For the girl, life was synonymous with pain.
In the oldest memories she could recall—memories now so blurred that only a few scenes rose to mind like paintings—the girl had been happy.
Inside a splendidly decorated building, she had worn beautiful clothes and eaten warm, delicious meals.
She had a mother, and a father, and many others who helped her besides. And the people around her had always treated her with smiles.
She had not been able to understand it properly back then, but that must surely have been what happiness was.
That life was overturned quite literally overnight.
If there was a beginning to it, it was the fact that her mother and father did not return for several days.
The people in the mansion tried not to tell the girl any details, but she could hear at least what was being said beyond the walls.
Cowardly kingdom, war, honor. At her young age, she could not fully understand what those things meant, but she did understand that it was because of this thing called war that her mother and father were not coming back.
After several days like that, when her parents finally returned to the mansion, the girl witnessed a sight she did not want to believe.
Her father had come back without a wound, but her mother had returned with a great injury to her chest.
People in long robes, speaking words she did not understand, came and went constantly, and as she watched her father’s face grow sadder with each passing day, the girl learned for the first time what anxiety was.
Fortunately, the girl’s mother recovered quickly. Though she remained in bed, she would stroke the head of the girl who clung to her and show her a soft, comforting smile.
It was regrettable that, from around that time, perhaps because her mother had regained some strength, her father came to visit less often.
The girl had no doubt that her mother would soon regain her health and that everything would return to the way it had been before.
Forever and ever.
That was what she believed.
―――How could you, how could you do this!!
―――It is all for you.
―――You’re mad!! You’ve gone completely mad!!
One early morning, shouts rang through the mansion. Before the girl, awakened from sleep, could grasp what was happening, men in masks carrying swords smashed through the door of her room and appeared.
They kidnapped the girl along with her mother and dragged them to some unknown place.
The floor was as cold as ice, and iron bars surrounded them on every side with no way out. Even though her mother held her tightly, the girl could not stop her body from trembling with anxiety.
From a young man whose appearance alone sent chills down her spine, to an old man with one eye covered who was called a slave trader, she was eventually taken to a certain place built inside a cave.
―――Well, well. To think a direct descendant of the great archmage, Eliut Paul Gracentio, would end up in such a state. Heh heh……
―――Shut your mouth!! If only I could use my magic, I would burn that filthy tongue of yours this instant!!
―――You talk too much for an empty shell whose mana circuits have all burned away.
―――My ancestor, and the heroic spirit who guided him, will never forgive you!
As far as the girl remembered, that was the only time she had ever seen her mother so furious.
Her memories after that were not very clear.
Because the pain repeated every day without change left her no room to think about anything.
The pain of having her entire arm severed, the pain of her body being hacked apart, the pain of being thrown into flames, even the terror of being devoured by the darkness that surged toward her from every direction.
When she came to her senses, there would be no wounds on her body, but the illusions and hallucinations she experienced vividly each time were enough to crush the girl’s fragile mind.
Even so, the reason she did not give up was because, during the brief rest she was given after those horrific ordeals—just enough time to sleep—her mother was always by her side.
Though her mother must have endured those cruel experiments as well, she always accepted the girl as she screamed, as if nothing had happened.
But.
―――I’m sorry I couldn’t stay by your side until the end…… I love you, ■■■■……
After her mother breathed her last while holding her in her arms right before her eyes.
After that pale violet hair brushed past the girl’s shoulder for the final time.
Only fragments of memories remained, broken into discontinuous pieces.
She understood only that pains she could neither avoid nor endure would continue to crash down on her without end.
She ate because something painful would happen if she did not, and she did not try to avoid anything because greater pain awaited her if she did.
She simply spent day after day with eyes that no longer focused.
Forever and ever.
Believing it would never end.
And yet, someday……
Deep in her heart, she desperately hoped that someone would appear to bring all of this to an end.
And then.
―――Why is she your sacrifice?
Miracles, as a rule, only arrive when all hope has been severed.
◇
The first person the girl saw when she woke was someone a little bigger than herself, but still too small to be called an adult.
In the underground, she had only ever seen eyes filled with madness, so that person’s eyes came as a somewhat fresh shock.
Only then could the girl remember. The person before her was the mage who had rescued her from the very bottom of that hell, where nothing worse could have existed.
But she could not believe it. To the girl, people were beings who always caused her pain.
The sun and blue sky she could never have seen down there, the stars and moon, the Milky Way embroidering the night sky. Each and every one of them was beautiful and mysterious, but she could not show it.
The blanket covering her, the bed beneath her body, the warm meals served in bowls and the clean water—all of them carried no intent to cause her pain, and she could feel that, but she could not accept it purely.
The fear engraved deep into her mind all this time refused to accept it.
Because suspicion kept welling up in her, whispering that after giving her so much, they might suddenly change and plunge her into pain.
If believing the people before her as they were meant she would fall back down below, then she thought it better not to believe them from the start.
And so the girl never allowed the mage before her, nor the boy who sometimes came in, into her heart.
Even though, somewhere in her heart, a strong conviction began to arise that they would not harm her, she steeled herself again and did not lower her guard.
