Chapter 07 "Mina's Confession and the Footsteps of the Ritual"
『……Understood. That's enough‚ Mina. From here on‚ I'll be the one to smash this twisted causality to pieces.』
Under the weight of those spat-out words‚ I stared fixedly at his back as he tried to step into the twilight‚ and barely managed to squeeze out my voice.
「……Wait‚ Louie.」
It was less a shout and more a clump of hoarse breath. In the chilled corridor‚ only my agitation echoed awkwardly. The lingering light outside the window collapsed into a thick ultramarine‚ painting the shadows on the stone walls even darker and deeper.
He stopped and slowly turned around. The moment I looked up at his figure‚ an eerie chill crawled up my spine.
He wasn't looking at me. His eyes seemed to be counting‚ one by one‚ the number of darknesses nesting behind me.
The scent of damp stone after rain that filled the corridor was swept away and erased by the burnt-ink heat rising from him—a sickening heat similar to rust.
The person before me was no longer the cynical magic student I knew. The jet-black ink crawling from his fingertips to his wrists moved like mud with a will of its own. His unfocused pupils seemed to be staring into the bottom of an abyss no one knew.
「……Have you developed a hobby of calling out to empty space? Or has even your vision been contaminated by my ink‚ causing you to lose the boundary between reality and hallucination?」
It was a cold voice‚ like an iron needle frozen solid gouging into my eardrums.
「If you have the energy to joke around…… then don't run away! Hey‚ look at these 'bloodstains'! Doesn't it make you feel anything!?」
With trembling fingertips‚ I pressed the medicine capsule I had been clutching against his chest.
「……I can't bear it alone anymore! I don't want to watch that child break any further. Hey‚ something like this…… you're the only one who would understand……!」
Faster than I could finish speaking‚ Louie's hand reached out. His mud-like fingertips forcibly‚ yet with a fragility as if touching glasswork‚ snatched the medicine capsule from my hand.
「……Thank you for providing the specimen. As you said‚ my brain is already burnt out. That's precisely why…… the 'beautiful lies' you all see are so transparently visible to me.」
Louie placed the medicine capsule on his palm and traced it with his fingertips‚ as if cherishing it‚ or perhaps dissecting it.
The anomaly came suddenly.
「……Lou……ie……?」
The eyes of the boy I looked up at grew even deeper‚ completely clouded with a horrifying color I had never seen before.
Behind me‚ a heavy‚ viscous shadow rippled. The air in the corridor froze instantly‚ and my lungs screamed as I inhaled. My airway closed. Breathing stopped.
He had completely erased my existence from the world and was staring solely at the "ashes of death" on his palm. All vitality had vanished from those eyes.
The man before me had now renounced being human and was about to sink his own brain into the 'bottomless mire' lurking in the depths of this medicine capsule——.
An irresistible despair quietly took shape. The color in the depths of his eyes‚ one that could never return‚ made me certain of it.
＊＊＊
I rolled the stolen medicine capsule between my fingertips. The gritty gray texture sank deeply into the ink stains.
For me‚ whose vision was beginning to lose its colors‚ that small object trembled on my palm like a 'fragment of nothingness' severed from the world.
「……Analysis‚ commence.」
I focused my consciousness to a single point and connected the recognition circuits in my brain to the faint magical remnants left in the medicine capsule. The forcibly replayed 'records' were mercilessly slammed onto the back of my retina.
——It's hot.
A violent‚ drug-induced heat that scorched the brain directly.
What flowed in through the residual thoughts was the obscene heat of the refined agent burning Elina's throat and sliding down her esophagus. The moment she swallowed‚ a sweet euphoria raced up her spine. A burnt-sugar-like‚ poisonous aroma that invaded deep into her lungs dominated her nasal cavity.
This was not salvation. It was a physiological scream as her memories and emotions that composed her 'self' were melted into sludge and diluted by the potent drug amid an intoxication like a high fever.
（……What is this heat? Is it physically grinding down the soul?）
The image of her that formed in my mind was still in the shrine maiden outfit from my memories. Yet its outline was as brittle as ice transparent under sunlight‚ fragile enough to collapse at any moment. Skin turning white and translucent. Sweat of agony traced the hollow of her protruding collarbone with a pearly gleam and dripped down.
The raw body heat I remembered when I once grabbed her slender wrist melted together with the drug's heat that drove my brain mad. The pulse of hers that my fingertips remembered was forcibly tuned by the refined agent‚ robbed of its humanly irregular rhythm. That sensation flowed back directly into my brain.
