The Witch of Clockwork and Sand
The Duke of Mittenburg.
A name that should have meant nothing to me. And yet, for someone who had collected hundreds of the wanted posters bearing Karin’s face—Kaira the Hero’s face—and stared at them thousands of times over, it was a name I could never forget.
The sole survivor of the ducal house that had lost its entire family to the hero Kaira. The one who had inherited that ruined lineage alone.
I stared blankly at the flames gathered in her palm and thought, A mage duchess…
The duchess’s face was undeniably beautiful, yet so gaunt it raised gooseflesh. Shadows pooled beneath her eyes, and she was so emaciated that her bones stood out sharply, as if she had starved for months. She looked like a corpse, standing only by some miracle of will.
“Well then. How should one take revenge on the enemy of one’s family? You would know better than anyone, wouldn’t you, Hero Kaira? After all, you’ve already taken your own revenge on the murderers of your family!”
“Mmph…”
Karin’s face looked deeply uncomfortable. Terrified, even. A smile lingered at the corners of her mouth, but the duchess’s eyes burned with glacial hatred as she continued in a cold voice.
“After that day, I couldn’t eat anything at all. Meat, fish… anything made by killing or crushing a living thing—I couldn’t put it in my mouth. Even if I forced it down, I would vomit it all back up. You’re wondering if I could have simply eaten bread instead?”
As she spoke, the duchess ran her fingers through Karin’s hair and twisted a lock of it playfully.
“The mere smell of bread makes me retch now. You understand why, don’t you, Kaira?”
The duchess’s expression was steeped in such bone-chilling resentment that it was almost nauseating. That look alone told me everything. Karin truly was the hero Kaira, and the massacre of the ducal house had not been a mere false accusation.
“So… ahahaha. In the end, I survive on gruel so thin it’s hard to tell apart from water. Yes, the very same porridge that must be sickeningly familiar to you.”
I turned the duchess’s venomous words over in my mind. It seemed undeniable that Karin had committed mass murder. Yet from her very first greeting, I could easily guess that Kaira must have had her reasons—reasons that left her no other choice.
Karin… did you lose your family to that ducal house as well?
That was as far as my speculation could reach. I had no way of knowing what else had happened.
The Duchess of Mittenburg circled the wooden post to which Karin was bound, gazing at the girl’s small frame with open mockery.
“Hmm. So this pathetic, scrawny body is what you used while selling yourself to stay hidden. No wonder it was so hard to find you. Clever, Kaira. Who would ever imagine the hero had fallen into prostitution? Ah, except for me, of course. I always knew you were perfectly suited to be a whore.”
With that, the duchess drew a dagger from within her robes. The surrounding soldiers waved their hands in alarm, trying to stop her, but before anyone could reach her, the blade had already slashed downward.
The rags that had barely covered Karin’s tightly shut eyes fluttered to the ground, revealing her slender, naked body. As the tattered cloth fell, a small metallic clink rang out.
My gaze was drawn to the sound as if hypnotized. Though soiled and scratched, the transparent crimson and untarnished bronze-gold still glittered.
That’s…
Having torn away the fabric that could scarcely be called clothing, the duchess sneered in front of the blushing, humiliated Karin.
“What a pathetically adorable pair of breasts. So this is what you used to seduce men? Well, I suppose it makes sense. A vulgar bitch from the start—whoring and shaking your hips must have been your true calling. Isn’t that right? You spent an entire year getting fucked by strangers whose faces you never even saw, drooling the whole time. Just like the filthy slut who happily spread her legs for my father, you must have enjoyed every second of it.”
It can’t be…
What on earth had Karin—what had the hero Kaira—endured in her life? What kind of horrific path had she walked that she deserved to hear such words from this woman?
“Well, let’s end this little reunion between old classmates here. Since we’re each other’s mortal enemies, I doubt either of us wants to look at the other’s face any longer, do we?”
If only I had met her sooner… If I had grown closer to Karin, would she have confided her secrets in me?
“Since we share some old affection, I’ll start by purifying that filthy cunt you’ve sold thousands of times by now.”
The duchess slowly lowered the hand that still held dancing flames.
