I Will Protect My Brother - Chapter 126

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 126
My heart began to beat steadily, yet unmistakably. A dull, aching sensation of elation tightened around my chest.
A powerful conviction had arrived.
‘You were waiting for me.’
A fierce urge to open this door consumed me.
I wanted to draw closer to him. I wanted to meet his gaze so he couldn’t avoid my eyes, and speak with him.
What kind of person was he? Was this solitary existence, abandoned for so long, not a burden to him? Did he wonder about me as much as I wondered about him?
My grip tightened on the iron bars.
“There are too many watching eyes—it’s been difficult to slip away. It takes about a week just to travel to Riltear and back. I may not be able to come every month.”
I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. I held my breath and observed his expression intently, searching for how he would react to my words.
“Winyak, would you want me to keep coming here?”
“….”
“Do you wish for me to continue visiting you?”
His crimson eyes wavered. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze, yet unconsciously his eyes blinked once, twice. In each brief moment as his eyelids and lashes lowered and rose again, a desperate longing flickered through.
In one glance, desperation; in another flash of those eyes, anticipation, hope, and then desperation once more.
This was the first moment I had ever glimpsed an emotion in him other than hatred and resentment.
Therefore, there was no need for me to speak aloud in response.
“You don’t hate me….”
“….”
“Then, I’ll come again next month! I’ll try to visit as often as I can manage.”
My chest swelled with joy and delight. Before I realized it, the corners of my mouth had lifted, and I was smiling broadly.
Karga, who had been watching me distantly, murmured indistinctly.
“…Thank you.”
With those words alone, all the hardship I had endured until now was forgotten.
As I came and went from this place, I had never managed to share all the trivial stories that now poured from me at length. Today’s weather, the season, idle gossip from Abuye, the fashions currently sweeping through the Capital….
While my voice continued, Karga’s eyes sparkled not with that dark, blood-red hue, but with their true crimson brilliance.
That faint glimmer of life was more beautiful than the starlight densely scattered throughout the Cosmos.
So beautiful I couldn’t tear my eyes away for even a moment.
Then, my vision rippled violently.
As if a great banner were fluttering, the landscape before my eyes began to distort.
“…!”
My consciousness, which had been sunk deep within, was forcibly dragged toward the surface of wakefulness.
I opened my eyes wide.
The soft, warm scent of wood filled each breath I drew.
There was no dark dungeon, no damp and musty smell, no young man fallen into such exquisite ruin that he eclipsed all that filth.
I raised my upper body, clutching my head.
“Ah… this dream again.”
I had been having similar dreams for several days in succession.
But never before had one been this vivid.
The emotions from the dream rarely lingered so intensely after waking. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the overwhelming sensation that left me breathless.
At that moment, I heard someone standing before the doorway. I snapped my head toward the Gate.
My hearing sharpened to a keen edge. Instinctively, I reached across my chest.
My hand brushed against a small disc—something I always wore around my neck, though I couldn’t say why.
In that same instant, the door creaked open a hand’s breadth.
Someone poked their head through the gap. Their eyes widened with surprise.
[Oh?]
“…Urs?”
[My, you were already awake. Miss.]
A sigh of relief escaped me. Urs—the elf who owned this Cottage where I lived.
The tension that had gripped my shoulders melted away.
Urs whispered apologetically.
[What’s this? Up so early? I was only planning to leave your morning medicine and slip away.]
“It’s fine. I’ll be out soon.”
[Take your time. It’s still dawn—the sun hasn’t risen yet.]
“No, I’m fully awake now. I thought I’d do some dawn training for once. If I skip even a day, my body feels stiff.”
Urs tilted his head in bewilderment, then seemed to understand, offering a peculiar smile.
[Very well. Prepare yourself and come out.]
“Yes.”
I threw off the blanket and set my feet on the floor. I pulled my outer robe from the back of the chair and was about to leave the Room when doubt seized me.
“Dawn training…?”
My body feels stiff if I skip dawn training? When did that habit start?
“I didn’t have it yesterday.”
Dawn training? Whenever I opened my eyes, the sun was already high overhead. So where had those words come from?
Strangely, the moment I tried to dismiss the thought, my joints actually creaked as if rust had set in.
‘How odd.’
I scratched my cheek in confusion, then shrugged and resigned myself to it.
After all, such inexplicable doubts surfaced in my daily life more than once or twice.
* * *
The world I inhabit is called Alfheim.
Many races dwell together in Alfheim.
The vast majority are elves, while the rest are beings from other worlds who fell through dimensional rifts.
I am one of them—currently the only human in this world.
I have no knowledge of how I became Alfheim’s sole human. I simply exist here, as if I always have.
