman who, at least once, had been pure in her solitary ambition was disappearing in much the same way.
Violet—for that was the name representing the little flower.
The violet that no one would ever remember again had withered away. Even its final petal, gone in vain.
Withered just like that.
When Theresia raised her head, what she saw through the gaping hole in the ceiling was the moon. A full moon casting an unusually frigid light shone down upon her. As if blessing her rebirth, that light felt oddly, almost chillingly refreshing.