Her breath came out in thin, trembling wisps.
What if I’ve actually lost Ricador out here?
Would she have to stay completely still until daylight? And what if some monster suddenly came leaping out of the darkness?
Having survived more than a few traumatic encounters in forests, Riersha felt her body begin to shake uncontrollably.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and the mana that had been lying dormant inside her lurched awake, spiraling upward like a sudden whirlpool.
“Huh…?”
Riersha hunched over and stared at her hands in bewilderment, opening and closing her fingers.
What is this?
Mana was rising from her body at a terrifying speed.
It poured out of her in explosive waves, as though her very life force were draining away with it.
She stared at the spectacle, completely at a loss.
Soap bubbles bloomed throughout the forest — dozens of them, hundreds — colliding with one another and bursting, over and over again.
Why won’t it stop?
The energy draining from her made her head spin.
One thing was unmistakable: the mana coursing through her body felt vivid and real in a way it never had before. Every pulse, every current — she could feel it all with startling clarity.
This was everything she had ever wished for.
The problem was that the mana was careening wildly out of control.
It was rioting in response to her emotions, driven into a frenzy by her fear.
What am I supposed to do right now?
Riersha was completely at a loss. She hadn’t anticipated anything like this.
Just as panic began to tip into genuine terror — what if something goes terribly wrong? —
“Riersha!”
“…D-Daddy?”
She looked up. Pernoa was rushing toward her, his face drained white with alarm — and behind him, equally pale, was Ricador.
Pernoa took in her condition in an instant. His expression hardened into something frightening, and his features twisted with the look of a man terrified of losing something irreplaceable.
Even as her consciousness began to blur at the edges, his urgent voice cut through the haze and found her.
“It’s all right — just take hold of your mana, Riersha!”
Take hold of it. But how?
The question drifted through her fading mind.
“Calm down and stop the flow. If it keeps draining like this—!”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t have to. Riersha understood instinctively what came next.
And she could see, with an almost unbearable clarity, how his face crumpled with grief at being the one who might have to say it aloud.
Because of her greed — because she had wanted so desperately to surprise everyone —
She had made the people she loved look like that.
Riersha choked on a sob, and then the tears came pouring out of her.
“I’m sowwy… Daddy. I’m so sowwy. I won’t do it again, I pwomise…”
The moment she broke down crying and begged for forgiveness, Pernoa pulled her into his arms.
His hand moved in slow, gentle circles across her back — and to her astonishment, the mana began to settle.
But the tears would not stop.
The instant she had seen his face, she understood exactly what she had done. The realization hit her heart like a stone dropping into deep water.
“Riersha did somefing bad… I’m sowwy, Daddy. I’m weally sowwy…”
“…Hah.”
She heard something escape him — a long, slow exhale. Like a breath he had been holding for a very long time. Even through the haze clouding her senses, that sound reached her clearly.
Ricador must have been so frightened too…
Her body was giving out. As Pernoa caught her and pulled her close, she caught a glimpse of Ricador over his shoulder — frozen in place, his face rigid with shock.
Riersha parted her lips as if to say something.
Then the world went dark.
⁂
When Riersha opened her eyes again, a full day had passed.
Sona, her eyes swollen from crying, rushed to her side the moment she stirred and began checking her over anxiously.
“Miss Riersha, are you all right? Does anything hurt?”
“Mm, I’m okay. I’m awake.” She blinked slowly. “Where are Daddy and Brother Ricador?”
“Ah… the Young Duke is waiting outside, and as for Young Master Ricador…”
Sona’s expression clouded, and that alone told Riersha that things weren’t going well for her brother.
“But it wasn’t Ricador’s fault.”
“It seems someone else agrees with you.”
The door swung open, and Pernoa walked in.
Behind him trailed a man with hollow, shadowed eyes — someone who looked as though he hadn’t slept in days. The moment he saw Riersha sitting upright, he clasped both hands together and drew a shaking breath.
“Oh — oh, thank goodness. Thank you for waking up, Miss Riersha. Truly. Thank you.”
It was the Arachrene family’s personal physician.
From the look of the dark circles carved beneath his eyes, whatever he had endured while she was unconscious had not been easy.