In the midst of that torrent of heat‚ her lips trembled like a broken toy‚ trying to form words.
「……I……don’t……want……to……」
I don't want to die. The most beautiful and filthy 'impurity' that a human should naturally hold.
But before that cry could take shape‚ the drug's effect bared its fangs mercilessly.
A sweet euphoria like molten lead forcibly lifted the muscles of her face. Fear‚ despair‚ even the scream that sought me—all were painted over by this preservative called the refined agent. Faster than the tears on her cheeks could dry‚ a 'perfect shrine maiden's smile' without a single impurity was sewn onto her face like a curse.
The forging into inorganic gold coins paid as the price of prayer.——The heat of hers that I knew had now been coldly crushed by the world's system.
「……Tch‚ don't fuck with me……!」
My consciousness‚ having finished the analysis‚ was slammed back into the real stone corridor with violent mass. A discomfort as if my stomach was being gouged out. Overwhelmed by intense dizziness‚ I couldn't help but drop to my knees on the cold stone floor.
「Louie……? Hey‚ are you okay? Your face is completely pale.」
Mina's voice echoed from afar‚ but I had no room to respond. What burned into my mind and wouldn't leave was not the innocent smile of a young girl. It was the death mask of a living doll‚ forced to smile to preserve her 'value as a sacrifice' while her heart was ground down by the drug and stripped of her humanity.
（……So this country forced such a potent drug on her just to stitch her to the altar.）
They were shaving off her most beautiful impurities to forge her soul into a 'coin' for the gods.
I pressed my trembling fingertips against the stone floor. The dripping jet-black ink slowly spread into an ugly stain. Rage so intense it felt like my blood vessels would burst scorched the overcapacity magical circuits with sparks.
「……What the hell do they think she is……!」
My cracked voice crawled out from the depths of my throat‚ lower than I myself expected. The absolute anger dwelling in that voice and the horrifying heat of the ink overflowing from him. Mina‚ who was beside me‚ swallowed her scream in the back of her throat and staggered backward as if repelled by instinctive terror.
「……I'll kill them. This nauseating 'peace' and everything else……」
The bitterness of the lemon confection I ate that day. The taste with which she smiled and said it would "pull me back to reality" was the world's only 'real bitterness'—a tongue-stinging‚ consciousness-forcibly-awakening flavor to escape even for a moment from this sweet poison that burned the lungs.
「……Analysis complete‚ Mina.」
I staggered to my feet and clenched my right hand‚ soaked jet-black with ink‚ tightly.
「……I feel like shit. I want to rewrite this rotten casting machine itself from the roots with my ink right now.」
Along with that declaration‚ I kneaded a lethal dose of magical power. It was precisely the moment when my own killing intent breached the levees of logic.
My vision burst with a sound.
Inside my ears‚ a high-pitched noise like a thousand needles gouging glass raged. The circuits of thought burned out with heat. What invaded even the depths of my lungs was the horrifying smell of burnt ink. I nearly collapsed from my knees due to intense dizziness‚ but barely endured it by pressing my hand against the ice-cold stone wall. My ink-stained fingertips created viscous stains on the wall.
——At that moment‚ the last 'color' was completely stripped from the world.
The twilight melting into crimson‚ the heavy brown of the stone corridor—everything converged into a merciless monochrome. A hopelessly still world composed only of white‚ black‚ and infinite shades of gray. The 'Fourth Tier' curse that Sera had warned about had finally completely devoured my present.
「Louie……? Are you okay……?」
At my feet‚ Mina was shouting something. But even her figure receded into the distance beyond the fog. Her trembling voice was now nothing more than noise to me. The scene of the present was forcibly excluded as an error exceeding the brain's processing capacity. In its place‚ 'past records' that had sunk to the bottom of my memory rose like a muddy torrent and began to arbitrarily repaint my field of vision‚ reality itself.
The ceiling of the stone corridor was repainted with the high‚ soot-covered beams of the library tower. The sensation of the cold walls was rewritten into the window frame that contained the warmth of the girl who had invaded my sanctuary that day. My five senses were glitching. Not the kingdom's cold logic‚ but the afterimage of 'that day' to which I was most deeply bound trampled reality like a hologram.
——On the other side of that gray silence‚ she was there.
In reality‚ Elina was not here in this place right now. She was probably somewhere in an unknown abyss‚ dressed in a burial shroud‚ having her heart—the impurity called emotions—ground down. However‚ my broken eyes could not depict a version of her I had never seen. My brain instinctively refused to reflect that cruel present.
