When the healer Gowen Elden appeared in the castle, the servants still moving through the corridors at that late hour parted like an ebbing tide to make way.
Every one of their faces was dark.
The servants' manner only fed Gowen's sense of foreboding and his imagination.
'Just how serious a matter is this?'
Gowen's own expression grew steadily graver along with it.
Of course, anything that had made the Grand Duke race through the snow at night could hardly be a small matter.
But he had not expected the mood in the castle to have sunk this low.
A little later, Gowen reached the Young Master's bedchamber and knocked.
"Young Master. It is the healer, Gowen Elden. I have come on His Highness the Grand Duke's orders. May I come in?"
Yank!
"Sir Elden. You're here."
The door opened at once, and Vestia appeared.
"Mm, yes."
Over Vestia's shoulder, Gowen spotted Raizel lying in bed with only his head raised. He was pale and wore a sullen look.
'It seems there is still no improvement in his aphasia.'
Tightening his grip on his house-call bag, Gowen stepped into Raizel's room.
"What on earth happened?"
Gowen asked.
Vestia answered in place of Raizel, who could not speak.
"Well......"
It was a simple story: ever since Raizel returned to the castle, he had thrown himself into sword training, until in the end he collapsed.
"......And then His Highness sensed some strange mana wave. A moment later, His Highness shouted, and all the servants rushed out to the training ground in alarm."
"Hmm...... That is puzzling."
Meanwhile, Raizel was watching Vestia and Gowen talk.
'A mana wave?'
It was a somewhat unfamiliar term to him.
'It seems they call qi mana here.'
He secretly moved his fingertips, just slightly. An extremely faint flow of mana brushed past them.
'The natural energy in the air may have churned along with my strikes. Did he sense that?'
He glanced at the empty air.
In this world, qi, that is, mana, was far more abundant than in his homeland. That made it somewhat easier to sense the presences and movements around him.
Still, reading the Heavenly Demon's presence should have been extremely difficult.
And yet the Grand Duke had read the faint mana wave his movements had pushed out.
That was intriguing.
'Is the Grand Duke's sense of qi really that keen?'
But the Grand Duke was missing an arm and an eye. For a man of such talent to be maimed like that was a great pity.
Raizel slowly blinked.
And Raizel himself was the Grand Duke's only child.
'A maimed lord of the castle, and his only heir.'
In that case, it was not hard to work out why he had roared that Raizel was a mana cripple after probing his body, or why he had raged while catching him when he collapsed after his enlightenment.
'......'
Raizel felt a strange discomfort.
That worry and affection had never been meant for him.
"Let me take a look first."
Gowen finished talking with Vestia and spoke to Raizel. Instead of answering, Raizel quietly blinked.
Soon Gowen took Raizel's arm and let his mana flow in beneath the skin. Gowen's mana circled through Raizel's body, examining his condition.
When the process was over, Gowen slowly opened his mouth. His expression was a little darker than before.
"......There is nothing."
At Gowen's rather ominous-sounding words, Vestia asked back anxiously.
"What?"
"There is nothing much wrong."
Then Gowen's usual indifferent tone carried on.
"His muscles have taken quite a shock. But that will heal with rest......"
Gowen glanced over at Raizel.
"......Nothing has changed. I think rest is all you need. I will speak to Her Highness the Grand Duchess and have a restorative tonic sent up."
Hearing that, Raizel nodded. He had been thinking that summoning a physician in the middle of the night was a bit much anyway. He rather liked Gowen's temperament, which did not fuss.
***
After leaving Raizel's bedchamber, Gowen headed for the drawing room where the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess were waiting.
"You have come."
The Grand Duchess greeted him in a gloomy voice. Gowen ducked his head in a bow and took a seat.
"How is Raizel?"
Gowen first studied the Grand Duchess's complexion. A mother who had held her son again after seven years, she had brightened a little in the days since Raizel's return. But in the past hour or so, her face had turned as dark as an invalid's.
'Small wonder.'
Her only child.
The most precious being in the world.
Afraid he would blow away if she breathed on him, or break if she held him too tight.
The son she had cherished so dearly was now nothing more than a mana cripple.
'Given the Young Master's condition...... no one would dare accuse Her Highness of overprotecting him now.'
But for all that devoted love, a mana heart, once broken, could never recover.
As a healer, and as a vassal of House Esselklein, calling it regrettable could not begin to express how he felt.
Gowen answered the Grand Duchess.
"He is unharmed. His muscles are only strained from pushing himself too hard; with enough rest, he will be fine."
"Ah, I see. Muscle spasms...... I see."
At Gowen's diagnosis, the Grand Duchess looked sheepish.
"What a relief that he only overdid it......"
Once the mood had calmed a little, Gowen looked at the Grand Duke.
"Your Highness."
When their eyes met, a strange tension settled over the room.
And within it flickered a sliver of hope that even the Iron-Blooded Grand Duke could not hide.
So Gowen went on like a guilty man.
"Nothing has changed."
His words had no subject, but the Grand Duke understood him at once.
Contrary to the hope the Grand Duke had briefly held, it meant Raizel's ruined mana heart was just as it had been.
"......I am sorry."
"Haa......"
The Grand Duke let out a deep sigh. Then he buried his face in his large palm, covering his eye.
"......It is not something you need to apologize for."
Perhaps because he sat there not as the Grand Duke but as Kailan, a child's father, Kailan gave up even pretending to be calm and let out one deep sigh after another.
"......I felt a wave of mana."
