Chapter 5
“…….Can you see this?”
She stared blankly at the tiny fairies brushing their cheeks against hers and the man standing before her.
The man possessed a beauty unlike anything she had ever seen.
Silvery hair that shimmered strand by strand under the sunlight, and eyes the color of a clear sky. His gaze held a hue as though it had captured the heavens themselves.
Though the color was the same shade of blue, it was entirely different from the Grand Duke’s cold, icy glare.
As her thoughts, like flowing water, once again drifted toward the Grand Duke, a sharp pain pricked at her chest.
Instinctively clutching at her heart, she hesitated when she noticed the man still waiting, as if expecting a reply.
Slowly, she gave a small nod, and at once, the tiny fairies fluttered up into the air.
[She can see us!]
[A special human! A Contractor?]
[Contractor! Contractor!]
[No wonder I’ve been in such a good mood!]
The man strode up to her and extended his hand. His blue eyes seemed to shimmer with light.
“I am Lazerdin of the Northern Spirit Tower. Call me Ledin. I never imagined I’d meet a Spirit Master in this place. Which faction are you with?”
She blinked slowly.
“……A Spirit Master?”
A gentle breeze passed between them, and the fairies spun and fluttered through it, their laughter ringing clear.
The man’s expression shifted slightly, as though sensing something was off.
A look that said he could hardly believe what he was seeing.
Only after a long silence did he finally speak.
“Don’t tell me… you truly don’t know you’re a Spirit Master?”
His tone suggested he was staring at something utterly absurd.
She couldn’t keep up with his words. A Spirit Master?
She had definitely heard—no, read that they were beings who formed contracts with spirits, the purest essence of nature, and wielded tremendous powers beyond the realm of magic.
He had called her a Spirit Master. And spirits weren’t supposed to be visible or audible to ordinary people.
—Can you see this?
The man’s slightly startled voice echoed in her mind once again. She turned her gaze to the fairies spinning circles around her.
“These little ones… are spirits?”
The man let out a faint scoff, as if he couldn’t believe it.
As though to himself, he muttered, “So you truly know nothing,” and then reached out to grab hold of one of the fairies, pulling it before her eyes.
[Eeek! Ledin, let me go!!]
The translucent, pale green fairy struggled, slapping at his fingers with tiny hands, but the man, seemingly used to it, didn’t so much as flinch as he continued.
“These are spirits. More precisely, they’re nymphs, earth spirits under my command.”
[That’s right, we’re nymphs!]
[Nymphs!]
The fairy that had wriggled free of the man’s grasp flitted up into the air, singing the words in a lilting tone.
“And,”
The man’s hand, which had been pointing at the spirits, turned to indicate her.
“Only Spirit Masters can see spirits, apart from other spirits, of course. I don’t know who you are, but you are a Spirit Master. I can’t imagine why you’ve gone this long without knowing it. Have none of the spirits you’ve seen ever tried to form a contract with you?”
When she wordlessly nodded, the man’s face twisted into a grimace.
“……Are you sure you’re not mistaken about something?”
It was the first time she spoke, quietly, as she kept her eyes fixed on the man, who looked deep in thought.
One of his eyebrows arched.
Spirit Masters, powerful beings before whom even the Emperor himself would bow his head.
And she… was one of them? It was laughable.
She tilted her head back.
The endlessly dark, lightless heart she had carried within her was in sharp contrast to the cloudless, brilliantly clear sky overhead. The sunlight stabbed at her eyes.
She had spent her life trapped deep within the cold, desolate palace, her heart endlessly cut and torn by the people she called family, her mother and her blood kin.
And now.
She slowly turned her gaze toward the direction of the Grand Duke’s estate.
Foolishly, she had thought to hope. She had believed in salvation and opened her heart, only to be mercilessly cast aside.
No, betrayed. That man had probably harbored hatred for her from the very beginning.
And yet she couldn’t sever the feelings she held for him. The sheer wretchedness of her position was suffocating.
She had no power.
Not even the slightest strength to escape from a fate she did not choose.
There was no way someone like her, powerless, insignificant, could be one of those Spirit Masters that the great powers of the continent scrambled over themselves to possess.
No one knew better than she how powerless she truly was.
After a brief pause, she opened her palm.
The pale green spirits let out delighted cries and fluttered down, perching on her hand, their sparkling eyes fixed on her.
She gently stroked their tiny heads, then turned toward the man, who still wore a furrowed brow.
He remained silently gazing at her.
She didn’t know how much time passed like that.
“…No. You are a Spirit Master.”
His words, as though flatly denying every thought she had held, made her blink.
The man rose to his feet.
“I’ll return another time. I’ll teach you about spirits then.”
Without waiting for her reply, he casually declared his intention to freely come and go from the Grand Duke’s household. With a flick of his fingers, the spirits circled around her once before slowly vanishing from sight, leaving only faint traces of scattered light in the air to mark their presence.
“Well then, I’ll be going.”
