The following day, at noon.
Three hundred of the Holy Knight Order’s finest gathered at the staging grounds on the outskirts of the capital, standing in taut, precise formation.
“Attention! The Commander will speak before departure!”
Leon’s adjutant, Karim, called out in a booming voice.
Leon stood beside him in silence, listening — or pretending to listen — as Commander Alex began his thunderous address.
His mind was not there. It had not stopped replaying the events of the previous night, looping them over and again without rest.
Leon. I was the one who broke the seal on that mana stone. The one that cursed you.
You were used by me.
Leon had heard every word Kasha said.
He had not been awake from the beginning. Watching Kasha lose herself in her work, he had slipped into a shallow doze. And at some point, he had found himself observing his own dream from the outside.
The Leon in the dream looked about eleven years old.
He had just returned from a full day of classes at the Academy and gone straight to the piano before dinner. He had to finish playing before his mother and father came home — they would be angry if they found him at it.
The time he spent at the piano before supper was the only rest he allowed himself. The only time he wanted left entirely undisturbed.
Academy classes were not difficult, but the boy was always tired.
The girls who flocked around him with admiring eyes, the boys who burned with envy and issued challenges at the drop of a hat only to break down crying after being defeated — all of them wore him out.
His cousins, Nigel and Melissa, attended the same Academy. But as they entered their teens, they had begun to treat Leon with increasing distance. Nigel especially seemed to view Leon as a rival for no particular reason, and would create awkward tensions with unsettling frequency.
I’ve never taken anything from you.
Leon had wanted to say it, but he knew by then that those words would no longer serve. Things were always going to keep changing.
He lifted the piano lid with a somber expression.
The door cracked open then, and a small silver-haired boy peered inside.
Leon… you’re back. You’re late today.
Leon wrapped seven-year-old Anthony in a tight hug. His younger brother, who spent three or four days of every week in bed, was still smaller and more fragile than other children his age.
Anthony, however, squirmed free. He had never been comfortable with physical affection.
He looked up at Leon with those watchful eyes.
What did you learn at the Academy today?
Swordsmanship. Mathematics. Astronomy.
…That sounds nice.
Leon smiled and ruffled his brother’s silver hair.
Already impatient for the Academy at seven years old. How remarkable will you be when you grow up.
Anthony heard the encouragement and only stared at him with smooth, unreadable eyes.
He’d been running a fever for days, apparently. Leon placed his hand on the boy’s forehead and let sacred power flow.
Anthony felt it and glanced up at his hand.
You’re lucky, Leon.
How so?
You’re healthy. You’re clever. And you have sacred power.
You’re far cleverer than I am. And much prettier, too.
Leon kept his focus on directing the sacred power while teasing back lightly.
But the voice that came back was more serious.
Leon.
Mm?
Give me one thing.
…What?
The golden warmth flowing from Leon’s hand faltered.
Leon looked down at the green eyes watching him with a sudden, unsettling steadiness.
What did you say, Anthony?
You have everything. So can’t you give that woman to me?
A chill shot down his spine.
What are you… saying, Anthony?
Leon asked, but Anthony gave no answer.
The small, pale face before him seemed to shift — slowly, subtly at first, and then with greater certainty, until the face of his brother from days ago at the picnic outing was layered over it — the intense gaze Anthony had fixed on Kasha.
Wait. Days ago?
Just one thing. It’s fine, isn’t it, Leon.
Dream and reality tangled inextricably. Anthony’s face blurred and ran like wet plaster, losing all recognizable shape.
Anthony!
He tried to call out the name, but his throat was sealed, nothing coming through. He strained against it but could not move — as though bound.
Then it came.
Something cool touched his forehead. A scent — without color or weight, yet endlessly soothing — drifted in and filled his lungs.
Kasha…?
The name rose in him, and the nightmare released.
He could not open his eyes immediately. Careful, careful hands were moving through his hair and across his brow.
This, too, seemed like it might be a dream — the kind that presses on the chest with tender, aching certainty.
