“The merchant spoke with a Serrant accent. He said he’d give me m-money if I handed the woman over.”

“Money? How much.”

“100 ollings…”

“Less than the cost of your own funeral.”

“The woman was g-going to die anyway! She was barely breathing! I thought it was just the price for disposing of a body… kkhh!”

Kahar looked down without feeling at the man’s collapsed body and swallowed a gnawing hunger.

He should never have left her at the castle. When he found out Lani was pregnant, he didn’t know what to do with himself for a while.

His body burned like something had bewitched it. He thought he ought to prepare for a wedding, and while he left for the capital to take care of things, she vanished.

He told himself she probably got caught up in some minor trouble when he heard she went toward the shopping district alone. Five days of combing through the territory with that as his comfort.

For reasons unknown, Lani entered this mountain, and that was the only fact he confirmed after she disappeared.

Someone saw Lani standing in front of the clock tower in the shopping district, but witnesses after that were hard to come by.

The lack of witnesses is strange. Whose doing is this?

In the darkness, Kahar lifted his blue eyes to the sky, then to the wreckage around him.

A world without her, without Lani, is nothing but death. Nothing but silence. Nothing but colorlessness.

“Find the merchant who speaks Serrant.”

Mihael, his aide who gave up trying to stop him, answered in a subdued voice.

“Please, enough, Your Highness.”

Is this not enough already?

She is most likely no longer of this world.

“The High Priest said he can no longer sense Lady Lani’s presence…”

Mihael couldn’t bring himself to say the rest and swallowed what he truly meant.

“We move.”

When Kahar started moving, the elite knights who followed him held their breath and fell in behind him.

Hard boots that pulled free from a thick, sticky puddle left ghastly footprints behind.

If it meant finding her, he could drench himself in as much filthy blood as it took.

Lani. Lani Deloën.

The name of his one and only companion.

***

Lani’s funeral was held. And Kahar released her remains into the river.

Only after losing her did he understand. That he never made her a single promise.

That he never once let slip even a fragment of the words: I like you, I hold you in my heart, I love you.

He should have approached Lani, who always told him not to joke around, with a little more sincerity.

Instead of running away like an idiot, afraid of burdening her, afraid she would leave him, even though she was timid at heart.

He should have told her she was so endearingly clumsy it drove him mad, that he could no longer get through a single day without her, and asked her to marry him.

“Lani.”

Kahar’s low voice sank into the river that carried her away. He stared at the swirling current, then drew a crumpled piece of paper from inside his cloak.

The brief notes for wedding preparations were meaningless now.

Perhaps it was the last trace of affection he left behind while she was still alive.

He tore the paper apart like splitting open his own heart and burned the pieces in the wind.

If they drift and drift and reach the place where your soul rests, perhaps it will count as a confession, however late.

Kahar grieved his belated regrets and tried to cut Lani from his heart.

But she would not be cut out.

Rooted deep within him, she seemed destined to consume him forever.

“You’ll probably keep hating me hard, even there. But if you think of me, even that way…”

He would say nothing to scold her. If he had known she would leave at the young age of twenty, he would have pressed far more sweet things into her hands.

The long life that remained, left on him like a burden, was his penance.

If I could see you again, I would do anything.

Go well. No, don’t go well.

“…Rest. Until I come to you.”

Carrying a heart full of holes, Kahar turned away. Until the day he followed her, he would go on regretting.

***

Even after the doctor said the youngest daughter would not survive the night, the Chloe Ducal House was remarkably composed.

They even began preparing her funeral early, quietly welcoming her death.

So while Meliciel rose from her bed alone, drew the heavy curtains, and looked around to see where she was, no one noticed.

She opened her eyes during the hours when warm sunlight beat down sharply. The one who woke was not Meliciel, but the dead Lani.

She took everything in, bewildered. A large room, quiet but reasonably furnished. Furniture that looked expensive.

Strangely cold, but this was unmistakably a room used by a noble. Even the farthest room in Od Palace at the Grand Duke’s castle was filled with things this fine.

“What on earth…”

What happened? Lani looked into the mirror and murmured in disbelief.

