TRL 01

Chapter 01

0. Return

The Lascail family was an old, wealthy, and prestigious noble house.
The Duke and Duchess of Lascail truly loved one another, and their children were kind and intelligent. They were a perfect, happy family.

Until the day their youngest daughter, Lilieta, suddenly disappeared.

At one side of the rear garden of the Lascail ducal estate stood a round flowerbed. At its center was a small tombstone, as if buried among the flowers.
It was a newly made gravestone. The name engraved on the white marble was clear.

Lilieta del Nisa Lascail
1751–1760

The year was 1770.
It had already been ten years since the only daughter of the Lascail family vanished.

During that time, the ducal house had used every means at its disposal to search for the young lady. They scoured the entire continent, yet found nothing. Nothing at all—
except for a bloodstained scrap of clothing and a few strands of blond hair discovered in a nearby forest on the first day she went missing.

People said Lilieta must have been eaten by a beast and told them to give up.
The Lascails did not give up. Not for ten long years.

Only recently did they finally accept Lilieta’s death and halt the search.
The gravestone had been erected just three days ago.
The small coffin buried beneath it was empty.

As they buried the empty coffin, the duke wept openly, and the duchess collapsed unconscious.
The second son, Rihardt, did not attend the funeral at all.
The day after the funeral, the eldest son, Leonhardt, received a message from a tavern: his brother had collapsed there, completely senseless from drink.

Leonhardt personally went to bring him back. The entire way, Rihardt muttered like a man who had lost his mind.

“They say Lili’s dead, brother.
They tell me I should finally accept that she’s dead.
They say it’s been ten years, that it’s time to forget. Have you forgotten, brother?
I can’t forget. I can’t accept it.
We never even saw her body.
Do you really believe that sweet, gentle child went into the forest alone in the middle of the night?
Do you believe that? I don’t.
Brother, Leon—do you know what she said to me the night before she disappeared?
She said she’d had a strange dream and woke up.
She said it scared her so much and asked if I could stay with her until she fell asleep again.
But I—I!
Why did I do that?
It’s my fault, brother. It’s all my fault.
If only I’d stayed with her that night…”

It was a story Leonhardt had already heard many times.
No matter how often he told Rihardt it wasn’t his fault, his brother never stopped blaming himself.

After putting the drunken Rihardt to bed, Leonhardt handled urgent matters in place of his father, who was overwhelmed caring for his collapsed wife.
Because of that, he hadn’t slept properly for three days since the funeral. He had no time to think or steady his heart.

Leonhardt was not at all ready to accept his sister’s death and let her go. That was why he had come to Lilieta’s grave early in the morning.

Someone was already there. The Duchess of Lascail, who had fainted before, sat blankly in front of the tombstone.
She continuously stroked a framed photograph in her hands—a picture of her young daughter smiling like an angel.

She, too, seemed unable to let her daughter go. Perhaps she would never be able to accept that her child was dead.
If only they knew how she had died. If only they had seen her body.

Leonhardt repeated the thoughts he had mulled over dozens of times, then quietly turned away after watching his mother’s back for a while.

There was a considerable age gap between the brothers and their youngest sister. When Lilieta was born, Leonhardt was eight and Rihardt was six.
The brothers had inherited the Lascail trait of large, sturdy builds, but Lilieta was completely different.

She had been born prematurely at seven months after a difficult labor. She had been weak from birth.
She was often sick as she grew up. It must have been hard and frustrating, yet she rarely complained.
Even when taking bitter medicine, she would smile and say, “If I take my medicine, I get to eat candy too, so it’s good. From now on, I’ll call it candy time, not medicine time.”

She was a child like sunlight. The entire family cherished her dearly.

Leonhardt walked past the tombstone. The rear gate of the garden came into view.
The iron gate entwined with rose vines was tightly shut, wrapped over and over with a rusted chain.

That back gate led to a birch forest.
In the past, it had always been open. The birch forest, tended by the family for generations, was a safe and beautiful place.

But after Lilieta’s bloodstained clothing was found there, the duke himself had locked the gate with chains.

