The Letter of the Great Mage
The place where the great mage had departed.
Kaira, my dear. Knowing that you would soon come here, I leave this letter behind. It could not be helped. I told you clearly that I would study the traces of shadow you left behind as you tore the world apart, and that you would spend your entire life wondering about that power which might devour you at any moment.
Well then, are you enjoying the book I gave you? The mathematics and logical structures used within are not simple, but I am confident that if you delve into it for a long time, you will surely grasp its principles. I hope I did not hand over my book to some foolish disciple incapable of understanding even that much.
As you can easily tell from the fact that this letter remains, I have succeeded in a gamble of a lifetime. Perhaps I made some miscalculation when creating the spell, but it took far longer than I expected. Before my body began to rot away, a chill wind of early winter was definitely blowing, yet when I came to my senses, summer was already approaching. I detest summer. My body decays so easily that I require even more preservatives.
Yes, you did not open the envelope merely to read such grumbling. I shall write what you wish to hear. Regarding that cabin—if no one has smashed it or set it ablaze before you read this letter, it should still remain. But do not set foot inside.
You and your daughter were heading to Poscotia, were you not? Poscotia is the capital of the devotees who worship the God of Light. Kaira, what exactly is a god?
If you are a proper mage, you should be able to answer the moment you hear the question. When the desires and wishes of intelligent beings toward a specific concept gather and surpass a critical point, condensing around a certain person or object as its core, that person or object gains divinity from that moment and becomes a god.
Those who worship light, the origin of life; those who crave vengeance; those who revere the earth that bestows abundant fruit; those who show awe at the end of life that comes to everyone—gods were born from the faith of each and every one of them. And it is not only faith. Fear and hatred toward that concept also serve as nutrients that induce the birth and growth of gods.
Of course, if someone like us explained this to an ordinary, ignorant believer of any denomination, we would be beaten. The combat priests of the Light Denomination or your friend the saintess would try to burn anyone who spoke such words alive.
But if a god is merely a kind of phenomenon—born from intersecting desires, woven from intertwined fears, and vanishing when it can no longer receive faith or hatred and its very name is forgotten—then think about it, Kaira. There is no reason such a thing would exist only in our world, is there?
The world we touch when we use magic, the one from which we steal mana… is overflowing with energy. Excessively so. I do not know whether intelligent beings reside there, but the proposition that the thoughts of intelligent beings affect that place is undoubtedly true.
Because, is it not so? Mages like us constantly open gaps to that place and steal its energy. If there are countless other worlds similar to ours, their mages might also be in constant contact with it.
A god created by mages—beings who are lumps of desire and arrogance. I cannot even guess what kind of divinity or how horrifying an authority it might possess… but from your abilities, I can make a conjecture.
You know that interfering with time or space is a grand magic that ordinary spells cannot even imitate, yes? And yet you handle it so easily that it makes one sigh. Perhaps the deity that created you is a god born from the condensed desire to manipulate time. After all, any intelligent beings harboring such a wish would be filled with greed, so it is only natural that it would be malevolent.
In that case, Lady Kaira, you too are a saintess chosen by a god. Just like that woman who was once your comrade. Only, that god is undoubtedly an evil one. It is not even a deity of our world, yet it covets our world, and if given the chance, it is fully prepared to devour your soul and personality without hesitation. I do not know how you caught the attention of such a thing, but it is unfortunate.
However, do not fall into too much despair, my lovely disciple. Everything I have written so far is merely a highly probable hypothesis.
In truth, the corruption created when that entity descended upon your body was so severe that afterward I could not even properly enter my own house. The wound upon the world was so intense that the signal was too strong to study easily…
So now I intend to abandon the house. Well, it has already been three years since I sent you away, so I have lived long enough enduring wind and rain.
It is a shame about the garden I cultivated, but in my view it has not been long enough for any deep attachment to form. From now on… well, I wish to touch a proper research facility, so I plan to go to the Magic Academy. Do you not think Apryon would welcome me and at least toss me an honorary professorship?
I have placed a powerful mana seal on this letter so that only someone capable of handling a mana circulation system to a certain degree can touch it. Since I cannot know when you will return here, I have also added preservation measures so the letter does not decay and fall apart.
If this place becomes part of a forest overgrown with weeds, even if the letter remains intact you would not be able to find it, so I must infuse it with quite a lot of mana. Enough to suppress all biological activity in the surroundings. And to strangle the breath of any other humans who dare intrude upon the place where I once stayed.
My writing has grown unusually long. Then, let us meet again someday at the Magic Academy, my disciple. It may be a bit difficult for you, a wanted criminal… but since both you and I can live for a very long time, the arrest warrant will disappear long before we do.
From the great archmage Viran, who loves you far too much as experimental material.
Ah, one more thing.
This letter will destroy itself the moment it senses that you have finished reading it, so be careful!
“Ah…!!”