“With fire.”
Karin shook her head wildly, as if she already knew what was coming, expressing raw rejection and terror. But the Duchess in the black robe simply stroked the space between the girl’s thighs with her left hand wreathed in flame.
“Mmph… ugh… ngh—?!”
The fire vanished from the duchess’s hand and transferred directly onto Karin’s body—onto the most precious part of the pitiful girl.
“Ugh…!!”
The instant the flames caught, Karin twisted violently. Her face contorted in unimaginable burning agony.
She trembled all over, writhing and moaning in pain, and there was nothing I could do to help her.
Tears streamed down Karin’s face as she clenched her teeth against a pain beyond words. The vacant expression of someone who had lost everything only moments ago had been swept away. All that remained was a human being fully surrendered to the raw emotion of suffering.
“Grrrrrrrrgh!!! Uuuugh…!!! Kgh, khk…! Hrrrrrrgh!!”
The fire that had first ignited at Karin’s groin slowly spread to the rest of her body. A thick stench like mammalian flesh thrown onto a blaze filled the execution ground.
It wasn’t exactly foul. If I had closed my eyes and plugged my ears, I might have called it fragrant, even mouth-watering. But everyone present knew exactly where the smell was coming from and why, so no sane person could keep from grimacing.
Feeling that human flesh was, in the end, nothing but animal meat, everyone wore expressions of utter horror—except for one. The duchess alone continued to chuckle in a spine-chilling manner.
“Uuuuuuugh!!! Ngh… ugh… hrrrrrrgh!!!”
Among the deathly silent spectators, only Karin’s wretched screams tore through the quiet.
The flames licked greedily across her skin. At first it blistered horribly, then quickly cooked to a pale white before turning a savory golden brown, then a deeper chestnut, and finally the color of brittle charcoal.
The part of Karin that had burned first—her womanhood—was already completely dead. Above her blackened pubic bone, what had once been her most intimate place, the place that had once welcomed me inside her, now clung to her in a shriveled mass of charred flesh and grease.
Yet Karin still clung to life. It would have been kinder if she had died from shock.
“Hrrrrgh…!!! Ngh… ugh… mmph… hrrrrrrgh…! U-uuu…”
Strength failing her, no longer able to thrash properly, Karin shook her head as tears poured down her face. The flames that burned only her body and nothing else slowly, inexorably killed her. She stared at her own lower half with terrified eyes.
What must it feel like to be burned alive? To watch, fully conscious, as the fire slowly devoured her from the waist down, leaving only scorched meat clinging to bone—what kind of feeling was that?
When the flames reached just below her chest, Karin’s movements became noticeably sluggish. Her intestines must have been cooking, the moisture in her lungs boiling. With her lungs ruined by the superheated air, she would likely suffocate before the fire even reached her head.
It was impossible to imagine the agony of being burned from the inside out.
“Hehe. How beautiful, Kaira. Come to think of it, you were most beautiful when you had no limbs at all. Now those slender, delicate legs and those adorable feet have become nothing but meat stuck to bone. You’ve grown pretty again.”
“Hrrrrrrrrgh… ugh… ngh… khk, kgh… kegh… ngh…”
Karin’s head drooped limply. The rag she had been biting fell from her mouth. Mixed with the burning cloth, a thread of blood-tinged saliva dripped down through the flames.
She no longer even had the strength to show anger at the duchess’s mockery.
“Ughhh… u-ugh…”
The moans that had been filled with excruciating pain grew faint. The agony of the flames devouring her upper body could only have grown worse, never better.
“Hehe…”
The sorceress duchess laughed ominously and brought her face close to Karin’s, which was twisted beyond recognition by pain. And then…
She kissed her.
After removing the gag, she sealed Karin’s mouth once more with her own lips and remained like that for a long time. The flames gnawing at Karin’s body did not transfer to the duchess at all.
“Huu…”
Like a farewell, the kiss between the two girls—one that seemed it would never end until Karin’s death—finally parted after what felt like an eternity.
“With this, I’ve repaid you for last time.”
Last time? What had happened between them? It was something I could never guess from Karin’s moans filled only with misery, shame, and pain.
