Unnamed Memory - Volume 4 - Chapter 8

8. Answerless Prayer

A slightly cloudy sky hung over the white castle.

The dilution to the sun’s potent rays made for comparatively pleasant weather for Farsas.

In a corner of the training grounds, Oscar reached a stopping point in Tinasha’s practice and drew his sword back. Frowning curiously, he said, “You’ve got the basic techniques down.”

“Before I became queen, I had a bit of an intensive crash course,” she admitted, readjusting her grip on her practice sword and checking its feel. It was a little heavy, something that had always bothered her. She used magic to enhance her arm strength and made a few practice swings.

“Did someone from Farsas teach you?” Oscar inquired.

“What?! How did you know?”

“Your basic techniques are the traditional ones from my country’s school of combat. I used to employ them, too,” he explained.

“Whoa, you can tell from that? Yes, you’re right,” she admitted. Naturally, her basics were the traditional Farsas ones—Oscar had been the one to teach them to her.

Tinasha giggled, and he eyed her suspiciously. “How commendable of your former instructor to teach swordplay to a natural-born mage.”

“Ah-ha-ha. He was a strict teacher but a very nice person. He was so dashing, and I learned a lot from him,” recalled Tinasha, her dark eyes glowing with deep affection, which annoyed Oscar for some reason.

She slashed at him experimentally, and he parried her sword away as he muttered sarcastically, “I wish he would have done something about that recklessness of yours since he took the time to tutor you. You’re an adult now, and you need to learn to work with others.”

No sooner had the words left Oscar’s lips than he realized he’d made a mistake. Anyone who taught Tinasha before she took the throne had to be dead now. He opened his mouth to apologize but broke off when he heard the woman laughing. She was doubled over as though he’d said something truly hilarious.

“Get mad at me like you always do. I don’t know what’s so funny…,” he insisted.

“Oh, n-no, don’t mind me…” Tinasha gasped, still shaking with amusement.

He gave her one glance and then clapped her on the shoulder with the flat of his blade. “As you get more actual battle experience, I think you’ll really improve. You’ve got good reflexes. Still, you’re weak, so don’t take an enemy strike head-on.”

“Understood.”

“I’ll try to check your progress every day, but you don’t need me—ask Als to practice with you,” Oscar advised, turning back to glance at the clock embedded into the outer castle wall. It was about time for him to be getting back. He walked up to Tinasha and patted her head. “That was some good exercise.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile, taking his practice sword from him.

Oscar tore his eyes away from that graceful smile before it could swallow him. “All right, I’m heading back. See you.”

“I’ll come to make tea for you later,” Tinasha replied, waving good-bye to him. Immediately, a certain presence that had been waiting behind her this entire time appeared.

Another man’s voice sounded in her ear, low and taunting. “Well now, isn’t this an interesting thing you’re doing.”

She half smiled, without turning around. She replied calmly, “He’ll get mad if he finds out you’re here. Why did you save me?”

“Don’t sweat the small stuff. I do like strong opponents, but you can still get better. Work at it until we’re evenly matched in a fight. And don’t slack off, got it?”

“I think that will take a very long time…”

“Don’t complain. Maybe I’ll train him up, too; that sounds fun.”

“Stop it. Don’t involve him.”

There was a snort, and then the presence at her back vanished.

Sighing at the whims of her acquaintance, Tinasha left the training area to put the swords away. She never looked back.

Upon returning to his mansion, the man shrugged off his mage’s robe and sank into a chair. Gazing at the ceiling, he let out a deep sigh. A cup of tea was immediately placed before him, which he accepted with a smile.

The girl who gave it to him leaned against the armrest of his chair. “How did it go, Valt?”

“Both failed. They were caught. And here the timing is right and everything.”

“That’s because you used careless humans. We need to get a better pawn.”

“If I train a good one up, people find out about it. All we can do is take it easy. We’re still in the warm-up match,” Valt remarked breezily.

Miralys pursed her lips in dissatisfaction. “Will that really be all right?”

“Yes. No matter how powerful she is, it’s far preferable to when she was a witch. She’s considerably less experienced, now,” Valt explained, flashing Miralys a gentle, reassuring smile.

The wheel of fate had only just started to spin, very slowly.

Even if things got tough in the days to come, he saw nothing that would cause him to lose.

Valt was watching things play out from overhead, rather than down in the streets.

And he believed wholeheartedly that he could see the ending he longed for ahead.

Absorbed in her curse analysis, Tinasha didn’t notice the rapping at her door. After several more knocks, she finally answered, opening the door to find Oscar there. “Oh, is it already time for practice? Sorry I didn’t notice.”

“No, it’s not that. A tailor has come, and you’ve been summoned. Let’s go and take a look,” he said.

“A tailor?” Tinasha echoed, following after him.

The king explained to his international guest, “Every so often, a tailor comes to the castle with fabrics. I’m going to order some clothes.”

“Oh, I see…”

“She usually arrives much sooner, but apparently she spent a long time buying up her stock this year.”

“Huh. This is my first time with something like this,” admitted Tinasha.

Once Oscar brought Tinasha to the chamber where the tailor had been granted, he pushed her toward the dressmaker. “All right, measure her from head to toe.”

“Why?!” Tinasha protested.

“How else will she make you clothes?”

“I—I guess, but…,” Tinasha muttered, not quite sold on the idea as the tailor began to take her measurements. Oscar observed the process, quite entertained.

The two of them and the tailor were the only ones in the room filled with bolts of luxurious fabrics, but as Tinasha’s torture by measurement wore on, Als showed up with some documents for Oscar. Doan and Sylvia also popped in looking for Tinasha, a book on magic in hand.

Tinasha flipped through the tome and answered their questions as the tailor went about her work. “In Tuldarr, there’s a number of volumes explaining this. I’ll bring them with me next time.”