“So I didn’t die…”

What in the world is this?

The tousled chocolate-colored hair was nowhere to be seen. Lush, flowing pink hair and emerald eyes a shade deeper than before looked back at her from the mirror.

The pale, thin fingers and washed-out body were not Lani’s own either. The face that once resembled a puppy’s had become cat-like, prim and sharp, and her chest…

“…Got bigger.”

Unable to believe it, she moved her body this way and that, scrunched her face and relaxed it. She tried smiling awkwardly.

Seeing it move the way she intended, she confirmed this body was hers.

“Could I have become a ghost?”

But her fingertips, caught in the sunlight, were vivid and clear. She had no energy, but perhaps because she was freed from the terrible pain she felt just before death, her senses felt more alive than ever.

She moved slowly toward the open window. From the small garden spread out beyond it, the noise of cicadas and grass insects came in loud and bright.

This couldn’t be a dream. Sounds this vivid and beautiful couldn’t be an illusion.

Am I alive? Did I survive? Lani’s heart beat fast.

“Then the ba…by?”

She let out a trembling voice and carefully wrapped her hands around her lower belly. If she entered someone else’s body, what became of the baby?

She gathered the faintest thread of hope and tried to form her divine power. A faint but real surge of it rose from within her body.

And then…

No…

“Gone.”

She murmured, hollow.

“Gone.”

She tried again. Same result. She couldn’t find the life that once chattered with a quick pulse like a small wild bird.

Gone. The child was gone.

Lani lived, and the child was gone.

“Why…?”

She asked the empty air, eyes full of tears.

Why did I survive?

But sadly, no one answered. The world was never on Lani’s side, so she didn’t ask expecting an answer.

She swallowed her grief and confusion and looked toward the door. Thinking of the child felt like it would tear her chest open, but understanding her situation came first.

Where was this place, whose body was this, and what in the world happened?

Lani gathered her courage and pulled the bell cord hanging by the bed. But no one came running.

She shook the cord once more. Same result. Only quiet stillness.

If no one comes, the only option is to go out herself.

Walking wasn’t easy, though. Her joints were stiff like someone who lay in bed for a long time, and her muscles were nearly gone.

It took quite a while to walk carefully to the door. She barely managed to push open the large door, several times her own size.

The vast corridor was dead silent.

“Is anyone there?”

She opened her mouth awkwardly, but no voice came back. She stepped out cautiously and stale air wrapped around her.

It was a strange atmosphere where, even in summer, cold came before heat.

Her small footsteps made a faint echo as she moved into the unknown space. She looked around as she walked, and after some time, the end of the corridor appeared and she finally sensed a human presence.

Lani stepped forward with a mix of relief and fear.

“Good heavens!”

A middle-aged woman in maid’s clothing cried out loudly, seemingly startled by her sudden appearance.

After clutching her chest to recover, the maid narrowed her eyes at Lani standing still, then quickly widened them.

“That… hair color… c-could you be Miss Meliciel?”

The maid asked in an uncertain tone, shook her head side to side, and rubbed her eyes.

But with Meliciel’s appearance still clearly before her, the maid covered her own mouth with both hands.

“Goodness. It’s real, it’s really her!”

“Do you… know me?”

It was a strange question and she knew it, but Lani couldn’t help asking.

“Of course I do! I’m the only one keeping watch over this annex, so naturally I’d know you. But you’re not a g-ghost, are you?”

“Perhaps…?”

Lani tilted her head and let her voice trail off uncertainly, and the maid checked her feet, then let out something like a sigh of relief.

“Since you’ve woken, Miss, we’ll need to stop the funeral.”

“The funeral, you mean…”

“Everyone thought you’d stopped breathing and was preparing for your funeral.”

“…My funeral?”

“Whose else would it be? Goodness. What in the world is going on!”

The maid pressed a hand to her forehead and gave a small shake of her head. She couldn’t easily believe what was happening before her eyes.

She clearly confirmed herself that Meliciel’s breathing stopped.

Meliciel was a young lady who never left her sickbed from the day she was born. The maid thought she finally shed her ailing body and departed this world to become a free soul, so what was the meaning of her standing up like this?