Vestige (26)
It was a street he had walked with Ravin.
They passed through a once-bustling thoroughfare, now empty of people and cluttered with abandoned supplies.
They cut across an unmaintained park, overgrown with weeds and utterly deserted.
They moved through a cafe district that looked as if no one had opened for business in weeks, then made their way toward the massive church.
Jenna accompanied her—demons could slip into the city and attack at any moment.
Back when they attended the Academy, the conversation would never have lagged. Today, as on too many other days, neither of them spoke.
There was nothing to say.
Lately, going out alone had felt far more comfortable, but a veteran knight had been killed by a demon disguised as a human while drinking alone in a tavern only two days ago.
Everywhere you turned, it was too dangerous to go alone.
The mages who had escaped from that place yesterday had been brought into the capital, tightening security even further.
Demons might have slipped in among them.
The city had gone past silence into barrenness.
How long had it been since she last spoke to Ravin?
She never got a proper day off, and now she couldn't even see his face. It felt like something inside her was being steadily worn away.
She climbed the church's broad steps, passed busy-looking priests, and walked inside.
Estelle was there, idly tossing dried plums into the air and catching them.
She spoke without turning around.
"You came again today."
"I didn't see you yesterday either."
"The words are exactly the same as yesterday's. Go back."
"Is Ravin even in the church?"
"Where else would he be."
"With you, it wouldn't be surprising if you'd hidden him away somewhere."
Estelle turned slowly at that.
Her mouth opened and closed before settling into an odd, eerie smile.
But the corners of her mouth were trembling.
"I wish I could have."
She saw Estelle's eyes quiver, a tremor barely perceptible.
She started to say something, then shut her mouth.
"He said he doesn't want to see anyone for a while."
"...In this situation?"
"You know him. Ravin's the kind of man who'd do exactly that."
Estelle's mouth had gone dry for no reason. She wet her lips with her tongue.
"Even when I go, he won't open the door for me."
"Then tell him to at least give me a reason."
"If I knew that, I'd have done something about it. Ravin trusts me more than he trusts a woman like you."
Estelle smiled.
And kept going.
"So head back soon, like yesterday. Who knows when the demons will cross the walls.
It won't change a thing, but come find me again tomorrow."
She wanted this insufferable Saintess in front of her to just die.
She was keeping her from seeing Ravin. Maybe it was this woman's fault she couldn't see him at all.
She closed the distance and grabbed Estelle by the collar.
Then she whispered, low and cold.
"You've gotten weaker, so drop the stubborn act and bring me Ravin before I kill you.
Stop strutting around like you're someone, you fucking commoner. Yeah?"
Jenna, standing beside her, registered the eyes around them and pulled her off Estelle.
"Wh—what the hell are you doing? Sera, get a grip!"
She glared at Estelle, teeth grinding audibly.
She let go of the collar, shoved her back with a fist, and stepped away.
Estelle stared at her retreating back until she was out of sight, then sank to the floor right where she stood.
It looked like she was trying to stand up, but her legs wouldn't hold her.
Estelle sat slumped on the cold church floor, thoughts drifting up.
'Maybe I just didn't want to get up.
I want to follow you.
That girl looks so pitiful.
She doesn't know a thing, thrashing around like that. It's so absurd it makes her even sadder to watch.
Levina never once considered she might become someone to be pitied, and that makes her look miserable.
Ravin. I really do hate you.'
* * *
The moment they left the church, word came that another powerful demon had appeared somewhere and wiped out an entire unit.
She geared up just enough, put Kyle, Jenna, and the other knights at the front, and followed behind.
Every single day looked like this, and she still couldn't see Ravin's face.
Demons or no demons, she wanted to get rid of Estelle—that fucking commoner Saintess.
She hadn't been riding long before a demon came into view, casually carving through the soldiers fighting it.
The knights spurred their horses and charged straight at it.
She kicked off from her galloping horse, launched herself into the air, and fired a spell at it.
It swatted the incoming spell aside like it was nothing.
Then it grabbed a soldier crawling away on the ground by the hair—and instead of cutting his head off, tore it off with its bare hands.
Crunch.
It hurled the torn-off head at Kyle, who was leading the charge.
Kyle moved to cleave the head in two, but it burst right in front of her eyes, throwing her from her horse.
The force was impossible to credit to any spell cast in that split second.
Then she met its eyes.
Features so close to Ravin's.
One eye only, touched by rot, but the eye was identical.
The same clothes she'd seen it in before, the same set of the mouth.
A cold shiver crawled up her spine.
Demons always attacked in ways that were hideous and sickening. It had to be coincidence.
The thing that resembled Ravin locked eyes with her, its mouth twitching upward, then raised its sword high toward her.
Dozens of four-legged monsters charged the knights who were still hesitating after Kyle fell.