Kailan said.
It was a rather abrupt change of subject.
But Gowen had already heard about it from Vestia, so he could reply without being flustered.
"Ah, yes."
"A very faint, terribly fragile wave of mana. But it was unmistakably mana in motion."
If a man of the Grand Duke's skill called it faint, that mana wave must have been weaker than anyone could imagine.
Even so, the Grand Duke must have pinned his hopes on it.
Like a drowning man clutching at straw.
"That wave was spreading out from Raizel, I tell you."
The Grand Duke, too, was desperate.
"So, so...... If by any chance, by one chance in ten thousand."
"Your Highness."
Listening to the Grand Duke, Gowen was seized by the urge to leave. Hearing this was painful.
For it was not as though Raizel becoming a cripple meant nothing to him either.
He had begun serving as healer to the Grand Ducal family of Esseldria when Raizel was a three-year-old tot.
He, too, had once dreamed of Raizel succeeding the Grand Duke, and of serving Raizel as a vassal once he became Grand Duke.
"If a miracle has happened and his mana heart is healing......"
Gowen looked at the floor.
A ruined mana heart never worked again.
The Grand Duke, of all people, surely knew that unchanging truth.
The more he heard the Grand Duke speak, the more it pained Gowen.
Of course, the one suffering most would be the boy himself.
But Raizel's despair did not belong to that one boy alone.
"Why...... Why, of all people, did this misfortune have to befall that boy?"
Like this, one man suffered over Raizel's despair as if he had lost the world.
"Was I not enough?"
"Kailan......"
Grand Duchess Alicia, her face contorted, took Kailan's hand.
Even so, Kailan went on lamenting.
"Raizel, that boy. My son's talent is such a waste. I grieve for all my son could have achieved with a whole mana heart. If that boy grew up safely, how many people could he save one day? It grieves me so that I cannot sleep."
Ever since Raizel returned to the Grand Ducal Castle and began honing his swordsmanship, Kailan had dreamed a certain dream every night.
In the dream, he saw Raizel with a sound mana heart.
There, Raizel was an acclaimed hero and his pride.
But when he woke, there was only himself, a one-armed man, and his son, a mana cripple.
A dream that could never come true.
The real Raizel was as good as dead as a martial artist.
That was why the dream was like a nightmare.
"......The effort that boy pours in deserves to be rewarded."
And so, every time he saw Raizel with a sword in hand, he felt he would go mad.
Was it not far too wretched?
His heart, torn to shreds the day he lost his right arm, had crumbled to dust the moment he saw his son's desperation.
Alicia, who had been staring blankly as Kailan lamented, looked at Gowen.
"......If only I could give him mine instead."
"Pardon?"
"......Is there no such way? If it were possible, I would take out my own and give it to Raizel."
"......Your Highness."
It was an absurd thing to say. As Gowen floundered, a tear finally spilled from Alicia's eyes.
"......I know it makes no sense. I only want to grasp at something...... even a straw."
Soon Alicia began to sob.
Outside the drawing room where the ducal couple and Gowen sat, the two knights guarding either side of the door and the maidservants overheard the conversation too, and wiped away tears.
'Just once.'
'If only a miracle would happen, just once.'
'Please......'
A night when everyone prayed with bated breath.
Beyond the snowfield piling ever higher, the darkness deepened.
***
"Please get some rest, then, Young Master. I'll come back tomorrow morning."
After checking on Raizel one last time, Vestia left his bedchamber.
Thud.
When the door closed and complete silence fell, a deep, booming voice he knew well rang out.
「Your first enlightenment in seven days......」
It was the voice of the Heavenly Slaughter Star.
Raizel, who had been gazing at the magic lamp glowing on the table in the dark, narrowed his eyes into a scowl.
「I cannot decide whether to call that slower or faster than I expected. Frankly, I never imagined you would devote yourself so to something like the Three Powers Sword Art.」
Raizel did not respond. He had been hearing the Heavenly Slaughter Star's voice for decades. If he kept ignoring it, the Heavenly Slaughter Star usually lost interest and vanished soon enough.
「Where did the Heavenly Demon who ground his teeth vowing to bring me down go, leaving only a greenhorn swinging a shabby wooden sword? Will you do nothing else?」
He kept silent.
「Kill, and achieve great deeds. Do you mean to starve me to death? Fatten yourself up, I say.」
But today was different. The Heavenly Slaughter Star's rambling went on and on.
「Perhaps because you died and came back, you have become an even duller block of wood. And you were a joyless wretch to begin with. At this rate, there is no point in having gone to the trouble of reviving you......」
A brief silence passed.
「As a special favor, I shall give you a prophecy.」
The Heavenly Slaughter Star's laughter rang out. It was a sound Raizel hated so much it set his teeth on edge.
「You will not have time to take things so easy. The Grand Duke will die before long. When the Grand Duke dies, things will get difficult for you.」
Only then did Raizel raise his head and look at the night sky outside the window.
But the Heavenly Slaughter Star did not give the answer he wanted. As ever, he did as he pleased.
「Do your best.」
With those words, the Heavenly Slaughter Star disturbed Raizel's rest no further. Low laughter lingered for a while, and then complete silence fell once more.
Even after hearing the Heavenly Slaughter Star's prophecy, Raizel did not so much as stir.
But it was neither bold composure nor dull indifference. The Heavenly Slaughter Star might have made a plaything of his life, but he had never once lied. Raizel had learned that painfully, over decades.
Raizel clenched his fist hard.