“Wait, dragon?” Lina asked, eyes wide.
“Must’ve been a Daemon Varian Ninety or close to it,” Halwen said, his voice steady. “They look like the dragons from fairy tales.”
“Is it formidable?” Lina pressed.
Halwen gave a dry laugh. “Formidable? It was an apex predator, even among Daemons.”
The words hung a moment, their weight trailing into silence.
Leopold’s gaze cut toward Vierna. She sat rigid in the chair, her expression still locked in the spell’s gray hollow. His eyes narrowed, unreadable. “Edwin Erbenzram… never thought his child was Vierna.”
The name lingered in the air, heavy with recognition.
Halwen tilted his head slightly. “Forgive my curiosity, Arkmarschall, but does that mean she came from a prestigious family?”
Leopold didn’t look away from Vierna as he answered, his words clipped, almost dismissive. “House Erbenzram was a minor knightly household. They served for generations. The only figure of note was Edwin. And now the line is gone.”
The chill of his tone silenced further questions. Lina sat back, listening, while Halwen pressed on.
“Arkmarschall, if Erbenzram was a minor house, how did Edwin have that kind of money?”
“Hollenstaid had the highest count of Varian Ninety,” Leopold said flatly. “Herzog von Stranband could not drive the regiments harder without risking mutiny, so he set bounties. Generous ones. Even then, only Edwin kept taking them. Rumor claims he killed more than seven, alone.”
Halwen frowned. “Then why did they go extinct? I never saw their name in Hollenstaid’s register of nobility.”
Leopold’s gaze lingered on Vierna, cold and searching. He gave no answer.
Lina, caught between their voices and the still projection, lowered her eyes back to the memory as it shifted once more.
The projection shimmered, the last echoes of Leopold’s voice dissolving into stillness. The sterile chamber faded once more into Alice’s world.
“Frau Erbenzram, everything is done. All the servants’ severance payments have been settled,” Lyn reported.
“Thank you for all these years, Lyn. I wish you the best,” Sylvaria said to the maid.
“If you’re ever free, please drop by. I’ll miss you,” Alice added as the projection dimmed.
“Hehe… I will, Fr?ulein. I’m going to miss your moon-colored hair, after all,” Lyn said with a kind smile. “Well then, Frau Erbenzram, I’ll take my leave. I hope everything goes well with the vineyard.”
“It will, Lyn. Thank you for all these years.”
Lyn bowed politely and left the manor.
“I’ll miss her, Mom.”
“I will too, Alice. But we need to move on.”
Alice nodded, and the two of them headed toward Sylvaria’s room.
Her parent’s room unfolded—wide and sunlit, its walls softened by pale drapery that swayed faintly with the breeze. Shelves of neatly stacked books lined one wall, their spines worn with use. The floor was scattered with little comforts: a cushion by the window, a folded shawl draped over a chair, a vase of flowers still fresh. It was a place of quiet order, serene in a way that felt untouched by the world’s cruelties.
Alice sat curled in that window’s light, a book open across her knees. Her lips moved in a whisper as her eyes danced over the lines, her finger tracing words with a scholar’s precision. Behind her, the soft rise and fall of breathing marked her mother’s presence.
Her gaze lifted from the page. She turned toward the bed, watching her mother’s face softened in sleep. Her small hands tightened around the book’s spine, knuckles pale, as though holding it anchored something inside her.
Her eyes lingered, silver catching the light, and though no sound left her lips, her thought was clear in the way her shoulders eased, the way the crease between her brows unknotted. So long as her mother was there. So long as her father’s footsteps still returned through the door. What did it matter if whispers chased her at school?
Her breath trembled, then steadied. She tucked herself deeper into the window’s glow, the faintest smile ghosting across her lips. Even if the word Faintborn someday branded her, here she would still be gathered into her father’s arms, still be cradled beneath her mother’s hand. Their acceptance filled the room as tangibly as the warmth of the sun.
And in that moment, she needed nothing else.
She reached for the book beside her—a heavy volume with a red cover, its leather worn smooth at the edges. The title, stamped in faint gold runes, read The Enology of Aether: Spellbound Fermentations and Elemental Vintages, by Archmagus Lewin. She had chosen it herself from her father’s study, after he told her about the plan.
Father is unfair. If it were my book, he’d say Archmagus Lewin was just a glorified nerd and too pricy. But if it’s his book, he doesn’t care at all and just buys it straight away.
