3
Three days had passed since I had been confined to this room. Thankfully, the servants came at fixed times each day, bringing me food and tending to my needs but that was all.
I could not step outside, nor could I look upon the faces of my honored ancestors. All I could do was gaze out the window or fall asleep.
My body was at ease, but mentally, it was a cruel punishment.
“Ugh…”
I recoiled instinctively at the sight of my midday meal: a crust of stale bread scattered with crumbs and a withered bunch of grapes, with only a few berries left clinging to the stem.
‘The food’s condition is hardly good at all.’
I pushed the meal aside and lay back on the bed. As I stared up at the patterns on the ceiling, a suffocating fear of what awaited me welled up inside.
I had steeled myself to accept any punishment. And yet, here I was – weak, pitifully weak.
What will become of me now? Will I spend the rest of my life imprisoned here, paying for my sins?
To chase away the fear, I forced my mind onto other matters. Most were nothing but regrets over the past.
‘If only I had been wiser, perhaps Ignitius could have been saved.’
If only I had been more vigilant of those around me.
“Take your grievances to the wraiths who burdened you with useless tasks in the afterlife. Tell them it was their demanded sacrifices that brought you to ruin.”
Those words of Valonius echoed in my ears like a nightmare.
‘Tasks’, he had called them.
I understood why it could be seen that way. The spirit of guardianship was far removed from the harshness of reality. Yet that spirit was my pride.
Bearing its name meant I was born to hold my family’s standard and protect our people. So even if it were called a burden, even if it had led us to ruin, it mattered little. It was the path we were always meant to tread.
If only… if only I had had more time. If only I had begun while there was still hope, before everything became irretrievable.
Perhaps from the stress, my head grew feverishly hot, my consciousness drifting away. I was swallowed into a long dream.
‘… Where am I?’
I found myself in a vast expanse, so endless I could not see its bounds. A translucent veil stretched across the space, and behind it loomed a colossal, indistinct shadow. Looking closer, I realized it was a roaring inferno, blazing without beginning or end.
[― Greetings, my descendant, Cassia. Welcome back to Ignitius.]
A gentle female voice spoke as a small light flickered before me.
Entranced, I reached toward it only to gasp when I realized my arms and legs had returned to their full size.
[― Your prayer has reached us.]
The light touched my hand and, in an instant, shifted into the form of a girl—my own age, with flaming red hair and eyes of molten amber.
[―Try it once.]
With only those words, the girl turned back into a sphere of radiance and slipped away behind the distant veil.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in my bed.
“Goddess…?”
The word slipped from my lips before I could stop it, but I quickly shook my head.
‘No.’
Her warmth, her gentleness was enough to make me believe she might have been Vesta Herself. But she was not. Instinct told me that Vesta dwelled beyond the veil I had glimpsed in the dream. That light was but a soul in Her service.
‘She called me her descendant. Perhaps… she was another of my ancestors.’
Rising to sit, I tried to climb from the bed but stumbled, falling with a crash.
“Ahh… that hurts…”
My limbs sprawled small and frail across the floor.
‘My body shrank again?’
As I tilted my head, a cascade of hair spilled over my eyes.
‘… This color.’
It was the exact shade of the girl’s hair in the dream. The face too, though younger, was unmistakably similar. A fleeting resemblance to the face I had once glimpsed reflected in marble.
‘Could it be…?’
Suddenly frantic, I scoured the room for a mirror.
‘Nothing?’
No matter how I searched, I found nothing reflective, only bowls of water, trinkets of metal, spoons.
I strained, twisting a spoon this way and that, but it reflected nothing on my face. At last, as I set it down on the table, my eyes caught sight of something useful.
“A silver tray!”
I swept the dishes to the floor and flipped the tray over. At last, my reflection appeared.
“… E–exactly the same…”
My mouth fell open.
Red hair and amber eyes. A face far too young, yet unmistakably the same as the girl I had seen in the dream.
Why… Why did I now bear my ancestor’s appearance?
The words from the dream came rushing back.
[―Your prayer has reached us.]
[ ―Try it once.]
My final prayer.
“Goddess… no, anyone—please, protect my family.”
That prayer had been for Ignitius. And yet, it has been answered? I had been told to try it once?
It made no sense. How could I, who had lost everything and collapsed at the temple doors?
Besides, my struggle would only mean something if Ignitius still stood.
I closed my eyes, took a long breath, and carefully retraced every vision I had seen.
The middle-aged Lord Tiverius, alive and walking. Lord Abellus as a youth. People dressed in garments from ages past, like actors on a stage. And then…
I ran to the wall and pressed a trembling hand to the window.
And saw them: the familiar structures of Ardentluna Manor. It was unchanged, save that the ramparts and gates once built to repel invasion had not yet been raised.
On the distant mountain stood the temple of Vesta, not the crumbling ruin I knew, but gleaming new, as if freshly built.
‘Don’t tell me… I’ve come to the past? In the body of my ancestor?’
***
Even after realizing this was not the afterlife, I sat in long, troubled thought. I could not understand most of what had happened, but a few things were certain.
I had been granted a chance to save my family. Through the grace of the Goddess Vesta and of some nameless ancestor, I was beginning anew.
Perched on the windowsill, I gazed at the temple of Vesta in the distance and tried to place this time in history.
It was the era of the fourteenth head, Lord Tiverius. The golden age of Ignitius.
And as the phrase ‘golden age suggests’, from then onward our family would only decline. After the fifteenth head, Lord Abellus, died in battle without leaving a proper heir, the royal house seized the chance to drive us out of central politics.
Though in this time our family still held many seats in the Senate, through cadet branches and loyal vassals alike, in generations to come, we would lose ground, until not a single seat remained.
To prevent that collapse, I would have to stop Lord Abellus’s death and shield the family from the royal house’s encroaching claws.
‘Impossible alone but with the family’s support, it could be done. And here beside me were Lord Tiverius, master of the kingdom’s administration, and Lord Abellus, destined to be a legendary general.’
‘Let’s see… Lord Tiverius is here, high above me on the family tree. That places me… about the fourteenth generation down.’
Fourteen generations removed and yet, as a distant descendant, I had been given the chance to save them all. What greater honor could there be?
I sprang to my feet, heart swelling with resolve.
“Al-all right! H–honored… ancesth…ors! I’ll s-save you all!”
“My lady, you still haven’t touched your meal.”
“Kyaaah! Y–you scared me!”
Startled by the maid’s sudden voice behind me, I screamed.
