I continued going to the academy as if nothing had happened and maintained my image. Except, this time, I unknowingly set an invisible wall between myself and everyone else.
Except for one person.
Everyone noticed, my classmates, the few friends I'd made during that first week.
The way I kept them all at a careful distance.
The way I flinched from their touch yet stayed completely calm whenever Roselia was involved.
Even I didn't understand.
But I knew one thing:
Something had changed between us.
Something I couldn't name.
Something everyone else seemed to notice long before I did.
And then—
Time blurred.
Days bled into months.
Months slipped into years.
Before I realized it, four years had passed.
Graduation came and went, and I walked across that stage not as a student but as an Archmage, the highest rank any mage could attain.
Or so people thought.
In truth, I had surpassed even that.
My exam results, my achievements, and... other incidents... had pushed me beyond the standard tiers.
Eleventh Tier Archmage.
A title so rare it might as well have been mythical.
Leveling a mountain during a practical exam two years prior certainly helped.
Being a top-ranked student of the world-renowned Imperial Academy of History and Elements also meant my future was practically guaranteed. Mage, scholar, noble... whatever I wished, really.
And so, with the Emperor's approval, I was granted honorary nobility for my accomplishments and my Kazarian bloodline.
I told myself I earned it.
...but deep down, a quiet unease twisted in my gut.
Because I had a feeling Roselia had a hand in that title.
A hand in far more than I wanted to admit.
I remained in Vàr for the next few years, building my reputation, forming alliances with people who shared my vision... and privately managing Roselia's possessiveness.
I'd grown accustomed to it, or perhaps I'd simply learned how to move around her.
Either way, some quiet part of me still recognized how wrong it all was.
In time, the public formed their own narrative:
I was Roselia Nutriscu's personal Archmage.
I didn't answer to generals, to nobles, or even the Emperor himself.
People noticed.
They noticed how I reacted the instant she called for me, how I obeyed before I even realized I had moved.
One moment in particular spread through Kazar faster than any rumor-
During a battle near the border, the Emperor himself had begged for my assistance. He hoped my presence would give Kazar the advantage it desperately needed.
As I walked through the rows of tents in the Kazarian Army's main encampment, a soldier sprinted toward me, clutching a sealed letter.
"Madame Eunuella! I carry a letter from the Nutriscu House!" he shouted, breathing hard as he presented it to me with both hands.
"Thank you. Good work," I replied with a small smile.
He flinched, not in fear, but in something closer to shy panic. His face reddened instantly before he bowed and hurried away.
I slipped inside the tent the army had prepared for me. A private space, reinforced with mana barriers, dimly lit, quiet enough to think.
I broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
My eyes skimmed the first lines,
and the color drained from my face.
"Eh...? That... can't be right..." I murmured.
My hands trembled as I folded the parchment again, more gently than I intended, as if rough handling might make the words any truer.
My village.
The place where I grew up.
Where my parents lived.
Where the neighbors still treated me like a child running through fields of duskgrass.
Caught in the crossfire of the war between Ishtar and the neighboring kingdom.
I knew about the war, of course.
Everyone did.
But my village was nowhere near the border.
It sat deep within Ishtar's center, untouched by military traffic, far from siege routes, far from anything strategic.
For it to be involved...
It made no sense.
None.
Unless—
"Something isn't adding up..." I whispered, a sinking weight settling in my stomach.
But right now, none of that mattered more than whether my family was still alive. So without wasting another second, I slung my robe over my shoulder and stepped out of the tent. With my enhanced eyesight, I glanced toward the distant plains. Their numbers, distance, formation.
Except...
"I don't need to be precise with this one." I exhaled shakily, knowing full well what I was about to do. What it would cost.
I couldn't inform the general. I didn't have the time. Not when my family's lives might already be hanging by a thread.
Even so, my hands trembled. Of course they did. This would be the first time I'd erase thousands in a single moment.
A bead of cold sweat slid down my temple.
"Forgive me," I breathed.
Slowly, I raised a hand overhead. No circle. No chant. I wasn't even sure this was a spell.
"Pierce my enemies."
The air thickened. The clear sky dimmed beneath gathering clouds.
Then, the clouds split open.
A flash, swift as an arrow loosed by the heavens shot downward. The plains ignited in a blinding white eruption. A shockwave ripped across the battlefield, tearing through tents, rattling bones.
When the light faded, the enemy camp was gone, reduced to scorching ash beneath a rising mushroom cloud.
And just like that, I understood.
I had taken more than thirty thousand lives.
Standing in front of my tent, I stared up at the cloud climbing higher into the sky. My eyes wandered over the damage around me, tents ripped apart by the shockwave, supplies scattered, soldiers frozen mid-step as they took in the ruin stretching across the plains.
"Did... we anger the gods...?" one of them whispered, voice trembling. Others stood rooted in place, pale and shaking, while several who had witnessed me casting the spell dropped to their knees. Some stared in awe. Some in terror. Some... in worship.
This...
I shook my head faintly as my gaze brushed over theirs.
Was necessary. If I hadn't done it, they would have pushed through Kazar... They would have plundered the towns...
Yes. I needed to do it.