Leonhardt remembered clearly what the birch forest had been like.
There were no dangerous beasts. Deer and rabbits roamed freely, birds chirped, and if you followed the woodland path a little way in, there was a small lake.

He used to take his little sister by the hand and stroll to that lakeside. He could still vividly remember the soft, tiny feel of her hand.

The forest lay within the boundaries of the Lascail estate. That was why the ducal residence was called the Birchwood Castle. It was not dangerous.

And yet they claimed Lilieta had been eaten by some nonexistent beast there?
That she had slipped out of the ducal estate alone in the middle of the night without anyone noticing? A ten-year-old child?
And Lilieta had been weak. She got out of breath just from running a little.

Impossible. Absolutely impossible.

Someone dragged her out.

Unconsciously, Leonhardt clenched his fist. His grip tightened painfully, and a vague murderous intent surged up.
Whenever he imagined what might have happened to her that night, he felt like tearing some unknown culprit to pieces.

He relaxed his hand and took a deep breath. Only then did he notice his father standing some distance away beyond the chained gate.

The Duke of Lascail stood in the middle of the forest path, his hands clasped behind his back—
as though waiting for someone, for a girl whose footsteps were as light as a fairy’s, to come walking back along the path.

Leonhardt grabbed the bars of the back gate and stepped onto the thick chain.
In one motion, he vaulted over the gate and approached his father. The duke turned at the sound.

“Leon.”
“Father.”

Leonhardt did not ask what he was doing there. Nor did the duke ask why his son had come.
Father and son stood side by side, gazing toward the end of the path. No one emerged from the birch forest.

The duke slowly turned and patted his eldest son on the shoulder.
“Even though I let go for three whole days, there were no problems. You’ve worked hard.”
“It was nothing.”
“Go in and get some proper rest. You haven’t slept well.”
“Yes. I’ll be in shortly.”

The Duke of Lascail returned to the manor first.

Leonhardt did not follow. He stood there for a while, then walked alone along the woodland path.
Between the white birch trees, a blue lake gradually came into view. The setting sun cast a long, dazzling trail of afterglow across the lake’s surface.

“Leon oppa, look at that. It’s like the sun dropped a silk shawl while going to sleep. It’s so pretty.”

The voice she had whispered echoed in his ears.

Leonhardt gazed at the lake and thought of Lilieta—
her rosy cheeks, the violet eyes sparkling beneath crescent-shaped lids, her fine blond hair fluttering in the breeze…

Then suddenly, wet blond hair burst up from the surface of the lake.
Water droplets scattered like jewels in all directions. Even soaked through, the hair shone brilliantly—just like his sister’s.

White, smooth skin. Long hair that looked as though it had never been cut. Violet eyes visible through the clinging blond strands.
A fairy-like girl—no, a woman—rose from the lake.

With a face strikingly similar to Lilieta’s.
As she might have looked if she had not disappeared and had grown safely to the age of twenty.

Leonhardt could not comprehend what he was seeing.
After searching the lake bottom countless times… we found nothing.

While he stood frozen, the woman who had risen from the lake staggered briefly, then regained her balance and waded out.
A low curse reached his ears.

“Damn it. What the hell happened? I open my eyes and I’m underwater?”

Standing at the lakeside, she irritably swept her wet hair back. Then her eyes met Leonhardt’s blank stare.
She swiftly shifted her stance—lowering her upper body slightly, pulling one leg back, her hand moving by habit toward her waist.

Her hand, searching for a weapon, grasped at nothing. There was nothing hanging at her waist.
She visibly flustered, then looked down at her own clothes.

“What is this?”

She was wearing a white, lace-trimmed nightgown—the exact same one Lilieta had been wearing when she disappeared.
What had once been a voluminous negligee that reached the ankles of a child now barely covered the woman’s thighs.

One side of the skirt was torn—the same place as the bloodstained scrap of clothing Lilieta had left behind.

The woman lifted the wet, sagging hem between her thumb and forefinger. Her beautiful face twisted into a deep scowl.
“What is this ridiculous, dragging outfit? Which perverted bastard did this?”

Leonhardt could not breathe. Her grumbling barely reached his ears.
At last, he forced his lips to part.

“Lili?”