So Se lu, Ec I nes flan-I-dizis.
Your world is cold and dark.
Be-lit E yum haul getis corna-Te-xeo noi bie phia,
There, you start a flame that burns itself out, hiz mis cia dia noi bie flow lef Ec girid.
but in the glow of your light, someone will surely begin to walk forward.
PROLOGUE 1
End of the Zoa
The Zoa are gone.
Those words echoed in her mind over and over again, like the toll of a church bell.
“Impossible…”
She was Shanorotte Gregory.
Born with a powerful constitution and strong astral powers, she had volunteered herself for a mission to infiltrate the barbaric Imperial forces. That was to say, she had lived her life as a perpetual spy, leaking Imperial secrets to the Sovereignty.
But at that moment…
…she could only watch as the Zoa’s most elite members were hauled off by the Imperial forces one by one.
None of her compatriots so much as resisted. She was unsure whether they were dead or simply unconscious. The ten or so of her allies who had disguised themselves as businesspeople were carted into the aircraft.
They were now prisoners of war.
……What happened?
……We were supposed to rendezvous here! What happened to them all?!
Imperial territory, eighth checkpoint. The Zoa had planned to infiltrate this checkpoint and enter the Imperial capital. But by the time Shanorotte arrived, everyone involved in the operation had been taken into custody.
Among the prisoners was a man wearing a metal mask.
Lord Mask On.
He was the temporary head of the Zoa household and the mastermind of the Imperial invasion plan. Yet now he was a captive of the very Empire that had been the target of his subterfuge. Even he was being dragged off.
Only a single noteworthy member of the Zoa was missing: Princess Kissing, their secret weapon. Shanorotte couldn’t imagine the girl would flee on her own.
“What happened here…?”
She was near the entrance of the eighth checkpoint.
Just watching from the brush was already as much as she was capable of. The shock had left her weak in the knees. Then she lost the ability to even hold herself up, and her legs gave way.
“We lost…?”
Everything seemed to fall away. In that moment, the loyalty and absolute trust she had built up for the Zoa, one of the three Nebulis royal families, dropped off like collapsing building blocks.
They had lost.
She had no way of knowing what had transpired, but the Zoa had likely been defeated by the Imperial forces.
In other words, by their sworn enemy.
“…”
Her vision grew blurry.
And…
“Ah… Ha-ha…”
A dry, self-deprecating laugh escaped her lips.
“We were idiots… What was the point of everything I’ve done…? I disguised myself as a despicable Imperial and even acted as a spy in the forces… I did my part.”
She had done everything she could.
Despite being from the Sovereignty, she had lived as one of the very Imperials she despised.
She had pretended to be one of the abominable people who called her kind—the astral mages—witches.
She had endured the mortification.
Shanorotte had even helped the Imperials attempt to secure the vortex in Mudor Canyon. During the operation, she led an advance unit as an Imperial commanding officer and leaked the forces’ movements to the Zoa. The mission had been extremely dangerous, yet her loyalty to the Zoa had compelled her to see it through.
But now all her suffering meant nothing.
“Must be nice, being in the Imperial forces right now…”
She stifled a cackle and watched as the aircraft carrying the Zoa’s elite forces took off one after another.
“Looks like the Imperial forces ended up being superior to the Zoa family after all…”
She couldn’t allow any deed to go unpunished.
She couldn’t excuse the Imperial forces, of course, but the upper echelons of the Zoa family weren’t innocent, either.
This was her error.
She had believed that martyring herself to the Zoa’s cause would eventually allow her to take revenge on the Imperials, yet they were annihilated just as their goal was in sight.
The royal family and the purebred types—all of them.
She never should have believed them.
All useless.
The members of the royal family were simply mages who had been born with stronger astral powers. But one could only be so ill-prepared for a battle. Had she known what folly that would lead to, she never would have followed them in the first place.
“Guess I’ll just go it alone…”
She planted a hand on her knee, rising unsteadily to her feet.
The Imperial forces had left. Some personnel had stayed behind to staff the checkpoint, but she could easily slip past them.
She would go all on her own into the Empire.
“Well, who’ll I take down with me…?”
Her allegiance to the Nebulis’s royalty ended there.
But her desire for revenge against the Empire would be everlasting.
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