The Rewinding Witch's Retribution (1)
Nothing was visible. Memories, memories, memories, and more memories. A tidal wave of countless memories that I should have forgotten instead mercilessly swallowed me whole.
Father's death, losing my limbs, losing the child that was forcibly taken from me... All those memories of loss swirled in my head, preventing my sanity from returning.
I wanted to scream. It would have been natural to roll around like a madman, clutching my head and screaming.
But... not even a small voice came out. I couldn't move my body either. I was struggling against the shock that bound my body like chains, preventing even that.
For a long while, I sat there with a blank expression, a dazed look, staring at my companions, trying to cool my overloaded brain as all those memories flooded in like a tidal wave at once.
When I regained some composure, Mervin's elven sword came into view. It was the only thing left among what I had before being kidnapped.
Like a child, I begged Mervin for the sword. "That's... mine..."
He handed it over without a moment's hesitation.
Clutching the sword I received from Mervin weakly and dragging it on the ground, I blankly left the basement.
Right outside the room where I had been imprisoned was a spacious reception room where guests who came to find me were waiting or resting. As I passed through the wooden door leading to the reception room and climbed the narrow stone stairs, I saw the starry night sky through the open door beyond the stairs.
Drawn by the stars as if enchanted, I stepped outside.
It was then that I first realized the place I had been imprisoned was the basement of a tower rising in the courtyard of the castle within the ducal city.
After being locked in a basement with no windows, not even one with iron bars, for a year, I breathed the outside air. Naked, exposed to the chilly night breeze, I slowly wandered the castle courtyard.
Occasionally, I saw soldiers asleep, unaware of the world. My companions... Mervin must have done something using natural toxins.
I made my way toward the splendid building that appeared to be the ducal mansion.
"Ungh...!"
The mansion door, decorated with ornate wood carvings and translucent glass, was too large. With my body weakened from starvation and abuse, I had to put all my weight into it, even letting out a groan, to push it open with all my might.
"Wow..."
Seeing the first-floor hall of the mansion that welcomed visitors, I genuinely marveled.
Having only experienced small bakeries, the corridors of an old magic academy, and provincial count's mansions, I hadn't even known such splendid buildings could exist.
Though it was incomparably smaller than the hotel lobbies or massive convention halls I had seen in my previous life, it had been over ten years since those nostalgic memories from Earth had returned. Even memories that once shook my heart enough to bring tears had now faded to the point of "oh, those existed."
I stared blankly at the neatly polished mirrors hanging in the large hall.
Reflected there was the image of a gaunt girl holding a single beautiful sword, wearing not a single scrap of cloth.
Light brown hair, slender limbs, and a body with almost no feminine curves. The outline of ribs stood out beneath a chest like that of a child.
It was the first time I had seen my own appearance in a long while. Thanks to rewinding time, it wasn't the hideously starved form.
The face that had been pretty enough to make me secretly proud remained as I remembered, but a chill ran down my spine at the expression as if emotions had been erased, like someone who had lived for hundreds of years, a countenance as if the soul had been wiped away leaving only a shell.
The eyes, constantly meeting my gaze, with blood vessels visible making them appear crimson... those eerie eyes were also a little frightening.
With both expression and eye color so inhuman, it was like a small girl facing a ghost.
'Really... is this me?'
I stared for a long time at the nineteen-year-old, four-month-old girl in the mirror who had lost all her former innocent beauty, then...
'Sc-scary...'
Unable to bear the sight of myself, changed beyond what even the power of rewinding time could restore, I finally averted my gaze.
Unlike the splendid interior decorations lined with mirrors, the first floor of the mansion was quite messy. All the display cases and drawers were open, and the beautiful carpets were overturned. It was probably traces of my companions searching the mansion to find me.
Just like the castle courtyard, people were lying asleep inside the mansion as well.
I didn't know what method he used, but Mervin's mysterious magic seemed capable of affecting even the inside of a house with closed doors.