In the midst of such a whirlpool of emotions, emotions even she herself could not understand, one day she pretended to make a mistake and dropped a cup of water. Another day, she held out without eating the food she was given.
Surely, if she disobeyed orders like this, she would be repaid with pain, just as she always had been.
And yet, nothing of the sort happened.
When the young mage stretched out her hand, and that hand slowly approached the girl’s head, the girl squeezed her eyes shut, thinking that of course, this was how it would be after all.
But what she felt was only a gentle hand stroking her head.
She could not understand it. At the same time, she understood all too well that this was what she had been craving.
Because although she had not received it for a very long time, it was something she had received long, long ago.
Then one day, the young mage said this.
“Then, until you remember it again, I’ll give you a new name.”
A name.
A word that called her.
It had been the last thing her mother said, too.
Though her own name had sunk into the remnants of her memory, buried beneath the word “sacrifice” by which the black mages had called her,
she could still remember that it was one of the most precious things of all.
“Then, from now on, your name is……”
For some reason, in that brief moment, the girl felt her chest swell with an indescribable emotion.
The girl herself could not understand why she felt that way.
“Illiana. Your name is Illiana.”
Illiana.
The girl did not yet feel that it was herself.
Because it was somehow different from the faint memories that remained.
But…… it was the same.
Just like when her mother had called her, the girl felt as though something deep within her chest was being filled.
It was the emotion called warmth, which she had not felt in such a long time.
◇
She had newly gained the name Illiana, but that did not mean her daily life changed drastically.
If anything had changed a little, it was that the young mage no longer stayed by her side all the time.
She still spent most of each day with Illiana. But as the days passed, the amount of time she was away grew longer.
The words “I get anxious when you leave, so please stay with me” rose all the way to her throat, but Illiana held them back and swallowed them down again.
Though she had been given something like picture books with cute drawings so that she would not be bored during that time, Illiana enjoyed the time she spent with “Teacher” more than reading such books.
The reason she called her Teacher was because, when Illiana asked for her name, she had said it was a secret and told her to call her that.
Illiana could not accept that Teacher had given her a name while keeping her own name a secret, so she asked again and again, but each time, the only answer she got was that it was a secret.
As for why she had come to be away so often.
The cause was the gray-haired boy who occasionally came and went from the room, Cassian.
At first, Illiana had vaguely thought he was someone like a servant from the mansion she barely remembered, so when she learned that he was actually a disciple, she had been quite shocked.
It was an analogy Illiana could not understand, but,
in any case, Illiana did not like Cassian.
Putting everything else aside, she did not like the way Cassian looked at her. It was difficult not to dislike someone who openly looked at you with eyes that said they hated you.
Perhaps that was why, whenever she glimpsed him through the door during training, covered in dust and looking a mess, she would sometimes laugh at him inwardly.
When time passed like that and night came, Illiana could finally have her teacher all to herself.
Because while she lay down and slept, Teacher always watched over her from beside her. That fact alone gave Illiana a sense of relief she had never felt before.
Whenever she occasionally had a bad dream, she was certain that the nightmare melting away at once with a warm light was also thanks to Teacher watching over her.
Beneath the warm sensation of being gently, softly stroked, Illiana drifted off to sleep.
◇
It was probably around the time roughly a month had passed.
The snowstorm that had raged for several days subsided, and with clear weather visiting for the first time in a while, Teacher and Cassian went outside to train.
Illiana felt a little anxious at the thought that she had been left alone in the house again, but she believed Teacher’s words that she was protecting it with magic.
She had only just begun learning letters and numbers, so she could not sense exactly what magic was, but for some reason, she could feel at least that she was being embraced.
Illiana sat quietly and waited, but before long, unable to overcome her boredom, she began wandering around every corner of the house.
Except for Cassian’s room, since he was not yet someone she could trust.
Ever since about five days earlier, when she had become able to walk properly again, Illiana had been wandering around a little like this whenever no one was in the house.
Then, in one corner of the first floor, she discovered a large, round object. Strange patterns were drawn on it, and Illiana soon remembered that Teacher stroked it once every day.
She had heard that it was called a dragon egg. She did not know very well what a dragon was, but she understood that something would come out from inside it.
In the picture books, cute chicks had been born from inside eggs, so Illiana thought it must be something like that.
Illiana suddenly thought she should try stroking the egg as Teacher did. Without lifting it, since she must not drop it, but just there where it was.
But Teacher had said she was giving it mana so it would grow well inside, and Illiana did not actually know how to use mana.
The only thing she knew was that the warm sensation when Teacher stroked her was mana.
“……Mm, like this…… it felt like this……”
Illiana simply recalled the feeling of being stroked and gently caressed the egg. After she stroked it a few times, her body somehow felt a little warmer.
But then.
―――Crack! Craaack!
Suddenly, cracks began to form in the egg. The cracks slowly appeared from the very top of the egg, then soon spread across the entire shell.
“……H-huh……?”
Before Illiana, who had fallen into a panic thinking she might have broken the egg……
―――Piiit!! Piiiiiiit!!
The dragon hatched.