TSF 10

Chapter 10

‘If I hadn’t come here…… I heard he would have already left for his next inspection tour several days ago. If things had gone as they were supposed to, he wouldn’t have had to deal with this forest fire.’

Rea bit her lip.

‘Is it because of me?’

She thought about it with a serious expression, then flopped back onto the bed.

‘It doesn’t matter. I changed the future the moment I returned. I knew beforehand that everything might change.’

She turned onto her side. Her hair tickled her cheek.

‘I thought he would keep me there all night, asking me all sorts of questions…….’

She turned to the other side because the position was uncomfortable.

‘It’s not that he didn’t ask. He probably just put it off. He’ll definitely call me tomorrow and question me about everything. If he does, I won’t just sit quietly either. Should I tell him to take responsibility because he stole my first kiss? I wonder what kind of expression he’ll make.’

She imagined Karion’s stunned expression and giggled before turning over again.

‘……He looked like he was in pain earlier. Is he all right? It was surprising that he went into the forest alone to save a child from the village. I thought he was a cold person…… Still, I’m glad he found the child.’

As soon as they returned to the garrison, a soldier had come running to tell them that it had been a misunderstanding and that the child had not actually gone missing.

Rea was impressed that Karion had not gotten annoyed and had simply said, ‘As long as we found her.’

‘He really is her son. He has compassion for people.’

She continued tossing and turning for a long time before finally drifting off to sleep.

—Wake up.

“Hm?”

Rea’s eyes flew open.

It was the spirit’s voice.

The spirit sometimes sent her a clear sense of its will.

Most of the time, it was a warning.

The spirit’s will sounded almost like a human voice.

—Stop it.

‘Stop what?’

—It will burst.

‘What will burst?’

—Fire.

Rea immediately sat up and climbed out of bed.

‘Did the forest fire flare up again?’

She looked out the window.

People moving around to clean up after the fire could be seen as shadows in the darkness, but none of them seemed to be in a hurry.

She quietly opened the bedroom door.

The hallway was silent and empty.

A breeze blew from the far end of the dark corridor.

It was showing her the way, telling her to come this way.

She followed the wind down the hallway and stopped in front of a door.

‘Whose room is this?’

Security in the residence was looser than usual.

Perhaps everyone was distracted by the commotion caused by the forest fire. She had not seen a single person on her way here.

She looked around, carefully opened the door, and slipped inside.

As she looked around the dark bedroom, she heard a faint groan.

She approached the bed where the sound was coming from and flinched.

“Your Highness?”

Karion was breathing heavily, his face twisted in pain.

Not knowing what to do, Rea sat down on the edge of the bed.

After hesitating several times, she reached out and placed her hand against his forehead.

His hand suddenly shot out and grabbed her wrist.

Their eyes met.

After returning to the garrison, Karion heard the welcome news that the forest fire was weakening because the wind had changed direction.

Under normal circumstances, he would have stayed up all night directing the cleanup.

But the condition of his body, which had felt refreshed until he left the forest, gradually began to feel strange.

His body felt heavy, and his head throbbed. It seemed the aftereffects of his attack were finally catching up with him.

He decided it would be better to rest until morning and returned to his bedroom.

He felt relatively fine until he finished bathing and lay down on the bed.

As time passed, his temperature rose, his breath grew hot, and his body became limp, like soaked cotton.

The symptoms were clearly different from the attacks he called his ‘curse.’

If the attacks felt like being thrown into a raging fire, this felt like being slowly submerged in boiling water.

‘Am I sick?’

He had only heard of such an illness. He had never actually suffered from it himself.

Aside from the chronic illness he called a curse, he had always been healthy and had never even caught an ordinary cold.

Feeling humiliated at the thought of being brought down by something as trivial as body aches, he tried to sleep.

By the time he realized that ‘something was wrong,’ his mind had become hazy, his limbs had lost their strength, and he no longer had the energy to call anyone.

He lay there almost resigned to his fate when he felt an energy slowly boiling deep inside his body.

He had a vague certainty that the energy would eventually devour him and burn him away.

