The Ego That Blends with the Seeping Shadow (1)
Before reviving the others, I pulled a bundle of firewood from my pack and built a campfire. The sun had already set some time ago, and we needed the light. Especially here, in front of that hut.
Meanwhile, Kurt had dressed the corpses again. There was no way I could remember who had worn what. I put my own clothes back on as well. When he saw me conjure water from thin air to wash the dirt from my knees and feet, a flicker of envy crossed his face.
“You really are a mage, Witch.”
“...What’s this all of a sudden?”
“You dress like a mage, but in battle you only used a single sword. I thought, so there are mages who fight with nothing but a blade… At least, that was what I thought in those final moments before I died.”
…Though I had mixed in feats no ordinary person could perform, such as batting swords away with my bare arms. That was magic too, but it held none of the dazzling spectacle people usually expect from sorcery. To them it must have looked like nothing more than martial skill.
Martial skill, huh…
I wanted to test myself. Like a child given a new toy, I wanted to show off exactly how strong I had become. And because of that, I now felt a twinge of regret for the way I had swung my blade without negotiation or mercy, even though they had tried to kill me.
So I offered no reply. I simply pulled on my boots in silence and walked toward the corpses.
Start with the ones who died first. The ones… who would hold the least grudge against me.
The first to die had been the two whose necks were severed by the blade of time. Could I rewind their individual times and then fuse them back into one? I had never tried it, but there was no other choice.
I took the pocket watch from the inner pocket of my robe, gripped it tightly, and laid both hands on the blood-soaked corpse. Left hand on the head, right on the chest. Eyes closed, I felt the ticking of the mainspring and gears against my palms.
All I had to do was read the past. Just as I always did… Since the two “objects” had originally been one, I should be able to bind them together.
I chased the separate threads of time with eyes submerged in darkness. The visions of the two bodies cooling after death nearly made me retch, but I steadied myself and adjusted the speed at which the sand flowed backward in both hourglasses.
Ah…
The instant their times wove completely into one, I saw it. Without hesitation I rewound time—to the moment when he was still alive.
When I opened my eyes, a bearded man drenched in sweat was panting before me. I also saw Kurt’s urgent face as he rushed forward to calm him.
I knelt demurely before the campfire, head slightly bowed.
On the opposite side, seven men sat facing me. Some were breathing hard, some clicked their tongues, and some simply stared with mouths agape.
Reviving the earliest victims first had been the right decision. Because their final memory had been the moment their heads and bodies were still joined—grabbing hold of me—after hearing Kurt’s explanation they cooperated without much resentment.
Those killed by my sword had tried to charge at me in fury. The man named Han, who died last, was the worst. Knowing that, I had revived him last of all, and the others, now calm, held him back.
“I have caused you all a great deal of trouble. I took your lives and inflicted pain merely to show off my swordsmanship. I am truly sorry.”
I remained on my knees, head bowed. Perhaps this form of apology was unknown in this world. It was a gesture familiar on Earth, especially in the East. Yet my sincerity seemed to reach them. That was only natural. A bow was proof of no hostile intent, of being unarmed. Whether on Earth, in this other world, or on any other planet.
“Well… since we’re alive again, I guess it’s fine. It did hurt, though.”
“We don’t even remember the pain.”
“Still, miss… you really are a terrifying mage. To think you can bring the dead back to life… Farmers like us never stood a chance from the start.”
I kept my head lowered, avoiding their eyes, and answered with a touch of falsehood.
“That is correct. The grand mage Viran who once lived here was my master. She sustained her life by reviving her own dead body and extending her lifespan. I inherited that magic and modified it in my own way, hoping to help people. …Though I never meant to hurt them first and then offer the cure.”
“So neither you nor this master of yours is the witch we’re hunting? That the monster living inside that tightly sealed hut is the true witch? That sounds like an excuse to me.”
“Not a monster living inside the hut, but the hut itself, I would say.”
The shadow of corruption that had flowed in through the rift torn in the world as that entity tried to claim my body for its vessel. The malice and temptation I could still feel—the same force that had drawn my body toward the hut with nothing more than a fleeting distraction.
Even Viran could not purify it. All she had managed was to live outside the hut, researching it, and leave behind a mana-infused letter to keep people away. Such was the intensity of the contamination.
What would have happened if I had opened that door back then?
…In truth, I could not understand it. It would have been simple enough to pour mana into a stone or rock to repel humans and animals. Why enchant a letter that only I could open, a letter that would be destroyed the moment I did? Did that inscrutable mage expect some specific role from me?
“…It’s nothing.”
The voice drifted from far away.
Huh…? Far away…?
