This stone was said to be a palm-sized meteorite that had fallen into the lake at Montewarre Castle, and it was the relic left behind by that mage ancestor.

“A fragment of an asteroid that fell into a lake…… I wonder how she ever got hold of it.”

Lying on her side in bed, running her fingers over the smooth stone, she drifted off to sleep at some point.

Time passed.

“……”

When Shiloh opened her eyes, the sight before her left her speechless.

She had clearly fallen asleep in the attic, yet she was now standing before the lake surrounding Montewarre Castle. A lamp was in her hand.

No matter how she tried, she had no memory of going out in the middle of the night with a lamp.

“Is this a dream?”

But the scene before her was too vivid for a dream.

The lake glimmered mysteriously even in the dark of night, as though someone had scattered powdered jewels across its surface.

She was standing awkwardly at the water’s edge, unable to move forward or back, when all at once a crowd of fish gathered around her.

“What is that?”

Before her, a silver koi roughly three meters long broke the surface in a ripple of water, its body gleaming with a lustrous sheen. The great fish fixed its large eyes on Shiloh with the dignity of a water spirit.

As she stared at it in a daze, the fish that had gathered around her began leaping in arcs out of the water. She watched the fantastical display, utterly transfixed.

Then—

“Ah!”

A translucent hand shot up from the lake and yanked her ankle, pulling her under in an instant. No matter how hard she dug her heels in and struggled, the force was overwhelming.

Splash.

Her whole body was submerged.

Shiloh squeezed her eyes shut, grimacing, flailing her arms and fighting desperately to get out of the water. But the harder she struggled, the more bubbles rose around her and the deeper she sank toward the bottom of the lake.

Just as she thought she was going to die, she noticed something strange.

“What’s happening?”

Somehow, she could breathe.

She could even speak.

Shiloh took a deep breath and looked around carefully. A white, transparent membrane surrounded her on all sides. It seemed a special pocket of air had been created around her.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had prepared this specifically for her.

The great silver koi and the smaller fish from before moved ahead of her as if guiding the way, pausing and turning back whenever she fell behind.

Following the many fish, she eventually arrived before a cave deep within the lake. It was just slightly taller than she was.

The great koi was too large to enter. Shiloh followed the direction indicated by the small fluorescent fish and made her way carefully inside.

At the very back of the cave sat a bronze chest thick with moss.

“What is this?”

With trembling hands, Shiloh slowly opened the chest.

“……”

Her eyes went wide in an instant.

The chest was packed with an unidentified glittering powder sealed inside a glass vial, cooking utensils, and a basic magic primer.

Just then, the vision of the chest blurred and flickered.

C*ck-a-doodle-doo.

In the attic, where pale dawn light crept in through the cracks, she stirred and stretched.

“What a strange dream.”

She rolled over, and in the dim light something odd caught her eye. She pushed herself up from the rustling old blanket and approached the object with caution.

Squinting at the chest, Shiloh suddenly sucked in a sharp breath.

She had half hoped, half doubted……

“It’s identical to the chest in the dream.”

She brought the lamp over with shaking hands, examined the moss on the surface of the bronze chest, and then looked carefully inside.

The spatula and whisk inside gleamed like new, without a trace of age. The glittering powder sealed in the glass vial was exactly as she had seen in the dream.

“So that stone…… connects dreams and reality……?”

She murmured to herself in a daze, then narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.

“Was she someone who cooked?”

It struck her as peculiar that the items left for a descendant were a magical powder and cooking tools of all things.

Something else caught her eye. Among the two books tucked beside the cooking tools, one was a mythology book containing the tragic love story of Elinore, the mage ancestor of Shiloh’s family, and Bernar, the first emperor of the Amondi Empire. The other was an ‘Introduction to Magic.’

Shiloh took out the ‘Introduction to Magic,’ set it on her lap, and opened it. She read aloud the message written on the first page.

「The magical powder ‘pabua,’ which has no taste or smell when consumed alone, has the effect of amplifying the taste and potency of any substance a hundredfold.

However, one who reaches the level of freely channeling mana to cast attributeless magic can produce the same effect without pabua.」

“I’m not sure what attributeless magic is, but either way, if I master it before the magical powder runs out, I can keep making special bread indefinitely.”

The magic primer described in careful detail the basic methods for training the core in order to channel mana.

Shiloh dipped a small amount of pabua powder onto her ring finger, the kind that looked just like cosmetic glitter, and touched it cautiously to the tip of her tongue. Just as the book described, there was no taste at all.

‘What on earth……’

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head.

From the next day onward, Shiloh baked bread with pabua powder and ran experiment after experiment.

She lost count of how many times.

When she finally put a freshly baked blueberry scone made with pabua into her mouth and tasted it, her heartbeat thundered all the way to the top of her head.

“Did I…… actually do it?”

Remarkably, what the book described was no fantasy.

Two weeks later, she put her ‘premium functional’ bread made with the magical powder on official sale.

Fortunately, with her background in food and nutrition, she was able to create a wide variety of premium breads using ingredients suited to specific benefits. For customers interested in their skin she recommended bread packed with vitamins; for customers with joint problems she recommended bread made with cherries, which were good for the joints. The response from the very first day of release was anything but ordinary.

“I should advertise aggressively and pay off the loan as fast as possible.”

Shiloh cut up an old white linen skirt to use in place of expensive paper. She held out a pen to customers who had tried the premium bread and asked them to write a review.

She read the growing stack of reviews with a proud smile.

「I tried the premium orange muffin on a whim. The taste was astonishing, and my skin became as white and dewy as if I’d dusted it with powder.」

「I’ve been exhausted lately, but after eating the premium banana bread, a calm came over me.」

Most customers wrote their names as requested, but some left rather embarrassing reviews and asked not to be identified.

「At my age, in my fifties…… after eating the premium black raspberry bread, I rose like a young man even in the small hours of the morning.」

Some of the reviews were posted on the board outside the shop door.

With each passing day, a line began to form in front of the shop, and the days when Shiloh missed meals because she was too busy to eat grew more frequent.

But when had it started?

An eagle that had been circling near the shop kept catching her eye.

She spotted it again today, perched on the wall across the street and surveying its surroundings, and she barely managed to clap a hand over her mouth before a scream escaped.

Because it had reminded her of someone she absolutely did not want to encounter.

*

Creak.

The golden doors swung open on either side, and the sound of commanding footsteps rang through the sacred courtroom.

The light filtering through the stained glass windows made it impossible to see the man’s face clearly. Broad shoulders draped in a violet coat and precise, deliberate movements radiated an oppressive authority.

Everyone in the courtroom rose and bowed their heads in deference.

The chief justice’s stern voice rang out toward the man striding toward the bloodied figure bound to a chair.

“Please take your seat, Your Majesty.”

But the man ignored this and advanced until he was directly in front of the bound man.

A face of unsettling beauty revealed itself before the crowd. Sharp, clean lines of a nose and strong, defined features made for a man who commanded attention. The most striking thing about his face was a pair of red eyes, cold enough to carry the edge of killing intent, yet saturated with a deep sorrow that gave him a strangely haunting quality.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

The voice that came from those strangely sensual lips was ice-cold.