Her fingers lingered on the embossed sigil, and the pout softened into a small, wistful smile. It’s a shame I won’t be a combat mage, she thought, but if I can use even a little magic in a winery, that’s enough for me.
With careful hands she opened it, setting quill and parchment nearby. Her eyes scanned each page, pausing to jot down notes: a charm for ripening fruit, a glyph to hasten fermentation, a ward to keep pests at bay. Each detail seemed precious, as if the book whispered a promise of the future she could help build.
She continued reading for a while. Immersing herself in the book until she lost track of the time.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
From the bed came a soft, drowsy voice.
“Hmmm… Alice?”
She looked up at once. “Hi, Mom. How was your nap?”
Syl stirred, stretching her arms above her head, her dark hair spilling across the pillow. “It was good, hehe,” she murmured, a lazy smile curling her lips. Her gaze slid toward Alice with a teasing glint. “Why haven’t you gone back to your room? Are you admiring your mother’s beauty?”
“Bweee, no chance,” Alice huffed, cheeks puffing as she held up the book. “I’m reading this for the winery Father’s going to make.”
Syl chuckled softly, the sound like velvet fraying at the edge. “Hehe, you really are committed, huh?” Her voice was warm, but beneath it lay the faintest ripple—something hesitant, a note that brushed Alice’s ear but slipped away before she could catch it.
Alice only smiled, lowering her head back to the book, letting the scratch of her quill drown it out.
“So, tell me—what are you writing about?” Syl asked.
Another mistake. To ask the daughter of Edwin about something she was passionate about was to surrender the rest of the afternoon. Alice’s explanation went on for hours, a flood of detail and diagrams. She drew an entire chart of wine processing, complete with arrows, runes, and notes in the margins, her quill scratching like a sparrow gone mad.
It grew almost absurd when she began pointing out every typo and contradiction in the book itself, as if Archmagus Lewin’s meticulous scribes were clumsy students who needed her correction.
And whenever Sylvaria’s gaze wandered—whenever she reached for tea or shifted on the bed—Alice would pout with exaggerated sulkiness until her mother was forced to return her full attention. Syl endured it with the resigned patience only mothers could master.
Hours bled away. The sun drifted low, its gold stretching across the floorboards until evening cooled the room. Mother and daughter lingered in each other’s company, speaking, laughing, the silence between them threaded with comfort. At one point, Syl sighed and asked for a massage, and Alice, dutiful as ever, set her notes aside to knead her mother’s shoulders.
Night fell. The lamps were dimmed. By the time they finally lay down side by side, exhaustion pulled at their eyes. But sleep did not hold them long.
A sharp, heavy bang rattled the front door, jolting them both awake.
“Mom… is that Father?” Alice asked enthusiastically.
“I don’t know, dear. Let’s hope it is.”
Alice ran toward the door, her heart leaping at the thought that it might truly be Edwin. Yet as she and her mother walked the familiar hallway, the projection’s colors dulled, draining into a murky shade of green. It wasn’t the chamber’s light that changed, but the memory itself bleeding through. The spell captured it perfectly, pulling the breath from their lungs until a chill rose along their skin.
Every sense was drawn taut. Alice slowed, unease tightening in her chest—something warned her not to open the door, though she couldn’t name it. Then she felt it: the hallway swallowing sound, the air carrying a metallic tang—bitter on the tongue, sharp as copper. Even the walls seemed to press closer, the wreaths of candlelight guttering lower though no flame had flickered.
And then came the weight—wrong, suffocating. Something brushed across their thoughts, subtle and insidious. A gnawing impression, almost like envy. It was faint, impossible, yet there. Impossible because there was nothing for Alice to envy in that moment. Nothing in her home, her family, her heart, could have planted it. And yet the spell wasn’t wrong. This was what she had felt, faintly, as she walked toward the door.
Lina shivered, arms clutching tighter around herself. Halwen exhaled through his nose, steadying his stance as though grounding himself against something unseen. Only Leopold remained untouched. His face, ashen in the green dim, betrayed no shift, no ripple of unease, as though even this twisting intrusion had no place in him.
The hallway stretched on and on until at last the sound came. A knock—too sharp, too sudden. It rattled the wood like a strike from a mailed fist. Edwin had sent the staff away, so Alice and her mother were alone when they reached the door.
