Chapter 173
The voice offered no answer.
So Daphne instead slowly approached her own body—that is, the now-cold form of Sellus.
Undeniably her own body, a body that had lived through a span of time too long to even count, hers by every right, and yet, seeing it from this distance now… how to put it, it felt like something other than herself entirely. Like an unfamiliar being altogether. Daphne let out another hollow laugh.
“So returning to the dragon’s body means everything turns out happy, and continuing to live in this human body means…”
[You’ll die.]
Only then did the voice answer, firm and resolute.
[You already know this, don’t you. That body is nothing but a curse, and that curse grows stronger and more pronounced with every passing moment. Even suppressed by your own soul, it will only buy you a little more time. You will inevitably die.]
Daphne stared steadily into the empty air the voice was coming from. As though the source of the sound existed somewhere in that exact spot, she stared fixedly, unwaveringly, on and on… And then Daphne’s mouth opened.
“To think the very one who birthed this body would say such a thing. You’re quite the cold one yourself.”
Before Daphne had even finished speaking, the empty air before her began to distort wildly. The owner of the voice, no doubt, trembling.
“I know you’re Elise. This body’s mother.”
The voice offered no answer. But Daphne’s expression remained perfectly composed. Daphne tapped her own head and said.
“A spirit capable of speaking like this should be capable of materializing too. Come out. Better to talk face to face.”
Daphne shot a glance toward Shio, standing some distance away. Shio, who had been anxiously watching the situation unfold, quickly raised the mana density of the surrounding air, and slowly, a sphere of light began gathering before Daphne.
Whoosh—
Despite standing in a sealed-off cave, a cool breeze blew through. Daphne lifted her head, feeling the chill brush against her cheek.
Before her stood a woman with shimmering silver hair flowing down.
“You’re quite faint.”
Daphne said, studying the woman’s form.
For a departed soul to wish to remain, and to actually manage it, required a tremendous amount of power.
Which was why most souls, unable to hold onto this world, inevitably passed on. But Elise had somehow clung to this world for over a decade now, which likely explained why she appeared this drained of strength.
[The first thing you say to your mother, and this is it. You really are yourself, through and through.]
Elise said, with a faint smile, and Daphne’s brow furrowed.
“Mother? You said mother?”
[Of course. I am that body’s mother, so naturally, that makes you my daughter, doesn’t it?]
“…”
Suddenly, the center of her chest tightened and ached. A strange sensation. A strange feeling, too. Daphne shook her head.
“No, no. That doesn’t even make sense to begin with.”
Daphne said, studying Elise’s gaunt face, the pallor plainly betraying just how much suffering she must have endured before death..
“This body is nothing but a lump of curses. And I am simply a soul that happened to end up here by chance. So it’s quite a stretch to call yourself my mother.”
Elise’s expression turned complicated. A faint spirit though she was, the discontent in her expression was still clear enough to make out.
“So tell me, why exactly are you so desperate to send me back into that body, that Sellus? Do you regret giving birth to that curse, now that it’s come to this?”
[That’s not it…]
“Or is it that the filthy Calamity intruding into the body you gave birth to enrages you? Is that why you keep telling me to go back?”
Daphne clenched her fist tight and spoke, nearly shouting. It was strange. Strangely, she felt furious.
As though the woman claiming to be Daphne’s mother had appeared before her only to say, you are not Daphne, so hurry and leave that body at once.
As though she were condemning her, calling her a liar, saying she had no right to live in that body, no right to call her family her family.
“Fine. My apologies, then, for forcibly taking over this body. But if the hero hadn’t sealed me away, none of this would ever have happened!”
Daphne shouted, dragging in even Heros’s long-forgotten wrongdoing as though offering an excuse. At that, Elise’s expression darkened further.
[Daphne.]
“I am not Daphne.”
[No, no. You are Daphne.]
Elise took a step closer to Daphne. Daphne’s shoulders curled inward slightly.
[Mortality is merely life, but the soul is immortal.]
“…What?”
[In other words, the soul lives on forever, repeating birth and death endlessly.]
Elise crouched down before Daphne. She looked up at Daphne steadily. Even as a mere spirit, the dampness at the corners of her eyes was unmistakable.
[You,]
Elise smiled as though on the verge of tears.
[were always the soul meant to come to me.]
Daphne’s eyes went wide.
Meant to come to her—in other words, she had been the soul destined to be born as Elise’s own child.
What did that even…!
“Ah. I understand now.”
At that moment, Shio, who had been struggling all this while to make sense of the situation, murmured.
“So then, the soul that was originally meant to be born as Lady Elise’s child was intercepted by the dragons and placed into Sellus’s body instead. Even a mere receptacle for causal fate would still need a soul… so they kidnapped a soul that still had time left before its birth.”
[That’s right.]
Elise nodded, then turned her gaze back to Daphne.
[Which is why you couldn’t come to me, through no fault of your own…]
And she raised a hand to Daphne’s cheek. But being a mere spirit, flesh could not touch flesh. Her hand simply hovered in empty air.
[Fate, as it always does, finds a way to bring people together in the end. Doesn’t it?]
Watching Elise speak instead in that gentle voice, Daphne pressed a hand to her forehead. Her head spun.
It wasn’t that she failed to understand the words. Of course she understood. It meant, in short, that the dragons had stolen a soul to place inside Sellus when they created her.
She understood it.
But what she couldn’t understand was Elise, standing right before her now, tears streaming down her face.
[You are my daughter.]
Elise, seemingly unable to bear the emotion welling up within her, dropped her gaze, looked away, reached out a hand to try to hold Daphne, then, unable to help it, stared bitterly at her own hand passing straight through, before smiling once more and speaking.
[So it’s only right that your name is Daphne. Isn’t it?]
Daphne stared blankly at Elise.
That she had a mother.
Honestly, it was hard to believe. No—how could she possibly believe it? She had already spent hundreds of years alone. And had believed she would remain alone forever, into eternity.
The talk of some people being sad for never having known their parents’ faces had always struck her as an indulgent complaint, one she had no patience for. She herself had known nothing at all—how she’d been born, why she’d been born, why she’d had to live the life she had.
And when she finally did learn her own origin, it had been something so bleak, so nearly horrifying, that she had done her best to ignore it and simply live on regardless.
And yet,
‘Mother, she said.’
Daphne stared blankly at Elise. Elise was crying, and yet the smile never once left her lips.
“Then why…”
Daphne asked, almost unconsciously.
“Why are you trying to make me abandon this body?”
Looking down at her face, so similar to her own, she asked again.
“Why are you trying to make me give up being your daughter?”
Strangely, she felt as though she might cry.
Why did she feel so betrayed.
Why did this feel so unbearably sad.
It was truly strange.