A maid in a rather splendid dress was lying face down asleep.
With dazed movements, I knelt and placed my hand on the maid. She was about my age. A red-haired woman with faint freckles. I recognized her immediately.
It was her.
The maid who had served me after the attendant who first took care of me quit. The very same maid who had abused me while looking at me with displeasure every time.
'She was such a young person.'
Because I had nearly lost my eyesight while imprisoned, it was the first time I saw her face clearly. Looking at her peacefully sleeping face, she didn't look like someone who would torment a girl whose limbs had been cut off and bound.
A maid working in a mansion of a ducal house would have been either a noble's daughter or the daughter of a wealthy commoner recognized socially.
Why did this person, whose sleeping form looked so innocent, torment me, her peer, like that?
Not just this woman, but did everyone here know of my existence, or was it a secret known only to Zophy and a few close aides?
Why... what was different between this child sleeping before me and me, that while she could comfortably breathe the outside air, sometimes laugh brightly, and occasionally giggle with family, I alone... only I had to suffer such cruel things.
When the time at my fingertips rewound, when my closed eyes opened, I was crying profusely.
In my restored vision, there was only a single collapsed maid's dress.
The red-haired woman who had been wearing it was nowhere to be seen.
What was visible was... just... on my palm, a small pink baby with a human's limbs and face...
No, a fetus...?
I was seized by terror. With arms trembling in fear, the human form that had been placed on my palm fell.
'No... this, I, I... didn't, do this...'
I felt nauseous. I vomited as if my insides were turning over, but from a stomach that could only eat porridge... no, a stomach where even what I had eaten was unknown due to time rewinding, nothing came out.
After retching on the ground for a while, my eyes fell on the fetus I had dropped. Until just moments ago, it had been a complete adult woman.
The baby... was trembling, exposed to the cold outside air it should never have encountered.
When I worked at the magic tool shop in Valdenheim County, I had tested it several times.
I could rewind the time of objects, but I couldn't undo the rewound time. The power I possessed only returned something to its past state. It was one-way. I couldn't wind time that had been turned back to the future.
Therefore, this baby... the person I had returned to a fetus could never return to their original adult form.
I had just killed a person for the first time. An ordinary person not tainted by magic.
The image of the child who had come out with the placenta, dying without even taking a single breath of outside air, overlapped with the form of the fetus thrown on the floor.
It was too much. I absolutely couldn't endure it. I couldn't stay sane after doing such a thing.
Ah...
If I wasn't sane,
It would be okay...
Such a simple thing,
Why didn't I know?
"Ahahaha...!"
So I,
crunch,
stepped on it.
Yes. This was something I did.
Because I wasn't sane.
The sensation of infinitely soft flesh, the thin and tender bones of a not-yet-properly-formed child, crushing without resistance, transmitted through the soles of my feet. The unpleasant feeling of something—whether intestines, muscle, or blood—bursting out and seeping between my toes.
Trembling all over, I... wriggled my foot a little. To thoroughly crush and erase what was under my foot.
"Uhuhut... Ahaha, hat..."
Fear and guilt swirled. So... it felt good.
The sense of depravity from abandoning the most fundamental something needed to remain a person as a person harshly stimulated my pleasure nerves, ruined by years of imprisonment. The area between my legs grew damp.
Now I knew. What I had to do here. What I must do with this power received through reincarnation. Every person who came into my view, the people who cooperated with the duke and Zophy here... without leaving a single one, I had to turn them into the form of a fetus that would be crushed with a single light step by rewinding time. And then crush them. So that no matter what happened, it couldn't be undone.
'Ah, no... I can't do that. How could I think such... terrible thoughts...'
'That's not it. It's okay to do it, it's okay... I have the qualification. I have the right. I must do it. Yes, I must, Kaira... Father too, and my baby who had to be sent away without even being given a name... who couldn't even hear its cry once, died in this way.'
