A Dragon's Original Sin
“So that choice—the one where she went to the ducal house two months early and I went to the Magic Tower—caused all of this?”
Pay already knew the answer.
No… No, that can’t be it. They say a butterfly’s wingbeat can cause a storm, but it can’t possibly be that simple. In these two years I’ve never once seen Cassel, the eldest son of the duke, return. Nor have I witnessed the crown prince’s summons, the feud between the Huiante marquisate and the Orleans ducal house, or any of the countless other events unfolding somewhere beyond my sight.
She murmured slowly.
“…Why was time turned back in the first place?”
It had to be magic. There was no other explanation.
Since the ancient cataclysm, the hands of the gods had never touched the continent again. The gods had declared that their interference would end once they gathered the ancient dragons.
Curious about how events had unfolded, Pay had scoured every grimoire in the Magic Tower.
Time-reversal magic. No such spell existed in any of them.
Even if it did, it would be an immense forbidden art—something only a ninth- or tenth-circle mage, a dragon, or a celestial being descended from the gods could wield.
Even if such magic had existed long ago, the incantation would be lost by now. It was far too dangerous.
Then… who could possibly have done something like this?
“Lord Baroa. Did you turn back time? Was it because you pitied the child you once saved, only to watch her die so miserably? Did you want me to live properly this time?”
She carefully spoke the name that had just come to mind.
“You… the great Tower Master. Where are you now? I once swore I would find you someday. Please, give me a hint. Just like when you deliberately gave me both the names Morgana and Morgan le Fay.”
Pay curled her chilled body on the bed. There was another person she wanted to call out to.
“Lord Cassel. Sir Leon, who shares my exact blood. Even if you have no connection to Lord Baroa… I wish you were someone who remembers the past, just like me. I want to share this unbearable, crushing loneliness with someone…”
If only she could throw herself into the arms of someone who truly understood her existence and weep her heart out.
If only she could pour out everything that had been so hard, so heartbreaking, even if it took an entire night!
If that person… were you, Cassel.
The reason he had returned, unlike in the past when he had always remained at the Logia border, was for her alone.
After time had been reversed, he had sensed something strange and come back, only to finally recognize Pay—Morgana—Tiana Marietta Klein for who she truly was.
She thought she might even be able to let go of her hatred toward the people of the Klein ducal house.
It wouldn’t be forgiveness. It would simply be letting the resentment flow away from her heart, like water draining away.
Yes. She had never had any reason to hate Cassel in the first place.
If he escorted Dot, whom he believed to be his younger sister, with such tenderness at the spring debutante ball, it might sting a little—but she would simply pretend not to notice.
“…I’m greedy, aren’t I? I keep saying I don’t need anything, yet I shamelessly crave your attention. Just like Lord Baroa, who saved me and vanished like the wind.”
People could change. They could become different.
Pay was coming to understand that truth through her own life.
“Do you know? Even if you never regain your memories of the past… I still hope you’ll see me as someone special.”
Having voiced an impossible wish, Pay smiled bitterly.
She should sleep now.
Being alone, and having muttered so much to herself after so long, left her feeling a little embarrassed. Who had she been talking to, anyway?
Pay crawled under the sheets on the bed.
Before her eyes could close, someone leaning against the door rose to his feet, his face pale.
She knew the flow of time had twisted? Not just her, but that fake lady too?
Lucius knew whose blood ran in Pay’s veins, but he had never discussed it with the person involved. He had only guessed.
That she was the duke’s illegitimate daughter who had inherited the strongest of Caron’s blood, and that her status had never been acknowledged. Was that not the case? She was the real one, and the lady who had recently entered the Klein ducal house was the fake? She had called the other woman fake herself, so it had to be true.
Lucius walked unsteadily, fiercely interpreting everything he had overheard.
Her remembering the past is tied to me, so I’ll accept that. But that woman who can’t even use magic also remembers? Was my regression magic that unstable? Even if I cast it right before dying… I’m disappointed in myself. Wait. Who is this Baroa she mentioned?
He knew who Cassel was, so he could gloss over that, but the existence of Baroa required investigation.
Yet the name felt familiar somehow.
Who are you?
Just as Lucius was frantically searching his memories, a voice called out.
“Lululululu~”
“Hey, you.”
Holtdein’s whistling echoed as he passed by, arms full of empty milk bottles he had drained daily.
Lucius grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and fired off a question.
“Are you the mage named Baroa?”
Holtdein didn’t look particularly displeased to see Lucius, the man who had supposedly stolen his first love. For one thing, Lucius was far stronger than him. For another, something good had happened to him recently.
Thanks to drinking a bottle of milk every day, he had grown just a tiny bit taller! No one else could tell, but he knew.
A man who tried hard would eventually win love. That was how it worked.
Feeling rather proud of his renewed height growth, Holtdein grinned generously.
