The Girl's Past
Darkness.
In the endless ashen dark, she was a bound puppet.
Her body moved of its own accord, utterly against her will. Hands and feet traced eerie, unnatural arcs as if obeying another's command.
Familiar faces filled her vision. The maids who had cared for her all her life. The retainers who had poured their loyalty into the family's glory. Terror, betrayal, and despair warred across their features.
Her hand drew the sword on its own. Without hesitation, she drove it through the heart of the loyal knight who had been watching her with worried eyes.
A wet choke. Hot blood sprayed.
Next came the young maid who tried to flee in terror. She slashed the girl's back without mercy. Screams tore at her ears.
No… no…!
She screamed inside, but her body would not stop. Like the lead actress in a cruel play, she cut down one by one the people she had held dear.
The stench of blood mixed with the nauseating reek of contamination—flesh burning—and stabbed at her nose.
At last only one person remained before her.
Mari.
The head maid who had effectively taken her mother's place after her mother died. Always scolding, yet the one who had cherished and fretted over her more than anyone. Family, in every way that mattered.
Tears streaming, Mari still stood her ground in Serena's path and did not run.
"My lady… please… please come to your senses…"
Even that pitiful voice could not stay the sword in Serena's hand. In the instant the tip flew toward Mari's chest, time stretched into eternity.
The moment their eyes met—Mari's filled with sorrow—despair crashed over her as if the world itself were collapsing.
…Mari!!!
At that very moment Serena bolted upright.
"Hah! Hah! Haah…"
Her heart hammered madly. Cold sweat soaked her entire body. Gasping, she looked around. A familiar yet foreign room. Not the chamber that should have been hers in the Bennet Ducal House. Where was she?
And then—
"My lady? Are you all right?"
A worried voice. An unfamiliar maid approached to wipe the sweat from her brow.
It was not Mari. The instant that fact registered, the nightmare's horror flooded back over her.
"Mari…!"
Serena seized the maid's arm without thinking. Her voice cracked and shook.
"Where is Mari? Bring Mari here at once!"
She clung to the desperate hope that the last image of Mari's sorrowful eyes, of Mari falling beneath her blade, had been only a dream. That it had not been real. She pressed the maid hard.
The maid could give no answer. She only shook her head slowly, her face full of pity and grief.
The Bennet Ducal mansion that had once boasted such majesty now held only pitiful scars of destruction. Charred remnants of walls, collapsed pillars, and debris scattered everywhere silently testified to the horror that had unfolded here only a short time before.
Before the ruined house stood inspectors in the uniforms of the Council, faces stern. Their sole duty was to safely escort the principal culprit of the atrocity that had shaken all of Tera—the criminal who must stand trial.
Behind them waited a specially constructed prison carriage, ringed by additional guards who maintained a tight perimeter.
Inside that prison, beyond the cold iron bars, a black-haired girl sat quietly, bound in thick mana restraints. No emotion showed on her face, yet her empty eyes stared indifferently at the ashes of the mansion.
"Tsk tsk. Last time she denied the charges outright. This time she confessed without a fight."
One inspector glanced at the carriage and muttered to his colleague.
"True enough. Maybe she decided the evidence was too clear to wriggle free."
"Surely she won't walk again with no punishment like last time? An incident this large—the Council can't just look the other way."
"Well… rumors are already flying that the Bennet Duchy has moved. To defend that woman, no less."
"Are they out of their minds? Defending the one who turned their own house into a wasteland? And who brought contamination on top of it?"
The girl heard every word. Still she gave no reaction, only continued to gaze at the ruined mansion. Like an island cut off from the world, she remained alone in deep silence.
Then a sudden commotion rose from the mansion entrance. Shouts and urgent voices trying to restrain someone drew steadily closer.
"You must not do this, my lady! You cannot approach right now—"
"Out of the way!"
The inspectors turned toward the noise in confusion. There, amid several of their number blocking with their bodies, Serena Bennet was forcing her way forward, ash-gray hair whipping about her, determined to reach the prison carriage. Her face was deathly pale; her eyes blazed with rage and grief, reason nearly gone.
