The Return (2)
The place Sasha had chosen for their private walk was the rooftop of the Magic Tower.
A space free of any structure whatsoever, where simply climbing up felt like a weight lifting off one's chest. Not even a single speck of the ever-present dust had settled on the white stone floor, and it almost felt like stepping into a sacred temple.
"So? How does it feel, standing at the highest point of the White Tower?"
"……."
Oscar took in the view in silence for a while.
Back in his own days as Tower Master, he had been a frequent visitor here. No—he hadn't been the only one. Every Tower Master in the tower's history must have felt the same pull. Standing alone at the heart of that pure white world, one couldn't help but feel as though they'd been left utterly alone in the world. Which was precisely why there was no better place to sweep away stray thoughts and get one's mind in order.
Come to think of it, Sasha has always loved this place, even back then.
He had once brought his disciples up here when they were children. From that day on, Sasha had begged and begged to come up to the rooftop for picnics, and it had been quite the ordeal.
"It's nice. So open and refreshing, and the breeze feels wonderful."
"Doesn't it? That's why it's a little bittersweet. I can't share this view with very many people."
The rooftop stairs had been connected to the Tower Master's chambers since time immemorial, which meant that of everyone in the White Tower, one person alone—the Tower Master—could claim this view as their own.
"To tell you the truth, the first time I came up here was when I was little. We had a picnic here, remember?"
"That must have been fun."
"It really was. I even declared that my dream was to become someone who got to come up to the rooftop every single day."
Now that she mentioned it, it did ring a bell. He'd read Sasha's hopes for the future and laughed his stomach sore alongside Marlon, the Vice Tower Master.
Oscar, recalling the same memory, smiled warmly. "Then your dream came true. You can come up here whenever you like these days, can't you?"
"……I suppose so."
With an expression that was neither here nor there, Sasha began to walk across the vast rooftop. He matched her pace, and after they had walked for some time, she murmured in a small voice.
"But no matter how many times I come up here, it never makes me feel the way it did when I was a child."
At the edge of the rooftop, she rested her hands on the railing and looked down over the city. Yet what lay in her eyes was unmistakably not Shilin, but some moment from long ago.
"I wondered why, and then one day it finally hit me. Ah—it was never the rooftop I loved. It was those moments, laughing and chattering up here with the people precious to me."
"……."
Oscar found himself unable to speak a word. The smile Sasha turned toward him looked far, far too desolate.
"The reason I don't like talking about my master or my senior disciples is simple. Every time it comes up, it brings back those happy old memories."
"……If they're happy memories, isn't that a good thing?"
"It's the opposite. Because I know I can never return to what we had back then. Not ever again."
A wizard may be able to gather up spilled water, but even they cannot turn back the time that has flowed away. Slowly closing her eyes, Sasha let the memories of those days surface.
They say that even a ruined wealthy family can coast for three years. And yet the White Tower, the most formidable power on the continent, had collapsed in a single morning.
The mages, the grimoires, the fragments of truth and history passed down through the generations—all of it had turned to ash and scattered on the wind.
"……."
"……."
And it wasn't only knowledge and property that had burned to ash.
The people who had survived the demons' invasion were gone too, like candles burned down to their wicks. The fall of the White Tower—the very name that had always filled them with pride—had claimed them all.
"I'm leaving."
"……Where will you go?"
"Who knows. With all the years I've put in, moving to another Magic Tower feels wrong. I'll look for a place at the Imperial Palace."
"There are barely any of us left—every single person counts right now, and still……"
"What, does leaving the moment the White Tower falls make me look like too much of a vulture? Wake up. It was Oscar Sage who abandoned us first."
In truth, everyone knew it was a lie. Everyone knew that Oscar Sage had never once abandoned the White Tower.
But those who had no real justification for leaving had to clutch at some kind of absurd sophistry. Only then could they leave their comrades behind with hearts a little less uneasy.
"……Let's rebuild."
The mages who resolved to stay aimed for restoration—to recreate the moment when the White Tower had shone most brilliantly. Bound together by that single goal, they spared no means and no method.
"First, let's summon every living White Tower mage on the continent back to the main tower."
"Isn't there even one high-tier mage among all those people? Just one would do. Comb the whole continent if you have to."
"Let's at least compile the basic and intermediate magic we've learned and used over the years into proper texts."
"I once watched the seniors cast their signature spells from close by. Let's recreate them as faithfully as we can."
Everyone put their heads together and threw themselves desperately into restoring the lost magic. In particular, Oscar's three disciples—the ones hailed as the future leaders of the White Tower—put their talents to full use.
While they cut off nearly all contact with the outside world and poured themselves into research, the world changed at breakneck speed. An age of peace unfolded, and the great age of Magic Engineering began.
Five years passed, all of it devoted single-mindedly to restoring the White Tower's magic.
"……."
"……."
Those five years were more than enough time to understand why the institution of the Magic Tower had arisen in humanity's history—and why the older and more traditional a tower was, the more overwhelming its prestige.