A dazzling yellow-green mana rose from the letter. Startled, I dropped it, but the letter burned with a brilliance like sunlight and turned to powder before it could even touch the ground, scattering on the wind.
“…Damn old witch.”
Still, I could understand. If she could afford to waste that much mana, it was an efficient method.
‘To pour such absurd mana into a single letter, blocking intruders while also adjusting it so that grass wouldn’t grow or the cabin wouldn’t rot for years… Truly, only an archmage could attempt such an outrageous method.’
The savage mana that had overwhelmed the surroundings—mana so thick that someone like me couldn’t even use magic, contaminating the very air—had burned all its power to reduce one letter to ashes and vanished. The oppressive pressure that clung to my skin and crushed my lungs disappeared, and only now could I move my body with some ease.
‘I came to see how her research had progressed… hoping she might have found a clue that could free me, or at least speak with her directly, but in the end I gained almost no information.’
It wasn’t entirely without information. The fact that even an archmage like her could not purify the corruption that manifested from me and simply left it alone, or that Viran had returned to the Magic Academy—those facts alone were significant enough gains.
Though it was already destroyed and I could never see it again, the date written on the letter was about half a year ago. She must have stayed here during that time, researching the corruption from beyond.
‘Still, it feels a little empty.’
With that thought, I gazed at Viran’s now ownerless cabin. A faintly ominous aura rose from it—something instinctively repellent from birth. Before I could even think, my feet were already moving toward the cabin.
‘It’s dark…’
The area was covered by trees that blocked sunlight, and since no one lived here, it was only natural that the cabin—without lantern or magical light—was dark. But this was a darkness different from the mere absence of light…
‘Huh…?’
I stopped walking.
‘When… did I walk all the way to right in front of the door…?’
As if I had dozed off for a moment, I had only blinked once, yet the cabin’s door handle was now within arm’s reach. As if the cabin itself had approached me, or as if it had lulled my consciousness to sleep for an instant and reached out to call my body.
‘Dangerous…!!’
I could feel it instinctively.
Even though the priests of Light had attempted purification for several years, they had ultimately failed to wash away all the corruption from beyond the world. The site of the inn where I had stopped and summoned living shadows had become nothing but ruins marked by a single memorial stone.
In Viran’s letter, there had been no mention of her attempting to purify her own cabin, nor whether she had failed or succeeded. Only that she could no longer enter the house.
There was no way a mage of her caliber would not have tried to cleanse the writhing shadows from beyond the world inside her own home. If she had succeeded in any way, she would surely have boasted about it in the letter. And that arrogant archmage… would certainly want to hide any failure.
I must not open this door.
The space eroded by whatever lay beyond—the very thing she had hypothesized might be a sacred deity—would still be spread out exactly as it was. Though it might have grown thinner than when it had descended using my body…
If I crossed that threshold, I would be swallowed immediately, devoured along with my entire personality. Knowing that, the shadow that had claimed the house had stolen my consciousness and lured me here. This time, there was no Viran to rewind time for me even at the cost of destroying her own body.
‘Was it dangerous just now too?’
I had not heard any whispers… but there was no denying that my consciousness had been completely taken, as if I had been possessed. Even after five years of purification from Bishop Lumina, it seemed the entity still possessed enough authority to manipulate my body.
Or perhaps it was not the being inside my body, but the remnants of the shadow left in this cabin that had controlled me.
Still, if I kept my mind clear, it should be fine. I took one step after another, pouring strength and will into each footfall as I moved away from the cabin. It appeared its influence could not reach far enough to control my body once I put even a little distance between us.
There was nothing more for me to gain here. Simply learning Viran’s whereabouts was already a profit. In any case, a master was a master, and having such a person at the center of the empire could only be an advantage for me, never a disadvantage.
I looked up at the sky to find my bearings, toward the north…
Just as I was trying to gauge the direction, a sharp sound tore through the wind. The moment the sound stopped, an impact like someone stabbing my waist with a tree branch struck me.
“Huh…?”
I looked down at whatever had burrowed into my waist. This was… long and thin…
Eh.
An arrow…?
“Ugh, ugh…!”
The pain that had been delayed for a few seconds by the shock of the arrow piercing my flesh now spread throughout my body. The sharp tip had dug in, and every time my muscles moved, the barbs tore at me, sending agonizing pain that made it impossible to breathe properly.
“Hah… haa…”
With sharp breaths that broke before I could even inhale fully, I could not endure the pain and collapsed to my knees.
‘What… what is this? A hunter? A bandit? Or someone hunting a witch…’
No.
This was no time to wonder about the identity of whoever had shot the arrow. A shout rang out from far away.
“I hit it!!”
Whoever it was, it was clear they had aimed at me with clear hostility. The fact that they shouted meant they were not alone. Moaning from the sharp pain, I steadied my mind—which had grown sharper thanks to that very pain—and grasped the arrow.
And then, quietly, I thought:
‘Rewind.’