Camellia's mana circuits had clearly been shattered two years ago, after that hellish incident.
A broken doll whose magic had been severed, unable to cast spells.
That was the stigma branded upon Camellia Valentine, the bloodline of a surviving traitor.
Yet, mana had coalesced.
At the end of her trembling gaze, silvery particles had clearly formed.
The time since she had come here flashed through Camellia's mind like a passing lantern show.
Every coin her master had earned through bone-breaking manual labor and all manner of grueling, dirty work had been converted into mana recovery potions and various magic books for her consumption.
"Come on, it's time to eat. How long are you going to wither away like that and ruin your market value? Hurry up and eat so you can shoot up like a rocket. I'm pouring blood-like investment money into you."
At first, she had thought he was a vicious, terrible black mage.
She had firmly believed, without a doubt, that he intended to fatten her up, slit her belly, and turn her into some bizarre goose-like magical beast. But....
'What black mage in this world would slash his own blood to buy medicine for fear that his sacrifice might die, investing to the point of working himself to death?'
The potions the man had coughed up blood to buy
had slowly stitched together her torn mana circuits,
and the magic books he had pressed into her hands
had rekindled the embers of life in her core, which had dried up and gone cold.
It was a miracle.
It might not have been a miracle bestowed by the heavens by chance.
A very warm and inevitable miracle, created by silently accumulated time.
Nasus's blind, foolish, idiot-like devotion had finally made the sprout of the archmage, whose life force had been exhausted, bud anew.
"Aah...."
Hot tears gushed down Camellia's pale cheeks.
A tremendous emotion that had been suppressed in a corner of her chest surged up.
She wanted to let him know.
She wanted to tell that foolish, incomprehensible man first, right this instant.
That thanks to the medicine and books he had bought her, she could use magic again.
That she could now repay the kindness he had shown her.
The very moment she tried to rise from her spot, shedding tears of overflowing joy and delight—
-Tap. Rumble....
"...Aah!"
At that shining moment of joy, the phantom of a terrible past that she could never forget thrust its head toward her once more.
Camellia's pupils contracted and rolled back madly.
Beyond her empty vision, her parents' severed heads rolling out of the darkness, spattering blood, rose clearly before her.
Screams,
the smell of blood,
flesh being torn away,
and the greedy gazes of soldiers and nobles looking down upon her with mockery.
Her breath caught in her throat.
A terrible chill covered her entire body, and her jaws began to clack together.
What if the fact that she could use magic again became known to the world?
If even a single word of the rumor that the eldest daughter of the traitor Valentine family had regained her strength reached the ears of those devil-like people—
'No!'
They would surely come again.
This time, to thoroughly crush the sprout of unrest, they would send assassins and torturers far more cruel and terrible than before.
And their merciless blades would inevitably turn toward the 'master' who had raised Camellia.
In trying to shelter the child of a traitor, the man would be butchered without a trace. Just like her parents, whose heads had been severed before her eyes....
'Moreover....'
Camellia wrapped her arms tightly around her own shoulders, trembling uncontrollably. Her sharp nails dug into her skin, drawing blood, but she couldn't even feel the pain.
Nasus.
That man always muttered strange, incomprehensible words.
What would happen if he learned that she had regained her strength?
'Would he truly be happy for me?'
The relatives who used to affectionately pat her head,
just like that day when they suddenly looked down on her as if she were a bug.
His warm kindness too,
who could guarantee that it wouldn't change overnight into a cold blade choking her neck?
'...I'm scared.'
She had no confidence.
The extreme terror that it might end yet again in devastating betrayal and terrible despair.
Her soul had been torn to such ragged shreds that she could not fully trust anyone again.
-Pssst
Camellia bit her lower lip tightly and deliberately scattered the silvery mana that had gathered at her fingertips.
The sole light of salvation shining in the darkness scattered once more on the cold wind and vanished.
'I must hide it.'
She had to remain a thoroughly incompetent, sickly burden of a slave who drained her master's backbone.
So...
Don't reveal anything.
Don't show anything.
Only then could she survive.
Only then... would she be hurt less.
***
"Kuhack! Kuhack! Urggh...!"
Recently, Nasus's suppressed coughing could be heard throughout the night.
Nasus's pallid face growing noticeably gaunter by the day.
'When I was sick and lying down, he gave everything to save me....'
Camellia clenched her fist tightly.
Though she had vowed to live without drawing anyone's attention, she thought it inhuman to watch her savior cough up blood and die.
After agonizing and hesitating dozens of times over, she hid her trembling fingertips with effort and quietly left behind a single note.
Having written a promise that she would return soon—a promise even she couldn't be sure of—
she took a deep breath and gripped the doorknob.
-Squeak.
It had been two years.
It was the first time in two years that she had crossed the threshold and stepped back out into the world of her own will, without coercion from another.
When she had gone to the herb merchant in the corner of the slums and heard there were herbs on the back mountain, she had thought she could go and return quickly.
But the sun in the chilly mountain set far faster and more mercilessly than the sun she had watched from her room.
-Rustle.
The back mountain shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
The footsteps of Camellia, who had been wandering lost, came to a halt.
