Lately I often doubt whether this truly is a world steeped in miracle and magic.
Of course, the answer is beyond dispute. This world has the true god and the evil god, magic and Holy Light, devils from the Inferno, knights of Radiance, and warriors who train in martial techniques. I’m not so addled as to forget that.
It’s just that, amid the peaceably trivial days of late, I keep falling into the illusion that I’ve somehow slipped into some slice-of-life story.
At the Duke’s castle, there were several chances each year to watch high-ranking clergy of the Glorious Church display miracles at ceremonies. When I happened to pass Claire’s magic class, I could catch a flash of magical radiance now and then. In the source novel, the events swirling around the protagonist Nolan were crowded with fierce and dazzling battles between the extraordinary.
Yet right now, all of that feels far away. We’ve been in Romern a month, living in a house in the Lower City. The black sorcerer hasn’t come to stir up trouble again; so-called miracles and magic, the legends of heroes and warriors—here they exist only in the bluster of wandering performers, not in daily life.
In the dim little room, Clytia and Diya sat at opposite sides of the wooden bed. Diya held a page of a copy and read by candlelight. Clytia pinched needle and thread, intent on the embroidery in her hands.
I kept an eye to the side and glanced toward the pallet in the other corner. Nolan sat there bare to the waist, unwinding his bandages loop by loop, exposing the scar-ridged left arm.
“Should be… about healed, right?” He flexed the joint slowly, talking to himself. But I clearly saw an ugly hollow where the muscle of the upper arm had sunk in.
“I remember that night—the tendons in his arm were cut.” I thought. In my previous world, an injury like that would require a surgeon with exquisite skill to suture muscle and nerve strand by strand, then a year or more of recovery—or you’d likely be crippled for life.
Is it that bodies in this otherworld are different? Or is there truly some blessing of a god? Nolan’s left arm only had medicine and bandages; yet in a mere month he could move it freely.
Or is this the protagonist’s talent? I thought, and at last felt a trace of long-missed fantasy color, watching him flex slowly as if doing some kind of rehabilitation exercise.
Just then, Diya crawled across the bed on her knees, the wooden planks creaking, and pulled my attention to the golden-haired girl.
“Clytia—teacher, I’ve finished these pages.” Diya half-joked.
“Questions on Proverbs?” Clytia paused her work.
“Yeah—I’ve got these pages down.”
“Mm… want me to give you the rest for dictation?”
Questions on Proverbs counts as an elementary classic for Imperial common-tongue schooling. Clytia had it by heart at six. But for the exam Diya will take at the Royal Preparatory Knights Academy early next year, the culture portion seems to reach only this level.
“No rush—tomorrow.” Diya set the sheet down, then looked at the cloth in Clytia’s hands and exclaimed:
“So pretty. Little Tia can read and write, and do such fine handiwork—what kind of family raises a daughter like you?”
The Duke’s force-fed curriculum, of course—I thought. In the castle’s girls’ handicraft class, Clytia’s mind often wandered and she’d muddle through in a few strokes; oddly, these days when doing work to help with expenses, she was extra serious.
At Diya’s words, Clytia lowered her head. A flicker crossed her eyes; she said nothing, only gave a slight shake.
“Ah… Little Tia still can’t remember her family?”
“Mm.” Clytia barely nodded.
That’s a lie—I thought. She still hasn’t decided to return to the Ducal House. Or rather—does she truly plan to?
“Sigh… Brother—brother!” Diya suddenly called Nolan’s name.
“What is it?” Nolan looked up.
“If we can’t find Little Tia’s family, having her live with us always wouldn’t be bad!”
At that, Clytia glanced at Diya at her side, and her gaze drifted to Nolan.
“What are you saying? We’ll find them.” Nolan shook his head, threw on his shirt, and stood.
“Hey, I’m not cursing Little Tia. I mean, if—if we can’t find them—since she’s so nice, I want her to stay with us.”
Diya sat up straight and leaned to the bed’s edge. Nolan shook his head and came over.
“What are you thinking? How could we live together always? Leaving anything else aside—in two months, when you go to the Academy, I can’t go with you.”
“Can’t Brother come too?”
“The Royal Preparatory Knights Academy is closed to outsiders. People outside can’t enter.”
“Right, you’re right…” Diya tilted her head, then mused. “But that would mean, then, it’s you and Little Tia living together—and I’m the one tossed into the Academy…”
“What do you even think about all day…” Nolan was left speechless by her wild talk. He turned to Clytia. “Anyway, don’t listen to her. I’ll find your family as soon as I can.”
Clytia looked at Nolan, pressed her lips together without a stance either way, then lowered her head and took up the needle and thread again.