“Zophy…”
Gathering the last of her strength, Karin looked at the duchess with a voice that sounded as if blood was boiling in her throat.
“Yes?”
“Fall… into… hell…”
A single phrase utterly unlike Karin—filled with hatred that burned as fiercely as her body—escaped her lips. The duchess simply stared at Karin’s face with perfect clarity, showing neither triumph nor disgust.
For the very last time, Karin looked at the face of the Duchess of Mittenburg…
No.
She turned her head and showed me her red eyes. I did not look away. Our gazes met.
A silent final greeting that could have lasted seconds or hours—I couldn’t tell. I instinctively knew this was the end.
“……”
Around the time the flames began to devour the spot just below her sternum, Karin’s head, which had been rigidly upright from enduring the pain, fell forward with a limp thud.
I knew it then. The person I loved had just died.
The moment Karin died, the flames suddenly roared higher.
“Iskil.”
“Yes…”
“You’ve witnessed her final moments. If you don’t want to see any more, you don’t have to.”
I shook my head, rejecting Wolf’s words that foretold an even more horrific sight.
“Watching until the very end is my duty.”
“I see…”
The small, soft breasts that had once brought me such gentle comfort were now nothing but ash and grease clinging to blackened ribs. The light brown hair I had loved to look at shriveled the instant the flames touched it and vanished without a trace.
When the fire finally engulfed the area above Karin’s neck, the spectators closed their eyes or turned their heads.
I did not. I could not. It was my duty to witness the exact moment her life disappeared, and even the moment her lifeless body was reduced to nothing.
Karin’s slack face was swallowed by the flames. The soft lips that had once touched mine vanished, leaving only ugly scraps of flesh fused to her teeth. The eyes that had held ruby-like transparent crimson irises boiled and evaporated, leaving empty sockets.
The skull that had once formed her beautiful facial lines was now nothing but charred bone with scorched meat and fat clinging to it, inspiring only revulsion in those who looked upon it.
After devouring even the crown of her head, the flames finally died. What remained was a pitch-black silhouette that could barely be recognized as once having been human, hanging grotesquely from chains on a wooden post untouched by fire.
I stared blankly at Karin’s corpse, which had burned so completely that it would crumble at the slightest touch, as if in a trance. It was now a horrific shape from which even gender could no longer be discerned, limbs melted and fused together, yet I could not look away.
“So this is your end. Farewell, Kaira.”
Still in that mocking tone—or rather, with something beyond mockery this time, a faint trace of bitterness and longing—the duchess offered a final greeting to Karin’s remains.
“You’re already dead, so you won’t hear this, but there is something I still needed to say to you at least once. Thank you, Kaira. For sparing my life. Yes… if only we…”
With one more wave of her hand, the entire ghastly remains—supported only by bone and dangling from chains—were engulfed in flames. With a crackling sound, Karin collapsed as if she had never possessed a form at all.
Into ash. Into dust.
“…How much better it would have been if we had never known each other from the beginning. If we had never met.”
More than half of those who had watched Karin’s final moments had already fled the scene in nausea, unable to bear the sight when the flames were at their fiercest. But Wolf, I, and a handful of spectators stubbornly determined to witness the witch’s end remained.
Not out of satisfaction at having seen a good spectacle, but wrapped in a strange discomfort and solemnity.
I simply hung my head, struggling to hold back my tears, when I noticed something among the ashes that had once been Karin and stood there in a daze.
“Let’s go.”
Wolf nudged my side, but I shook my head.
“Why are you being so stubborn? It’s already over.”
Without answering, I simply stared at the thing glittering among Karin’s ashes.
“…Go on ahead…”
Wolf looked at me for a moment, then did as I asked. He probably couldn’t understand what I was looking at, but he seemed to realize I needed to be left alone.
As I stood rooted to the spot, staring at it, a single gust of wind—completely out of place in this place of death and ashes—blew through the execution ground thick with the smell of burning and death.
It carried the scent of bread baked with dough rolled in ash.