The two thoughts collided, and one won. Then I realized. I had already gone mad beyond the point of return.
Eventually, I wandered the mansion like a ghost. Searching for sleeping people. Leaving bright red footprints mixed with the blood of the pure baby I had just killed and my own filthy, corrupted fluids on the marble floor. Tears flowing from my eyes, a hollow smile on my lips.
A soldier in armor. 'Next.'
A noble who appeared to be a guest, collapsed asleep at a table. 'Next.'
A maid carrying several laundered clothes. 'Next.'
A chef and assistant who had fallen asleep while cooking in the kitchen. 'Next.'
A white-haired grandfather who looked like a high-ranking butler. After returning every single one to a baby without exception, I stepped on and crushed their soft, pliant flesh and bones.
"Ehehehet... Good, this... It's fun... Feels, good... Ahaha..."
While crushing who-knows-how-many babies into bloody masses and rubbing my soles forcefully on the floor to enjoy the sensation of them being crushed, my thoughts turned to that person too... she who had made me like this would also be asleep inside the house.
I thought of something good... truly, something good, and smiled happily.
Then immediately, I inserted my fingers inside and stirred violently. The hymen that had been restored along with the rewinding of time tore futilely.
"Ungh...!!"
The pain of rupture, as if it would never get used to no matter how many times experienced, the sharp pain of tender membranes being torn spread through my lower abdomen. I tried to endure the pain while letting out low moans.
Because there was something I had to do with this...
Leaving traces of virgin blood flowing down my legs, I moved my steps somewhere.
As expected, Zophy was asleep in her own room. Zophy's room was easy to identify. As the only mage in the household, it had a massive ebony magic research table and bookshelves occupying half of the large room.
Truly befitting a mage who held the top position. Since a great noble house wouldn't be concerned with property, it seemed she had academically and greedily collected books; the shelves were densely packed.
'There are many good books.'
I pull out one of the magic books. It recorded several spells I knew existed but had never actually used.
While reading the book without much thought, I discovered a usable spell.
Though it was an unmastered spell requiring me to keep glancing at the book while preparing for a long time, it wasn't too difficult. It was a very low-difficulty spell that even a magic academy freshman could use after a few practices.
With hands trembling from lack of strength, I lifted the elven sword and tore the fabric of the ornately decorated bed canopy. Long enough to... bind a person.
Then I used the spell I had just seen in the magic book on Zophy.
'Decimona's Binding'. A non-lethal spell used to gain a momentary advantage in battle by subduing a person using soft materials like cloth.
Though it was magic, as a low-level spell, it was merely making something a person could do with their hands a little easier. A properly prepared soldier could throw a net or bolas, and if they had properly learned how to tie people, they could achieve similar results with just rope.
But since I was a mage who hadn't learned such things, using the spell was better than tying clumsily. If I tied her by hand and Zophy easily undid the bindings and engaged in a struggle, with my small body, I might not be able to win.
I struggled to carry Zophy, who was quietly sleeping on the research table bound by Decimona's Binding, and threw her onto the bed.
Then, with a light wave of one hand, I used another spell. One of the few spells I could use without chanting, just with a hand gesture—the spell I had created.
So that even if Zophy's time was rewound, she could still remember all the things she had done so far.
After that, I gently placed the hand that had cast the spell on Zophy's shoulder.
And,
rewound.
Zophy's time returned to that period. Around the time she had been knocked down after being hit on the head with Kalia's wooden sword.
It was also the appearance of her most familiar to my eyes, but... since the mind is influenced by the body, returning her to that youthful body would weaken Zophy's mental strength accordingly.
There was no significant visible change to the now-younger Zophy's body. It had merely shrunk a little in size. Those large breasts also seemed slightly smaller.
Of course, I could have returned her to a fetal state, but I didn't.
I mustn't.
Because I had to break her.
While looking down at her on the bed with an empty expression, Zophy slowly opened her eyes.