He immediately set about examining her condition, and after a long, thorough assessment, he pulled back with an expression of pure bewilderment.
“Well… this is extraordinary.”
Pernoa reacted sharply to the man’s tone.
“Explain.”
“Miss Riersha’s mana…” The physician shook his head slowly. “It’s flowing with remarkable stability. Rather than the disruption we feared from the surge, it has settled into her body — perfectly. Completely.”
“…Stable?” Pernoa’s brow furrowed. “That shouldn’t be possible.”
The physician, who had served the ducal family for many years, reached back into his memory and nodded with certainty.
“I examined her condition at birth, my lord. At that time, her mana was profoundly unstable. But now… it’s as though this is how it was always meant to be. She is entirely at ease.”
He was right.
Riersha noticed it herself — a lightness in her body that hadn’t been there before. She could feel the mana moving through her, steady and warm, as natural as breathing.
She was exploring it curiously, nudging it this way and that, when Pernoa looked down at her and let out a long sigh.
“You’ve caused more trouble than both your brothers combined.”
“…I’m sowwy.”
Riersha’s voice shrank to almost nothing. She burrowed under the blankets as if she could disappear entirely, then peeked out to gauge Pernoa’s expression before quietly asking the question that had been sitting heaviest on her mind.
“Where is Brother Ricador?”
“Resting right now. After that, he’ll be receiving his punishment.”
Sneaking out of the annex past midnight without permission was bad enough — but placing Riersha in danger was another matter entirely. The punishment was deserved.
Pernoa’s brow creased. The last time he had seen Ricador, the boy had looked dreadful. It weighed on him more than he let show.
Riersha, feeling responsible for putting her brother in such a position, murmured in a small voice.
“But it really wasn’t his fault. I was the one who asked him to take me with him.”
“What a close pair of siblings.”
The tension between Pernoa’s brows eased, and he gave her a quiet smile.
Riersha turned her head to one side. His steady, searching gaze made her cheeks prickle with warmth.
“Don’t worry yourself, Riersha,” he said. “You’ll be receiving a punishment as well.”
“P-punishment?”
She startled, gripping the blanket tightly with both fists.
What kind of punishment?
Beside her, Sona was wearing a quietly anxious expression.
It must be something terrible.
Riersha swallowed nervously, bracing herself —
“You’ll write a letter of reflection by hand and bring it to me yourself.”
Pernoa reached out and flicked her lightly on the forehead. It didn’t hurt in the slightest.
Riersha, a beat too slow, brought her hand up to cover the spot and pulled a face as though she were mortally wounded.
“The drama,” he said flatly.
He let out a short, helpless laugh.
Riersha stared at that laugh for a moment, wide-eyed and a little dazed — then broke into a grin and laughed along with him.
⁂
In the quiet hours before dawn, when Riersha had finally fallen into a deep and peaceful sleep, Pernoa and Sona slipped out of the room together.
Neither of them had let anything show in front of the child, but the physician’s words were still ringing in both their minds.
Sona spoke first, her voice low and serious.
“My lord… what the physician said just now—”
“Yes.” Pernoa’s voice was measured. “It seems someone tampered with Riersha’s mana.”
There was no other explanation for what they were seeing. Someone had deliberately interfered with Riersha while she was still in the womb.
Children who survived a mana surge were supposed to be left unstable afterward. Their mana would never quite settle. And more often than not, their lives would begin to unravel — one surge following another, each one worse than the last.
When Pernoa had seen Riersha in the forest, her mana running wild, it had felt as though the ground had dropped out from under him.
He knew she had been growing anxious about her inability to control her abilities. He had known — and he hadn’t warned her in time. The regret of that sat like a wound inside him.
Ricador had been so overcome with guilt and terror that he had briefly lost all composure. That alone was enough to convey how grave a mana surge truly was.
And yet — against every expectation — Riersha had defied the pattern entirely.
Rather than being left shattered by the experience, her mana had steadied itself almost immediately after the surge. It was settling, rapidly and cleanly, into something whole.
“Which means,” Pernoa said quietly, “that something has been obstructing the natural flow of Riersha’s mana all this time.”
“Yes, my lord.” Sona’s expression was grave. “I believe so as well.”