“Please do,” Doan said with a bow. No sooner had he done so than the dressmaker finally released Tinasha.

Oscar scrutinized the list of measurements with keen interest while Tinasha frowned unhappily. “Don’t look at that…”

“You really are stick thin. Not much muscle on you, either,” he remarked.

“That’s just how I’m built.”

“Well, you do look skinnier in clothes. You’re actually pretty curvy when you’re undressed.”

“Just who benefits from you making misleading statements like that?!” she exclaimed, her face bright red as she threw a punch at him.

“Well, I’m amused,” Oscar replied, catching her fist easily in his palm.

Als, Doan, and Sylvia wore expressions that were difficult to describe.

In a stormy mood, Tinasha summoned sealing ornaments to her. Keeping one eye on the young woman, Oscar picked out fabrics and started to hand them to the dressmaker. Once Tinasha had put on five sealing ornaments, she gave a resigned sigh. “Do I need to have clothes made for something?”

“No, it’s just what I’m into. You’ve been complaining about the heat lately, and you only wear light, casual outfits,” he said.

“It really is so hot here… Can I make some requests of my own?”

“Go for it. If you place an order now, it should be done by the time you go back. If it’s not, I’ll have it sent to you,” Oscar said, which made Tinasha remember that, in two months, she had to return to Tuldarr for her coronation. With all the recent events, time had passed in a flash.

“T-two months left… Will I finish in time?” she wondered absentmindedly.

“Don’t worry about it so much. You can do it anytime.”

“No, I can’t,” Tinasha insisted. Her original schedule was already strict, but the attack on Legis had delayed the process for more than a month. However, after she had extracted the configuration of the enchantment placed on him, her curse analysis was going much faster. Still, it was extremely difficult, and she’d had to stop many times to think.

If the spell that she once saw was really one she had crafted herself, then recognizing the quirks in her other self’s spell craft should have proved invaluable. Yet that was not the case. While Tinasha did pick out pieces that truly were like her, the majority of the array was crafted to align with the blessing spell the witch had originally placed on him.

Perhaps I simply need to give it more effort, she thought, which was when Oscar placed a hand on top of her head knowingly.

“You’ve started sword practice, so keep up with it. Two to three hours a day will be good,” he said.

“…Thank you,” she replied, looking up at him and giving him a somewhat pained smile as she nodded.

Oscar instructed the tailor to prioritize Tinasha’s order, then declined to have measurements taken for his own garments. Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered. Instead, he looked through the documents Als had brought. When he got to the last page, a frown creased his handsome features. “This looks like it’ll be a pain.”

“Once we’ve had trusted people make a list of all the artifacts, we will seal off the underground labyrinth,” Als said.

“The underground labyrinth?!”

It was Tinasha who cried out wildly upon hearing that. The master of the castle and his three vassals all looked sour.

“Wow. There’s an underground labyrinth here? I want to see it,” she said.

“You’ll die,” Oscar replied.

“What?” asked Tinasha, unsure what he meant. Still, charmed by the idea of a subterranean maze, she pressed the issue. “Where’s the entrance?”

“The treasure vault.”

“Huh…?” Tinasha was baffled. It seemed unusual that a repository of valuables led to such a place, but this was a foreign country, after all. Tuldarr kept its treasure vault underground, so perhaps it was normal in Farsas to have a labyrinth beneath the sod instead.

As she mulled it over, Oscar explained. “Thieves broke into the treasure vault forty years ago. They escaped without anyone finding out what they stole. The king at the time…my grandfather, he bitterly regretted it and built a secret passage leading out of the castle from the vault.”

“What? Why would that lead him to build a secret passage?” questioned Tinasha.

“As bait for more thieves to sneak in. The passage was made into a maze filled with traps. It’s set up meticulously so that once someone enters, no one can open the door to it for a full day, except for royal family members. However, no one can open the door from the inside during that time. The design only allows two to three people in at once,” Oscar detailed.

“What was he thinking?” Tinasha said with disbelief.

“Maybe he thought it a game? I wish he’d organized and catalogued everything inside the vault instead… He was an odd one,” Oscar remarked.

The wild tale made Tinasha admit, “I can see how you’re related to him…”

“What was that?” Oscar said.

“Don’t pinch my cheek!” she cried, rubbing her reddened face and leaping away.

Als seized his chance to interject. “Is it really all right to seal off the labyrinth? The contents are still a total unknown.”

“Hmm, yeah…,” Oscar replied.

“Is there something inside?” Tinasha wanted to know.

“We don’t know,” Oscar stated, scratching his head in annoyance. “Ever since the labyrinth was built, no one’s gone inside. It’d be a problem if someone found their way into the treasure vault. The construction work was divided among craftsmen who only knew their own section, and the chief mage who was privy to the entire maze’s design is dead. It’s admittedly unpleasant, but there’s tales of a ghost craftsman who perished inside the labyrinth, although there’s no record of any such death.”

Sylvia covered her ears, shivering at such an unsettling story.

Musing on what she’d just heard, Tinasha tilted her head to one side. “This castle has quite the history.”

“Yeah, although the labyrinth is only forty years old. Doesn’t Tuldarr have stuff like this?” he asked.

“Nothing so interesting, no, especially not any ghost stories. I’m the closest thing to one,” she answered.

“I see,” Oscar replied, placing a thoughtful hand under his chin.

He still wanted to close off the underground labyrinth, but it would be just as troubling if it turned out something dangerous had been left there. They also didn’t know where the exit led to. He really wasn’t sure if sealing it off now was the right decision.

Oscar’s gaze happened to land on Tinasha, who was perusing the spell book Doan and Sylvia had brought. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Tinasha, do you want to go into the labyrinth?”

“No thanks, I’ve heard enough.”

“Let’s both go in, then,” he decided.

“Why?!”