Standing there was the 'usual Elina‚' mischievously smiling with her blue ribbon swaying in the spring breeze by the library tower window.
In a gray world that had lost all color‚ only that blue ribbon writhed‚ emitting a vivid color of life extracted from the depths of memory. She was humming‚ holding a basket of baked sweets to her chest‚ in the exact form of that beloved day when she had cruelly dragged the "observer" called me back to reality.
「……Watch me…… Elina. I won't…… let them turn you into…… such an empty sacrifice……!」
I reached out with trembling fingertips toward her in the void. What reached my fingers was not the beloved warmth of her cheek. There was only the gritty‚ cold texture of a stone wall.——Yet my insane brain continued to replay the elasticity of her soft skin and the sour scent of lemons as the present.
If this country's god intends to wash away your heart as an 'impurity‚' then my mad eyes alone will burn every proof that you were once a human being onto these retinas and into the record book without omission. Even if my vision is devoured by delusion and I can never see the 'correct truth' again——.
Behind me‚ the sound of someone's frightened footsteps retreating echoed on the stone floor. But even that sound was now nothing more than friction noise to me. Even the raw sound of breathing in the throat was processed in my brain as popping noise.
「……Recording‚ continue.…… I——only I——will rewrite the continuation of this distorted official history.」
Toward the illusion standing in the colorless void‚ I could not stop a mad smile from spreading across my face. I clenched my ink-stained right hand so tightly it felt like it would break. There‚ the heat of her that only I knew dwelled deeply and darkly‚ like a curse‚ or perhaps like a prayer.
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……I'm scared.
While staring at the back of the boy standing motionless before me‚ I felt my own fingertips losing sensation as if I were grabbing ice with bare hands.
「……Watch me…… Elina. I won't…… let them turn you into…… such an empty sacrifice……!」
Louie was speaking with heartbreaking gentleness toward an empty void where no one stood. His hand was stained pitch-black with ink‚ writhing eerily as if darkness itself were crawling out from his fingertips. What was most horrifying was his expression. With unfocused eyes lovingly gazing at something I couldn't see‚ his lips were twisted in a distorted smile.
「……Hey‚ Louie? Stop joking. Who are you even talking to……?」
The voice I squeezed out vanished as if absorbed into the damp stone walls. The presence of night clung thickly‚ and from the depths of the corridor drifted a mixture of the heavy scent of earth after rain and the dry smell like corpses of old books flowing from the library tower.
Louie slowly turned his head. His eyes lacked vitality as if sunk into the depths of thick fog. Yet in their depths‚ a pitch-black passion boiled darkly. He wasn't looking at me. It was a bone-chilling gaze that merely recognized an 'object' shaped like me at the edge of his vision.
「……Ah‚ it's Mina. For background noise‚ you're making quite a shaky sound.」
「Noise……? Your brain really is burnt out. Elina isn't there at all. What you're looking at is just a wall——」
「Don't describe my vision using the same standards as your mediocre retinas.」
Louie spat the words and clenched his ink-wet right hand tightly‚ thrusting that fist right in front of my nose. I reflexively tried to pull back‚ but my feet wouldn't move as if trapped in mud. The 'bottomless darkness' that I had never seen under the dazzling light of Senior Kyle. It spread in the depths of this boy's eyes as an unfathomable abyss.
「……I'm scared. You're already broken. You talk about salvation‚ yet you've become the biggest monster yourself……!」
Instinct screamed to run. But in my mind‚ the image of Elina coughing up blood as she devoured the drug‚ fading away with a doll-like smile‚ remained stuck and wouldn't leave. Senior Kyle was right. But that light was too straightforward and could never reach the dark mire spreading at Elina's feet.
「……Fine. A monster is fine. If she can't be saved by a beautiful miracle‚ then I'll smear the very laws of this world with filth.」
Louie's voice pierced my eardrums with cold resolve.
He gripped the distorted medicine capsule he had forcibly taken from my hand and tucked into his pocket with such force that it seemed to gouge through his clothes. The jet-black ink dripping from his fingertips slowly eroded the fabric‚ painting the shape of the medicine capsule in his palm into darkness. As if the distorted hardness awakened Elina's screams in Louie's fingertips‚ and he had physically 'possessed' that child's heart along with her despair——I could only stare at such an ominous turbidity.