-Grrrr.
An unpleasant gnashing sound echoing low from beyond the thick bushes.
Camellia's pupils shook madly.
Two eyes flashed in the darkness, and a starving wolf appeared, drooling.
It was unmistakable killing intent. Feeling the instinctive terror of death, Camellia urgently thrust out her right hand.
'Magic... I have to use attack magic!'
To protect herself.
She had to bring back the herbs, if only to save that man who would be waiting for her, coughing up blood.
She drew up mana from her core. Silvery particles began to form bit by bit at her fingertips.
But. The moment her fingers pointed toward the wolf,
her gaze got entangled with the blazing blue-white eyes shining fiercely even in the darkness.
"Kill them!! Sever the necks of those traitor bastards right now!!"
"...Ah."
A hollow sigh escaped Camellia's lips.
That cruel and greedy gaze of the wolf.
It was horrifyingly similar to the gaze of 'that person' who had looked down upon her while pronouncing the death sentence upon her parents two years ago.
Hallucinations of sound tore through her ears.
The stench of blood pierced her nose.
Rolling heads,
screams,
and the cracking of whips.
"Ah, aaah... no...."
Pssst-
When extreme trauma struck her entire body, the silvery mana gathering at her fingertips scattered futilely.
Her mana circuits twisted arbitrarily, and excruciating pain ripped through her chest.
-Kwaang!
The moment the silver light faded, the beast launched its massive body into the air.
'Father, Mother... I too will soon....'
In that terrible despair where she couldn't move a single finger.
Camellia slowly closed her eyes.
It was the very moment the fishy stench spewing from the beast's foul maw reached the tip of her nose.
-Kwaaaang!!
Instead of the pain of torn flesh,
a fierce heat wave whipped past, and the beast's terrible scream struck her eardrums.
"Krwa! Kwaa!"
Crimson flames blazed furiously as if to swallow her vision.
The wolf, its fur singed by the overwhelming inferno, yelped and tucked its tail, fleeing into the darkness.
"...Huh?"
Camellia blinked her blank eyes slowly.
'An illusion?'
Beyond the dying embers of the flame that had pushed back the pitch-black darkness, someone stood holding a torch, gasping for rough breaths.
A silhouette swaying precariously as if about to collapse at any moment.
A thick smell of sweat and bloody metallic scent wafted in on the night wind.
"Kuhack! Haah, haah...."
It was her own, foolish master, Nasus.
In the man's other trembling hand was a piece of parchment burned black and turned to ash.
"What in the world was that just now...."
At Camellia's hoarse, spaced-out voice, Nasus—who looked like he could barely stand—turned his head.
His mouth caked with dark red blood, he let out a hollow laugh.
"Hahat... If you're gonna live and die by your own fate in a cesspit like the slums, you've gotta carry at least one 'insurance policy' like this."
Nasus flicked the scroll's ashes from his hand onto the ground.
"Fuck, I was saving that for when it really mattered...."
Rough curses spat out.
But not a single word properly entered Camellia's ears.
He had saved her.
Dragging that sick body,
using a magic scroll that was no different from his own lifeline, to save a worthless burden of a slave not worth a single silver coin.
Then, Nasus plunged the torch he was holding deep into the bare dirt ground and staggered toward her.
Beneath the blazing firelight, he suddenly thrust out a rough, calloused hand toward Camellia, who was seated on the cold ground.
"Nasus...."
Calling him with a cracked voice, the moment Camellia reached out her trembling, delicate hand to grasp the man's rough hand—
-Whoosh!!
Before their hands could meet, the man's large, strong arms yanked Camellia's slender body toward him with beast-like force.
"...Eh?"
Camellia's eyes grew impossibly wide.
Her pale cheek was helplessly buried against the man's chest.
He embraced her.
For the past two years,
the man who had purchased the slave had never laid a hand on her body, not even once.
He had never made the physical demands that could be claimed as a master's natural right in this era.
He had only ever scanned her as if measuring her worth with complicated emotions in his eyes.
The thick forearms of the man who had embraced Camellia's shoulders so tightly for the first time were trembling violently, as if they might collapse at any moment.
"Are you out of your mind?! You crawled out in the middle of the night to become beast feed just to pick up some trash-like grass?!"
"...I'm sorry."
Camellia, curled up tight, spat out an apology with a trembling voice.
Above her bowed head, the man's panting screams mixed with a metallic rasp came pouring down.
"You're not someone who should die a dog's death in a place like this! You're the one I've staked everything on... the one who should shine so brilliantly that even the stars in the sky would seem laughable one day!!"
In that instant, Camellia's gaze, which had been pinned to the ground, slowly lifted upward.
"...What?"
The moment she looked at Nasus with bewildered eyes, the man's lips, which had been baring his teeth with bulging veins, parted stupidly.
"Wha...?!"
His vision distorted bizarrely as if an earthquake had struck, and his unfocused eyes began chasing after something invisible.
"Nasus...? A-are you okay?"
Camellia asked carefully with a trembling voice.
But her question did not reach Nasus's ears.
Nasus's lips trembled as he stared into empty air.
"What is this... the future... has changed?"