If this is a dream too, I hope I never wake from this one.
But the sleep retreated like a tide, swifter than he wished.
The truth was, feeling Kasha’s cool and soft hand against his skin and remaining unconscious was simply not possible. He lay still and considered how to let her know he was awake without startling her.
And then her voice reached him.
Leon. I was the one who broke the seal on that mana stone. The one that cursed you.
He could not say it had come as a complete surprise.
It had always been clear that Kasha was deeply connected to the mana stone in some way. But hearing the confession from her own lips — that was different.
The last of his drowsiness left him.
What she wanted to confess was plain enough. She had broken the seal on the stone. She had approached him from the beginning to take it back. And her message was: stop letting yourself be led around by someone like me.
But could one really call this a warning? With a voice that trembled like that, words so desperate and raw?
Don’t put yourself in danger. Don’t get hurt.
Her voice had been so achingly earnest it left a hollow ache in whoever heard it.
This was not pity. It was not a performance of guilt. She was afraid of something — genuinely, deeply afraid. She was worried.
As though she had already seen him hurt.
But what struck him hardest was what she had said last.
And — absolutely, never, never die. Not in this life. Never.
Not in this life.
Leon murmured it to himself. Beside him, his adjutant Karim shot him a sideways glance. Leon ignored it and stayed lost in thought.
What did she mean by that? Not in this life — never die?
Too heavy, too precise a phrase to dismiss as mishearing. The emotion threading through her voice in that moment had been too deep, too true.
There had been a profound grief in it.
It was like—
The day he had first met Kasha. At the Tyrot ducal ball — the weight in her gaze when she had looked at him for the first time.
A gaze too heavy, too sorrowful to belong to someone meeting a stranger for the first time.
Kasha. What are you?
And yet — even after hearing her confession, instead of clarity, his mind had grown only more complicated.
His feelings, however, had become clearer.
Don’t put yourself in danger. Don’t get hurt. Never die.
Whatever history she carried — in that moment, her desire for him to live had been real.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s pity or guilt.
Leon thought: as long as you are afraid for me, I have every reason to survive. I will come back. I will protect you. So just—
“Sir Leon! Are you not listening to me?”
Commander Alex’s shout snapped him out of his thoughts. He raised his head with an expression of mild irritation.
And in that next moment, every member of the Holy Knight Order witnessed something they had never seen in all their years of service.
Their flawless Vice Commander, Leon Aranias, standing there with his mouth hanging open, more completely at a loss than he had ever been in his entire career.
Even stumbling over his own words.
“What are — why are you here?”
But he had every reason to be.
Because Kasha Rüschino was standing before him, on the very grounds from which he was about to depart.
She wore dark travel clothes fitted close to her slender frame, a plain cape with the hood pulled low — but it was unmistakably her.
The very person who had occupied every corner of his thoughts until moments ago.
As though sensing his bewilderment, Kasha approached with a composed expression and extended one hand toward him.
He remembered the soft warmth of those fingers — still sharp in his memory — and he flinched.
Commander Alex’s voice rang out again.
“She has joined the expedition as the device’s manufacturer. She will be overseeing instruction in the use of the devices during the journey. Go on and introduce yourselves — what are you waiting for?”
There was, if he wasn’t imagining it, a trace of amusement in that shout.
Leon reached out and took Kasha’s small hand, helpless against his own surprise.
Beneath the hood, her vivid rose-pink eyes met his plainly.
The cool, fresh touch of her skin against his palm was what finally jolted him back to full awareness.
“Hold on. You’re joining the expedition? You?”
“…I look forward to working with you, Vice Commander Leon.”
As though she were teasing him, Kasha completed the formality swiftly and stepped back.
Before Leon could process any more of the situation, Commander Alex’s voice rolled across the staging grounds like a thunderclap.
“Depart at once! Return having lifted high the name of our God! The glory of the divine upon the earth!”
“The glory of the divine upon the earth!”
The knights’ cry shook the ground beneath their feet.
