Chapter Text
———————
So, I visualized my mana as being uncompressed as possible.
An explosion.
For a moment, it felt like time stopped.
An almost-frozen wave of mana slammed through my vessel, filling my head and my body so violently that I thought I might pop…. Nothing.
…
Really? Of course it didn't work. Why had I expected it to, because I had finally lost my mind? My breathing came in shallow gasps as knights closed in from both sides of the border. Ehrenfest before me and Ahrensbach behind me. There really wasn't a way out anymore, was there?
"Congratulations," I muttered to myself. "You survived kidnapping, torture, political conspiracies, and crossing half a duchy..."
"...only to be arrested by your own duchy."
Somehow, that almost hurt more. It was almost laughable. Stories always seemed to have an answer for moments like this. The protagonist would awaken some hidden power , discover an ancient bloodline, or unlock a secret technique their teacher had neglected to mention. Myne would probably somehow convince the gods this was everyone else's fault or just blessing bomb out of it. Or Ferdinand would appear out of nowhere, and solve everything before questioning every life decision leading up to this moment.
Unfortunately, neither option seemed forthcoming. My thoughts drifted toward increasingly ridiculous stories from Earth. They always managed miraculous last-minute comebacks. The heroes always found something, a final miracle waiting until the last possible moment. Sadly, this wasn’t one of those stories. It was just me.
There had been one… One so absurd that even while reading it I had wondered how anyone could keep a straight face. The strongest attack imaginable concentrated into a single point. The protagonist had whispered it with absolute confidence, ridiculous as his reasoning had been. To survive a nuclear blast, one must become… I let out a weak laugh, and I closed my eyes.
There had to be something.
Anything.
Please...
Just...
Anything.
If one of the gods was listening...
If anyone cared...
Please.
I don't want to die here.
I don't want to disappear like this.
I don't want everyone to think I betrayed them. I don't want Mother, Adeus, or Erita to spend the rest of their lives believing I abandoned them... or worse, that I became Ehrenfest's enemy. I don't want the soldiers who searched for me to think all their efforts were for nothing.I don't want Myne, Ferdinand, or everyone at the temple to remember me as a traitor. Even if all you can spare is a single path forward… Please listen to this desperate plea.
O gods who watch over this land...
Hear my prayer.
If my voice can reach your lofty heights...
If there remains even a single thread of your blessing upon me...
Please...
Guide me forward.
Please.
Silence answered. Of course there was no divine intervention. The gods did not simply descend because one frightened girl begged them for salvation. If they had, Yurgenschmidt would be a very different place…
This shithole world was already full of suffering. Why had I ever thought I would be someone special?
"Well...It's not like I have anything left to lose." I closed my eyes. If I was going to die here... I might as well make my last mistake an entertaining one. If nothing else… At least I'd die embarrassing myself and having fun. I gathered what little mana remained. It wasn't enough, not even close. Even though the thought felt ridiculous I imagined all of it compressing.
Smaller.
Smaller.
Smaller.
Until every drop occupied only a single point. The image refused to stabilize. It slipped through my thoughts like sand as I danced on the edge of the void. My thoughts scattered.
I would never see Erenit again. I would never watch Adeus inherit the province and become Giebe. I would never have another awkward conversation with Mother... somehow, that hurt far more than I had expected. I wasn't ready for this to be the end.
"...I..."
My voice barely rose above a whisper. The end was here. No more noble euphemisms. No more pretending to be composed. I would just be me. If my final words were unbearably embarrassing... then at least they would be honest.
"...am..."
Then something answered. answered not in words but in laughter. It was a quiet, delighted laugh, feminine and ancient. It echoed through the frozen world as though time itself had paused to listen. Only I seemed able to hear it. Everyone else looked frozen in place.
"How entertaining.."
Purple light flickered beneath my feet. Not just beneath me, but everywhere. Intricate lines spread across the stone in impossible geometries, blooming outward faster than roots beneath spring soil. Circle after circle unfolded, and divine script I had never learned engraved itself into existence.
