Dozens of gazes converged on Selonia all at once.

The cold, austere atmosphere of a witch trial would intimidate anyone seated in the defendant’s chair, but Selonia simply straightened her back and took her seat without hesitation.

“Selonia Brienne.”

Ludvig spoke again.

“You stand accused of being born with mana, of concealing it while bewitching the Grand Duke, and of sowing disorder within the Empire. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”

“I do.”

Perhaps because the answer was unexpected, a murmur rippled through the Grand Assembly Hall.

Selonia slowly turned toward the Pope and spoke.

“First, I would like to ask this. What, exactly, does the Grand Temple define as a witch?”

“…W-what?”

Ludvig faltered for a brief moment, then stammered out a perfunctory reply.

“A witch, of course, is an evil being who defies the will of the High God and steals the life force of others by borrowing the power of the evil god Ranesh.”

“Then are you saying that anyone who steals another’s life force is, without exception, an evil being who must be punished?”

“Obviously!”

Ludvig let out a derisive laugh. The bishops seated beside him clicked their tongues in disapproval, as though they thought Selonia was just quibbling over words to buy time.

Standing up, Selonia slowly swept her gaze across the entire assembly hall, her voice growing stronger.

“Then I hereby accuse Bishop Delmo, the Chief Inquisitor, of stealing the life force of others.”

There was an immediate uproar.

How could they accuse Bishop Delmo out of nowhere? Of stealing others’ life force, no less? Was Selonia Brienne suggesting that the rumors circulating throughout the Empire were true?

Murmurs rippled through the gathered nobles and clergy who had come to observe the trial. The confusion was even more pronounced among the ordinary priests, who knew nothing about what had happened in the Grand Temple’s underground prisons.

“This is your witch trial!”

Delmo bellowed, rising partway from his seat beside the Pope.

“Do you dare toy with a faithful servant of Ardiel, using nothing but your silver tongue to evade your crime?”

His face twisted with open agitation. Broad-shouldered and imposing, Delmo’s roar silenced the noise in the hall. Encouraged by this, he pointed a finger at Selonia and raised his voice even higher.

“Stealing life force? You dare slander me like this without a shred of evidence!”

“Then do you have evidence that I stole another person’s life force to obtain mana?”

“Th-that is—!”

Delmo faltered, the words catching in his throat.

Selonia seized the opportunity. She pressed forward without mercy.

“I asked whether you had ever seen someone have their life force stolen directly by a witch. I will ask everyone here as well: Has anyone ever seen—or even heard of—a victim whose life force was taken by a witch?”

People turned to one another and whispers of confusion spread through the hall.

Come to think of it, no one had ever seen such a person. Nor had they ever heard of anyone who had lost their life force to a witch.

Sensing the atmosphere shifting in a dangerous direction, Ludvig’s face gradually darkened.

Selonia stepped away from the defendant’s seat and lifted the mana detector positioned at the center of the assembly hall.

She walked forward alone and took hold of it.

Her unexpected action caused even the Pope and the bishops to spring to their feet and stare at her in alarm.

Selonia briefly met Kailos’s concerned gaze, then brought her finger to the set of needles in front of her.

Three drops of blood welled from her reddened fingertip and fell, one by one, onto the detector.

This time, she had no intention of sabotaging the magical artefact. Doing so would be discovered almost immediately, as it had been before. However, a recent conversation with Muneme had given her an alternative option.

According to Muneme, Selonia’s mana reserves were so vast that they could overwhelm and disrupt the tool itself.

Compared to before her regression, when she hadn’t realized she had mana, she could now use it, and she was steadily gaining more of it. She chose to trust Muneme’s words.

Careful not to betray her tension, Selonia tightened her grip on her dress.

The silver orb of the magic tool began to spin, emitting a faint, flickering light.

That was all.

The device remained calm, as though it had detected no mana at all. At this, the assembly hall erupted into an even greater chaos than before.

“T-that can’t be right…?”

“Isn’t it malfunctioning? Hey—have a mage check it!”

Priests and mages repeatedly inspected the device, but they all came to the same conclusion: there was nothing wrong with it.

Exhaling a quiet breath of relief, Selonia addressed the hall.