The latch clicked.
There stood a man. Tall, slender, dark-haired—and handsome in a way that caught the breath. His eyes shone like a thousand diamonds set in the night sky, brilliant, captivating, impossible to look away from. A cloak of shadow draped across his shoulders, and beneath it he wore a shirt the color of deep, smothering green—rich as poisoned velvet, the shade of envy itself.
For a heartbeat Alice thought him fairer even than her father, until her gaze followed the curve of his face and the illusion broke.
Half of it was gone.
The left side still bore the features of a man, refined and perfect. The right side, however, was nothing—no eye, no nose, no hair, no flesh. Smooth and pale, like the unfinished mold of a mannequin, a mockery of what should have been.
The spell carried not only the sight but the sensation of him. To the watchers, it was as if the air recoiled in his presence. That faint gnawing of envy twisted sharper, curling beneath the skin.
“Good night, Sylvaria. What a beautiful and lovely evening it is,” the man said, bowing with a noble’s grace, every motion polished as though carved from courtly ritual.
Alice’s gaze darted to her mother.
Sylvaria didn’t even think. At the first sight of him, light flared in her hand and hardened into a blade—curved, slender, gleaming like it had been poured from moonlight. She leveled it straight at him, arm taut, stance precise.
But Alice saw it.
The faint tremor running through her mother’s wrist. The breath caught too long in her chest. The stiffness in her jaw, as if her teeth alone kept her steady. It wasn’t the poise of a warrior facing an intruder. It was the recoil of someone staring at a phantom long buried, a ghost dragged from the grave to stand in her door.
“You have ten seconds to explain why you are here, Harmus.”
“Oh my,” he answered smoothly, dipping his head in mock civility. His tone never rose, but every syllable dripped with amusement. “What a hostile lady you’ve become. Did Edwin mistreat you so cruelly that you twisted into a CREATURE SUCH AS THIS?!”
He paused, cleared his throat, and the smile returned—crooked, curling only on the half of his face that remained.
Then the air buckled.
Mana poured from him in a black-green tide, thick and heavy, as if a swamp had risen to drown the room. It pressed against the skin, wormed into lungs, and turned every breath into rot. The taste of it was bile and iron. Sylvaria doubled over, gagging, then vomiting hard onto the floor as the weight of it crushed her chest. Beside her, Alice clutched her throat, retching as if her body were trying to expel the poison from her lungs, eyes rolling back as she fought the invisible noose strangling her.
And outside the memory, Lina and Halwen convulsed as if dragged into the same nightmare. Both dropped to their knees, clawing at their throats, vomiting until their stomachs emptied, faces slick with spit and tears. Their vision swam, black spots blooming at the edges, each breath a scream against suffocation. The spell did not let them simply see it—it forced them to drown in it, as if they too were trapped in that choking tide.
Lina looked at the Arkmarschall. He stood motionless, focused only on Vierna, who was shuddering in the grip of the nightmare she had been forced to relive. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling so violently she could barely hold them still. For a heartbeat, Lina could have sworn she saw Leopold steadying her, his hands clasping her arms to stop the shaking. But that was impossible… wasn’t it?
Gradually, the suffocating sensation ebbed. The black tide receded, leaving only the echo of nausea and dread. Whoever was wielding that magic in the memory had stopped—for now.
“Sylvaria,” Harmus said softly, his voice still wrapped in that unnerving politeness, “I did not come here to fight.” His eyes gleamed like fractured gems. “No. I came bearing good news. And I expect to be greeted like a bearer of good news, BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IS OWED TO ME!”
His mana constricted tighter, then loosened, like a noose easing just enough to let one breathe. His voice did not change.
“So either you grant me the pleasantries you’ve so coldly denied, or I will kill you and make sure Edwin’s bastard watches it. And it isn’t because I am cruel—no—I am kind. This is because you, because you pointed a damn blade at your HUSBAND’S OLDER BROTHER.”
Sylvaria’s grip whitened on her blade. She knew—Alice saw it in the tremor of her arm—that there was no winning here. Against mana this suffocating, defiance was death. Slowly, she lowered the weapon. And with it, her pride.
Harmus’s lips stretched into a crooked grin, half a smile on half a face. With the grace of a noble entering his estate, he stepped past the threshold, as if the house had always belonged to him.
Is the Guy evil?
