“Y-Yuto! Stay with me!”

Levian screamed and leaped off Flokai’s back. She hurried over, blue healing magic streaming from her hands to envelop Yuto’s body. But healing magic could not mend the damage caused by overusing the Void’s power.

“Th-this can’t be...”

Levian’s eyes widened as the spell’s aether shattered into tiny fragments around Yuto and scattered. She had never seen or heard of anything like it.

And this was far from the only thing. Everything she had seen and experienced since coming to Belkain with Yuto defied her understanding. The helplessness she so despised and had longed to shake off swept over her again, but she refused to give up. She hurriedly rummaged through her herb pouch. If magic was useless, perhaps she could at least find an herb that would help.

“Ngh...!”

Yuto, who had been lying facedown on the floor struggling to suppress his pain, tried to stagger to his feet. Levian recoiled in alarm, while Flokai drew close and whispered.

“Yuto, you need to rest now. If you move in this condition, you’ll damage your soul.”

Flokai, too, knew the power of the Void well. It was incomparably stronger and more dangerous than an ordinary constellation’s divine authority. Having used that power beyond his limits, Yuto was bound to suffer the strain.

“Hah... Hah...”

Despite Flokai’s pleas, Yuto clutched his body and gasped for breath. Light flashed before his eyes, his vision repeatedly turning red before plunging back into darkness. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, and his fingertips twitched faintly, beyond his control.

He planted those trembling fingertips against the floor. They scraped across the marble with a squeal, but he did not stop.

“Y-you mustn’t get up! Lie down and rest for a little...”

“I’m... fine.”

Tears welled in Levian’s eyes as she grasped his shoulders, but Yuto shook his head fiercely and forced strength into his arms, pushing his upper body upright.

“Have to... go. There’s something... I need to check.”

“But...”

“It’s what... I came for.”

The words emerged in a cracked voice. Every word brought a bloody cough from deep within his lungs. Yet even as pain clouded his eyes, they remained fixed on the ruined staircase leading to the second floor.

“You idiot...! I’ll carry you, so please stop pushing yourself!”

In the end, Flokai had no choice but to yield to Yuto’s determination. He heaved a sigh, then gently took Yuto in his jaws and lifted him onto his back.

“Y-Yuto, please eat these herbs first. They’ll help you regain your strength. A-and an aether potion, too. You still have some left, don’t you?”

Levian offered him the blue herbs. Yuto did not resist. Barely managing to open his mouth, he accepted the herbs she fed him. He had always been so cold and strong, but now he truly seemed like a frail boy his age.

That only made her heart ache more. However mature he acted, Yuto was only fourteen. He was a full two years younger than she was. With a deep sigh, Levian took an aether potion from inside his clothes and poured it into his mouth as well.

“Whew...”

After he took the herbs and aether potion, the pain in his body gradually subsided. Vitality returned to his utterly exhausted frame, and gentle aether filled the body that the Void’s power had tormented and torn apart.

Soon, Flokai took Levian onto his back as well and bounded toward the stairs to the second floor. The staircase was half collapsed, but that meant nothing to his leaps.

On Flokai’s back, Yuto bit his lip. Much of his physical pain had subsided, but his mind was far from peaceful. Every sight within the royal castle, ruined on the night of the catastrophe and desecrated by the Black Mages, stirred memories.

The second-floor corridor was far quieter than the first, but its stillness offered no rest. It was the desolate silence of a tomb where time had stopped.

Leaning against Flokai’s back, Yuto saw the silk wallpaper adorning the walls. Though it was now moldy and torn in places, its patterns remained vivid in his memory.

‘It was here...’

Memories of the past surfaced. The large flowerpot behind which he had hidden as a child, holding his breath during a game of hide-and-seek.

His mother’s voice as she found her son and smiled kindly at him.

His father’s footsteps as he approached to stroke his son’s head, setting aside the stern expression he wore before his subjects despite being busy with affairs of state.

But now, only a bitter chill lingered in the corridor before him. The hallway that had once been so warm had become a passage through hell, steeped in purple miasma and clotted with rotting flesh.

Yuto let out a faintly trembling breath. Tarnished gold ornaments slipped past through the purple mist filling the second-floor corridor. Memories vivid even with his eyes closed churned through his mind as though they had happened only yesterday.

‘After Mother died... Father... would always walk these halls alone...’

Yuto’s mother had passed away from an illness of unknown cause when he was young. After the disappearance of the mother who had smiled at him so tenderly, her long, warm golden hair flowing down her back, an oppressive silence had settled over Belkain Castle for a time.

She had placed most of the decorations in this corridor herself. Painting had been her hobby. To be honest, she had not been a particularly accomplished artist. Even so, she had proudly hung her paintings in the corridor and delighted in summoning her husband and son to admire them and share their impressions.