I need to get to my family.
I tried to cling to the reasoning, to the desperation that had driven me to act. To believe any person in my position would have chosen the same.
But even as the excuses formed, they rang hollow.
Because deep down, I knew.
I wasn't a protector.
Not in that moment.
I was far worse than those murderers in Cryia years ago.
Without sparing them another glance, I turned away and vanished from their sight.
When I manifested inside the Nutriscu Estate's main hall, Roselia was already there waiting. Her expression was a storm of sorrow barely held together.
She hesitated. Her lips parted, closed, then parted again-
before she finally managed to speak.
"Rania... love... Aoegos is..."
Her voice cracked.
A lump rose in my throat. Tears blurred my vision.
"Please... please tell me it's not what I think it is..." I whispered, taking shaky steps toward her. My robe dragged across the polished floor, pooling behind me.
"Right...?" My voice trembled. "Aoegos... Mom and Dad are fine... right?"
It couldn't be.
It couldn't be.
Aoegos was nowhere near the border.
A village on the opposite side of Ishtar,
there was no reason it should have…
But Roselia only shook her head.
And in that instant, I understood.
"That's not possible..." I choked, breath hitching.
"Aoegos is more than a thousand miles west...
And the war... it was in the east... it shouldn't have reached them..."
Images flooded through me. Sharp, vivid, merciless.
My parents' laughter.
The smell of warm bread from our neighbor's oven.
The sound of children shouting as we raced across the plains.
Faces. Voices. Lives.
All of it surged into my mind at once, as if my memories were trying to cling to existence before the truth ripped them away.
The world around me began to crumble silently, collapsing inward. While I stood there, powerless to stop any of it.
Even after everything I had achieved.
The titles, the impossible feats, the promises I made myself...
even after vowing to surpass the gods themselves—
I couldn't protect the people who truly mattered.
My knees buckled.
I hit the floor hard, staring at nothing.
"I couldn't even protect them..."
My voice sounded foreign, hollow.
My mind went blank.
Then—
"...what... the fuck..."
The words slipped out, cracked and trembling.
I was devastated. I knew I was devastated.
So why…
why did my chest feel tight in a way that wasn't quite grief?
Why did something inside me twist, wrong and broken…
Why do I feel like laughing?
A small, fractured breath escaped me.
"Heh..."
My shoulders shook.
"Haha... hah..."
"To hell with all of that..."
Everything went quiet.
My vision dimmed until the hall vanished entirely, replaced by a single image that devoured my thoughts.
The ruins of a village.
A village far, far too similar to my own.
I rose slowly, movements stiff and automatic. I turned away from Roselia without meeting her eyes, snatching my robe from the floor as mana coiled beneath my feet.
I heard her voice behind me. Soft, trembling, afraid.
But I couldn't care anymore.
Not now.
Not after this.
When I reappeared in Aoegos, the world I once knew was gone.
Ash drifted through the air like snow.
Flames crackled weakly among charred beams.
Bodies lay where they had fallen, villagers, neighbors, innocents.
And then my gaze found them.
The two people who had raised me. Held me. Loved me.
Lying together even in death, wrapped in each other's arms as if they could shield one another from the slaughter.
Stab wounds riddled their bodies.
Their clothes were burned.
Their faces were still.
Something inside me twisted. Sharp, tearing, and then hollowed out into nothing.
"What was the point...?"
My voice scraped out of my throat, thin and cracked.
"Studying that hard... all those titles... all those praises..."
My knees buckled. I sank beside them, reaching out with a trembling hand that hovered inches above their cooling skin.
The last threads of my sanity strained, quivered, and snapped.
My fingers curled into a fist.
Uncurled.
Curled again.
And then—
Rain began to fall.
A soft drizzle at first, pattering across scorched earth. Then heavier. Colder. The sky itself seemed to sag with grief.
"...what terrible timing..." I whispered.
I lifted my hand, letting a few droplets gather in my palm. They mixed with ash. Gray, dirty, and ruined.
The water trembled in my hand.
So did I.
"..."
"I already took thousands of lives," I murmured, a low chuckle slipping out-dry, humorless.
"Another hundred thousand wouldn't hurt."
The flames, the rain, the corpses, they vanished in a single step.
I reappeared high above the capital of the kingdom that dragged my village into its war.
Its spires glimmered beneath the storm clouds.
Its streets buzzed with laughter, chatter, vendors calling out their goods.
All of it felt distant.
Unreal.
Fragile.
There was no quelling this rage burning in my chest—
but strangely, I felt calm.
Too calm.
Calm in the way a blade is calm before the swing.
Almost like I wasn't planning on slaughtering the hundreds of thousands living below.
"What was this city called again...?" I tilted my head, watching people go about their lives, oblivious to the shadow hovering above them.
"I guess that's no longer important," I whispered.
"It won't last long anyway."
A faint smile tugged at my lips, cold, empty, resigned.
I'm done playing the neutral variable.
There's no reason to restrain myself anymore.
Innocent or not.
The wind around me shifted, swirling with power as the rain refracted light around my silhouette.
The first scream rose from below as people finally noticed the figure hanging in the sky.
I opened my hand.
And let everything fall.