‘Am I going to die like this?’

He had never been particularly attached to life, but he had never wanted to die such a meaningless death.

‘Princess.’

Why was it that, at a moment like this, the person flashing through his mind was that woman with green eyes?

A breeze brushed across his face.

Had he gone beyond hallucinations and started feeling things that did not even exist?

There was no way a breeze could be blowing inside his bedroom……

His forehead suddenly felt cool, and strength returned to his limp body.

He grabbed the wrist of the person touching his forehead.

She appeared before him in a blur.

As his mind cleared slightly, he realized that he was not seeing things.

‘The princess!’

Was this what it felt like to see hope at the very end of despair?

In the darkness, she seemed to glow.

But he did not want hope.

It was better never to have it than to grasp it only to lose it.

So he spoke in a cold, stiff tone.

“What are you…… doing in my room?”

The moment his hand grabbed her arm, a breeze blew.

It was a breeze only she could feel.

Rea suddenly felt as though every sound had disappeared, leaving her alone in a completely empty, pure-white space.

It was a sign that all her senses had entered some extreme realm beyond the limits of human perception.

It did not happen by her own will. Whenever the wind spirit needed to tell her something important, it would sometimes lead her into this state.

She saw an illusion of fierce flames burning as though they would consume the entire world.

Then she heard Nella’s voice.

⌜You are lucky. You fully awakened the power of a spirit.⌟

⌜What does a full awakening mean? How do you know?⌟

⌜Because you are still alive.⌟

⌜……What?⌟

Nella already knew a great deal about the ancient spirits that had been forgotten by the world.

She had said that the reason spirits were forgotten in the present age was because the chance of awakening them was so low.

⌜If you fail to fully awaken, a weak human body like yours will be caught in the spirit’s rampage and torn apart. It explodes.⌟

‘A spirit’s rampage!’

Rea looked directly into Karion’s silver-gray eyes.

“Your Highness. Answer my question honestly. How long have you been like this? Since you saw the forest fire earlier?”

Karion slowly closed his eyes and opened them again.

The reason he was holding her wrist was not to push her away.

It was to keep her from pulling away.

Just being in contact with her made him feel as if a small passage had opened in his lungs.

“Like what?”

“The energy running wild inside your body right now. I’m asking how long that energy has been tormenting you.”

Karion stared at Rea.

As expected, this woman knew about his curse.

And he knew the exact answer to her question.

“The autumn of the year I turned ten.”

“Ten? You’ve had it since you were that young…….”

Rea swallowed the question, ‘How are you still alive?’

“Did these symptoms appear in the forest earlier, too?”

“Is the princess a mage?”

“What?”

“When the princess touches me, the curse subsides.”

“……Curse?”

“The curse.”

After saying that, Karion turned his head away.

But his hand was still holding onto her.

“It isn’t a curse…… Then how does it subside?”

“I…… can breathe.”

Rea’s green eyes widened as she murmured,

“So that’s why.”

‘Did he kiss me because of that?’

A single picture came together in her mind.

‘The wind’s power calms the fire energy that is running wild because it is incomplete.’

She did not know why the spirit power he had awakened at such a young age was now running wild.

But this had never happened in her previous life.

There was no doubt that the future had changed because she had come here and met him.

If she could not stop the spirit’s rampage, he would die.

Nella’s voice echoed in her ears.

⌜Rea. The wind spirit represents harmony and flow. It embraces other spirits that conflict with one another. It is a gentle power.⌟

‘No.’

She could not let him—the son of the person who had saved her—die here.

He would have lived at least another ten years even if nothing had changed.

For him to die young because of her—how could something so terrible happen?

If that happened, she would have no face to meet Nella even in death, and she would have no reason to live this life.

“Wait!”

Rea shook off the hand holding her wrist and climbed onto the bed, straddling him.

“Excuse me.”

She met his startled silver-gray eyes, immediately lowered her upper body, and pressed her lips against his.

Karion’s body stiffened for a moment, but his hesitation was brief.

He cupped her face in his hands, pulled her lips into a deep kiss, and eagerly pressed closer.