When I first regained consciousness, I was utterly bewildered.
An elf who introduced himself as Urs was gently stroking me as I lay in bed.
[Congratulations. You’ve finally become quite presentable, Miss.]
“….”
[Your heart has grown well too, and the wound is nearly healed. Now, do you remember anything?]
Nothing. My mind was a blank canvas.
[That’s only natural. Think of it as being reborn—begin painting your new life from the very beginning.]
Thus began my new life.
The elves of this realm live for two hundred years at minimum, stretching to several centuries at most. Compared to them, I was scarcely more than an infant taking my first uncertain steps.
Young, fragile, and ignorant even of my own identity—the elves cherished me all the more for it.
[It’s perfectly fine to live without knowing. There’s no need to force yourself to remember.]
[No one here will harm you. You are our friend, after all.]
It was a comfortable existence. A life where I belonged wholly to one place, buried in infinite and benevolent love.
A life where I need not calculate or worry, where I was protected rather than forced to protect.
My time in Alfheim was satisfying in every way.
Had it not been for the dreams that visited me each night like clockwork, I might have melted naturally into the fabric of Alfheim itself.
The strange scenes that unfolded behind my closed eyes continually stirred my curiosity.
Everything I saw in those dreams was undoubtedly a fragment of my lost past.
‘What manner of person was I before?’
As I gathered the fragments from my dreams, I occasionally reaped modest rewards.
Yesterday, I discovered a word that might be my name.
“Rozentia.”
“Yes, what is it?”
“…Will you come again next month?”
“Rozentia…”
I paused in gathering medicinal herbs, lost in thought. I had come to the Valley behind the cottage with Urs to collect them.
‘Rozentia. That must be my name.’
In most of my dreams, I stood alone in the center of a grand Hall, adorned in elaborate gowns and heavy jewelry. The name Rozentia, with its archaic elegance, suited such a place perfectly.
‘Was I truly a princess of some realm? Or perhaps nobility?’
Recently, I had dreamed of myself in such finery wandering through a castle I had never seen before. But in the past few days, the dreams had taken a different turn.
A limbless man imprisoned in the damp confines of the Deep Sea Prison.
It was a haunting combination of images. The memory of his mutilated form sent a burning ache through my chest.
[My lady?]
When I stood frozen, staring into empty space, Urs spoke in a casual tone.
[Did something come to mind?]
“…Just a name. It seems I was called Rozentia.”
[I see. What a lovely name—fit for a princess.]
“Isn’t it? I rather like it. Oh, and I saw a very handsome man in my dream too.”
[A man? A lover?]
“No. It doesn’t seem to be that sort of relationship. More like… getting to know each other…?”
We had only just begun to speak. I pondered the young man’s face carefully.
“I wish I could dream more. I’d like to see his face from closer.”
I want to open the iron-barred door and step into the prison. Perhaps I had done so before.
Could I dream that day again? I want to touch his face right before my eyes.
Ah, something is almost coming to me… but not quite.
‘Wait. I went into the prison? When?’
The wandering threads of my thoughts came to an abrupt halt.
Did I really go inside that place?
[Miss?]
“Oh, yes!”
I lifted my head abruptly. Coming to my senses, I realized I’d been harvesting medicinal herbs and weeds as if felling a forest.
These days, such moments of sudden doubt came far too frequently.
As I washed my dye-stained hands with dry water, Urs chuckled warmly and offered me comfort.
[Don’t strain yourself like that. Forcing yourself to dig through memories won’t make them resurface.]
“….”
[If we’re truly bound by fate, the opportunity for your memories to return naturally will present itself. Put your mind at ease.]
Urs plucked a handful of long-rooted medicinal herbs from the dense grass field.
[Besides, are you really going to refuse Sionir’s invitation? That boy seems genuinely sincere toward you.]
“Well, it does seem that way. I’m still deliberating over what to do.”
Sionir was a High Elf from the Lower Village of Western Forest who had recently been expressing romantic interest in me. A young man with deep brown hair and kind violet eyes, he would blush across both cheeks whenever he stood before me, his shyness evident.
“He’s quite cute, actually. I thought maybe I should try going on a date once….”
Yet something kept gnawing at me from behind. What was this feeling?
My conscience pricked relentlessly, as if I were committing some terrible transgression. It was a strange sensation—as though I’d become a wretched woman cheating behind the back of a rabbit-like lover.
‘Did I really have a lover?’
If so, I hoped he was as handsome as that man from my dreams. There’d be no way to meet him again, but at least the thought would be pleasant.
Lost in such idle musings, I was just pulling up the last tuft of grass when it happened.
A brilliant light exploded above my head like a thunderbolt.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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