Then the advancing soldiers froze in place, not becasue time stopped, but because they seemed to be in awe. Even those preparing their spells simply stared and stopped moving.
More rings.
More symbols.
More power.
Mana that could not possibly belong to me flooded through my body.
No… Not into me, but through me. It was as though I had become nothing more than a conduit. Then my knees buckled. I knew this wasn't even my mana nor my spell anymore. The laughter returned in my head ever louder. I couldn’t see her, but I just knew somehow that it was grinning at me with a wide, far too wide, of a smile like the cheshire cat. I was a bird voluntarily walking into its mouth unable to stop myself. "A most entertaining prayer."
The unknown knowledge flooded my mind and not just words. It was understanding. An impossibly intricate divine circle unfolded within my thoughts, rings nested inside each other, every symbol carrying meaning I somehow understood without ever having learned. It was beautiful and terrifying. The final ring rotated into place.
The purple radiance collapsed inward instead of outward. Every instinct screamed at me to run just like the soldier who had just sprinted away from me. However, I couldn't move. The pressure was too great. The world had gone silent, and even the wind seemed afraid. Then somehow against my will, my lips moved almost on their own. I knew what it was but i could never imagine the result.
"...Atomic."
The world fell to darkness as I lost consciousness.
———————
The knights had surrounded the young girl with green hair and golden eyes. She claimed to be an Ehrenfest noble, but judging by her appearance, there was little reason to believe her. She had acted rashly and impulsively. The knight narrowed his eyes. Years of training and experience had taught him to expect one of three outcomes. Either the suspicious girl would surrender and accept her fate now that she was surrounded on all sides, she would make one last desperate attempt to escape, or the Ahrensbach knights would reclaim her by force.
However, in all his years of border duty, he had genuinely never expected her to simply… pray. At first, nobody moved. The girl simply stood there with her head bowed. For a heartbeat, the tense standoff grew strangely quiet. Then violet light shimmered beneath her boots.
“A blessing?” someone whispered.
“No,” another knight answered immediately. Blessings did not begin with circles.
An unfamiliar magic circle appeared, followed by another, then another. Each was larger than the last, perfectly nested within the previous one. At first, they looked like ordinary mana circles, but the lines were far too intricate.
The veteran knight beside him slowly lowered his spear.
“I’ve…”
His voice caught.
“…I’ve only ever seen script like that in the temple.”
The circles continued to spread. One crossed beneath the Ehrenfest formation. Another reached the Ahrensbach side, then another followed. Neither side dared interrupt. No amount of training could have prepared them for this. No one wanted to become the first person in history to strike someone while the gods themselves appeared to be answering a prayer. The knight found his eyes drifting back toward the girl. She hadn’t moved, and her head remained bowed as though nothing around her had changed.
More circles appeared. Five, ten, twenty… no, far more than twenty. They spread across the stone floor, climbed the walls, and disappeared through the gatehouse roof until it became impossible to count them. Layer upon layer of glowing violet script covered everything they touched. Then something even stranger began to happen. Some circles rotated clockwise while others turned counterclockwise, while others remained perfectly still. Every movement felt deliberate, purposeful, and beautiful.
The knight couldn’t understand a single symbol, yet merely looking upon them made him instinctively loosen his grip on his spear. Around him, knights from both duchies had unknowingly lowered their weapons as well. No one had given the order. It had simply happened. His gaze returned to the girl once more. She was still praying. She hadn’t even looked up. However, something changed. He felt something that wasn’t evil. It wasn’t hostile, but it was simply… sacred.
It felt like looking upon something no mortal was ever meant to witness. “How many gods did she pray to?” someone whispered. The knight couldn’t tell who had spoken, and no one answered. He doubted anyone knew. Then the air itself began to change. It grew heavier, not oppressive, but focused, as though the mana itself had begun gathering into a single point.
No.
It wasn’t gathering.