“Of course. He was the previous Tower Master, wasn’t he?”
“The previous Tower Master?”
Lucius had been so focused on recovering his lost magic and studying history since arriving at the tower that he had paid little attention to the Magic Tower itself.
It was the same reason the current Tower Master, Neia, kept forgetting his name despite watching him closely.
The Tower Masters were, after all, nothing more than slightly skilled mages in Lucius’s eyes.
His boundless arrogance made him overlook the truth slipping through his fingers like sand from a castle.
“Yes. When Pay first came to the tower, she brought his letter of introduction. And that Drakan of hers—he left orders for the tower to hand it over to her as well.”
“What?”
Lucius was stunned, as if struck by lightning.
Until now, he had assumed Momo—Moitetra Banus—had been kept at the tower because someone had captured and imprisoned the creature during his absence. The Magic Tower would have been the perfect place.
But the one who had captured it was the previous Tower Master, deeply connected to Pay?
That meant it had happened far earlier than he thought?!
Something was wrong. There had to be more to this!
“You’re hearing this for the first time? You’ve been stuck to Pay like glue, yet you barely talk to her, huh?”
Holtdein’s confidence had grown along with his height—even if only by the width of an ant’s eyelash. He sensed an opportunity to reclaim the first love he had thought lost before he could even confess.
Yes. Those who challenged fate would win love!
Whether Holtdein was subtly provoking him or not, Lucius was too busy firing questions to notice.
“Tell me everything you know about that Baroa guy!”
Holtdein answered obediently, and Lucius pieced together Pay’s muttered words with the remaining fragments of the puzzle, his face turning ashen.
A Tower Master who had existed for only a year after the young girl suffered her misfortune, then vanished without a trace?
He had left Momo at the tower with instructions to introduce him to Pay when she arrived?
There was no need to think further!
Bang!!!
Lucius rushed to Baroa’s room, which was still being preserved, and his pupils dilated.
The moment he entered, he felt a familiar presence. A trace of the magic he had barely left behind, and a faint voice…
“…has fulfilled its duty.”
At the end of his gaze lay the remnants of something that had been solidly constructed and then shattered.
Lucius walked straight over and picked up a single shattered blue gem.
I made this. It was a final safeguard, a power left behind for the worst possible scenario. Since Pay had grown splendidly, it was no longer needed and had dispersed.
There was nothing more to see, yet he walked to the desk and picked up a red-covered grimoire. The pages that no one had been able to open since Baroa’s disappearance flipped open far too easily.
“…Damn it.”
The sentences written in a way only an ancient dragon like him could understand, the familiar handwriting. The proud inscription of a solution that defied common sense—it was exactly the kind of thing he would do.
Lucius’s legs gave out, and he collapsed onto the spot.
“It was me… It was me all along. I… I! I did everything!”
The memories of the thought-form he had left behind in the forgotten past began to flow into the arrogant dragon’s mind, one by one.
The mysterious Tower Master, Baroa.
His true identity was a thought-form of Lucius, born out of necessity before the seal was broken.
His unconscious mind, which had foreseen what would happen after the seal was lifted, had quietly separated from the sleeping dragon. It was a truth even he had not known until now.
If the existence known as Baroa had never been.
If Baroa had not rescued the “real daughter” from the thieves and entrusted her to the monastery.
The Klein daughter would have suffered the misfortune of her nursemaid and maids being murdered, only to be helplessly dragged outside the empire and sold into slavery.
Living a grueling life under the name “Jena” and dying before she even turned ten—that would have been her cruel fate.
The real problem came later, when time passed and the seal on the long-slumbering dragon Lucius was finally broken.
Because of the ancient seal, he was destined to regain his sanity only after his ferocious aggression had already revived.
The mad dragon would instinctively seek out the Klein ducal house, where Caron’s descendants resided, and wipe it out cleanly from the start.
The ducal house was only the beginning; the destruction of the capital, Lapis, would be a matter of time.
Afterward, no one would be able to stop Lucius, who had transformed from an ancient dragon into a demonic one.
Only after he had destroyed every civilization and living being on the Tiser continent would he finally stop—but by then…
Dragons could do anything, yet they lacked the power of creation.
In other words, the world would be destroyed as it was.
After Lucius himself died, only complete silence would remain.
I…!
That was why Lucius—or rather, his wise thought-form—had laid out an intricate plan.
First, he would make the fragile-hearted Klein daughter experience firsthand just how miserable her life would be without awakening.
Then, he would force Lucius to instinctively turn back time due to the threat of death. He would also guide the daughter living her second life to walk her own path instead of following her fated destiny.
This was the only way for both Pay to live and for Lucius to survive safely.
Because he had consumed an enormous amount of magic to cast the regression spell, his ferocious instincts and power would be greatly diminished, while his sanity would remain clear—ensuring the world would not be destroyed.