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chapter 18
This is the story of the day Lirian first met Illei.
Step, step.
A road where ash piled up in soft mounds. Burning buildings.
No screams could be heard—only silence. The place was nothing but ruins.
Seventeen-year-old Lirian walked barefoot through it.
Her eyes trembled faintly at the sight, unfamiliar yet strangely familiar.
As she wandered blankly, step by step, she saw a house swallowed by greedy flames collapse in a heap.
The instant that image etched itself into her pupils, Lirian collapsed to the ground without realizing it.
A pitiful cry leaked from her mouth.
“Ah, aah….”
That place was—
“Our house.”
Once, her home.
Lirian sobbed as though wringing out every last drop of moisture from her body.
But no matter how desperately she tried, no voice came out.
She gasped for breath, clutching her throat at the loss of her voice.
Then, shaking her head weakly, she suddenly began to run.
“Anyone—”
She tore through the ruins until her bare feet bled.
“Isn’t anyone here?”
Her fingers grew raw as she searched frantically.
But none of the people she loved could be found.
That bitterly cold winter, on the day the world was swallowed by the darkness called Abyss—
The shock of losing her family had even stolen away her ability to speak.
“Cold.”
There was no one left in that ruined world to ask for help.
She curled up with empty eyes, stripped of will to live, stripped of hope. For how long, she didn’t know.
Step.
Suddenly, a pair of military boots stopped before her.
“Haa.”
A low sigh.
Blankly raising her head, she saw someone standing against a single, unusually bright star.
Silver hair gleaming beneath the starry sky.
Blue eyes that seemed cold and unyielding.
Lirian instinctively thought:
That’s… beautiful.
“This isn’t human. Not a ghost either.”
The silver-haired man frowned at her.
As she stared up at him, his expression hardened further.
“You’ve got no wariness at all, do you.”
“……?”
“If you see a stranger, at least pretend to run—forget it. Haven’t changed a bit, really.”
The pretty man gave her a sidelong glance and turned his back.
Lirian thought he would simply leave.
But then—
“Why aren’t you coming?”
He glanced back at her, speaking bluntly.
She blinked.
“…Can’t walk?”
She shook her head.
She couldn’t speak, but her arms and legs still worked fine.
“Then hurry up. No time.”
She didn’t know why she had to follow him, but his natural tone of urging made her rise to her feet.
As if bewitched.
She began to follow him.
But perhaps from crouching too long without food, her legs soon gave way. She collapsed again after only a few steps.
The man raised his eyebrows as he looked back.
She expected him to get annoyed and walk away.
Instead—
“Let’s see. Are you hurt?”
He walked over without fuss, knelt on one knee, and removed his gloves. He rotated her ankle back and forth.
“No bones broken.”
She nodded to say she was fine.
He glanced at her, then suddenly turned his back and crouched down.
“Get on.”
A broad back filled her vision. For a moment, her father’s back overlapped with it.
Now a stranger’s back extended the hand of help.
Staring blankly at him, she hesitated, then climbed onto his back.
He rose easily and strode forward.
“Hold tight. You’ll fall.”
The ruins she couldn’t escape on her own quickly fell away behind them.
She glanced back unconsciously at the crumbled wall she had sat against.
Above it, a single bright star drew a trail as it fell.
Turning forward again, she pressed a letter carefully into his back with her finger.
“Why?”
Why are you helping me?
But the man continued walking in silence, giving no answer.
She wondered if he hadn’t understood. Just as she was about to try again, a low whisper reached her ears.
“Call it the price of flowers.”
Lirian didn’t understand.
“Choa!”
After greeting Caesar and Resa and returning to her room, Lirian shouted with her cheeks bulging full of gummy bears.
Now that she’d finished her snack—
“It’s time to rescue Illei.”
Her father had said he would handle the rest, but Lirian couldn’t just sit still.
“The temple is technically outside imperial law. Even the emperor’s army can’t enter without justification. We’ll need solid evidence.”
She had overheard Resa saying this to Caesar before leaving the room.
Adults often used difficult words in front of her, and though she didn’t understand everything, Lirian had a strange knack for piecing things together.
“But that’ll take too long.”
She had witnessed too many of the cult’s atrocities in that end-of-the-world era.
She remembered them so vividly she could still recall every horrific detail.
“And Illei might suffer the same thing? I’m supposed to just wait?”
Never.
Lirian spread open a large sketchbook.
Letter by wobbly letter, she carefully wrote:
[Illei Cerevia Leonhardt]
The true name she had only learned after returning through time.
Staring at it for a long while, she clenched her crayon tightly.
“I’ll save you. Just wait a little longer.”
She knew she wasn’t very smart.
Maybe this was a foolish, stubborn idea.
But—
“Illei saved me. So now I have to save him.”
Everyone has a line they cannot retreat from.
This was hers.
She filled her sketchbook with drawings, crayons smudging all over her body, then nodded solemnly.
“Done.”
She slung on a teddy bear backpack—stuffed with snacks, of course—and leapt to her feet.
“Alright, I’m off!”
Waving even to the doll named Rose on her bed, Lirian strode out proudly… and hopped over the child-safety fence again without a care.
Whoosh—
The only thing left in her room was a sheet of paper covered with messy letters:
[Dad, Mom, Big Brother, Little Brother, dummy! (Bleh) Bye! Lirian’s going!]
With the same skills she had once used to assassinate abyssal fiends, Lirian easily slipped past the ducal manor’s security.
Her small stature compared to her peers—something she stubbornly refused to acknowledge—made it even easier.
But then—
“Uh… where’s Zerkino?”
She tilted her head, staring intently at the map she’d drawn in her sketchbook.
A passing child pointed at her.
“Mom, look! She’s all colorful. Must be a Pierrot!”
“Shh. Let’s go.”
Her whole body was streaked with crayon colors from making the map, but Lirian was too busy trying to find her way.
“Is it this way?”
She stepped into a dark alley—
“Ah!”
“Hm? What’s this?”
A group of thugs already there turned to look down at her.
Lirian brightened, raising her sketchbook.
“Mister, do you know where Zerkino is?”
“Who’re you calling mister?!”
One of them, barely in his early twenties, snapped.
Lirian, five years old and at the pure peak of mischief, beamed innocently.
“You look waaaay older than my dad. Aren’t you a mister?”
“Guh!”
“B-boss!”
“You can’t die! You’re only twenty-two!”
“Shut it!”
The real gang leader narrowed his eyes as he studied her.
Despite her ragged appearance, the hairpin in her hair was clearly set with a precious gem.
“Hey… this kid’s worth something.”
Shhhk—he drew a dagger from his belt.
If they took her hostage and demanded ransom, they could make a fortune.
But at that moment—
“A sword.”
Lirian’s violet eyes gleamed brightly.
“You drew it, huh?”
Her hand went to the backpack on her back.
Peeking out from the half-open flap was something glinting.
Jeryl’s flamboyant toy sword.
“Rocks are too inconvenient!”
So before setting out on this adventure, Lirian had prepared properly—
The weapon she was best at handling: a sword.
She grabbed it, pulled it free, and swung it in one motion.