In the end, they hadn't restored so much as a mote of the magic their predecessors had built over hundreds of years. It was only natural. "Restoration" was the word, but in truth the work was closer to creating magic from nothing.
"I think this is as far as I go."
"My parents' health is failing. I'm going home to care for them and try my hand at farming."
"……I received an offer from the Academy. I have a family to support now too. I'm sorry."
Five years was more than enough time for people bound by a shared goal to drift apart. No—arguably, the real miracle was that they had lasted five years without giving up at all.
"……."
And in the midst of it all, Oscar Sage's first disciple—Lloyd Schultz—vanished from the White Tower without a word.
When the newspaper broke the shocking news a few days later that he had become the formal disciple of the Red Tower Master, the atmosphere in the White Tower grew too bleak for words.
And for the two disciples who had trusted and followed him, the blow was nothing short of catastrophic.
"Sasha, pack your bags. I'm going to hear it from his own mouth."
"O-okay."
The two of them marched straight to the Red Tower and demanded, day after day, to be allowed to see Lloyd. Under any other circumstances they would have deserved to be thrown out on their ears, but the fact that they were disciples of Oscar Sage carried weight. No one could afford to mistreat the disciples of humanity's hero.
Then, after several days had passed, the Red Tower Master happened to descend to the lobby with his attendants in tow.
"Hm? What's all this commotion?"
"W-well…… some mages from the White Tower are causing a scene, insisting they must see Lord Lloyd. They're disciples of Oscar Sage, my lord."
"Well, well. Is that so?"
Grinning as though he'd been handed a free show, the Red Tower Master glanced back over his shoulder. "Lloyd. It seems you have visitors."
"……I apologize for the disturbance."
"Nonsense, think nothing of it. We'll wait here a moment—take all the time you need to talk."
Lloyd walked out from the rear of the group, draped in a robe of blood-red crimson. The sheer strangeness of the sight struck Gilliot and Sasha dumb for a moment.
"Why did you come."
Lloyd's voice was sharp, edged with irritation. Gilliot was obviously infuriated by it, but mindful of where they stood, he swallowed his anger and asked instead.
"Brother, I'm really, really angry right now. So explain it to me like I'm an idiot, nice and simple. …What exactly is going on?"
"You already know from the articles."
Lloyd said flatly. "I became a mage of the Red Tower. The Red Tower Master took a liking to me and made me his disciple. That's all there is to it."
"……And your reason for leaving the White Tower?"
"It was the most rational choice available."
"Then why—why did you make a decision that important without breathing a single word of it to us?"
A cold, impassive gaze fixed on Gilliot, who was trembling with agitation. "Because I wanted to avoid exactly this kind of tiresome bother."
"……Last question. What were we to you? What did we even exist as?"
"……."
At that question, Lloyd let out a long, deep sigh, as if all the fight had drained out of him. "Pathetic. You came all this way just to hear me say something like that?"
"Something like—what?"
"Fine. You want an answer? Here it is: I can't stand the two of you."
Lloyd's words drove into their ears and their hearts like barbed arrows.
"The truth is, I never liked you from the beginning. We're not related by a single drop of blood—strangers, nothing more. And yet just because we happened to serve the same master, you treated me like family, leaned on me, depended on me whenever it suited you. Honestly, it was exhausting. Your expectations weighed on me until I couldn't stand it, and I ran away from the White Tower to escape you. I never dreamed you'd chase me all the way here. Well? Is that answer sufficient for you?"
"……."
Sasha couldn't manage a single word—only tears fell, drop by drop, like a chick's pitiful droppings. But what frightened her more than that was the thought that her second senior brother, unable to hold it in any longer, might lash out and cause a scene. If he started a riot here, he would clearly end up beaten half to death for it.
"……Right. I understand how you feel, perfectly."
But Gilliot showed a side entirely unexpected. As if it were nothing at all, he gave a quiet nod and turned away.
"Don't cry, brat. Let's go home."
"Yeah……"
"And Lloyd Schultz."
Gilliot looked back over his shoulder, his voice cutting and cold. "You really are a selfish bastard to the very end. Don't ever cross my path again."
"……."
After that, Sasha could hear Lloyd and the Red Tower Master exchanging words behind her, but none of it stayed with her. The only thing she remembered was what came half a year later—
the day her second senior brother, the last person she had left to lean on, disappeared from the White Tower with one of its high-tier grimoires in hand.
"After that, well……"
Sasha's voice trailed off. "It's not much different from what everyone knows. Everyone fixated on me alone, and they passed the Tower Master's seat to me—an honor I hardly deserved—just so I could access even one more high-tier grimoire. To be honest, I'm not really cut out to lead people."
"……."
"Oh—oh, don't look at me like I'm some tragic figure, please. I'm genuinely happy these days. There was a time I thought the day my efforts would be rewarded would never come. Whenever I hit a wall like that, I'd be eaten up with self-loathing, wondering what on earth I was even doing."
Then her face broke into a radiant, full smile.
"But thanks to you, Oscar, things have gotten so much better, haven't they? So you really don't need to wear that expression. Anyway—that's why I said I can never go back to what we were, all those years ago."