Tinasha wasn’t the only one who popped her head up in surprise. The other three reacted similarly.

“Y-Your Majesty, you’re going to go in there?!”

“And you’re taking Princess Tinasha, too…”

“It’s perfect. Let’s go take a quick look,” Oscar declared, hauling up a still openmouthed Tinasha and laying her over his shoulder. He waved at Als, who was too stunned to respond. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”

He left the room, and Tinasha’s shrieks echoed in from the hallway. “Hey! Hold on just a minute here!”

“Think of it as practice. You wanted to go in, didn’t you?”

“I said I didn’t want to anymore!”

As their voices grew more distant, the two mages and the general exchanged glances.

“What should we do…?” Sylvia asked, fretting.

“Those two are the strongest around, so won’t it be fine?” Doan reasoned.

“Will we be fired if something happens?” Als muttered, and the two mages shrank back fearfully.

Doan believed that no matter what Oscar said about his grandfather, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Oscar entered the treasure vault, Tinasha kicking and struggling in his grasp. The guards stationed at the entrance looked surprised but remained silent. Once they were inside, he finally set her down on the ground.

Tinasha shook her head a little, dizzy after getting dragged around. “I don’t even know what to say about how forceful you are…”

“Here, take this sword,” Oscar instructed.

“Listen to what I’m saying!” Tinasha protested, though she accepted the slender blade he handed her. Unsheathing it a little, she saw it glowing with a faint-purple light: magic. “Is it all right to use this?”

“Swords are made to be used.”

“There’s plenty of exceptions to that…,” Tinasha grumbled, even as she fastened the weapon around her waist. As she did, Oscar touched a stone door at the back of the room. With a wrenching sound, it opened inward.

The king looked back and gestured to her to follow. “Come on, get a move on.”

“Won’t we get locked inside for a full day?” questioned Tinasha.

“Not if we find the exit,” the king countered.

“Ugh,” Tinasha grumbled, pulling off the sealing ornaments she had donned earlier and going over to him. Holding on to Oscar’s sleeve, she followed him in.

Inside, the passage was dark and entirely made of polished stone. Once they were a few steps in, the door behind closed silently.

It was only pitch-dark for a moment. Soon, the candelabras along the walls flared to life. Tinasha marveled at the sconces. Their placement seemed to invite one farther in. “That’s an incredible mechanism.”

“He was fastidious down to the details,” Oscar commented.

Tinasha turned back to inspect the door. After running a magic-infused hand over the surface, she nodded. “This is an enchanted device. I think I can open it from the inside.”

“That’s good.”

“Want to go back?”

“No,” Oscar stated, setting off to head farther in. Tinasha jogged to catch up with him.

Slowly, the passage sloped downward. The walls, floor, and ceiling, which were beautifully polished, began to turn rocky and rough. As Tinasha gazed all around her raptly, her companion suddenly yanked her back. Several arrows whistled past where she had been standing.

“Eek!”

“Put up a defensive barrier,” Oscar instructed, and Tinasha obeyed, weaving one that covered both of them.

Nervously, she reached out to get ahold of his cuff. “Don’t take off and leave me behind…”

“While I do kind of want to see your face if I did that, I definitely won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll punch through the ceiling to get out.”

“Don’t destroy my castle. Just teleport.”

As the pair continued, the temperature grew cooler. For a place untouched for so long, the air was relatively clear, suggesting a draft. They pressed deeper, dodging numerous traps all the while.

“For a labyrinth, this is a pretty straight path. I’m grateful, but it’s odd,” Oscar commented.

“Maybe your grandfather simply wished to call it a labyrinth,” Tinasha suggested, gazing at the ceiling as she shivered. It was nice and cool underground, but it was edging on the side of too chilly. Unlike Oscar, a native of Farsas, she was dressed lightly owing to the warm weather. Her shoulders, arms, and legs were exposed.

Oscar gave her a sidelong look. “You cold?”

“I’m fine. I can adjust the temperature inside the barrier. More importantly, isn’t it getting more humid down here?”

“…I hear the sound of water,” he said unhappily. Tinasha didn’t care to respond. Soon enough, she, too, caught the noise of something dripping.

The stone passage opened to an underground lake. It made for a mystical scene, though both Oscar and Tinasha came to a halt before it with displeased expressions.

“What in the world is that…? Why is there a pool underneath your castle? Is the foundation all right?”

“I’m sure it’s fine; the lake’s not that big, after all. But isn’t this…the Lake of Silence?”

Oscar sounded awestruck, and Tinasha frowned at him.

He was right—the body of water was not especially sizable, being only slightly larger than a pond. The ceiling curved in what appeared to be a natural arc that blended in seamlessly with the rock walls.

The path they were on ran along the outer edge of the lake, then extended out over it from a certain point. The trail was bare stone without any railing, winding over the oval-shaped lake before landing on the opposite shore.

Far in the distance, there were three things that resembled doors set into the rock face on the wall opposite the two.

Tinasha gazed at the black surface of the water, glimmering with reflections of the flickering candle flames. “What’s the Lake of Silence?”

“An old legend in Farsas. It’s where the inhuman being pulled Akashia from the water. The story goes that people came and settled around it, but there was never any lake that fit its description, so most thought of it as only a legend. Never did I imagine that the castle was built on top of it…,” Oscar explained, checking to make sure Akashia was still at his waist.

The weapon was far more mysterious than the mystical spirits of Tuldarr, which everyone knew belonged to the demonic race. Enigma shrouded not only Akashia’s powers, but its origins as well.

Tinasha stepped up to the water’s edge carefully and examined the surface. “You can’t tell how deep it is. And I also feel an…unpleasant presence.”

“An unpleasant presence?” Oscar repeated.

