Chapter 12
Time had stopped.
It wasn’t simply that time seemed to slow, no, it had truly, utterly come to a halt.
Her body, mid-fall toward the ground, was suspended in the air. The people visible through the open window, too, were frozen in place.
Everything had ceased moving, the world drained of color, turned to ashen gray.
Everything except for her.
Her mouth ran dry at the sight of such an unfathomably strange scene, beyond anything she could put into words.
[Do you desire us?]
Her lips parted.
The voice she’d heard as Sasha shoved her, it grew in volume, drilling into her ears.
Whoosh.
A sound like wind brushing past.
The instant she blinked, her vision shifted.
It was pitch black.
She lay in an endlessly dark space, so vast she couldn’t tell where it began or ended.
Her body flinched reflexively, then, realizing she could move, she slowly raised herself.
“…Where is this.”
[Our domain.]
The voice was far louder now, reverberating through the space with a deep hum.
Nothing was visible.
No hint of light pierced the suffocating dark, and yet, it did not feel frightening.
On the contrary, a curious sense of warmth, a languid comfort, wrapped around her body. More peaceful than anything she had ever known.
Somewhere in her mind, alarms blared that she should be wary of this unknown space and disembodied voice. But her body would not obey.
Flicker.
As she stood there in a daze, her head tilted back, light began to spill forth from somewhere. It was not a harsh brightness.
She wasn’t sure how she was even seeing it.
Butterflies, their wings a mixture of black and silver, shimmering with a faint glow, began to appear one by one, circling around her.
Their color was not a fiery crimson, but a deep, blood-soaked hue, their darkened wings gently fluttering.
One butterfly alighted softly on her cheek. As if it liked her, as if it didn’t want to leave, it brushed its small body against her skin, wings quivering.
[We are darkness.]
[The shadows hidden throughout all of nature.]
[Wherever there is light, behind it, there are those like us.]
[Few among humans can forge bonds with our kind.]
The butterflie’s gentle glow enveloped her.
[But we like you.]
[We want to be with you.]
[We want to give you our power.]
[Do you need us?]
[Do you desire us?]
The words, soft as a song, slipped into her ears, resonating through her head.
—”You are a spirit wielder.”
Suddenly, Lazerdin’s voice echoed through her memory.
—“In nature there are six spirits: fire, water, earth, wind, light, and darkness.”
Spirits and darkness.
Her eyes widened.
The butterflies, their wings shimmering as if to say they would wait as long as she needed, continued to flutter around her.
“…Spirits of darkness?”
The moment she spoke, the butterflies quickened their fluttering, as if delighted to be recognized. Their soft light grew faintly brighter.
[That’s right. We are the spirits of darkness, Nyx.]
[We are darkness itself, beings who hold the power of the beautiful night.]
[Just like the other five, we are indispensable to this world of nature.]
[And we like you.]
[Do you need us?]
A figure surfaced in her mind, the only Spirit wielder she had ever known, the one with silver hair. Had he known this would come to happen?
—”Would you not come away with me?”
Ah… yes.
If he were to ask her those words again now, if, by some chance, she still had such an opportunity left.
She would reach out and take his hand without hesitation.
She wanted power.
She despised the life of a discarded princess, despised her existence as a grand duchess bound to a husband while watching his mistress at his side, powerless to do anything.
She loathed her position, always gauging other’s moods, tossed about by their whims, a fragile ornament in a world that denied her voice.
And now, she no longer wished to live that way.
She wanted to live as herself.
—“Sasha, are you alright?”
Even if he humiliated her, no matter what he did, no matter if he dismissed and condemned her before the eyes of all, that golden-haired man had always seemed so dazzling to her eyes.
But the tenacious shell of love she’d wrapped around him had finally been stripped away, leaving only the pitiful shell of her own self behind.
And now, she no longer wished to be swayed by anyone.
Not as someone’s possession, not as a forsaken castoff, but simply as herself, standing alone with dignity.
And so, without a single trace of hesitation, she nodded.
“I want you.”
The moment the words left her lips, the butterflies that had been slowly circling her all at once took flight. The upper reaches of the dark space were filled with crimson-black wings.
A soft glow rained down upon her from above.
[It’s rare for a human to bear darkness within them.]
[That’s why we love the ones we forge contracts with.]
[We love them for a lifetime, and for a lifetime we share our power.]
[Are you ready to make a contract with us?]
She nodded again, slowly.
The butterflies that had risen into the air swarmed back around her, surrounding her in an instant.
Her vision was filled with nothing but the gentle flutter of wings and the light spilling from them, yet she did not feel trapped.
Rather, a sense of comfort, something warm and soothing, seemed to wrap around her.
[Your name?]
[Tell us your name.]
[The name that shall be bound to us.]
The voices of the butterflies, of the spirits, echoed through the air.
Blinking against the light that scattered dazzlingly around her, she slowly lifted her eyelids.
“…Asila.”
At that soft reply, the butterflies shimmered once more, their glow falling like fine dust.
And then, a voice far greater than any she had heard so far, one that seemed to make the very space around her tremble, poured into her ears.