It was compressing.
The knight’s breath caught. Mana expanded. It flowed. It mixed. It did not compress. Not like this.
Every ring slowly began moving inward, methodically and deliberately, as though countless unseen hands were constructing something impossible. The knight looked back toward the girl once more. She remained lost in prayer, completely unaware of what was happening around her. The veteran knight beside him never looked away. Something in his instincts screamed at him to run, yet his feet refused to move. Looking around, it seemed many of his comrades suffered the same hesitation. The circles weren’t attacking, nothing had exploded. They simply continued their silent dance.
Then the squad leader finally tore his eyes away. His face had gone deathly pale, as though he alone understood something the rest of them had missed.
“RUN!”
Knights stumbled over one another. Through the corner of his eye, he saw even the disciplined Ahrensbach formation break ranks. Years of training dissolved into raw instinct. Somewhere behind him, a captain shouted for an Ordonnanz to be sent to the Knight Commander. Yet amid all the chaos, the girl never fled, never flinching as she remained in the same position. She remained at the center of the impossible miracle, her head still bowed in prayer.
Then, as though some unseen conductor had given a signal, every circle stopped. The rotating rings aligned. Every symbol ignited with violet radiance. They began collapsing inward, every ring converging toward the girl at their center. The knight found himself holding his breath.
Then the purple radiance descended, and the world vanished in violet.
———-
Wrapped within Schlaftraum’s gentle embrace, I was enjoying the rarest of dreams. There were no reports, no meetings, and no complaints from the Knight’s Order. I was simply hunting in the commoner forest without a care in the world. It was a wondrous and vivid dream. Honestly, it was shaping up to be one of the better nights I’d had in months.
Then something vanished something that should never vanish. My eyes snapped open. Why must my visit to Schlaftraum’s realm end now? Let me go back.
“…What?”
I remained perfectly still, waiting for the feeling to return, but nothing did. Had I imagined it? No. Something had been wrong, if only for the briefest of moments. As Aub, the duchy barrier was never far from my awareness. It wasn’t something I consciously paid attention to any more than I thought about breathing. It was simply always there, only noticeable when something went wrong. Except, for one brief instant, it wasn’t. It wasn’t weakened or damaged, nor had someone passed through it. It had simply… been gone.
A tiny piece of it had simply ceased to exist. My mind instinctively reached toward the barrier. The connection answered immediately. It was whole and complete. This had never happened before.
I checked again, and nothing had changed. No damage, no foreign mana, and no instability. Yet the lingering sensation refused to leave me. Something had to have happened. Something that should have been impossible, yet somehow it had happened.
Before I could gather my thoughts, an Ordonnanz landed near me.
“My lord! An urgent report from the Ahrensbach border gate!”
Of course. So I hadn’t imagined it.
Suppressing a sigh, I sat up and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The bird relayed its message. It was almost incoherent: an unknown ritual, countless unknown divine circles, knights from both duchies retreating, and an overwhelming surge of mana. Then nothing. The report ended there.
“…That’s it?”
The Ordonnanz chirped once before falling silent, then repeated the message two more times. Wonderful, I thought. I’d somehow been awakened by an impossible magical phenomenon, and the report ended precisely when it became interesting. Another Ordonnanz burst through the window before I had time to complain.
“Knight Commander Karstedt requests permission to report immediately!”
“…He’s still half a bell away.”
The bird repeated the message.
I frowned. If Karstedt had resorted to an Ordonnanz before reaching the castle himself, then this wasn’t merely a border incident. Reluctantly climbing from bed, I let out a long sigh.
As my attendants hurried to carry out my orders, an absurd thought crossed my mind.
Rozemyne was asleep in her jureve, so it couldn’t be her… but somehow, I had a terrible feeling this was Mila’s fault. I frowned. No, that couldn’t be right. Hadn’t she died? I stood there thinking for a moment before mumbling to myself,
“That somehow doesn’t make me feel any better.”