“Mmm… Maybe it’s just my imagination,” Tinasha admitted, shaking her head and returning to his side. She looked up at him a little helplessly. “I—I actually don’t know how to swim…”

“…I’ll remember that. Once we get back, you should practice. You can use the large bath in the castle.”

“Okay…”

The king clapped her reassuringly on the shoulder and then set off. She followed closely behind him.

They moved along the path that snaked around and across the lake. The stone paving was only a little bit higher than the water level. If a wave came, the trail would get flooded easily. The waters were like a polished mirror, and Tinasha eyed them as she muttered, “I wonder if there’s anything living in there.”

“Who knows? Doesn’t look like there’s any food around,” replied Oscar.

“I’ve only seen aquatic creatures in books, but I don’t like the way they look. It’s creepy how big they are. I’ve heard there’s a giant squid in the northern ocean depths,” Tinasha said fretfully.

“I’ve never been to the ocean, either,” Oscar offered calmly as he led the way.

The path curved to the right and then to the left, sometimes winding so close to itself that jumping across was possible, but as the two didn’t know what was ahead, they decided it best not to do so. Candelabras lined the trail at regular intervals, their orange glow dancing on the water.

By the time they reached the middle of the lake, Oscar and Tinasha could now clearly make out the doors on the other side.

“Why are there three?” Oscar mused.

“Perhaps two of them are the wrong way,” Tinasha offered, trudging along after Oscar. She thought she saw a shadow appear below the glassy lake’s surface, and she looked over. But nothing seemed amiss.

Puzzling over it as she turned forward again, there came a splashing sound behind her.

“Huh?”

The next thing Tinasha knew, she was upside down and staring back at Oscar’s panic-stricken face.

Noticing something strange, Oscar couldn’t believe his eyes and turned back.

A half-translucent gigantic tentacle was holding Tinasha aloft and squeezing around her. Bound fast, her lovely face was contorted in pain and shock.

The appendage then tried to drag her down into the depths, but Oscar ran over and lopped it off. At the same time, Tinasha used a wordless spell to crush the part of it that bound her.

She tried to support herself as she fell through the air, but another tentacle appeared from behind and got ahold of her.

With a loud, rushing splash, she disappeared into the water.

“That idiot!” Oscar cursed, jumping off the stone path and diving in. Amid the dark depths, he could make out Tinasha’s white limbs and a dozen tentacles surrounding her and dragging her down.

Oscar swam down, Akashia aimed toward the limbs that came at him. With his face screwed up as he pushed the sword against the water’s resistance, Oscar still managed to use his physical strength to sever a tentacle.

After repelling a third one, he searched for Tinasha, but she was hard to locate amid all the grasping appendages.

That was when magic burst forth from somewhere in the lake, with a young woman at the center.

It was a violent magical explosion, not constrained by any spell, and the blast sent transparent bits of flesh flying. Oscar pushed his way through those, cutting down weakly trembling tentacles as he went, and finally grabbed Tinasha’s hand. She had gone unconscious, and he tucked her under his arm and kicked toward the surface.

He deposited her onto the stone path, then pulled himself up onto it as well. Oscar bent over Tinasha and found she was breathing. He then checked to make sure she had a pulse before laying her out flat and pressing both hands against her abdomen.

On the second push, she spit up water and opened her eyes. She rolled onto her side, curling into a fetal position. “Th-thank you…”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I-it hurts.”

“I didn’t press on you that hard,” he retorted.

“No, not that… I think my ribs are broken,” she explained, her voice tight with pain. The defensive barrier was still up, so the creature had wounded her through it. Were it not for that protection, Tinasha might have suffered a far graver injury.

Her internal organs probably weren’t damaged, but Oscar still knit his brow as he asked, “Can you heal it?”

“About that… I don’t think I can use magic…”

“What? What do you mean?”

Tinasha’s eyes darted all around, as if searching for something. Reluctantly, she answered, “This lake… I think it has the same properties as Akashia. Touching it only gives me a slightly unpleasant feel, but now that I’ve swallowed some water, my internal magic is disrupted, and I can’t cast spells. I can force out power, but I can’t heal anything.”

“What in the…?” Oscar muttered.

So this really is the legendary lake.

That revelation was hardly useful at the moment, however. Oscar looked down at Tinasha suspiciously. “When you say it’s the same as Akashia…you mean that’s enough to make you unable to use magic?”

“Yes. That sword has incredible powers. It’s not just that magic doesn’t work against it. A touch from it will dissolve a mage’s magic and render them unable to cast spells,” she explained.

“I didn’t know that. How come you know?”

“It’s a secret,” Tinasha managed. Oscar wanted to pinch her cheek, but that would be too mean to someone with broken ribs. Instead, he moved to pick her up, but she refused. “That will make things difficult if something else shows up, and I can walk on my own.”

“All right, but…how long until you can use magic again?”

“Judging by how things feel, half a day to a full day,” she answered.

“If you can’t use magic…that means you’re basically useless.”

“I’m aware of that! You don’t need to say it!”

“I was joking. Sorry for dragging you into this.”

When Tinasha heard that, a mixture of expressions filtered across her face. Oscar led her along by the hand, walking half a step ahead and radiating guilt. She looked up at him. “Now we can’t get out using the entrance.”

“I planned on leaving from the exit from the start anyway, so it doesn’t matter,” he answered.

Tinasha’s eyes fell to her hand linked with his. She was soaked and chilled to the bone, but his grip felt warm and reassuring.

They reached the far shore without incident and came to stand side by side in front of the doors.

“Now let’s figure out which are the wrong ones,” Tinasha stated.

“What’s right and what’s wrong?”

“If you died, wouldn’t that make it the wrong door?” she countered unsettlingly.

Ignoring that, Oscar started to inspect the doors. He stopped before the leftmost one. “This one…looks a little familiar. I’m going to open it, so stand back.”

“How exciting,” Tinasha commented dryly, sounding disinterested.