“Is it acceptable to brand someone a witch based on a single accusation, without any clear evidence? Even if I were a witch, wouldn’t you be creating an innocent victim by condemning someone without proof of life-force theft?”

Her sky-blue eyes burned as they fixed coldly on Ludvig.

“There is no way to estimate how many innocent people have been wrongly accused until now. By holding witch trials like this and condemning women who may have been innocent, what have you done to them?”

“……”

Nobody answered.

Nobody could have imagined that the trial would unfold like this.

Ludvig stared at Selonia with narrowed eyes, his mind racing. The situation was steadily turning against them. If Selonia were to demand access to the underground prison, backed by the Grand Duke, it would be disastrous.

For a moment, Ludvig considered ordering Delmo to detain Selonia on the grounds that she had bewitched the hall. But with the Grand Duke seated there so resolutely, even that would not be easy.

And then—

The doors of the assembly hall were thrown wide open.

The answer to Selonia’s question came from the doorway.

“What did you do to my daughter?! Where is she now?! There’s no way that kind and gentle child could be a witch… Hic. My daughter is innocent! She’s innocent!”

A grey-haired man collapsed at the entrance to the hall, screaming in despair. Behind him, a crowd of people surged forward, their voices overlapping as they poured out their grief, rage, and desperation.

“My niece was nothing but a warm-hearted, gentle girl! All she did was heal a cat—how can that alone make her a witch?!”

“What did you do to my wife when you dragged her away?! You vile bastards! Those rumors about draining innocent women’s blood to steal mana—don’t tell me they’re true!”

“I owe my life to a woman you seized and branded a witch. All she did was cure me when I lay sick and abandoned by everyone—yet somehow, that became proof she was a witch. I still cannot understand it!”

The pent-up grief of countless people — those who had been forced to watch their loved ones being dragged away as witches, powerless to stop it — erupted all at once. The crowd surged forward suddenly, chaos erupting as Ludvig and the bishops panicked, stumbling over themselves in confusion.

Had those people somehow heard what had been said inside the hall?

Impossible, they thought.

That was when Kailos strode forward and tossed a small magical device onto the floor in front of them.

“It’s a magic tool that amplifies and transmits speech. Every word spoken in this hall has been relayed to the people waiting outside. They have a right to know the truth as well.”

“W-what is the meaning of this?! Where are the holy knights?!”

Instantly, the assembly hall descended into chaos. The Pope and the bishops scrambled to escape, while the remaining nobles rose from their seats to watch the chaos unfold with thinly veiled fascination. The priests and holy knights who had arrived too late and were still inside broke out in cold sweat as they struggled to restrain those shouting for the truth about the witches.

Thus ended Selonia Brienne’s witch trial, leaving behind nothing but doubt in the hearts of all who witnessed it.

***

It was a stalemate.

Everything that had happened inside the assembly hall had been broadcast in full via a magical device. As a result, suspicion and fury towards the imperial family and the Grand Temple were now simmering just beneath the surface of the Empire.

This threat was enough to engulf the capital at the slightest spark. Instead of achieving its intended goals, Selonia’s witch trial had solidified the rumors circulating through the city, bringing them perilously close to being accepted as truth.

Alix, who had cornered Selonia in the hope of possessing her despite the risks, now found himself in the same position. As he drained glass after glass of strong liquor and hurled curses into the air, a chilling sense of crisis crawled up his spine. Veins stood out starkly around his eyes, which burned with a savage, unrestrained glare.

When had everything begun to twist so irrevocably?

Yes — when Kailos stepped forward and asked Selonia to dance first. The very woman Alix himself had intended to claim. From that moment on, everything had gone wrong.

Driven to the edge, Alix could no longer avoid grasping at the most efficient — and most intoxicating — option left to him: crushing everything that defied him beneath an overwhelming weight of fear and ruling through it — the way he loved best.

A few days later, proclamations were posted throughout the Empire. They declared that the Grand Duke of Laharden had been bewitched by a witch, who had incited innocent people in an attempt to overthrow the Empire. The proclamations stated that it was Alix’s duty to raise an army and eradicate this evil.

War began once more, just as before the regression.