"My lady, please calm yourself! At this moment—"
"She's my sister! I said I will see her! Move!!! I said move!"
Serena shouted wildly, trying to throw the inspectors off. In the end her stubborn, desperate insistence left them no choice but to clear a path. She was the young lady of the ducal house and another victim of the same tragedy; they could not forcibly bar her.
The moment the way opened, Serena staggered to the prison carriage. She seized the cold iron bars with both hands and shook them violently, face twisted with fury as she stared at the girl locked inside—Yeon.
"You… you…!"
Emotions surged beyond her control; she could barely form words. Rage, betrayal, and sorrow made her voice shake violently.
"How could you… how could you do this to us!"
Hot tears streamed without end.
"Because of you… because of you…!"
As if her strength had finally failed, Serena collapsed to the ground before the carriage. Looking as ruined as the wreckage of the mansion itself, she glared up at Yeon through the bars with raw resentment.
"Because of you, Mari… Mari…!!! Ugh… sob…"
At last she broke into open, childlike wailing, pouring out her blame. Her desperate sobs echoed mournfully before the ruined house. She remained on the ground, weeping and cursing the girl beyond the bars.
Even the surrounding inspectors and retainers fell silent, unable to speak before such raw grief.
While everyone else drowned in Serena's sorrow, the object of that resentment—Yeon—still looked down at her with empty eyes and no expression at all.
A moment later the girl turned her head toward the inspectors outside the carriage and spoke. Open irritation colored her voice.
"Aren't we leaving?"
"…!"
The inspectors froze at the unexpected words.
"How long are we going to sit here like this? Just go already."
As if nothing had happened—as if they were the ones dawdling—she urged them on. Inwardly they clicked their tongues at her shamelessness. Not related by blood, true… yet with her sister wailing like that, she did not so much as blink and instead hurried them along. One could almost doubt she possessed a human heart.
Duty, however, remained. Reluctantly they began to move.
Clunk—
The prison carriage started forward. Leaving Serena's sobs behind on the ground, it slowly departed the ruined mansion.
Once the carriage had fully cleared the grounds, a strange sound began to slip from the girl inside.
"Heuk… haut…"
A soft, twisted moan that sounded as if she were enduring pain—yet carried an unmistakable note of pleasure. The eyes that had been vacant now held a peculiar heat; her face was faintly flushed. At the same time, deep within that gaze lay a light colder and more alien than ever, chilled to the bone.
Afterward the girl's life was never smooth.
The false crimes that Isaac Bennet and she herself had fabricated spread far and wide across Tera through the media, as if the world had been waiting for them.
The villainess who summoned contamination.
The traitor who destroyed her family.
A monster wearing human skin.
Every sensational, horrific label attached itself to her name. People who knew nothing of the truth pointed fingers and poured curses upon the phantom the press had created.
The trial somehow ended in acquittal—thanks to Isaac Bennet's influence and carefully manipulated evidence. Yet that was only a legal free pass.
When she returned to the family, cold indifference and quiet harassment awaited her. Foreign objects slipped into her meals. Her room deliberately disordered. Shoulders deliberately bumped in the corridors. Servants and retainers displayed their hostility in subtle, clever ways.
No one—not even Isaac Bennet—protected her inside the house. She was utterly alone.
Serena, once the girl's only family, had changed completely after the incident. She laid every scrap of blame for Mari's death and the family's ruin at Yeon's feet. Whenever their paths crossed she glared with deep hatred; sometimes she spat curses that bordered on malediction. The time they had shared and the promises they had made had already crumbled to ash.
When she happened to meet those who had served on the front lines, she faced open threats of murder. To them Yeon was no different from a monster who had driven their comrades to death; some could not restrain their rage and drew steel. Each time she barely escaped with her life.
The world had abandoned her. Her family hated her. The threat of death followed her wherever she went. It was a hopeless situation with no light in sight.
Even so…
Even so…
She never, for a single moment…
Stopped saving people.