He pressed the point of Akashia against a sigil engraved in the door. After a few moments, it slowly opened inward. Tinasha stared at it in shock.

Oscar peered inside the room, breathed a sigh of relief, and called her over. “C’mere. It’s all right.”

“What?”

Beyond lay a spacious room carpeted in red. A table, chair, bed, and desk were arranged inside. The chamber looked exactly like a luxurious royal’s quarters. In the back was a door leading to another place.

Tinasha took in the design of the chamber. It resembled Oscar’s own bedroom but sported even more lavish furnishings; the young king didn’t like having too many decorations. Tinasha tilted her head to one side curiously. “What is this place…?”

“It must be…Grandpa’s little hideaway spot,” Oscar muttered disdainfully.

The area had no signs of age, suggesting that magic maintained it. Oscar stepped farther in and picked up a book lying on the desk. It was an adventure novel well-known in Farsas, with a bookmark placed at the back. He drew out the discolored bookmark, tutting at the name and handwriting on it. No doubt about it, this was his grandfather’s.

Tinasha stared at the ceiling in a daze. “I guess someone did come down here after the labyrinth was built.”

“Looks like it,” Oscar said.

“Was that monster out there his pet or something?” asked Tinasha.

“I doubt that,” the king responded dismissively, heading to the back of the room to inspect what lay beyond. Three small chambers adjoined this one: a library, a clothes closet, and a bathroom.

Tinasha peeked into the bathroom from behind Oscar. “If that pumps out fresh water, I want to wash off the lake gunk on me.”

“Hmm. I suppose it’s unlikely that it draws from the lake.” Oscar turned the handle. A small amount of muddy water spilled out, but then it turned clear and steamy.

“Wow. I wonder where it’s coming from,” Tinasha posited aloud.

“The castle, probably.”

A lot of work had gone into this place. Surely, that meant there was another method of egress. Oscar left Tinasha to her bath and returned to the main room, thinking back on his mischievous grandfather.

Once Tinasha had rinsed herself, she emerged wearing a white dress borrowed from the closet. She pushed Oscar toward the bathroom next. Her wet clothes, still dangerously contaminated with the powerful lake water, were folded and placed inside a leather bag. The sword Oscar had given her remained at her side, though.

By the time Oscar emerged from the bathroom, Tinasha was sitting on the bed, bare from the waist up as she wound cloth around her torso in lieu of bandages.

Her black locks flowed down over one shoulder, revealing her alabaster back.

Noticing his presence, Tinasha said without turning around, “Did you wash all the water off?”

“…Yes.”

“Perfect timing, then. Come help me. I can’t get it tight enough on my own.”

Oscar opened his mouth to say something but held his tongue. He walked over to the bed and grabbed ahold of both ends of the cloth Tinasha was wrestling with. As he adjusted what portion she’d already wound around herself, he started to pull it taught. “Tell me if gets too tight.”

“I’m fine. Just pull it as much as you can,” she replied. Normally, Tinasha dried her hair with magic, but now it was damp and dripping, lending it a bewitching magnetism. The slightest bit of sweat beaded the vulnerable curve of her back from her soft nape down.

As Oscar bound the young woman, he said in an emotionless voice, “Right now you’re just an ordinary woman.”

“My magic is the only thing I have to offer, after all,” Tinasha remarked self-deprecatingly. Oscar was unsure of her expression. All he could see was the alluring white glow of her shoulders.

His eyes moved over her skin, so sticky to the touch. A faint floral scent tickled his nose.

This was his second time touching Tinasha’s back, but unlike the first, when the suffocating stench of blood almost made him fly into a rage, now her velvety skin seemed almost an enchantment unto itself.

Oscar looked down at her slender neck. The temptation to kiss that ivory nape surged within him. He could run his tongue along the gentle curve of her back and take her petite body into his arms. Every single part of her almost demanded he dominate and monopolize it.

The king rubbed the back of his neck, stirred up as he was by these smoldering passions. An inquiry from Tinasha snapped him back to his senses. “Oscar? Is it done?”

“…Yeah,” he answered, letting go and taking a step back.

Tinasha thanked him as she pulled the bodice of her dress back up. The collared, long-sleeved garment was of another era, but she wore it perfectly. It made her resemble a doll. Oscar had also taken some clothes out of the closet, but the men’s outfits weren’t so out of place.

Suddenly overcome with mental fatigue, Oscar gave Tinasha’s head a light rap. “Why don’t you have any sense of danger?! The two of us are all alone in here; you should be more on guard!”

“What? But you already helped me rinse off my back that one time… I thought it would be fine…”

“That’s not the issue here!” he snapped.

The young woman bit her lip, finding this odd. However, she quickly smiled and bowed her head. “Thank you very much for what you did. Also, I’m sorry.”

Tinasha was a little embarrassed, but only because she remembered how she had acted like a petulant child. She remained as clueless as ever. Ultimately, parts of her hadn’t changed since she was a girl. That was why she behaved so carefree and affectionately with the people closest to her.

Oscar turned his face away. “I didn’t do anything you need to thank me for.”

He hated how Tinasha relaxed around him because she was convinced he didn’t have any interest in her. However, that notion was one Oscar had fostered, a trap of his own design.

Tinasha giggled. “I wanted to offer my gratitude anyway. It’s funny…I came here for you, but it seems you’re always rescuing me.”

The words felt venomously sweet. Oscar remembered her saying she had slept for four hundred years specifically to meet him, and he felt slightly dizzy.

He sat in a chair a few paces from Tinasha and sighed as he responded, “Don’t joke about that. You’ve helped me plenty.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. How are your ribs feeling?”

“A little swollen, but all right. I’m pretty tolerant of pain,” Tinasha confessed, a smile blooming across her face.