[We are Nyx, the spirits of darkness and darkness itself, here pledge upon this place.]
[We shall love the human child, Asila, with unyielding devotion.]
[And until the moment this contract ends, we vow to share our power with her.]
A single butterfly landed in her palm, its crimson-black wings quivered softly.
[Asila, child of humankind. Will you make a contract with us?]
“…Yes.”
Prick.
The moment she answered, a thin trickle of blood began to seep from her fingertip. The crimson droplets slid down her hand and fell, one by one, with a faint sound upon the floor of the space.
From the small wound, the soft, ethereal light shed by the butterflies began to seep in.
It was foreign, and yet, warm. A strange, comforting warmth spread slowly through her body.
Her feet, which had been touching the ground, gently lifted into the air.
From her body, a glow, the same as that of the butterflies’ wings, began to spill forth. the light that wrapped around her steadily grew in intensity.
And when, at last, it swelled so bright it seemed to bleach her vision white, the voice reverberated through the space one final time.
[The contract is sealed.]
With those words, consciousness slipped away from her.
And so was born the third Spirit wielder of darkness, one whose name would shake the continent.
***
In the Tower Lord’s office of the Western Spirit Tower.
A man with black hair sat leaning against the wide window where the light of sunset streamed in, his eyes closed.
‘How long had he remained like that?’
Kallios suddenly raked a rough hand through his dark hair, which gleamed under the evening light, and sprang to his feet.
Yohan, the Fire Spirit wielder who had been struggling with paperwork at his side, lifted his head in surprise and froze.
Kallios’s eyes were blazing. Not the usual dazed gaze, but a sharp, dangerous glint, as though he was about to draw blood.
Having spent seven long years under him, Yohan was certain.
This was bad.
“…Where are you going?”
“The Northern Tower.”
“What?”
Yohan, who had been on edge as it was, always wary of whatever trouble that Tower Lord might stir up next, snapped fully alert at those words.
The Northern Spirit Tower. The north. Northern territories… and then, Lazerdin.
Shit.
Lazerdin.
Silver hair, pale blue eyes, a face so perfect it could dazzle even other men, and a personality utterly at odds with that appearance.
Kallios’s sworn rival.
He was a man so fearsome that if Kallios ever so much as caused a stir, Lazerdin would use the opportunity to bleed him for everything he could.
Yohan paled as he recalled the time Kallios had nearly demolished half a building during a symposium at the Northern Tower after a clash with Lazerdin.
And the aftermath.
“The esteemed Lord of the Western Tower, unable to endure a single slight, resorted to violence… Did you truly believe an apology would suffice? Do you have any idea what that building contained? You destroyed years’ worth of systematically archived records. Not only must you cover the restoration costs, but also compensate us for the effort of reorganizing it all.”
Thanks to his short-tempered Tower Lord, Yohan had been forced to deal with Lazerdin directly.
The man’s face had indeed been breathtaking, even by another man’s standards. But the moment he spoke, it was terrifying in a way entirely unlike Kallios.
Polite words, perfectly formal etiquette, and yet, within half an hour, Yohan had been so utterly worn down that he returned to the West having paid three times the originally agreed amount.
This so-called Tower Lord did nothing but cause incident after incident, driving the Spirit Tower’s finances into ruin.
If he even remotely acknowledged the damage he was causing, he’d take on some of the requests coming in, or at the very least go hunt down some of the monsters appearing all over the place.
But now, what business did he have at the Northern Tower? Yohan ground his teeth without realizing it.
“Hey, hey! You’re not seriously going to see Lazerdin, are you? Hey! Kal!”
As Kallios’s spirit partially cloaked his body, Yohan summoned Adonis, his Fire Spirit, in a last-ditch attempt to stop him.
But he froze at the final words that brushed his ear just before Kallios vanished from sight.
“There’s a Dark Spirit wielder in the North.”
And just like that, he was gone.
Left alone, Yohan pressed a hand to his forehead.
‘A Dark Spirit wielder? Now this was serious.’
By custom, a wielder of Dark Spirits was taken under the care of either another wielder of darkness or one of the four Tower Lords to learn to control that power.
Those loved enough by the Dark Spirits to form a contract were rare to begin with, but unlike the other five elemental spirits, Dark Spirits eroded the wielder’s mind.
They possessed overwhelming power capable of subduing the other spirits in an instant, but were also prone to devastating outbursts.
If that kind of spiritual power had been strong enough to be felt all the way here in the distant West, it could only mean one of two things – either someone had performed a massive spirit art, or there’d been a rampage.
There was no way the Northern Tower wouldn’t have noticed such a thing. If Yohan twisted the thought a little, he could even suspect the North had deliberately kept it under wraps to consolidate power.
‘Ah, forget it.’
His thoughts tangled deeper and deeper, and with a sigh, Yohan dropped back into his seat before the mountain of documents.
With one of the only two existing Dark Spirit wielders, and a Tower Lord no less, headed there personally, surely nothing too disastrous would happen.
Burying his face in the paperwork, Yohan muttered to no one in particular.
Please, just this once, don’t come back with another catastrophe.