Seeing it, Nolan sighed, hands on hips, and sat on the stool by the bed.
“Speaking of… this still hasn’t come off. I thought it would be easy.”
I knew what he meant—the manacles on Clytia’s hands and feet, stamped with a noble’s seal. Proper blacksmiths are familiar with the city guards; no one dares open such things in private. If exposed, you might even be reported as aiding an escapee.
“Haven’t found a smith who’ll do it. My hand’s about healed now—might as well figure out how to get tools and pry them off myself.”
As he spoke, he reached without thinking to the shackle at Clytia’s ankle. Clytia’s body trembled, and I felt the hard calluses of Nolan’s fingers brush the ankle.
“Let me see… have to pry out these three rivets.” He turned the cuff to look closer.
Clytia flustered; the fluster ran into me, and what I hadn’t minded suddenly rattled me. The sensation at the brushed fingertips magnified tenfold.
“Brother! Pervert! Why are you touching a girl’s foot!”
Diya shouted. Nolan blinked.
“No… I’m touching the cuff—not her.”
Diya yanked Clytia over and frowned.
“Still talking. Look—Little Tia’s face is red! Apologize!”
“Ah… okay.” Nolan looked up and noticed the flush on Clytia’s cheeks, stared a beat, then bowed his head.
“Sorry… that’s on me.”
“No… you didn’t touch me. No need to apologize.”
Clytia turned her face aside and spoke softly.
…
At first light the next day, Nolan went out—he said to look for work down at Romern’s docks, and see if he could find tools to open the manacles.
“Little Tia, stay home and be good, okay? I’m off to market.” Diya put the finished embroidery into a basket and slipped out too.
Is this a home? Diya really has a wide heart. I thought. Forced from their original home to this little place Nolan rented in Romern’s Lower City—yet she can call it home with such ease.
Only Clytia remained inside. These days, to avoid attention, she hardly went out.
Lounging back on the bed in a lazy daze for a bit, the girl then dragged the chain down and sat at the table.
She dipped a pen, drew out a few sheets, and began to copy from memory the text Diya needed from Questions on Proverbs. In Romern, food, clothing, housing, and travel all cost more than outside. Nolan had somehow fished up a gold coin to get a foothold in the Lower City.
Only books, paper, and ink are cheaper here than in the countryside.
Clytia had written two lines when she stopped and tidied the drafts from before. As she lifted a sheet, a jaggedly torn slip fell out.
She looked at it, recognized her own hand:
“The Festival of Offering draws near. By custom, the Duke will send envoys south to the Royal Capital with gifts.”
I looked at the line we’d written last night and fell silent. Romern sits on the north–south thoroughfare; envoys from Erandel to the Royal Capital must pass here.
Since coming to Romern, I’d inquired on purpose: the Ducal House seems not to have publicized the young lady’s attack and disappearance. If Clytia wants to return to the Erandel Duchy, this is the best chance.
Then—what will you choose, Clytia? I thought, a little cold.
Clytia stared at the line, lost. A cat shrieked outside; she flinched and snapped back.
She crumpled the slip into a pellet and swallowed.
The rough fibers scraped her throat. Then I heard her speak, slowly:
“Do you think… days like this can go on? That we can keep living like this—together?”
Of course not—I thought. Diya will enter the Royal Preparatory Knights Academy, and then be caught in a plot and die. Nolan will grow stronger by chance, and with his sister’s death as the moment, step onto the stage of this world.
Frankly, I’m already worried whether all the influence I’ve had on Nolan will tilt fate wholly away from the novel. I don’t take the source’s plot as gospel, and I don’t believe Diya must die to fulfill it. I only treat it as a prophetic book that reveals a possibility.
But if someone destined to be famed under heaven becomes a nobody because of me—then what? Who will save those he would have saved? Who will strike down the dangerous foes? When I think of it, it feels like I’m standing on the brink of the Abyss.
“Your mood… it’s like you carry some mission. Is that why you appeared?”
While my head rattled with nonsense, I heard Clytia say:
“Like… Saint Ancarno in the sacred tales?”
Saint Ancarno’s self-offering—I remembered the Glorious Church’s primal myth. He was a shepherd boy bullied by others, and he offered his body as a vessel for Danor, the formless, shapeless Lord of Light, to descend. From sunrise to sunset, the god delivered His way to humankind; then Ancarno’s body turned to ash, and his soul returned to Heaven with the deity.
Church theologians hold that everyone is born with a foreordained mission. Fulfill it and you go to Heaven; fail it and you go to Hell. Ancarno’s mission from birth was to await that instant of the god’s descent.
“Or… are you actually me—that because I threw away my mission, you appeared?”
Clytia seemed to ask me—and to ask herself—speaking slowly.