Beholding her expression, Oscar felt like he understood why that king had destroyed a queen’s country in order to have that woman, at least a little. Under his breath, he whispered, “Careful…”

The distinct feeling that they should not be cooped up in this room alone washed over the man. Both he and Tinasha held positions they could not carelessly disregard.

Oscar exhaled, resetting himself, and said to the person he brought along against her will, “If you’re in pain, you can sleep here. I’ll come and get you tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure I like that idea either…,” she said, looking around the room from her seated position on the bed. “Are you really going to seal this off? There’s quite a few magical objects in here.”

“You can tell that?”

“I still have my magic, even if I can’t cast spells.”

Crossing his legs and leaning back in the chair, Oscar remembered when they went up against the forbidden curse. The world looked completely different through Tinasha’s eyes. “Can anyone see that sort of thing if they practice?”

“No. There’s those who can and those who can’t.”

“What? It sounded useful. Now I’m disappointed,” Oscar complained.

“You’re one of the ones who can,” Tinasha retorted, hugging her knees to her chest.

Oscar’s eyes grew wide. “I can?”

“Probably, if you concentrate.”

“How do I do it?” he asked.

Tinasha thought for a while, head cocked pensively, then stood up and went over to him. She set a thick book down on the table. “Think of this book as the world we live in. Right now, all you can see is the cover of the book. But in reality, there are countless invisible pages just beyond the cover…or to put it more accurately, existing in the same place as the cover.”

She flipped through the book’s pages, then closed it again and snapped her fingers. “Remember that the world you can see is only one page of what’s truly there. Try to visualize it as things written in a different script on top. There, the flow of magic and spell configurations exist, with the rules of magic above them. You should be able to see all that if you believe you can picture those forces. It’s like looking at the flow of water or wind.”

“Got it, I think…?”

“It differs from person to person whether they can see it right away. I think you’ll succeed with concentration. To be totally honest, with how good you are with a sword and the fact that you have Akashia, a mage would be helpless against you at close range if you could see spells, too. You’d be far beyond the natural enemy of mages—you’d absolutely be the hunter,” Tinasha stated.

“I’m that much of a threat?”

“Yes. I would never get close were I fighting you. I’d bomb you from the sky.” The Witch Killer Queen had a look of utmost revulsion. It was enough for Oscar to realize his own potential. He even felt a vague sense of alarm at how easily she could talk about hunting mages.

Ultimately, Oscar was just one man, though. No matter how powerful an individual was, they were nothing more than a tiny dot in the world.

Shaking his head lightly, Oscar shelved those thoughts for the time being. “Maybe I’ll put the decision of whether to seal this off on hold… We still have more to check up ahead, I think. To think the Lake of Silence was down here all along…”

“I would curse you if you drew up that lake water,” Tinasha cautioned.

“You hate it that much, huh…?”

She grinned, but her eyes weren’t smiling. Then she changed the subject. “So why are you organizing the treasure vault all of a sudden? Looking for something?”

“Oh yeah, I guess I didn’t tell you. That shady cult was after something in the repository, but we don’t know what it was,” Oscar explained.

“You don’t?”

“Actually, it’s more accurate to say we don’t know what it was used for. We also don’t know where it’s kept, so I thought it was time to organize everything. Apparently, it was a red orb inside a small palm-shaped box. Have you seen it?” Oscar said, using his hands to indicate the size and shape of the object.

All the blood drained from Tinasha’s face. She covered her mouth with both hands, shaking minutely.

The king looked up in shock. “What is it?”

“Don’t touch it…”

“Huh?”

“Don’t touch that orb! Don’t let anyone… No, don’t look for it…,” Tinasha pleaded, burying her face in her hands.

Oscar jumped out of his seat and circled the table to stand next to her. He took both of her hands and saw that the young woman appeared on the verge of tears. “What do you know?”

He looked into Tinasha’s dark, wet eyes. Peering into them struck him with the sensation of gazing into an abyss. Beyond, it was so deep that he couldn’t see how far they went.

After a moment, Tinasha straightened up, though her lip still trembled with worry. Then, suddenly, she cast her eyes downward and shook her head.

“Don’t leave me…,” she whispered feebly.

No matter how Oscar soothed or threatened her, Tinasha would offer no more. Her stubbornness proved reasonably irritating. He wanted to ask why she didn’t trust him.

As Oscar turned back around to Tinasha for the dozenth time, he noticed for the first time that her forehead was beaded with cold sweat. At some point, her wan cheeks had grown red. Placing a hand against her forehead, he found that she was shockingly warm. He didn’t know if it was due to her broken ribs or falling into the water, but she had a very high fever.

“Why didn’t you mention you were sick?!” he snapped at her, picking the woman up and carrying her to the bed.

Tinasha was evidently already growing woozy and closed her eyes in pain once she was laid down. “I’m sorry…”

“Get some sleep. I’m going to go look around,” Oscar stated, dabbing sweat from Tinasha’s forehead, and then left the room.

He inspected the other two doors again. Unlike the one they went through that had the royal family’s crest engraved on it, the other doors had no markings of any kind.

First, Oscar unsheathed Akashia and pressed on the middle door. Cracking it open slightly, he peered inside. It was dark, and he couldn’t see to the end of the space, but he sensed multiple creatures inside and heard their cries.

Numerous red eyes glittered at him from the shadow. He went ahead and closed that door.

“Okay, let’s try the next one.”

Oscar tried the final door—the rightmost. This one opened onto a narrow passage made entirely of polished stone on all four sides. The same candelabras that illuminated other chambers were set in this one, revealing an innumerable array of ostentatiously installed traps. Oscar let out a dry laugh when he saw huge circular blades moving back and forth, some at knee level and some at waist height.

“He really had some taste.”

Oscar decided not to venture any farther than that. Standing before the three doors, he fell into thought.