Leaving behind a parting word, the man cast her one last inscrutable glance before turning and walking away.
As he made his way toward the mansion’s front gate, he suddenly slowed and turned his head halfway back toward her.
“…Your name?”
“…Asila. Asila von Ludwig.”
The surname had likely been spoken out of stubborn defiance toward this guest of the Grand Duke’s household.
Even if he was a stranger who had approached her without warning, she wanted to leave some mark of herself as a member of this house, if only through her name.
“…I’ll see you next time.”
Asila lowered her gaze to her palm, where the spirits had earlier tumbled and played.
Had it been a trick of the light, that the innocent, childlike smiles they’d shown her felt so unbearably warm? But then, spirits were the purest embodiment of nature, it was only natural they were radiant and beautiful.
She left the garden and stepped inside. The servants’ cold gazes briefly gathered upon her before quietly dispersing.
The room she entered, while labeled as the couple’s shared chamber, was for all intents and purposes her own. She bolted the door behind her.
A spirit wielder. A spirit wielder…
The man and those spirits, though constantly bickering, showed an unmistakable trust in one another, it was evident in their every word and gesture.
She still couldn’t fathom why that man had been so convinced she was a spirit wielder. But if… by some impossible chance, she truly was one, then perhaps, she might have the chance to stay close to beings who possessed warmth like those little creatures.
Asila was lost in the reckless, fleeting thought, then let out a dry, self-mocking laugh.
There was no ‘by chance.’ She knew better than to drown in foolish hopes. This situation alone was already too much.
Look at herself, already shattered, yet still desperate to cling to even a shred of attention from the Grand Duke, sunk in the pathetic mire of a thing called love.
Every time she dared hope, it only ended in pain, shredding her heart to ribbons. She could not afford it.
She whispered to herself.
Never again.
***
[Ledin! I want to see Asila again!]
[I miss her! Let’s go back!]
[I hate that pink-haired woman! But I like Asila!]
[Asila! Asila!]
Ledin lounged against the carriage seat, watching the nymphs noisily whine about wanting to see the woman they’d just parted from.
He hadn’t intended to visit the Grand Duke’s estate at all. It had only been a last-minute detour to check on a tangled trade deal involving the Northern territories.
The Grand Duke, a man lauded with titles like war hero, the Sun of the North, had a woman at his side.
— “Hello, I am Sasha von Barthe, lover of His Grace, the Grand Duke Karl.”
The woman had brazenly introduced herself as his mistress, and Ledin had instinctively furrowed his brow.
It wasn’t just her attitude. There was something about her that felt subtly… off.
[I don’t like her! Ledin, I don’t like that woman!]
[Let’s leave!]
[Let’s go, Ledin!]
Apparently it wasn’t just his imagination, the nymphs had been clamoring to leave as well.
But work was work, and shirking it entirely wasn’t an option. He had swiftly handled what business remained with the Grand Duke and left the mansion.
Though unsettled, the matter wasn’t his concern. He hadn’t even thought to look into the woman named Sasha. The thick, cloying perfume she wore only dragged his mood lower the longer he was around her.
It was then, as he was heading toward the front gate, that Ledin saw her.
A woman with long, obsidian hair and golden eyes, radiating a serene, distant air, as though she might vanish at any moment.
Before he could even approach, the spirits reacted.
Being pure embodiments of nature, spirits typically kept a fair distance from humans, save for those who were spirit wielders, their ‘contractors.’
Yet those spirits had eagerly flocked to the woman, nuzzling against her cheek. Though she seemed somewhat bewildered, she’d gently entertained their playfulness. And as he watched, Ledin realized.
“Can you… see them?”
It was a question asked for confirmation, to be sure.
Her awkward manner with the spirits had struck him as odd, so he’d asked which house she was from.
“These… are spirits?”
Never, in all sincerity, had he expected that the woman would truly know nothing.
At first, it had been duty that drove him to explain.
That she was a spirit wielder. That only spirit wielders could see spirits.
Spirit wielders were few in number. It was no trouble to offer a hand to one more.
Usually, spirits instinctively sensed a wielder’s presence and sought a contract on their own. Some as early as age five, though by fifteen, it would be impossible for it not to have happened.
To hear she’d experienced none of this, it had made him grimace.
“…Could it be you’re mistaken about this?”
But then, when he’d heard her quiet words and saw what filled those golden eyes, he could say nothing more.
Powerlessness. Emptiness. Resignation.
A darkness that seemed to have gathered over a lifetime. As though she had long since accepted that she possessed nothing, and would never possess anything.
He recognized it, having once known it himself, that crushing hollowness, the kind that makes one resign to life, until they feel no more.
Perhaps that was why.
Ledin had driven in the stake. Told her she was a spirit wielder.
As though bewitched, he’d promised to return, to teach her about the spirits.
Now, reclining deep against the carriage seat, he covered his brow with a hand.
That woman, Asila, her presence, her golden eyes, remained vivid in his mind, refusing to fade.