His father would walk those halls alone, gazing silently at her paintings.

Yuto had been much the same. Unable to accept that his mother was gone, he would hide beneath the covers on his bed and sob. Then he would go out into the corridor to look at her paintings, hoping to feel the warmth she had left behind. Before he knew it, his father would be standing beside him.

‘Father... bore the weight of an entire kingdom, but for me, he would gladly step down from his throne.’

The painting most treasured by the father and son left behind was none other than the portrait his mother had painted of them. Yuto could remember the occasion clearly.

She had summoned her busy husband and dressed him in ridiculous clothes fit for a clown. Then she had dressed her son in a similar outfit and even made them pose for the painting.

But no matter how thoroughly he searched the corridor, that painting was nowhere to be found.

Because in this world, Yuto had never existed.

‘Ah...’

He had already felt that truth deep in his bones, but it struck him anew.

‘Father...’

After his mother’s death, his father had treated Yuto with even greater tenderness. Even when he was up all night attending to affairs of state, if Yuto came to him after a nightmare, he would sit him on his lap without ever once showing annoyance.

The feeling of his father’s rough but warm hand brushing back his hair. The faint scent of ink drifting from piles of documents.

That was the most steadfast world Yuto remembered from the childhood of his previous life, and the image of both the king and the father he had aspired to be.

Flokai stopped, both of them still on his back.

“Yuto.”

Yuto stirred from those distant, cherished memories. At the end of the corridor, an enormous oak door engraved with the crest of Belkain’s royal family stood before them. This had once been Yuto’s bedroom. In this world, its last occupant had been his father, King Luke Belkain.

The door, which must once have held all the warmth of its owner, was now covered in grotesque purple moss, a bitter chill seeping through its cracks. Yuto staggered down from Flokai’s back. Levian dismounted with him and hastily tried to support him, but he shook his head and grasped the doorknob.

CREAAAK...

The moment the door opened, the smell of dead time, trapped for years, came spilling out.

The room was eerily neat and orderly. Surely the Black Mages could not have left it untouched. Had those damned mages kept it tidy rather than ransacking it out of some semblance of respect for the king of Belkain? Clutching his aching heart, Yuto staggered into the room.

Only a single pen remained on the desk his father must have used for his work. As though entranced, Yuto approached it. This was where his father had sat his young son on his lap and told him about the justice of Belkain. Feeling the sting of tears in his nose, Yuto caressed the quill and the desk.

Then he went to the bookcase behind the desk. An intricately carved lion’s head adorned its side. Recalling the past, Yuto pressed its eyes in a particular sequence.

CLUNK.

A low mechanical sound rang out, and the desk began to slide slowly aside, revealing a hidden room. This was where his father’s secret records had been kept. Yuto swallowed hard and stepped inside.

The room contained only a small desk. Opening an unlocked drawer, he found a gold-covered diary stamped with the seal of Belkain’s royal family. Just as in the world before his regression, his father had left behind all the truths he had learned in the form of a diary.

Searching through old memories, Yuto recalled the first time he had found and opened it. On the very first page, his father had hastily added a few final lines.

[In the hope that someone will one day discover this diary.]

With trembling hands, Yuto opened the diary.

[If someone should one day discover this diary, do not forgive this terribly foolish king. Hate me, and tell the entire world of my grievous mistake.]

Yuto’s expression froze at the words on the first page. In this world, Luke Belkain had had no children. Naturally, the words on the diary’s opening page would differ from those in the world before his regression, but their content still left Yuto bewildered.

‘Mistake...?’

What could he possibly mean by a mistake? Filled with questions, Yuto turned the page.

[The land of Belkain is beautiful, but its heavens are cruel. Even today, countless nameless people die throughout the world for the constellations’ amusement.]

[As king, I am powerless. I have not even been granted an heir to succeed me, to endure this hell and change it. Every night, alone in my empty bedchamber, I hear phantom screams from Belkain and the world that will one day perish.]

From its very first page, the diary differed from the one Yuto had read. His father in this world, Belkain’s last king, Luke Belkain, was far more pessimistic and despairing than the “father” Yuto remembered.

[In this world, Callisto, I was born a prince of the Kingdom of Belkain and became its king. Countless subjects live under my rule, and each has a family of their own blood.]

[But I have no family. One might say that, to Belkain’s king, his people are his children and his family. Yet in the end, as a man, I have left no blood of my own in this world.]

[My wife wanted a child, and so did I. But however much we wished and tried, no child was ever born to us.]

[Yesterday, the wife I loved so dearly passed from this world through illness.]

The handwriting in the diary wavered with his father’s grief and despair.