Were he alone, he could explore more and dispatch whatever came his way. Unfortunately, he had a feverish Tinasha with him. It would be next to impossible to handle either room with her in tow, and leaving her alone was out of the question.

He scanned the lake chamber but failed to discover any means of exit besides the three doors. Ultimately, he returned to check on Tinasha.

She was on the bed, asleep, curled up like a cat. He used a wet cloth to sponge away the sweat on her forehead. Her eyes fluttered at the touch.

“Leave me and go… I’ll return once my magic’s recovered…”

“There’s no way I’m doing that,” Oscar replied, sitting on the bed and carding his fingers through her still-damp hair.

As he lost himself in feeling her glossy, silky locks, she whispered weakly, “Oscar… There’s an orb like that in Tuldarr, too. The color is different, though…”

His eyes widened at the unexpected bit of information, and his hands froze. “Really?”

“I sealed away the one in Tuldarr four hundred years ago.”

“Sealed it away? So it’s something dangerous?” he asked.

“It’s an anomaly of magical history—an unknown. The power it has should be impossible. That orb can…transport the user to the past. That’s something no mage or demon can do.”

“…What?” Oscar questioned in disbelief. But since he wasn’t familiar with magic, he didn’t realize just how impossible this was. “That’s definitely a dangerous object, yet it could be convenient if used correctly.”

“No… Your world vanishes. Everything that exists now disappears, time rewinds, and you must do it all over again from that point… There’d be no original world or time to return to,” Tinasha explained, closing her eyes. Tears flowed onto the bed from her long black eyelashes. “I know someone who lost his life to that power…”

As her sobs soaked the white sheets, Oscar sat there astonished. He recalled something Tinasha had said before.

“…When I was young, someone saved my life. Yet by doing so…he ended up losing his past and future—everything.”

Now it was all clear. Oscar placed his hands on either side of Tinasha’s face and gazed at her. “The man who saved you…?”

The pale woman opened her dark eyes and stared at him. Then, as if nodding, she very slowly closed them again.

The anxiety of someone left all alone in the world colored her tear-stained face. Tinasha put her own hands on top of Oscar’s, stroking them gently, seeking confirmation. The warmth of them made his heart ache.

What had she gone through when she was younger? It was heartbreaking to see her grieve the transience of life.

After staring at her crying in silence, Oscar leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t want to change the past. If you don’t like that orb, I won’t search for it, and you can seal it away.”

His tone wasn’t gentle—he was simply making a promise to her.

“So…don’t cry so hard.”

While the king didn’t let his emotions show, though, he felt no hesitation.

Tears streamed down Tinasha’s cheeks as she nodded.

At last, Tinasha fell into a deep sleep. Meanwhile, Oscar began to thoroughly inspect the chamber.

If this was his grandfather’s hideaway spot, then there had to be a shortcut here that bypassed the treasure vault. Painstakingly, he inspected the walls and the backs of the bookshelves. As he did, he kept thinking about what Tinasha said.

An orb that could alter the past. It sounded ludicrous, but it had to be true if she was the one claiming as much. Compared to mages who were versed in the rules of magic, Oscar had an easier time accepting it.

“I never expected there would be a magic implement that could take you to the past and change the future,” he whispered to himself.

There were certainly many people who wished they could do things over, but it was impossible to ask, so their hopes were in vain. There was no guarantee that altering one point in time would make everything after that go the way they desired. Things could even unfold in a worse manner than they originally had. Moreover, the price was that initial world. It was a risky gamble, and that was being generous.

What was the man who saved Tinasha after?

If his goal was merely to save her, then he must have been incredibly devoted. But in exchange, his act left her obsessing and crying all the time. Oscar let out a sigh without meaning to.

“What did she mean by ‘Don’t leave me’…?”

His face screwed up in an annoyed grimace as he rummaged around at the back of a bookshelf.

Why had he been the only one able to enter the room where she was sleeping all those years? Why had Nark recognized him as its master?

Tinasha had claimed it was because he was similar to the man who had saved her. Oscar had caught her doing or saying mysterious things at other points, too.

The most curious thing of all was Tinasha’s decision to enter stasis for four hundred years.

Putting all those pieces together led him to one conclusion.

“…There we go. This must be it.”

Oscar reached a hand under the bookshelf and pulled a small metal lever there.

With a creak, the piece of furniture immediately slid aside, revealing a concealed staircase. Oscar climbed a few steps cautiously, wary of any traps or monsters, then went back to the bed.

“Tinasha, we can get out,” he said, but she showed no signs of waking. He wrapped her in the blanket and picked her up.

She was soaked through with sweat and appeared totally miserable. Gazing at her, Oscar was reminded of when they had first met.

“You knew my name all along…”

The way Tinasha had spoken his name with complete conviction left no doubt in his mind.

However, Oscar discarded the conclusion.

Even if it was true, he had no memory of that, which meant that the past had been redone, and he was a different form of himself. No matter how hard Tinasha cried, the original could never be restored.

And it was because she was intimately familiar with all of this that she avoided that orb.

What was gone could not return. Creating something new was the only way.

Regardless, Tinasha had her duties, and they would soon take her from Farsas. Oscar had to put a stop to this before he got too attached to let her go.

He would create nothing. Notice nothing. And spend the remaining two months that way.

“…So ridiculous.”

Had the man who saved her predicted that things would play out like this? Oscar stared down at the unconscious woman in his arms, a wry smile curling his lips.

Tinasha jolted awake and looked all around her. She was lying flat on her back in her pitch-black room in Farsas Castle.

Gingerly, she levered herself up to a sitting position, noting a faint sense of discomfort. An unfamiliar pain-relief spell had been applied to her, probably for her ribs.

“Ah… Someone cast this on me,” she muttered as she checked her magic. She could use it again. Undoing the pain-relief spell, she mended her damaged ribs. As she glanced out at the bluish-white moon hanging in the sky beyond her window, she checked the time.