「Mina. I'll give you a role. Collect every last remnant that Elina will spit out from now on. That will be the final proof that she was human‚ and the only key for me to rewrite the world.」
「Elina's…… remnants. So that's what you call the proof that she lived as a human……」
Those were taboo words that must never be spoken or touched as long as one was within Senior Kyle's world of light.
The terror of betraying the pure world of light. And the intense anger at having Elina's dignity trampled by muddy boots burned my chest. I clenched my molars. My vision distorted from the surging humiliation. Yet‚ Elina's soul remained only in the 'remnants' that the light had discarded.
There had never been any choice from the beginning. While listening to the sound of my own conscience breaking‚ I resolved to step one foot into that mire.
「That's right. Deliver to me all her memories‚ pain‚ and obsessions that the gods tried to wash away. It means that shadows need their own solidarity of mire.」
Louie's outstretched hand touched my trembling shoulder. The freezing cold of the ink and his own abnormal heat. That contradictory sensation burned my skin like a brand. There was no going back. Taking this broken boy's hand meant betraying Senior Kyle's dazzling light and falling together to the bottom of hell.
「……Fine. I'm scared‚ but…… you said it. That we wouldn't leave that child alone.」
I bit my lip and accepted the curse‚ as if swallowing all the jet-black poison he emitted.
——At that moment‚ all heat was stolen from the world.
A chill like needles piercing the skin crept up slowly‚ and I was assaulted by the illusion of freezing from my feet. The boundary line of twilight completely vanished‚ viscously painting over our outlines. It was the beginning of an irredeemable darkness completely abandoned by the grace of light. It dragged our complicit relationship down into the depths of a mire where light could never reach.
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GOOOOOOONG——.
Suddenly‚ a heavy bell sound that shook the silence of the Royal Academy from the pit of the stomach echoed.
It was not a mere time signal. A horrifying low-frequency vibration that crawled up the cold stone walls and from the soles of the feet to the spine. It was the overture of a cold countdown sounded by the temple to begin the kingdom's 'ritual.'
「……It's begun. Their horrifying casting ritual that turns lives into inorganic coins to maintain their 'beautiful peace.'」
In a monochrome world that had lost all color‚ only that sound possessed physical mass and shook the dust in the air.
Behind me‚ I sensed Mina sharply catching her breath. I wondered how she saw me now—standing in the center of this gray world‚ smiling distortedly at the void. Surely I appeared not as a savior but too pitch-black‚ and not quite monstrous enough but too fragile—an unidentified 'foreign object' that bugs the laws of the world.
「……Louie. You're really going‚ aren't you? If Senior Kyle or Lady Elise finds you‚ it won't end with just an execution.」
「The background is crashing the stage. I've already accounted for some production troubles.」
Without even turning to face Mina‚ I gazed toward the end of the corridor continuing from the library tower. There lay the deepest abyss of the temple‚ where the darkness was thickest and the 'laws' were most firmly guarded.
The Fourth Tier curse had completely stripped the colors of reality from my retinas. But in exchange‚ the 'afterimages' that my brain circuits drew on their own were more vivid than ever‚ tethering me to the gruesome battlefield called reality.
At the usual dead end of the corridor‚ Elina stood there‚ her blue ribbon swaying and holding a basket of baked sweets.
I knew it was an illusion. Yet my mad vision continued to reflect that child not as the 'Oracle Shrine Maiden' offering her body‚ but as the girl who had always smiled beside me. That alone was enough.
「Wait for me‚ Elise.…… The ink to defile your official history has already accumulated plenty.」
I clenched my right hand‚ from which jet-black ink dripped‚ so tightly it felt like it would gouge.
The coldness of the medicine capsule sunk in my pocket and the flesh-burning heat branded by Elina's residual thoughts. Those two contradictory textures mixed viscously inside my imperfect vessel‚ sublimating into a lethal dose of poison that would destroy the world.
One step forward.
This was not the march of a shining knight like Kyle. It was the first step of an invader crawling from the bottom of the mire—to devour all the wishes‚ screams‚ and the heart of the girl named Elina without leaving anything behind‚ and bite into the throat of the world.
「……Let's go. To pour a lethal dose of ink into the beautiful lies.」
The boundary line of twilight completely vanished‚ and the world was painted over in jet-black.
Toward the 'laws of the world' waiting at the altar of the sacred ritual in the depths of that darkness‚ stripped of the grace of light‚ I quietly yet decisively engraved a declaration of war in my heart and quickened my steps into the depths of the darkness.
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Chapter 07 "Mina's Confession and the Footsteps of the Ritual" Complete
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