Startled, I whipped around. At the very edge of the campfire’s glow, just beyond Viran’s small vegetable patch and directly in front of the hut’s door, stood a man.
The one who had died last by my hand and been revived last.
“Mr. Han?”
“Hey, Han! Didn’t you hear what the mage said? It’s dangerous in there…”
“When the hell did you get over there?”
How…? I didn’t sense any movement at all. It doesn’t feel like any time has passed. Then… It’s just like before.
It was certain. The darkness beyond the hut was luring people in. It twisted their perception, making them leap across time. Perhaps it wasn’t merely perception—perhaps it truly skipped time itself.
I stared at my right palm, opened my fist once, then closed it again. Rising to my feet, I turned to face the hut.
“Stay right there! I’ll come get you!”
“Huh? It’s only a few steps. What’s even inside—”
“No! Stop!!”
I shouted and broke into a run. I had to stop him. Before he opened that door… before he released whatever Viran had sealed inside, I had to stop him…
I had to stop…
Three steps.
That was all I managed. After three steps I froze in place.
Because the wall of the hut now loomed directly before me.
How…?
This was the exact spot where Han had been standing moments ago. The door stood open. Han was gone without a trace. Instinct told me he could not be saved. Just like all the others who had vanished before.
This is different from before… When the shadow writhed up from me or Pirel, it only drained people dry and corrupted them. This is…
What would have happened if I had opened the door earlier today when the hut drew me in? Would I have been annihilated as well? Or, as a vessel chosen by some transcendent being from beyond the world, would it have ended with my body simply being stolen? …Either outcome meant my end.
I picked up a pebble at my feet and tossed it carefully through the open door, into the space that seemed draped in something darker than darkness itself. I half-expected the wound that had torn the world open to be gaping there, a doorway to some unknown realm.
Anticlimactically, the stone clattered faintly against the wooden floor. It was only a hut. There was no dimensional gate leading to another world.
Yet I could sense it. A shadow wriggling like tentacles was slowly seeping through the crack of the open door.
Beyond the threshold I felt no intelligence. Not even the faintest trace of a living being with the most basic desires. There was no sound, no scent—only the writhing shadow that felt like a hallucination.
Even so, a suffocating malice pressed down on me. I knew perfectly well there was nothing there capable of emitting such malice, yet the pressure remained.
I glanced sideways toward the campfire. From a distance far greater than three steps could explain, the men stood rooted in place as if frozen. Even farmers who had never fought for their lives could sense it. Something that stole the breath from your lungs.
The door had opened, and we were all exposed to that malice. It felt as though we had inhaled a lethal vapor. This was not the neutral, choking pressure that had come from the mana in Viran’s letter.
I sank to the ground. It was the same power that had toyed with me, granting strength only to devour me later. It was an unintelligent malice left behind by the capricious will of another world—a will that twisted causality at whim, erasing the gaps between moments of time in order to consume intelligence and multiply its own existence.
If even a mere fragment of the cracked world, born when that entity descended through my body, possessed such power despite having neither soul nor will…
If such ominous contamination—something even Viran could not fully eradicate—had been created by that alone, then what would happen if I fell completely into corruption?
While those thoughts held me captive, the shadow crawled all the way to my feet. As though checking whether its prey was poisonous, it hesitated despite having no intelligence.
…Would an ordinary person have been devoured at this stage?
Was it hesitating because it sensed something of a similar nature—something granted from an outer dimension, carrying twisted principles?
This was my only chance. I had to devour it before it devoured me.
But…
The power to rewind time was nothing more than a trivial authority that entity had granted on a whim. Time returned, but each use tore the world’s causality and left another wound. And the wriggling shadow before me was likewise a gap in reality, a wound upon the world.
If I rewound this shadow now—to five years ago, to a time before it existed—would that act itself widen the wound?
Would it be like pouring fuel on a fire in order to extinguish it?
Couldn’t magic solve this without such risk? Some spell from Master Viran’s books, perhaps?
…As I pondered that,
the shadow swelled into a gigantic hand and swallowed me whole.
“Mmph…!!”
My mouth was sealed. No… it wasn’t sealed. I could no longer feel the area around my mouth. My ankles and chest had vanished too. There was only empty space wrapped in darkness. Was my perception simply twisted, making me feel they were gone? Had I been forcibly transported to another realm? Had I been erased? One thing was certain.
So this is how everyone disappeared…
In a span too brief for even a flicker of life to flash before their eyes, they had vanished without meaning.
Why…?
Yes…
Ahaha…
…Why is a mere phenomenon without soul or will—nothing but the cracks I created—daring to attack me?
I thrust out the arm that was being devoured and disappearing into the shadow.
Rewind.