“I wonder if Oscar’s still awake…”

Awaking here must have meant that Oscar had brought her out of the labyrinth. Hopefully, that hadn’t been too much trouble for him. Tinasha wanted to thank him either way. And she also just wished to talk with the man.

Raking back her sleep-mussed hair, Tinasha got up to change clothes.

Done with his work and dressed in his nightclothes, Oscar looked up at the sound of rapping on the door that led to his balcony. Suspiciously, he went over with Akashia in hand.

There stood Tinasha, her white skin glowing a pale blue in the moonlight.

“Why are you coming in from the balcony?” he asked.

“I didn’t know how to get here from inside the castle…”

He let her in, and she sauntered over to the table. Oscar frowned to see that she had changed into a light, simple, childlike outfit. “Did you heal your ribs? I liked what you were wearing before, though.”

“I’ll return that garment later. Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine. No one else was wearing it,” Oscar replied, sitting on his bed and gazing up at her. He paused, unsure.

“How did we get back?” asked Tinasha.

“There was a hidden passage. It leads to a royal apartment that’s no longer in use. I left you in the castle and went to go investigate the other chambers, but both of the other doors just lead back to the castle,” Oscar explained.

“What? So then, what does that mean?”

“It means the only way in or out of the labyrinth is through the castle,” he grumbled, feeling angry all over again just recalling that.

While fending off a wolf that appeared to be some sort of magical creature, he’d followed the path along countless twists and turns before it finally straightened out only to lead to the trap-filled room on the far right. He was very glad he hadn’t brought Tinasha along in her fevered state.

“By the way, everyone yelled at me when I brought you back. Even Als did, and he never raises his voice at me,” Oscar said.

“I-I’m sorry…”

“Well, it was my fault.”

He had absconded with the next queen of their northwestern neighbor and brought her back with broken ribs and a fever. An unending barrage of criticism was natural.

Oscar pulled his knees in close to his chest and looked up at the canopy of his bed. “I put off organizing the treasure vault. We only considered the idea because of that cult anyway. They worship some god named Simila. Never heard of it.”

Shock flickered across Tinasha’s face. “I think I have…”

“Really? Where?”

“Uh, I can’t remember… Tomorrow I’ll go and get some books from Tuldarr and look into it,” she replied.

“Okay, please do.”

Though Tinasha nodded, her eyes were still darting around as she carded through her memories.

Oscar went on. “So what do you want to do about the orb? You can seal it away, if you like.”

At that, Tinasha faltered for a moment. She stared back at Oscar and asked, “But…isn’t it your mother’s heirloom?”

“Is it?” Oscar frowned. He’d never heard that before.

Immediately, Tinasha clapped a hand over her mouth, realizing her slip of the tongue. She had assumed this Oscar would know that. As she paled, the young king looked askance at her.

Tinasha, who had been asleep for centuries, shouldn’t have known anything about his mother, who died fifteen years prior. Her familiarity with Oscar’s mother’s connection to a magic implement was even more suspicious. The other Oscar must have told Tinasha about this.

Holding back a deep sigh, Oscar maintained outward calm as he said, “Then I’ll inquire with my dad. Still, I doubt he’ll care if it’s sealed. We don’t want anyone getting ahold of it.”

“O-okay…”

Oscar let out that sigh when he saw Tinasha’s searching gaze. He felt no hesitation. This was something that had been decided four hundred years ago.

“Listen, Tinasha—I don’t know anything, and I don’t want to. I trust you, so if you have some warning for me, I’ll heed it gratefully. If there’s anything you wish for, I’ll grant it as long as it’s within the realm of possibility. Those are all things I’m choosing to do. I won’t have any complaints or regrets. Same goes for any decision I make.”

The woman was still hung up on the past, however. Oscar gazed straight into her dark eyes.

“Don’t let it weigh you down anymore.”

The words cut straight to the heart of the matter. Tinasha’s eyes widened. “Oscar, have you…?”

A pale glow poured in from the window, throwing her face into sharp relief and drawing a shadow behind her.

Oscar dropped his gaze to the floor, looking only at her shadow.

He knew that this was tantamount to pushing Tinasha away after she had traveled four centuries for him.

Yet from Oscar’s perspective, that bygone era had no bearing on the present. He couldn’t bury something that never existed. All he could give Tinasha was what he had. It seemed heartless, but that was his honest truth.

And Oscar believed that was how she should be, too. There was no need for her to be a captive of the past.

Tinasha’s shadow didn’t even flicker.

He looked up, worried that she had started crying, but instead he gasped.

As moonlight illuminated Tinasha’s form, her eyes glowed with a clear light. Her lips were turned up in the littlest smile.

It was the first time she had worn such a pure and clear expression.

She placed a hand over her heart. “I’m very glad I came to this era and met you. I’ve only been awake for four months, but I’ve been given enough blessings for a lifetime.”

Tinasha beamed with genuine, untainted joy.

Her dark eyes glimmered with moisture as she gazed at Oscar. The instant their gazes met, she launched herself at him and threw her slender arms around his neck.

She was warmth embodied. “So…I don’t need anything more than this,” came her tear-choked whisper.

It was like she was declaring a fact that couldn’t change—and would never.

There was no sadness in it, for she did not choose to express that. Oscar felt the woman’s grip around him tighten. “Even if we go our separate ways after this, you are my—”

Tinasha broke off there, pulled back, and looked at Oscar from very close.

Her smile was enchanting and filled with love. Their eyes met, and Oscar was struck speechless, his soul enthralled.

Just as a shapeless impulse urged him to speak her name, Tinasha floated up into the air.

“Good night…and thank you for today,” she said before teleporting back to her room.

The shadow was one.

Now there was only Oscar and moonlight… He stayed as he was for a long while, gazing at where she had been.