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Chapter 4
I was a mage.
Then… then where did my magic go…?
No.
It couldn’t be.
Please, anything but that.
Seeing the panic shaking my eyes, Mother’s lips curved into a thin smile.
“Unlike me, you had everything from the very beginning, didn’t you? A warm bed. Plenty to eat. Noble status from birth. And even the position of the Empire’s most exalted woman waiting for you in the future…”
“Ah… it hurts…”
“And even that wasn’t enough, so you dared to steal my magic too. Did you really think I would just sit back and accept it?”
Her beautiful red eyes gleamed with madness.
“So of course I had to take it back.”
“The person who took my magic…”
My throat burned more painfully than the cheek her nails dug into.
“Was… you?”
“It belonged to me from the start.”
Ah.
So that was it.
Ever since I was little… all this time…
I had been desperately clutching at straws.
Meaninglessly.
Mother smiled as realization spread across my face.
In a hollow voice, I muttered,
“…You stole the Holy Grail’s core because something went wrong even after taking my magic.”
“Now you finally understand. Well, thanks to your interference things will take a little longer, but I have no intention of giving up.”
“You… you can’t do this.”
“And what exactly are you going to do about it?”
Still painfully gripping my chin with one hand, Mother raised the other.
…A small vial filled with a colorless liquid gleamed in her fingers.
So this is how it ends.
I had no intention of submitting quietly.
But it was already too late.
Everything below my neck had been restrained by Mother’s magic. I couldn’t even twitch a finger.
A hollow laugh escaped me.
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Strictly speaking, no. I made you, after all.”
Drop by drop, death seeped between my parted lips.
“I’m simply destroying a failed creation I no longer like.”
“……”
“So sleep well, my daughter.”
Only after pouring every last drop of poison into my mouth did Mother release my chin.
The magic restraining me vanished, and my body collapsed weakly onto the floor.
“And now get out of my life.”
…Those cold words were the last thing I heard before losing consciousness.
“Aaah…”
Something between a sigh and a groan slipped from my lips.
Covering my eyes with one hand, I thought:
Looking back on it now, that was even more of a disaster than I remembered.
And yet strangely, I didn’t feel overwhelmingly sad or resentful.
Because these are only memories from my past life.
That version of me was dead.
The current me wasn’t the daughter of the Duchess of Ricard.
I was our mother’s Asha.
That fact held me firmly together.
In any case, after enduring the foul mood caused by revisiting those memories, I confirmed that my memories of my previous life seemed mostly intact.
So then… judging from the timeline… let’s see. When I was Beatrice, my mother Rosalind Caledro was around the same age she is now…
At most, no more than ten years had passed since my death.
Ugh, seriously.
What was this supposed to be?
I went through all the trouble of reincarnating, only to end up in the same world?!
My cheeks puffed out in annoyance automatically.
Couldn’t I at least have been reborn in a completely different world? Or maybe a hundred years into the future?
Why did I have to deal with this same awful world twice after already becoming completely fed up with it—
…Wait a second.
What was I even thinking?
I only got to meet Mom because I was reborn here!
This wasn’t the time to complain.
I quickly slapped both cheeks with my hands.
My soft, pudding-like baby cheeks jiggled with each smack. My tiny palms were chubby and delicate, so it didn’t hurt much, but it was enough to pull myself together.
Right.
I needed to stay calm.
More importantly, there was a high possibility that my mother from my previous life was still alive.
Well… though it didn’t really matter much now since I was an entirely different person.
The moment I steeled myself, I suddenly heard movement outside the door.
“…Who is that?”
The metallic clinking that accompanied each step was the familiar sound of a sword hanging at someone’s waist.
It wasn’t unusual for armed knights or soldiers to be walking around.
And yet…
For some reason, the heavy footsteps grated on my nerves.
Wait. Who’s outside right now?
Thinking about it, there probably shouldn’t have been anyone nearby.
This was the inner castle, where security was never especially tight to begin with. Mother always believed intruders should be stopped before they entered, not welcomed once they were already inside.
Therefore, most military forces are concentrated around possible entry routes and exterior defenses.
After Mother’s death, our castle had been maintaining the highest level of alert.
To protect her body from corruption monsters.
The corpses of powerful mages were considered delicacies to creatures born from corruption. A monster that consumed such a body would gain overwhelming pleasure and supreme power.
Which meant leaving a dead mage unattended was, bluntly speaking, no different from setting out a feast for monsters.
Ordinary burial methods were useless.
Even cremation accomplished nothing.
Instead of eating the corpse, the monsters would simply rush to lick the ashes.
A mage’s body could only truly return to nothingness when burned with the special flame that existed solely within the Mage Tower.
Therefore, every mage in this world was transported to the Mage Tower immediately after death—
to be burned in the Flame of Origin.
In other words, to undergo the Rite of Cremation.
Which meant that until Mother safely completed her final journey to the Flame of Origin, our forces had no choice but to prioritize guarding her body above all else.
Still, that didn’t mean I was entirely unprotected.
There simply weren’t guards standing directly outside my room. No one would leave the sole heir of the Grand Duchy completely alone without safeguards.
There were emergency measures in place for situations when close guards stepped away.
…So the chances of something happening are low, but still.
Just in case, hiding first would be smarter.
I quickly hopped down from the chair and opened the nearby cabinet.
Curling up quietly inside, I pulled the door shut.
The footsteps… stopped!
Following the training I had received countless times, I tightly gripped the pendant hanging from the necklace Mother had made for me.
I felt the protective magic surrounding me silently activate, erasing my presence.
Almost simultaneously, the door opened.
Peeking through the narrow gap in the cabinet door, I quickly assessed the situation.
A man. And those clothes are unfamiliar.
In the northern borderlands, nobody dressed that lightly unless they had a death wish.
Who was he?
Because I was hiding low beneath the cabinet shelves, I couldn’t see his face. But I could tell he was looking around carefully, searching for something.
He’s looking for me!
My heart began pounding rapidly.
Even though the necklace carried powerful concealment magic, considering he had infiltrated this far into the castle, I couldn’t afford to relax.
I just had to endure as long as possible and wait for Marquis Mafilda to return with my meal.
“…Hm.”
Right then, the man abruptly stopped scanning the room.
I clamped a hand tightly over my mouth and swallowed hard.
At the same moment, he began striding forward with long, confident steps.
H-he’s coming this way!
But the magic should still be working!
Could this just be bad luck?
Yet the closer he came, the clearer it became that his destination was the cabinet I was hiding inside.
Either there was something wrong with the magic—
or the man himself was extraordinarily skilled.
The reason didn’t matter.
Only one thing mattered.
I’m about to be discovered.
What should I do?
He clearly wasn’t someone I could defeat by resisting.
There was no obvious way out of this situation.
But even so…
Watching his legs draw steadily closer, I thought:
Am I really supposed to just sit here trembling like helpless prey and wait for whatever happens?
Mother never raised me that way.
“……”
Heat flared sharply inside me.
Slowly, I lowered the hand covering my mouth.
Then I pressed my thumb into my palm—
and curled my fingers into a fist.