The mage duchess, who had been staring at the collapsed pile of Karin’s ashes just as I had, clicked her tongue in clear dissatisfaction—a sound more like a lament than something that should come from someone who had completed her revenge—and turned away.
The officer who had shown Karin some pity hesitated for a moment, wondering if the body should be collected, but deciding there was no point in gathering mere ash, he gathered the soldiers and left.
The crowd drained from the execution ground like an ebbing tide. In the end, only I remained. It was the site of a famous witch’s execution; one would think at least a few soldiers would have been left to guard it, but the atmosphere had been so cruel and ominous that the officer had left no one behind.
I looked around carefully before approaching what remained of Karin.
And I picked up the thing I had been watching from the very beginning.
…The brooch I had given Karin.
I clutched it to my chest and closed my eyes for a moment. I had to remember the shape of her lips at the very end.
I loved you.
That was what Karin had said with her last possible movement of her mouth. To me—the incompetent fool who could neither protect her nor even recognize who she truly was.
Excellent work.
The tragedy of an abandoned hero. A piece truly worthy of the stage. It brings sorrow to those below and serves as a cautionary tale to those above. As a king, but first as a man, I am honored to welcome you as the royal playwright of our court.
“You honor me.”
I knelt and bowed my head deeply in utmost humility.
“The tragedy of a forsaken hero. A work like this deserves to grace the stage. It stirs pity in the hearts of the lowly and serves as a mirror for those in power. I am truly honored to accept you as my royal playwright—not merely as a king, but as a fellow human being.”
To receive such praise from the ruler of an entire nation. The joy and overwhelming emotion were almost impossible to contain; I nearly committed an unforgivable rudeness before the sovereign of this land.
“Our country is smaller than the empire where you were born. Still, I pride myself on being a patron of the arts more devoted than anyone in the empire. I have collected artworks from the unknown lands beyond the western plains, and even the ritual wooden statues used by the fierce tribes of the southern jungles who are said to devour one another… Yet I have never encountered a play like the one you have written.”
“You flatter me. My humble scribblings do not deserve such high praise.”
“Haha, such modesty.”
The moment Karin died, I bid Wolf farewell, packed my few belongings, and headed east. No matter what kind of play I wrote, as long as it depicted Karin, it would clearly never be permitted within the empire.
On rocks where I rested during my journey, in the shabby rooms of inns, and even after I finally reached the northernmost country of the eastern kingdoms—Orosea—and settled in a cheap house where the wind whistled through every crack, I continued writing the script on the back of Karin’s wanted poster without pause.
All of this… was thanks to her.
With every line I wrote, every time I wanted to give up, I recalled the fiery end Karin had met. Whenever my inspiration seemed to dry up, I would hold the scorched brooch she had left behind and remember the time we spent together. Then the words would come flooding back.
Even now, I remember the silent whisper she left me at the very end—setting aside all her resentment and leaving only those words for me alone.
I loved you.
Why couldn’t I answer her then? Why wouldn’t my lips move? All I had to do was say the same words back to her.
Only now could I begin to unravel that regret, even a little. Now that my story would be performed on stage.
It was also thanks to the King of Orosea, who loved the arts, for accepting me.
At first I was just another hanger-on among the palace artists, but I poured my blood and soul into completing Karin’s story day and night.
I wandered the empire gathering tales of the heroes. I even traveled to the dwarven mountain fortress deep in the mountains, enduring every kind of cold treatment, to obtain the records said to have been written by Hero Kadros himself.
The only reason I had come all the way to this remote kingdom was that it was the human realm closest to Kadros’s mountain city.
What I had created was the grand compilation of the heroes’ stories. Not the empire’s murderous witch Kaira, but the pure, untainted tale of my Karin, dressed in the outer form of a play.
The moment I finished, I presented the script to the king and received the evaluation I just heard. The king’s voice reached my ears, misty with nostalgia.
“However, this play has no title written on it. It would be better to give it a name before putting it on stage. Do you have one in mind?”
I answered the question I had been waiting for so long.
“I do, Your Majesty.”
“What is it?”
Thinking of her, who had crumbled into scattering ash, I spoke each syllable clearly.
“The Witch of Clockwork and Sand.”