It crouched for an instant, then exploded off the ground in her direction.
It happened so fast that everyone just stood there staring as it hurled a dagger straight at her while she was still in midair.
She deflected the blade flying at her throat, but it sank deep into her arm.
It closed the distance and slammed into her, and they crashed to the ground together.
A blade loomed above her, raised against the sky.
This was it, then. A hollow death.
She stared at the blade rushing toward her and thought of Ravin, one last time.
"Ravin..."
In that moment, the blade came down—but it struck empty ground.
Its eyes and mouth quivered, and its single eye met hers.
Then it drove the sword in its right hand straight into its own head.
Shunk.
It still twitched, then grabbed the blade and twisted, gouging deeper, until it went limp.
No blood flowed. Nothing came out.
She shoved the thing off her. It had no weight at all.
As if it were hollow inside.
Everyone stood there, dazed, staring at it, when a demon woman appeared from somewhere and clicked her tongue at the limp thing on the ground.
Slither.
The thing that had gouged its own head open dragged across the ground, then stopped in front of the demon woman.
She picked it up with her left hand, examined it from every angle for a long moment, then murmured.
"I don't know who you are, but you are loved."
Disorienting—but this was still a fight.
She gathered her mana lightly and fired.
The demon barely managed to deflect it with the thing, then looked at her and sighed.
"...Barely half a century old and already disgustingly strong."
The woman tore the head off the limp thing and tossed it aside.
The head rolled across the ground toward her.
Up close, one eye was missing, the skin had started to decay, and there wasn't a trace of blood—but it was unmistakably Ravin.
The Ravin the Saintess had told her was staying at the church.
It couldn't be here.
There was no way Ravin, who'd never been properly trained, could cut through mana with a sword.
Ravin couldn't be that strong.
Ravin couldn't move that fast.
Ravin would never pin her down. Ravin, even if he won, would never give up.
Ravin couldn't possibly love her that much.
If he didn't, there was no reason for him to shut himself in that room, refusing to look at her.
Ravin doesn't love himself, so he can't love me properly.
I have to teach him love. Make him happy.
Ravin's a useless wreck, so I have to hold him tight and help him through everything.
Leave him somewhere, and he won't last an hour before he dies—so I have to protect him.
Because Ravin can't love himself, I have to love him twice as much.
I'm the only one who can give him that kind of love.
I'm the only one who can offer him something real instead of just hunger.
Not the Saintess, with no real love and no real family. Just me.
I'm the only one who can love him.
Probably another mind-affecting demon, then.
"A child who treasures you more than his own life, and you won't even give him a proper glance."
She didn't answer.
She shot one look at the head that looked like Ravin's rolling on the ground, then threw herself back into the fight.
Exchanging words with demons had never once ended well.
The woman barely blocked Kyle's sudden sword strike from nowhere, then took her spell full-on—a massive hole blown through her chest.
The demon scowled, reached into the gaping wound, smeared her hand with gore, and then yanked something out of thin air.
At the same time, the headless thing staggered to its feet.
Sword in hand, it bolted straight toward Jenna and the knights.
Jenna managed to parry a few strikes, but she couldn't hold it alone.
The woman left the headless, still-moving thing behind, clutched her ruined chest, and vanished.
Only after several of them rushed it at once, hacking off its flailing limbs, piercing its body through, and Kyle splitting it in half—only then did it stop moving.
She stopped the mages who were scattering fire to burn it and pulled the dagger out of her arm.
She looked down at it. The Edelgard crest was carved into the hilt.
She pushed aside the priest who came to heal her and walked toward the thing.
She checked its clothes. The same clothes Ravin always wore.
In a strange daze, she laid a hand on it.
From its chest down to its split-open stomach, it was hollow. Her hand sank right in.
She straightened up and picked up the head that was still rolling on the ground.
It had decayed a little, but the face was identical to Ravin's. She stared at it for a long time.
"It's not him, right?"
Because Ravin was at the church.
No one answered.
The Saintess's faintly trembling eyes, the quivering corners of her mouth, flickered through her mind.
She scrambled onto her horse alone and rode.
She stopped in front of the massive church, dismounted, and walked inside toward the quarters where Ravin was supposedly staying.
The Saintess who should have been standing guard was nowhere in sight.
She shoved aside the priests who tried to block her way.
Then she subdued the two holy knights standing at the innermost door and kicked the closed door open.
Levina—whom she'd thought dead—was sitting on the bed, cutting her own wrist.
The moment she saw her, she kicked her aside and snatched the blade from her hand.
Then she drove it straight into Levina's shoulder and twisted.
A thin, ragged scream tore from Levina.
"...Why are you here?"
Levina smiled a smile that looked eerily similar to the one the Saintess had worn that morning.
Maybe it was the shared blood.
For a moment, Ravin's features flickered across her face.